Satan’s a Jerk

This week was insane. We had an Oregon snowstorm from Sunday to Tuesday, And by snowstorm I mean they got like three inches of snow over the three days haha it's funny because they literally shut down school and work and everyone takes the day off for it, even though it's not a whole lot of snow. Although it did kinda suck because of the seven investigators committed to coming to church only two of them actually came because they didn't want to drive in the snow. Either way, I guess I'm not one to make fun of their snowstorms #arizonaboy. It was fun though, we had a zonewide snowman competition and Elder Anderson and I took second place.

I got to bike for the first time the other day haha our district leader needed to borrow our car and so we toook the bikes out, however the bike i was borrowing apprently is like infamous for being a piece of garbage, and it totally was haha the seat didn't stay up and the sprockets were broken so i couldnt change gears and it rattled the entire time i was going haha it was an interesting time, fortunately it was only for one night.

We got a new car this week. It's a bright red 2018 corolla, and we're calling her Tina. She's very nice haha we ended up spending over six hours at the mission office and getting our old car washed and cleaned and switching out the hardware for the mission's safety device thingy and all that jazz, which was frustrating.

I had a couple hard days this week. A couple of our investigators dropped us and the rest of them are progressing but are all going through lots of trials and challenges and are expressing new doubts and we know that Satan is just trying to work at them and keep them from coming unto Christ. It's been hard and we've been super busy just running around visiting all of our people and keeping track of their needs and the ways they are progressing and trying our best to maintain daily contact with all of them. We also accidentally slept straight through our alarm like three days in a row which didn't help anything. I was feeling pretty unmotivated and really overwhelmed, and I had a couple days where I was struggling. But I just received so many promptings and reminders to do the three things I've learned will always help. I just had to focus on others and their needs, be positive about whatever situation I'm in and looking for solutions instead of the problems, and just remember Christ in EVERYTHING I do. Christ is literally the best. He is the ultimate friend, and he truly knows everything about us and our situtation becuase he felt it too. For every investigator who dropped us, I remember that He was betrayed by one of His closest friends Judas. When I complained about walking or biking, I was reminded that He had to walk from Jerusalem from Golgotha bearing his cross. For every feeling of discouragement or sadness or frustration, it helped me to remember that He literally bore mine and everyone else's. For every temptation I feel, I remembered that he suffered temptation of every kind. (Alma 7:11-13) For every time I miss my family and feel like I can't bear being away from them, I was super humbled when I thought about Him how He must have felt as he cried out "Father why hast thou forsaken me?" Jesus Christ truly lived. He is my Savior, and I know he loves me perfectly and without end. He knows me, and through Him and His teachings I know that I can become better and learn to experience a more true joy.

I love you all. Keep it lit

Elder Bond

Snow. Soda. And Good Times

This week flew by haha it was insane. We had lots of fun though. On Valentine's day Elder Anderson was pretty sick so we stayed in the apartment until like 2 which was rough but at the same time I had tons of time to study and clean up the apartment which was pretty nice. Then for our Valentine's dinner we went out with some missionaries from another district named Elder Hoffart and Petersen. We hang out with them lots haha they're fun. We went to Wendy's AND Taco Bell during our dinner hour haha it was super romantic 😂 We've had some super solid investigator lessons this week. Our investigator pool is on the smaller side right now but everyone is progressing and keeping commitments which is bomb dot com. I've been learning lots about having the courage and diligence to prepare for lessons and work with each of our investigators and their specific circumstances and questions. I've also been getting a lot better at talking to people on the streets. We had exchanges on Friday and each of us set a specific goal to accomplish that exchange. My goal was to continue to get better at opening my mouth. So I went to Elder Petersens area. I got there and he was like "Yo. We have no appointments today. Prepare to hate your life" which worked out cause that meant we got to spend the entire day tracting and street contacting. And guess what. We gave out SEVEN Book of Mormons that afternoon. And we got 3 potential investigators for their area haha it was awesome. It felt so good. It's so fulfilling to get to know people and then teach about how the Gospel can bless their lives. I've gotten to this point where when people ignore us or reject us I just feel sorry for them. Jesus Christ is such an awesome guy haha and I feel bad that these people don't know Him. We had one of our investigators named Laetizia (she's a foreign exchange student from Germany) she dropped us yesterday which kinda broke our hearts. But we know that she's just not ready right now, but in a couple months she'll be prepared. 

Lots of funny things have been happening this week haha there was a deal at Albertsens where you could get 4 12 packs of soda for 10 dollars so Elder Anderson and I kinda bought 8 12 packs of soda haha. There's also this guy named Patrick who's like always outside working so  we talk to him whenever we're in the area and we stopped by and he was getting rid of this queen size mattress and we were like "we'll take it" and he's so cool that he came and dropped it off at our apartment so now Elder Petersen has a queen size bed and I took his other mattress so I have a double stacked bed which is now WAY soft haha.

Anyways, it's been awesome. I love you all so much. I'm so stoked to be home in 692 days. Just know that no matter how much I miss you guys or how hard it gets that I have Jesus Christ by my side. D&C 84:88 is so true "I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up." He is my Savior. Applying His teachings and relying as fully as we can upon His grace by praying and studying brings so much peace and fulfilment. Try it out :)

Love you guys!!

Elder Bond

Pics

1. Dope sky

2. All sorts of soda

3 and 4. Romantic dinner with Orenco elders 

5. Rainbow after lots of rain

6. The little bit of snow we got haha

Week 2

Only pictures this week!

The Power of Prayer

This week has been crazy. Elder Anderson and I have been getting along so well and we've been getting so much done. We have a ton of people to be meeting with and so we spent a couple of hours the other day and sort of cleaned out our list of investigators and we're doing our best to focus on the people who are willing to keep commitments and bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ into their lives. We have tons of inside jokes and we are singing pretty much all the time. We sing hymns for our members when we have dinners or other appointments and they all love it and it totally brings the spirit, and then the primary presidency asked us to come teach a lesson about how much Jesus loves us for a little activity they had this week and at first it was super chaotic cause they're all little kids but then we looked at each other and were like "song time" and we sang I am a Child of God for them and immediately they all quieted down and paid attention, it was pretty cool.

I got to go to my first zone conference, which was awesome. The whole conference was about planning and preparing for our investigators, and the church has come out with a new method for how we should be doing our planning and it is so inspired. We go through our list of investigators and as we get to each name we say a prayer, discuss their progression and plan for what we can do to help them come to Christ for about 5 to 7 minutes, pray again, and then go on to the next name and at first I thought it was going to be like super robotic and not very personal but it works out so well. Every time we do it we get such direct answers to our prayers and they're always super immediate and it's really amazing to see. It's even cooler teaching the lessons that we plan with the new method. We have an investigator named Lydia who has kind of an interesting story. She's in her 30's and she has struggled with smoking since she was a teenager. She met with the missionaries almost 4 years ago and actually got baptized but never got confirmed. We don't know exactly what happened but we have an idea. So then she met with some other missionaries afterwards and they pushed her super hard and kind of scared her off and we're meeting with her now. Elder Anderson and his old companion have had two lessons with her and he said they both went okay. So we met with her on Wednesday and we asked some questions that we felt prompted to ask when we planned for her and she just totally opened up about where she was and then we taught about repentance and the Atonement and about how perfectly Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ love her and it was a super spiritual lesson and her countenance changed so drastically over the course of those 45 minutes. She's so amazing, and it was way cool to see such a huge change in her as she understood more about forgiveness and love. Awesome stuff.

We've met lots of interesting people out on the streets, but we've been getting better and better at connecting with people and having meaningful conversations in a short amount of time and then being able to relate everything back to the Gospel and the Book of Mormon. We've given out tons of Book of Mormons.

The members of our wards are awesome. We've had tons of opportunities to meet with members and get them more excited about missionary work and we've been seeing lots of progress and awesome things happening as we're working through the members of our wards. There's this one kid named Isaac Farrer. He's only 9 years old but he's a legit genius. We went over and shared a brief message with them and then asked them if they had any friends who we could meet with or they would be willing to share a message with and Isaac mentioned that he had a friend Roberto and so we just challenged him to give Roberto a Book of Mormon in the next week. The next day Isaac called us and he was like "Hey I gave Roberto the Book of Mormon and then I taught him about prayer and invited his whole family to church". Our minds were blown haha the kid is only 9!! It's awesome.

The weather has been awesome here, it rained for about 30 minutes the other day and that's been it. The sun is out and the skies are clear today so we went outside and played spike ball and kickball as a zone for our p-day which was super fun. Everyone jokes that I've brought the Arizona sun with me but I'm not complaining haha.

Guys, I love being out here serving the Lord in Oregon. It's hard at times, and I miss my family and I miss you all like crazy but I know I'm where I need to be. I know that Jesus Christ lives and that His gospel is so true. The principles of the Gospel are meant to bless our families, and I love being able to teach others about their Savior and how perfectly he loves them. He loves us so much. He lived a perfect life, he spent his entire life teaching and ministering, and ultimately suffered and died for us so that we could overcome sins and afflictions and death and be with Him and our families forever. I love my savior, and I'm so grateful to have his name on the badge I wear 24/7 to help me to always remember Him. He lives.

I love you all. Have an awesome week and as always, keep it lit :)

Elder Bond

Pictures!

His first night in Oregon!

They’re assigned car 007!

First Week in the Field

Friends and family!

I am in Oregon! I'm serving in the Hillsboro area and the two wards I'm serving in are the Quatama and Beaver Creek wards, so if any of you know people in those wards let me know.

My trainer’s name is Elder Anderson from Orem Utah and he's so awesome. He's a swimmer and an awesome singer and we have a lot in common. We get along really well and he's been helping me out a ton with learning and becoming a better missionary. We've spent a lot of time talking to people out on the streets and giving out as many Book of Mormons as possible which was hard at first but now we literally talk to every person we pass haha we have a lot of people we're teaching right now which is super awesome, and we do really well in our lessons.

The members in our wards are so awesome, and I'm stoked to get to serve with them. In one of the wards there's this old Filipino couple named the Persons and they're super short but so hyper and happy and I love being around them haha. The first time we went to their house to meet them she shook my hand so hard she literally cracked a few of my fingers and then she started dancing and gave me chocolate milk haha. I love them.

The people in this area are a little strange in some cases but super kind for the most part. We met a guy named Dave the other day who talked at us for a solid 15 minutes about science and how he knows more than any man on earth because he went into some forbidden Mayan temple and received Enlightenment from God. It was a little interesting, but we taught him about the Book of Mormon so I guess it was successful haha.

We've gotten to do tons of service which I've loved. There's a guy in one of the wards named Stephen who was in an accident and is now paralyzed from the neck down and the Ward came together and we split like 8 truckloads of wood for him, which he genuinely appreciated cause he can't do it and he only has a wood stove.

Anyways. I love it here. It's been super sunny since I've been here which I've been so grateful for haha.

All in all, God is so good. He provides for us in EVERY way as we pray, study, and diligently strive to apply the things we learn into our lives. I love the gospel and I know it's so true. I love you all. Stay lit