I’m Still Alive

Hey everyone! I'm sorry for being a bad friend and slacking on keeping y'all updated. The mission has been so awesome the past few months. After almost 8 months in Hillsboro I've been transferred to the Beaverton Stake in the Raleigh Hills Ward. Our ward goes from downtown Beaverton to the south waterfront area in downtown Portland. For all of you Oregon people, voodoo donuts and the keep Portland weird sign are now in my area. Be prepared for pictures next p day (we're gonna go check it out next week). I really miss my wards in Hillsboro and the amazing people I was able to work with and learn from. It was especially hard saying goodbye to my ward mission leader Brother Carstens in Quatama ward. He is such an amazing man and I learned so much from him about being a better companion. When you spend as much time together talking about the needs of others as him and I did you can't help but feel a special love. I'll never forget an evening when we were in their home and they were struggling with all of the stresses in their life at that time and we were able to study D&C 6 and I was able to bear my testimony of the personal experiences I had had of the grace and love of Jesus Christ to them. They're an amazing family, and I won't forget them. 

But this new ward is amazing! It's made up of a mix of newlywed dental and medical students, most of which have newborns and toddlers, and a lot of retired or nearly retired dentists with not much in between. There are only two actie youth in the entire ward (brothers) which is interesting. But everyone is extremely missionary minded and very involved in ministering to one another and helping to teach others about Christ. Good things are happening here. 

My new companions name is elder Andrus and he's dope. He's been out a transfer longer than me and the members love him. He's done really good work at establishing relationships of trust, and I'm excited to see how I can help. We've had lots of good laughs together, and we're guilty of staying up too late screwing around 😂

We don't have a ton as far as people we're teaching at the moment, but we committed one of our investigators Jason to be baptized at the end of the month yesterday at church! He's an interesting story. So he was out walking one day way up north of Hillsboro for some reason and he needed a drink and he saw a church building where there just happened to be a mission leadership meeting going on. He went in and asked for a drink and got some water and a counselor to our mission president talked with him and taught him a bit and Jason expressed some interest in learning. That was about a month ago. Fast forward to this and the lessons I've been here for. He's a recovering drug addict and he's looking for goodness in his life. He is extremely wise and attentive and he knows the bible REALLY well. We taught him about the doctrine of Christ (having faith, repenting, being baptized, receiving the Holy Ghost, and enduring) last Wednesday and it was absurdly powerful. We committed him to be baptized in that lesson but didn't feel like we should bring up a specific date yet. He also said he wanted to go to the temple!! We had the lesson at the church and as we left and he said he was gonna hang out on the church grounds to pray (the best possible thing to hear as a missionary 👍👍) so we left him be. He called us later and said he wouldn't be able to make it to church so we invited him to come to a different ward that met in the morning when he'd be able to make it. We met him there but had to leave early for a meeting and he stayed all three hours! We caught up with him just to ask about church and he just went off about the good things he had felt and been taught. We bore testimony to him and then he asked when the next service was when we could get baptized and we talked about a date. My favorite part though was he was late to the first part of church and when we asked why he said he couldn't wait and he went and drove down to the temple with his friend to check it out!!! He's so prepared and I love him and getting to watch him learn and experience Christ's gospel even after only knowing him for a week.

I know that the work I am doing as a missionary is of God. I know his son Jesus Christ is my personal savior. I know that through Christ, a man can change. I have changed as I have learned to really pray with my heart and mind and willingly ask God to remove my weaknesses. I've still got a long road of change and improvement, but I know I'm doing what I'm supposed to. I know God is my Father, and he is yours as well and loves you with wisdom and patience that I can't even comprehend. He has a plan for us, and its real. Don't forget to pray and you will always be shown the way. I hope you're all doing awesome. 

Stay lit!

Elder Bond

American Ninja Warriors

Hey friends! Happy Fourth of July week. We had an awesome time on the fourth, we got to walk in the Hillsboro parade with the stake family history float and hand out candy and cards for the familysearch.org website which was a blast. Then we did some service and helped one of our investigators hang some sheetrock which was fun, then we had some dinner and hung out with Bob and Sheryl for the rest of the night.

Speaking of Bob and Sheryl, THEY GOT BAPTIZED ON SATURDAY. It was such a great experience for them to be able to be baptized and begin their journey as members of the true church of God. The service was pretty awesome too haha the relief society room was full with members from the ward and some of their friends and family that had come to support them, all of the talks and musical numbers were on point and the spirit was just super strong for everyone there. After they got baptized we invited them to stand up and bear their testimonies and Bob just basically told his life story and it was dope and then Sheryl stood up and decided she'd rather sing than talk and so she went over to the piano and started playing this song and it went for like 8 minutes and she was accompanying herself. The song was called "I've decided to Follow Jesus" and it was crazy powerful. There were a lot of tears in the room. Probably my favorite part of it was before the service started we were working on filling the font and I walked into the room and Bob was reading through my Book of Mormon I had with me and I asked what he was reading and he said he had just opened it up to a random page and started reading and he opened up to 3 Nephi 15:24 which says "But behold, ye have both heard my voice, and seen me; and ye are my sheep, and ye are numbered among those whom the Father hath given me." which is DOPE haha everything was perfect for them. They got confirmed in sacrament meeting the next day and it was crazy powerful again. Sheryl was crying and everyone was crying and it was really awesome. 

We also did another round of our district finding time last night and set a goal to find 2 new investigators and we found 3 in our area within the hour #miraclesnevercease

Things have been going awesome. I'll most likely be getting transferred out of this area in the next two weeks or so which is a little sad cause I really do like this area and this zone, but I'm stoked to keep going with the mish.

I hope you all are doing great and enjoying your summers. Keep it lit.

We also got to help our ward mission leader cause he's adding a new living room to his house so we've been helping him get ready to pour foundation #doingwork

Tisms or Nothing

Well this week has been an experience haha Bob and Cheryl are AWESOME and are officially getting baptized this Saturday which is soo exciting. We went to the visitors center with them last saturday and it was super cool. THey both loved it and were feeling the spirit and bore their testimonies and got to learn a little bit more about the temple and what happens and it hardcore pumped Cheryl up haha the other day in a lesson we were talking and she was like "Oh Elder Bond I have something to show you!" and walked outside and came back in with a stack of like 30 pages and it was all family history work she and her mom had done! She was like "I think I've got my work cut out for me at the temple". She's so dope. And then Bob is just hilarious and makes the most random comments during these super spiritual moments but deep down he's super grounded in the gospel and he said the other day he went out to the woods and found his own sacred grove and prayed about this decision and what it would mean for him and his wife and he said that he can't deny that this is God's plan for him and that this is the true church haha it was such a powerful experience listening to him talk about it. We're stoked for them and stoked to see how their personalities and their testimonies are going to benefit the ward they're in. I love them.

We had our zone conference week and it was a great experience and I loved all of the training but the last part of it was about the new ministering efforts the church has been focusing on and our ward councils were supposed to come and participate in the training so that we can get pumped up and refocused as a ward and be able to minster in a more holy way which we were hardcore looking forward to and then out of our two ward we had one ward mission leader and one young mens president show up. I was slightly annoyed 😅 BUT it just means we get to work extra hard to get everyone on the same page and chugging along like we want them. It'll all be good.

I've been thinking a lot this week about revelation. In the Bible Dictionary it says "'The principle of gaining knowledge by revelation is the principle of salvation. It is the making known of divine truth by communication with the heavens and consists not only of revelation of the plan of salvation to the Lord’s prophets but also a confirmation in the hearts of the believers that the revelation to the prophets is true. It also consists of individual guidance for every person who seeks for it and follows the prescribed course of faith, repentance, and obedience to the gospel of Jesus Christ". Honestly these couple sentences have answered so many of my own personal questions about the gospel and helped solidify my understanding of so many principles of the gospel. The role of revelation is so crucial, and for a couple weeks I was really trying to truly understand it. My questions were really all centered around how we could stress personal revelation so much but then at the same time try and teach that the scriptures contain the gospel, and for a little bit I had a bit of a headache over it. BUT through prayer and study it's all been resolved for me haha If you have questons or are trying to understand something, search the scriptures but DO NOT forget to pray about it and make your concerns known to your Heavenly Father. I know that when we ask in faith that we can receive clarity of mind and new ideas AND the simple yet powerful confirmation of what is true.