March 31, 2014

Hello family,

This week was so much fun! We had a lot of cool miracles. Being a district leader is the best thing I have ever done on my mission. I get to hear about all the awesome miracles and hear how much The Lord is truly aware of what we do. It's crazy to see how much the work can change when we do what is right and stay positive and diligent.

I went on an exchange this week with our zone leaders which was super fun. I went into their area and we taught a bunch of people from the Marshall Islands. It was pretty fun, because their English is limited. Thus, we were able to just be super bold and direct and just tell them how it is and what they need to do. You can't do that with white people or else they would get offended. Also, the one that came here with my companion (Elder Plessinger) had his first experience being on bike ever. He has been out for 20 months so it's crazy that he has never ridden a bike. Also, when I was over there it turns out that an investigator that I had while I was in West Linn moved to their area and they went over and met them for the first time, but I had already met them so it was super easy for me to break the ice with them. I already knew her family so it was like I already knew them so I just introduced the new missionary to them. It was really sweet to see them again and to talk about the family.

We have an investigator named Malik. He is such a cool guy. We went over to his house everyday this week and then he came to church this Sunday. The ward all came up and said hi to him and now he wants to bring his family to church. Too bad it's general conference... That's alright though. He is so much fun though and he is really nice to everyone.

That's about it this week. Thanks for the prayers.

Love, Elder Udy

March 24, 2014

Hello family,

Things are going well as a  district leader. It's fun to serve other missionaries. My district is one of the biggest in the mission so I have tons of stuff to remember about them and their areas. I have three sets of sisters in my district and four sets of elders. It's pretty fun, but sometimes stressful. Were you ever in leadership? Or did you train at all? What was your experience with it?

Our new investigators are all doing well. Two of them came to church for the first time this Sunday. The ward freaked out over it. They wanted to know who they were. In relief society our investigator was introduced as a recent convert, which was funny. They didn't know though.

The other new investigators were supposed to come to church this week, but one of them got caught in an extra shift at work and the other was just a no show. Flaky people aren't very fun to teach, but they have their place in the world and they need the gospel also.

We set a couple baptism dates this week which is good. Hopefully they will progress well and be ready for their dates.

Love, Elder Udy

March 10, 2014

Hello family,

This week was good. My talk in sacrament meeting went well. I talked about agency and then tied it into missionary work. I got some compliments on it so I guess it was fine. I took my 15 minutes and left 15 for my companion. Luckily, they also had a youth speaker and a musical number.

Hm... Experiences...well, it rained a lot this week. On Tuesday it poured so hard while we were biking. We showed up at our appointment with a less active member and even though we told him we were soaked he had us come in. We took our jackets off and had a lesson. At the end we picked up our jackets and backpacks and there was a huge puddle underneath everything. I felt super bad about it, but he grabbed a towel and just wiped it up. It was super wet outside.

We taught a bunch of lessons and got to know the ward a lot better. From what they have been saying the last missionaries didn't do so great. They weren't bad, but they were kinda lazy and did the minimum. The ward loves us a lot for some reason.

Yesterday I had a meeting with the zone leaders and the stake president to talk about the work going on in the stake. We talked about each of the wards and the needs of them and the different people
that they have been teaching. That was a pretty cool meeting to go to.

Other than that, we have just been doing our best to get this ward going on missionary work. We did pick up a few investigators so that will help. We did a mission wide fast this week to help us find new
investigators. I have faith that good things will come from that.

There are a lot of ways to find new investigators. Door-to-door will get you investigators, but not very good ones. The best ones come from members that have a relationship built up.

We had to switch to daylight savings time so I lost an hour of sleep and I was super tired yesterday.

That's about all.
Love, Elder Udy

P.S. We received a letter from Emerson's mission president saying he has been called to serve as the District Leader of the Cook Park District in the Tualatin Zone. 

March 3, 2014

Hello family,

This week went well. The ward Loves a lot. I made an extra special effort to be excited and energetic about the work. It seemed to pay off a lot, because the ward seems to love us. We both bore our testimonies in sacrament meeting and that was the cherry on top. I think that we might have gone a little too far on the excitement part, because they asked us to speak next week in sacrament meeting about agency. Lol, its alright though, because it will just be a greater opportunity to serve and gain member trust. They said that we were good missionaries already. I guess the previous missionaries weren't the greatest and they never rode their bikes. O well.

We met some awesome people this week. Most were less actives, but one of them was an investigator from the Marshall Islands. He doesn't really speak English. Our only other investigator is a man named Dave that I guess is pretty solid. He wants to get baptized in about 6 months. Hopefully, we can meet with him this week.

Those are our only investigators so we are going to be doing some finding in this area for sure. The ward really wants to do missionary work, but need a little bit of extra enthusiasm about it. In my last area we had a set of sisters in the ward and they got tons of investigators just because they were always excited and super bubbly about everything so I have been trying to do that in this area. Trying to serve in every aspect that comes my way and give everything that I have to the work. Hopefully we can build the area up and get the ward excited by doing that.

My last companion stayed in Cooper Mountain. My new companion and I both came into this area at the same time so neither of us know anything about the area. It's pretty fun doing it again. Starting from square one on everything.

That's all for today. Say hello to everyone for me.

Love, Elder Udy

February 25, 2014

Hello family,

This week was really good. We were able to teach quite a bit and we set up a bunch of lessons for next week.

I guess the big news for this week is that I got transferred to a new area yesterday. The ward is called Cook Park. My companion is Elder Plessinger. He is a cool guy. He came from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Don't worry, we already had a discussion about Hershey. He said that the town does smell like chocolate and that he lives about 90 minutes away from there.

I am still riding a bike. This area seems to be a lot flatter than my last one. Which is always a plus. We are the only missionaries in the ward so that will be good. There is a lot of work that we need to do. We have 1 progressing investigator and one not progressing investigator with a date. That's all we have for a teaching pool so we are going to be doing some finding this week and going forward.

The ward was recently merged together with another ward to form one ward. So, hopefully that means as they get to know each other, they will get to know their neighbors! Ya. We met the bishop yesterday and the assistant ward mission leader that was called about a week ago. There is a lot of potential here to get some good things going.

It was super wet last week, but it hasn't rained in a few days.

I think that's about it for today. I took some pictures this week with some of the families that I worked with. I am going to make a goal to take more pictures in this area. For some reason that is always the hardest thing for me to remember to do.

Love, Elder Udy

February 17, 2014

Hello family,

Thank you Tally for the comments. All your comments are true. I will remember them next time I teach a single person. There was a comment about attitude in elders quorum this week, about how attitude effects everything that we do. Just by changing your attitude we can change our whole outlook on life. We can basically choose whether or not to be happy.

We went out this week and did some missionary work!!! It was sweet, although a bunch of our investigators never messaged us back and weren't home this week so we didn't teach as much as usual. Due to them not setting up a time to meet us we were able to do some finding things this week. We found three new investigators. We taught them the restoration and they all agreed to read and pray. Hopefully they will have done so when we go back this week and check up on them. Otherwise we will read with them.

Something that I read this week during my studies was from October 2008 general conference. It was a talk given by Marcos A. Aidukaitis called "Because My Father Read The Book Of Mormon". He talked about his fathers experience joining the church and the power the Book of Mormon had on his conversion experience. He said that his father felt the power that comes from reading the Book of Mormon. He felt it so strong to be true that he gave up a lot of his worldly habits and addictions to get baptized and enter into the kingdom. I kinda already knew that, but hearing it and reading another testimony of its reality is awesome. I encourage you all to read it. I thought it was great for this week because of all our new investigators. I hope and pray that they will be able to feel of that power through the book as they read and pray.

This week it rained a ton! Luckily I have a somewhat good raincoat. I learned that after a while my jacket starts just absorbing the water instead of repelling it. Oh well it's fine. I am hoping this week will be better.

Um that's all that I have to say this week. Other than I might be in a new area next week. This is the last week of the transfer.

Love, Elder Udy

Sent from my iPad. (Missionaries now have iPad's to mange their work)

February 10, 2014

Hello family,

We got about 7 inches of snow here over the past three days. Thursday is when it started and continued on Friday. Saturday we got freezing rain which was really cold and wet. Luckily, President Morby told us to stay inside and that nobody could drive their cars. He said that if you don't have an appointment then stay inside. If you do, then walk. On Sunday there was some sun for a couple hours so it started melting, but president said that nobody was even allowed to leave their apartment on Sunday. So that was fun. It's crazy to see how an entire city can just shut down. Someone said that there is only like one snow plow for the entire Portland metro area. That's how rare the snow is here. A member in our ward said that they haven't had snow this bad since 2008. In Utah this would not have been a problem, but here it was a big problem. I am grateful for snow plows.

Meanwhile my companion is from Houston, Texas and so the snow was unfamiliar to him. I helped him make his first snowman ever. We got it pretty big. I taught him all about snow and what you can do with it. He was pretty stoked about it.

You're probably wondering what we did inside for 3 days straight. Well, this week we got iPads. I have mixed feelings about them. I have to try even harder now not to get distracted by it and to make sure I use it for its purpose. One thing that we did while we were stuck inside is transfer our entire area book over to the iPad. Every teaching appointment and investigator and less active. It made my brain hurt and made me super restless. I am glad it's done now though.

Our iPads are now our planners, so we don't have carry those around anymore, which I am not very excited about. I loved having a hard copy of my planner. I could doodle, take random notes of information we get, and plan a lot better with it. Now that it's electronic it's a lot more formal planning. 

O yeah, church was cancelled because of the snow. That was weird as a missionary. It means that our baptism date has to be pushed back due to lack of church attendance. Also one of our less actives was planning to come to church this week and that didn't happen. Next week though will be good.

I thought the other day about the people that came to this mission with me were kind of like the start of the hastening. The kick off to this whole thing started with the age change. I was in the MTC for that. The start of my mission was the start of the hastening. I have been in Oregon to see it all unfold from the start up until now where the work has changed and we now have iPads. Maybe when I am done with my mission the Lords work will be done. The second coming perhaps? Lol...just kidding. I feel lucky to be part of this huge change from start to finish. What are some things in your life that you have seen unfold from start to finish? And how have you seen the Lords hand in that?

We taught some lessons during the first part of the week and they went well. Our investigator had us over to help him clean his music studio and then we had a lesson about Christ. He has investigated before and so he knows that we believe god was once a man like you and me. He asked us if god has a different savior other than Jesus Christ. We talked about that for a while.

Another lesson that we had was with a man named Gene. We found him last Sunday. The bishop actually knew about him and his family, so he gave us some information. He is a super nice guy that wants to get back to church and change his life. I am hoping that his family will want to come with him. One thing that I have seen since being out here, is that this is a very family oriented church. I remember one comment that a less active guy in my first area said. He stated right after a ward conference meeting for couples that "it's very hard to be single in this church." And that's true, it would be hard to be single in this church. Especially if you are over about 35 or so. God has set up his church to revolve around families, even though everyone is a child of god. Kinda weird how that works.

Another thing that happened this week is a lesson with a man named Anthony that loves to study religion and the history of it. We talked with him and were able share part of the restoration. He thought it was interesting and then he talked about how our message related to a bunch of different religions throughout history and how ours has little parts of each of them. That was pretty cool to hear from a non member. It's true though, that this church contains the fullness of the gospel, not just bits and pieces.

My companion made this Vietnamese soup stuff called pho. It's weird. It has rice noodles with spices.

I have a stomach flu today, so that's fun. Sorta. I'll get over it though...eventually. I think it's from being inside so much this week.

I love you all,

Elder Udy