New Companion from Chicago (week 58)

Well transfers came and now I am with Elder Bergman. He is straight out of the MTC and ready to get to work. He is from Chicago (Not actually Chicago, in-fact a a city called St. Charles which is close to Chicago, kinda like how I say I'm from Dallas). He doesn't know a bunch of Spanish yet ,but he is super ready to learn some more. He is just a stellar missionary and he is going to be a whole lot better once he has some more confidence in his Spanish skills. Elder Flamm's new companion is Elder Hanna. He was in Moses lake before coming here to Sunnyside. 

We were able to find an opportunity to help out our investigator ,that is getting baptized this week, by helping him install a new air conditioner. I had decided to give him a call to set up an appointment for the next day and while on the phone with him he told us how he was trying to call someone to help him install the new air conditioner so we offered to help him with it. It was a great service opportunity and it allowed us to talk more to his wife who in the past has been pretty cut off from us. She has been very grateful for the service we offered and now they both feel a little more confident is asking us to help out when they need things. Roberto is progressing a ton and is ready for his baptism this upcoming Saturday. He is excited to be following the example of Christ and to be leaving behind things like alcohol. He is hoping that soon his wife will gain that same desire and attend church with him and eventually decide to get baptized like he is. 

We have a super week ahead of us with Roberto's baptism and a bunch of great meetings. I get to go to trainer/trainee again tomorrow and then we have district council and district language study Wednesday and Thursday. All our time fills up fast and it fills up even faster having four hours of studies. It is going to be a great week. 

I hope everyone is having a great time and enjoying school getting back into session. Sorry I don't have a ton to write about this week. 

With Love,

Elder Boren

                                                      Apartment picture right before transfers.

                            Elder Flamm and Elder Hanna making use of their time at the laundry mat.

                                         Elder Bergman making use of his time at the laundry mat. 

Staying in Sunnyside and am now a District Leader as well as a trainer. (week 57)

Transfers are coming in fast Wednesdayy. So I'm just going to cut to the chase and tell you all the great changes that are up and coming. So Elder Steadman is going to be moved to Othello 2nd and 4th wards. He is also going to be training over there. I'm going to be staying here in Sunnyside and I will be receiving a greenie. I am also going to be the district leader. It's going to be new having those two assignments. We'll see how this works out for me. Hopefully well. Also Elder Dodson as I may have already told you is going to Florida and will be home for a week before going into the MTC. It is going to be a super exciting few weeks for him. An awesome transfer is ahead and it's is going to be fun. 

I thought I'd send this part as a fore runner to the rest of the email so you don't have to wait too long for the transfer information. 

Love ya'll,

Elder Boren

So now on to the Stuff that happened this past week. The investigator we have been working with named Roberto has decided to be baptized and is preparing to be baptized on the 27th. He is such a great guy and it has been amazing being able to work with him. He has a huge desire to learn more and wants to set himself on the path to the celestial kingdom. He told us that himself after we taught him the full plan of salvation and made sure he understood it all. He also came to sacrament meeting again although he made to leave early to make some food for his step-daughters birthday party. I am looking forward to being able to work with him some more this upcoming transfer. 

I think last week I talked a little about how we are working to plan more like it teaches in Preach my Gospel. If not now you know. So this past Friday we were able to start doing that and It was such a great change. Planning was actually a lot more enjoyable and I feel that I we have great plans. It took a really long time to do the planning ,but it was worth it. It makes a huge difference planning this way because it becomes planing and isn't just scheduling people into our week. 

Yesterday we got to see some of the blessings of planning things well. We had planned to teach one of the referrals we contacted a few days earlier and planned on taking one of the youth with us. The youth we took was Cole Gardner. He is going to serve in Costa Rica. He is leaving for the MTC in 9 days. So back to story. So we didn't actually know that she was going to be there ,but we felt it would be a good use of our time. So we knocked and she was there and was actually just getting home, But she let us in and let us teach. We had a great lesson and we were able to get to know her really well. She is going to read the Book of Mormon and hopefully we will be able to see her again this week. 

Well we are looking forward to a great week with lots going on. I hope all is well back home. From what it sounds everyone is having an awesome time. 

With love,

Elder Boren

                                                      Last District Picture of the transfer

 Elder Flamm making some calls to his district while Elder Steadman and Dodson Discuss something in depth. 

         Found a cool hat while doing service at a members home. Elder Steadman said it works well on me. 

I went on exchanges to Toppenish this week. It was a blast being with Elder Nielson. (Not currently in picture)

Pretty good week in Sunnyside (week 56)

We had a pretty good week here in Sunnyside. No fire burning down the town this week. However there was some fire somewhere down south. Now all the mountains around us are black. Hopefully there isn't any fire up north. That would be a lot more of a problem in the north because they actually have trees there. And no one got sick so we are doing pretty swell. 

So on to the people that we have been teaching this week. So we have been able to visit with Roberto three times and he came to church again. The first times we saw him in the week we answered some questions he had from the Book of Mormon. He had some pretty good questions and one of them lead to us teaching him the gospel of Jesus Christ that third time we saw him. He understood it all and even realized that we was not baptized the sane way that Christ was, that being he wasn't baptized by immersion. We invited him to baptism and he told us he would like to think about it first. Working with him has been great. He gets a little nervous when we ask him to say the prayer ,but he has become less hesitant as we have pointed out the feelings of the spirit that he feels during and after saying a prayer. He is such a great guy and I look forward to being able to work with him more this upcoming week. 

We had a pretty good Zone training meeting this past Saturday. We talked about working with members some more and then a large part of the meeting was dedicated to having effective planning time. We are working on making the mission into a preach my gospel mission and for the past while we haven't been as good at following the preach my gospel method of weekly and nightly planning. So we have to work on changing the mission culture. This is a super awesome mission and I am so glad we are here. 

This upcoming Sunday we are going to be having a musical fireside. It's going to be our version of music and the spoken word. Elder Steadman and I are doing a musical number with the branch mission leader and his wife. It's going to be great.

Not too much happened this past week but hopefully we have a little more exciting week ahead of us. We also have transfer call this upcoming Saturday. I hope all is well back home.

With love,

Elder Boren

              There was another fire to the south this past week. We don't really know what that one was.

 At the same place we had the super trucker burger I tried the chili burger (Basically a chili dog). The chili they used wasn't that great.

       Elder Dodson (This fellow here) Just got his call to the Orlando Florida Mission. You're got to let uncle Mark know.

a little note to Mom

I feel a lot better now. Hopefully I won't catch anything else this upcoming year (Knock on wood). P-day has gone well so far. How much longer til Jacob gets his licence and can drive himself? 

I think I remember saying something about them making my mouth hurt. I think Jacob might have as well. I do agree that it is worth the end result. Although I don't really remember what my teeth looked like before I had braces. 

Send a picture of her and the family. That sounds like it's going to be a blast. I didn't know you were going to get another exchange student this year. 

Right now there isn't anything I really need still doing well. 

Love,

Elder Boren

Mountains on fire (week 55)

Soooo just about all the mountains we can see from Sunnyside caught on fire and we almost had to evacuate last night. Luckily that din't actually happen and we all got to sleep well. During our day yesterday we would every once in a while get an alert telling us that so-and-so area needs to evacuate. It was a little freaky ,but we just kept on with our missionary work. The scariest part was the huge clouds of smoke filling just about the whole entire horizon. It was a bit weird having the whole apartment smell like smoke ,but it was also sort of welcomed because it had that campfire smell. 

This week we had a bunch of service and meetings. Tuesday we did service at the food bank and I got to carry out a bunch of boxes for people. I was exhausted by the end and didn't really want to move my arms. It didn't help that on Monday I blistered up my feet real bad playing a bunch of soccer with the zone. They it took a few days to heal ,but now it's all good. 

Wednesday we had our district language study over here in Sunnyside. We wrote stories and practiced using the past tenses. We came us with some pretty interesting stories since we would all write a line and then pass it on. It's fun being able to come together as missionaries and learn the language together. A little after we had our language study and the English elders got back we went and did service pulling weeds at the house of one of the members. It was hot and the weeds didn't want to come out ,but the member brought us ice cream and some water. We also got to talk as we worked and get to know everyone a little better. That same day we went and taught one of our investigators named Roberto. He is a great guy and he came to church this Sunday. He has really enjoyed us coming over to talk to him and teach him things. He is already reading in the Book of Mormon and has been reading the pamphlets we have brought him. Something really cool about him is that he is from Monterrey, so we have that in common. He has been prepared to receive the gospel and we are looking forward to working with him some more. 

Thursday we had our district council here in Sunnyside. The Zone leaders joined us which added for some more good input. We talked about the importance of using members in missionary work and what we can do to get them excited. We just have to work and put in the effort to have members out with us whenever we can, even if we just go out to knock doors. We also talked about how we need to make sure our investigators are reading and praying before we have them moving on to other commitments. 

Friday evening we drove out to a little town called Outlook and taught one our less-active families and then decided to try and find some other people to talk to in the town. This little kid talked to us and showed us some people we should meet. We talked to his mom and she told us we can talk to them this Tuesday. When we showed the kid a picture of Jesus Christ he thought we were talking about one his neighbors named jesus. We didn't figure that out until he pointed out the house where Jesus lived. 

Saturday we did even more service pulling weeds yet again. It was a lot more enjoyable this time due to it being earlier in the day and the weeds not being dead and buried in rocks. Pulling weeds isn't all that bad. It can actually be fun. Sorry I didn't do much pulling of weeds in the garden back home. Saturday was also the day where all the fires started. The clouds of smoke came out of no-where. We also had a great experience meeting a guy who was super happy to have us knocking on his door. He was on the phone with a pastor and he welcomed us straight in and told the pastor that he had to go because the mormons where there. We gave him a book of Mormon and prayed with him a few times. It was a little hard because he was a little boracho and wasn't completely there. But he gave us some cowboy hats and wanted to give us some other stuff ,but we wouldn't let him. 

On Sunday we had a good block of meeting and Elder Steadman got to talk. The Branch is focusing of Self-reliance this month. The hermanas had two investigators there along with the investigator we had there. It was awesome. After church we spent the day walking because we don't currently have a lock for the bikes and the English elders were using the car. But it was good to get out and walk a bit. We taught a guy who talked to the missionaries before ,but lost contact when he moved to another house. He remembers a bunch of stuff he was taught and we are hoping to be able to get in and teach him again this week. We left him with a Libro de Mormon because he lost his when he moved. 

Well that was most of my week I hope all has been well back home. Keep being awesome and enjoy another great week.

With love,

Elder Boren

 A member here in Sunnyside bought us bikes to use. They are really nice an we are very grateful for the member. 

                                            Clouds of smoke coming from the burning mountains.

                  This was yesterday morning. It was really bad last night but I don't have pictures of that. I think the                                                             fires might actually still be burning. 

I got bored one night and drew a Celtic knot.

     Elder Flamm and I chilling out at the laundry mat while out stuff was in the wash. Elder Steaman and Dodson                                                                     were counting coins.

                                            Them Counting and enlarging their coin collections.

some guy we met this week end gave Elder Steaman and I each a cowboy hat. Too bad it's not approved to wear out proselyting. 

One last zone picture before Elder Turley headed home.

Getting sick and taking it easy (week 54)

So this week was pretty great other than getting sick Saturday evening and for all of Sunday. IF we put that part aside it was a pretty good week. And yes, I am feeling better today. Just going to have to take it easy on the p-day sports.

On Wednesday we had a pretty good evening. We brought Xail Acosta out with us, recent convert in our area. We had planned to visit someone that lived right around the corner from him but that didn't work out for us. So we stopped by some other people living in the same neighborhood as him with a similar result. So we went with him to another near by trailer park were we had some other potential/current investigators. Once we got to our last plan we were finally able to have a lesson with someone. We sat down with them in front of their house and taught them the restoration. The lesson went great and Xail helped out a ton. He shared a powerful testimony and invited them to read in the Book of Mormon and to attend church on Sunday. He didn't end up coming this Sunday ,but hopefully we will be able to see him at church next week. We will hopefully be able to visit with him sometime during the week. 

That same day we were able to visit with Eric. It has been a while since we have meet with him, due to him having a busier schedule. We sat down with him and gave him an introduction to the commandments. We are hoping that as we teach him the commandments that he will want to progress more. Right now he is reading in the Book of Mormon ,but he struggles to understand everything he is reading. 

Last Thursday I went on exchanges with Elder Kinnear over in Toppenish. We spent a lot of time outside walking to different people. It was hot. We had an awesome dinner appointment where we got to know a non-member and built up his confidence with missionaries. His wife and the rest of her family are members ,but he has never really had the desire to draw himself closer to God. He really enjoyed our conversation because in the past he felt that he was never able to have a normal conversation with missionaries. He lives over in Yakima ,but hopefully he starts meeting with the missionaries more and progressing in the gospel. 

In interviews with President Lewis he invited us to re-read "That I Might Draw All Men unto Me" by Elder Dale G. Renlund. He wants us to focus on the part of the atonement in the talk and I would like to invite you to do the same. Also share any insights you find while reading it. 

I hope everyone has a great week. It looks like we have a good one ahead of us. 

With love,

Elder Boren

The Acosta family took us to get wings last p-day. It was fun.

defining success (week 53)

We had ourselves a great week here in SunnySide. We finally decided to drive over to Yakima for p-day last week. Not that great since the drive there is a bit long. We had some meetings and got to talk to a bunch of different people. 

On Tuesday we had our Zone Training Meeting. The meeting was focused on involving the members in missionary work. We are going to be trying to get the members more involved by making visits to the families in our units. I shared a little story in the postcard I am sending this week. We also touched on the topic of becoming consecrated missionaries. That topic has become something I have decided to study more this past week. I have been using the talk "The Fourth Missionary". Here are some insights I have pulled out of my studies this past week;

• Sacrifice - Doing one thing at the expense of another thing that has equal, or greater, appeal.
• Consecration - Giving of one's self to the Lord. Nothing of greater appeal than to do his will.
• "For whosoever will save his life shall lose it ; and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it." (Matt 16:25,26)
• "Nevertheless they did fast and pray oft, and did wax stronger and stronger in their humility, and firmer and firmer in the faith of Christ, unto the filling their souls with joy and consolation, yea, even to the purifying and the sanctification of their hearts, which sanctification cometh because of their yielding their hearts unto God." (Helaman 3:35) 

Also while studying that talk I have looked at the idea of success. Sometimes it can be hard to measure if we have been successful, especially as a missionary. We are successful when we can say the following;

• "I am doing my best. I have a lot of weaknesses and a lot to learn. But I am withholding nothing from the Lord. I am serving with all of my might, mind, heart and strength. I am faithful and giving it all I have to give." 
• "I have no regrets; I did my best."

Sometimes we feel that we are not successful because the world likes to measure our success by comparison. But the Lord doesn't use comparison to view our success. It comes down to our desires and if we gave it the 100 percent. Those two quotes got me thinking of a quote from a talk given by Neal A. Maxwell. "Actually, everything depends - initially and finally - on our desires. These shape our thought patterns. Our desires thus precede our deeds and lie at the very cores of our souls, tilting us towards or away from God." (Swallowed Up in the Will of the Father”

Neal A. Maxwell) That then leads back to what it means to be consecrated. Which is to be dedicated to the will of the Lord and have our desires show that dedication. Just some thoughts I thought I would share. 

We have been working in our area to find some new people. It seems like all the people we have been working with recently don't have time for us. So we are looking for those that are willing to make time to talk to us. The sisters (Hermanas) actually found us this really great guy who is actually on what he calls a really long vacation. He shares a lot of beliefs with us and seems to be really prepared to receive the gospel. We haven't invited him to church yet (probably should have done that when we meet him) ,but that will be one of the things we try to do this upcoming week. We also have another great investigator, also found by the sisters. He has told us of how he wants to draw himself closer to God again. He told us that he has fallen away from doing the things he know he should and he has noticed something has been missing. We testified to him that drawing himself closer to God again was going to bring happiness and is the thing he has been missing. When we first stopped by to meet him we left him with a copy of the Book of Mormon and when we came back to teach him he had already read to 3rd Nephi. He is just another person that the Lord has been preparing to receive the gospel. 

The bikes are tons of fun when we do get to ride them. We have a huge hill in our area and it is a blast ridding down it. Although it does take a bit of work to bike up it. I don't have any crazy stories with our bike riding. Sorry about that. Right now the bikes are out of commission with the chain being broken on one. Hopefully we can get that fixed soon. 

We are looking forward to another great week here in Sunnyside. I hope all is well back home and continues to be so. Espero que disfruten su semana y aprenden mas cosas. 

With love,

Elder Boren

                                                Elder Steadman and I at Zone Training Meeting. 

                      The people we talk to here like to give us food. I got a 9 o' clock snack out of it.

Figuring out this piano thing. Not as hard as I though. Just have to figure out how to play flats and sharps here soon. (Sorry it's blurry)

Good week in Sunnyside (week 52)

This is the only one I took. It probably isn't super interesting although I thought the car looked a bit amusing. Maybe this can be the car the boys drive to school. 

 

So we have had a pretty good week here in Sunnyside. Nothing too exciting has happened b,but the missionary work is continuing forward. 

So last Monday was a little different with it being the fourth of July and all. During the three hours of proselyting we had three lessons with less-actives/recent-converts. It was really cool being able to use that time effectively and teach the gospel. We also got to spend some more time getting to know one of the recent convert families in our area. They are such an awesome family. 

Tuesday we had our district language study. It was a little hard for us to stay on topic since we had transfers the next day and a few of the Elders in our district got transferred. We were able to spend some time working on the subjunctive tense. Since we have taken some time to study it I have now been able to notice it more in conversations and now I better understand what people are saying. Hopefully I can keep getting better at this whole Spanish thing. 

Wednesday was transfers and I took some time during lunch to clean up the apartment. It was a bit messy and needed some vacuuming. It still needs some more work but it is getting there. Sometime during the day the English Elders moved in. We were out on bikes all day while they used our car for the transfer. Then we met up with them at the apartment for dinner and ate with some members in the branch. Since there is a set of sisters and elders for both the ward and the branch one week the branch feeds the elders and the other it feeds the sisters, and vice versa with the ward. It's fun taking the English elders to dinner at homes of members in the branch because we get to translate the things they don't understand. It's also fun being able to hold conversations between our companionship and them not understand all of what we are saying. Should be a fun transfer living with these two great missionaries, Elder Dodson and Elder Flamm.  

We have decided to do more tracting even though we would rather do other things. There is a point during our day where knocking doors happens to be the most effective use of time although we would rather not be doing it. Luckily using that time to tract means that we find people who would be willing to have us stop by and teach them at that time. We are also lucky that we aren't in an area as spread out as Royal Slope. Here it's a whole lot easier to go out an tract. We are going to see how tracting this week turns out. 

I hope everyone has a great week. Keep having fun!

With love,

Elder Boren