Season 15 Episode 1

Hey we had a great week!
My companion is from Houston. His name is Elder Bleazard. As far as what our address is, I am still working on that. I am in the middle of nowhere. But, we live with two old guys and a dog named Gismo. It is a pretty good set up.

Elder Bleazard looks like Pearce Brosnan

Gizmo! Our roomie!

We had a crazy week.

Tuesday was a bomb day. We got referred to us a sweet person who is about to be baptized. It was like manna from heaven. Haha!  We have worked so hard. We also had some sweet lessons. It was a good way to kick it off to the new zone leader coming in. I felt good about leaving after that. We had worked so hard to build up the area and right at the end things started happening.

Wednesday was transfer day and that is always a headache and a half. Getting to the transfer site at like 7AM, making sure everyone gets there and waking up super early to get there. Then we get to the mission office and we unload and we make sure there are some people driving others to their new areas. Then that afternoon we made plans for after the transfer. We taught a less active and we brought her visiting and home teachers over and that went really well. At first we were really bummed out because we didn't get to teach her because our visit was just spent talking. But it worked out somehow. She was invited to the women's broadcast and she went, and had a great time. That was like her first time back to church since she was 9!

Thursday we had a sweet day.  We worked hard to get to everything we had. Elder Bleazard and I both want to family.(not sure what this means). It is something we feel that we can do here. We then went to the ward council ministry night and the bishop gave us a few names of people to go. Those people were’nt home, but, we were able to find an investigator who has been really hard to contact.

Friday was really great! We did service at a food bank. Then we taught a part member family and at the very beginning the father said he was not an investigator. But by the end of our meeting he said that he would like to investigate. It was a pretty awesome spirit  that was definitely working on this guy. And we planned for our week and made some good plans.  This day is when the real miracles happened. Friday night we were supposed to have a lesson with Brandon. He had to cancel on us but we invited him to come to a baptism Saturday morning. He said he would come and check it out. We had a few members pray that he would have a special experience at the baptism. And he came and had a great experience there, and he was really grateful that we invited him. After the baptism we gave him a quick church tour. That was the icing on the cake for him. He felt the spirit of the baptism and then when we toured the chapel, he felt it even more. He said he was planning on coming to church this week.

Sunday was awesome because Brandon came to church! He loved Sacrament  Meeting, but  had to leave right after. He said next time he would  bring his son and he's going to stay for all three hours. The members did great in helping him get fellowshipped!

Our home - Numbers strangely looking like a house number.....

Picture from a hike in Portland

Elder Astle

Season 14 Episode 6

This has been a very amazing week. 

Tuesday we were on exchanges with the Cherry Park Elders. I stayed in the Spring Water ward. We had a good day. We saw some really cool miracles. We taught a guy from Iran who doesn't speak very much English. So we had to teach as simply as possible. Then I felt like we needed to go by to visit an investigator they weren't home but we started knocking around and found sweet new gators. Then right before the end of the night we found a new person. 

We had a sweet lesson at institute about the resurrection. It brought to my mind some thoughts. We have the knowledge of this. So many people think that it is just done and over after death. We were teaching this guy this week who didn't think life went on but after the lesson after we showed a really powerful video he said he believed it. I have been thinking about how the resurrection is the crowning point in the atonement and is really the most important thing we believe in. Without that our faith is in vain. 

Wednesday we had a district meeting we went to. And then we had to plan a little training we would give in the meeting on Thursday. It seems like it is going to go well. We had a lesson with Jensen. She is a member who wants to come back. She is going to be re-baptized here pretty soon. She is one of the most solid members of the Ward and she isn't technically a member. 

Thursday we had a meeting in the Cove. It was a great meeting. Some of my favorite meetings  ever. We gave a training on having people on date for baptism. It seems like a lot of us have people on date but they never get baptized. So we talked about how to help that. Then we had sport night. Usually these are just really fun but this time we played glow in the dark ultimate frisbee. It was a blast! But the best part is a recent Convert brought his friend to the activity. So after we played we talked to him. We had this feeling to show him around the church. We were in gym shorts and were sweaty giving a church tour. Then as we were walking by the chapel I thought that we should talk to him about what happens there. Normally I wouldn't do that in just basketball shorts. But I felt prompted to. We talked with him for a bit and then gave him a Book of Mormon. And Nathan, his friend ,said they talked the gospel The Whole Way Home!!! 

Friday was a crazy, We had our planning and we taught a solid guy who is on date for 4/15. 

This letter is a little shorter then normal but it was good week. 

Oh and I am being transferred to the Pioneer Ward in the Van North stake. 

Elder Astle 

Mom note: My cousins were in Portland over the weekend and decided to go to Alex’s ward for Sacrament Meeting.  My cousin Dave said he scared the beejeebers out of Alex as they waved to him when he walked into the chapel.  A range of emotions played across Alex’s face as he couldn’t place them at first, then recognized them, then was happy and then worried that he had somehow broken a mission rule.  Highly entertaining to Dave for sure.  Here is the picture taken after Sacrament Meeting when Dave was able to deliver a hug from ME!!!!!

Alex and Dave!

Season 14, Episode 5

This was a great week. Monday we went bowling. I found a cool Hawaiian shirt for like 2 bucks at DI, just to get into the bowling spirit.(mom note: this shirt... It’s UUUUGLY!)  We also had a really cool miracle! We had a few members pray that we find a new investigator before 9 o'clock. When we had them pray, it was about 8 o'clock, and we needed to find somebody that night. We felt like we needed to go by a potential's house, but they didn't pan out.  Then at 8:59 PM, we knocked on this guy named Behrans door. He seemed really interested and he said we could come back after we talked to him for a little bit. Talk about cool miracles! This one was really cool!

Tuesday we had a day. We were working really hard to trying contact some people. No luck for us really the whole day. Then later that day we had lesson with Jessica. She is doing well. Her lesson was centered on helping her share the gospel. She has a bunch of friends and the one she wants to share the gospel with was somebody who wasn't  very supportive of her when she got baptized. We were helping her plan to share this message. Afterward we had institute. It was just a really good lesson on the Atonement of Jesus Christ. We are really trying to get some of our people to come to this because it is so good.

Wednesday was a very interesting day. We went out to District meeting up in North Portland area. We had plans to stay up there to work in that area. Then I got a call from a less active who asked us if we could help him move some furniture into his place. So we changed our plans so we could help him out and then we taught him about how to do missionary work. It was sweet, but it kind of threw a whole wrench in our plans, but it worked. After we had all that happen, we had a lesson down at the very bottom of our area right after dinner which meant rush-hour traffic. So we were stuck in traffic for about an hour. We had a really awesome lesson after dinner. We had a lesson with somebody who wants to get back in the swing of things. 

Thursday was such a breeze. We did some service at the bishop’s storehouse. Then after that, we headed over to a lesson for a less active guy. After, we tried to contact around there; for the most part, no luck.

Friday we had a really good planning session. We've been struggling to find some people who are solid who we can actually teach. Our problem is we find people aren't all too interested. So we have some really good plans on how are going to find some new investigators this week. Some of those are really out of the box. 

Saturday was a very very busy day. We had a breakfast at the beginning of the day. We had a correlation meeting with our new Ward mission leader. It is kinda hard to communicate because he is Hispanic and there is a language barrier. After that we headed out to the institute building to have a lesson. It was a good lesson. Then we headed to a baptism in Longview for Elder Davenport. 

Sunday was mostly just church. And we had a sweet miracle come to church. Just somebody who wanted to come that some other missionaries found. That was a bonus!

Elder Astle 

Season 14 Episode 4

This has been a really good week and I'm trying to remember everything that happened, but it seems that my days are combining so we will just go with what I can remember. 

On Monday we went and hiked around Mount Tabor. It's not a very big hike, it's just kind of a nature walk but it was good to get out and to breathe a little bit. It was a very fun day.  We had a lesson with our investigator named David. We are having to teach him very simply because he is from Rwanda and doesn't speak much English. 

Tuesday we had our district meeting then we did a lot of driving because we felt like we needed to go to the very tip of our area. After what felt like persecution of the Saints, with a lot of very uninterested people, we found Wendy. She's this old lady who has a lot of member friends. Her family are members of the church. We started talking to her and she told us that she was looking for a closer relationship with God. We shared the restoration with her and helped her understand that she could strengthen that relationship. It was a solid lesson and we referred her over to the missionaries there. Sometimes we feel like we're bounty hunters for the Lord because we go in and we find some people for the missionaries in other areas that are really elect and ready to get baptized. 

Wednesday, Oh what a day! My favorite part of every month! We did Stake reports! That took up the majority of our day. Then after that we felt like we needed to go find a blue house with an American flag outside. We went looking for a blue house and ran into a former investigator that we dropped because we haven't been able to make contact with him. I didn't recognize him at first because he was coming up from behind us on the street. We talked to him and he said he’s just been really busy with work and hasn't had time to meet. I think we were supposed to see him for us to be on his mind. 

Thursday afternoon was very interesting. Not a lot of action or excitement happened. We went to a college campus and taught this guy in one of the student commons areas. That was the first time I've done that and probably the last. It just wasn't a good place for the spirit. The guy we were meeting was a investigator in the past and he's not ready really at all right now so it was kind of a waste of our time. Then we actually had a cool miracle. We made contact with a potential investigator through his phone. That does not ever happen. Usually YSA are always on their phone but they never get back to anyone. That was awesome. 

The later part of our week was when a lot of things started happening for us. We had a planning session today and I think it went pretty well. We have some new ideas and some new things to try to help the area get moving. Later that night we had a really good lesson with David teaching him the plan of salvation. It is very interesting teaching him because of his understanding and his language limitations. We have to go really slow and basically teach like we're teaching a child. But that lesson went really well the spirit was there and he had a good understanding of what we taught. 

Saturday was really awesome! We had a recently returned missionary call us and say her friend wants to meet with us for her class at school. She is taking a world religion class and needed to experience meeting with the missionaries. We had never met her and we gave a church tour. It was one of the few times that I have given a church tour. It went really really well. We made sure everything was ready for the tour and all the lights were on and then we started giving the tour. We didn't know what to expect because we've never met her before, but it was a powerful lesson. She didn't have much of a belief in God at first, but the spirit was there so hopefully she felt something. After the tour we headed over to a lesson with some Elders out in Gresham. They told us they were supposed to pass us off their investigator. The lesson fell through, so we felt like we needed to make a few phone calls. We called a few numbers off the numbers that have been in our records for a very long time. We called this guy and he answered and he said we could totally come by his place! That is a crazy cool miracle! 

Yesterday we had a stellar day. At church one of the members brought their friend who wants to be taught. Also, this random person shows up at church who wants to be baptized! That is crazy! She actually was a member a long time ago but she removed her records and wants to get back into church. Stuff like that never happens! Usually people who remove their records do not want any part of the church or coming back to it. Then after church we went to the lesson of the miracle phone call from just the other day. And this guy was golden! We started off really well and found out he just wants to find a belief in God. It was an amazing lesson! Then on the way home from that lesson we felt like we needed to call one of our recent converts and set up a time to meet and she said that she will bring her friend with her to the next meeting! We found three new investigators just in church or through some really cool miracles!

Love,

Elder Astle