AN AWESOME TRANSFER

Dear Family,
Just a quick update....J and S got baptized and they are doing great! Active and happy. I don't know if J has received the priesthood yet because I got transfered but I think he will soon if he hasn't yet. K has received the priesthood and is going to early morning seminary and has such a strong testimony it's crazy! K's mom, got married last week and is getting baptized this Saturday. I'm going to try and get permission from the zone leaders to go to the baptism. They said I probably could because it's only an hour drive from where we are.
Thank you for the Butterfingers! I still have a few left but all four of us have been working on them! Thankyou for the tie as well! You can't have too many I've found. Most missionaries have about 30-50 ties! How do I feel about pink ties? I love em! Really. President Pfile doesn't care about ties as long as they don't have pictures or text. That made me happy!
Well Emma, to answer some of your questions...We can decorate our apartment but that costs money and we don't have much of that and so we're just going to buy a Christmas tree and a few lights for the tree and then we're going to do a gift exchange!
About cooking...Elder Baker (one of the elders in the other companionship in our apartment) likes to cook. He went to two years of culinary school so we've been having him cook and then we do dishes! Although, if you want to send the pizza recipe we want to make it!
As far as quotes that beat Emerson's....How about these:
1) "As hearts change, lives steady." Um.....that's all I can think of right now.
Well, the weather here in LaJunta has been pretty nice. We got tiny snow flakes yesterday but not enough to really call it snow. Actually though, yesterday, when we were driving to zone conference in Pueblo it was 13 degrees farenheit! It was very cold. I was glad we were driving!
A few days ago we went over to an investigators house and they had the cutest little puppy with a TON of energy! She was jumping all over me for the entire 30 minutes we were there and she was biting (gnawing) on my hands! I guess she loves to chew on hands and so they named her Bites! She was so cute.
So yeah, there are four of us in one apartment here. They are awesome! This is going to be a great transfer. Elder Downs is my companion. (Picture) He actually reminds me alot of Carson! He's super cool. We are already best friends! We both like to be sarcastic (not being mean or over the top with it of course) which makes the work really fun. And of course we just use sarcasm with each other, not the people we teach!
Elder Baker, as I mentioned earlier, loves to cook and so we love him! Elder Conley is awesome too! He's been sent home twice for kidney stones and so this is his thrid time out. We're all hoping that he can finish up his mission because if he needs to be sent home again he won't be able to come back out. He actually lived in Molalla, which is about 30 miles south of Portland and so he's not far from Eugene at all!
He was like, "Do you know Kelsey Stutz?"
I was like, "Heck yeah...she was in my student ward."
We were both so excited! We decided that since we're so close we're going to start a band when we get home because he plays guitar and drums and writes songs! Oh, and he plays piano. He is super cool! He's really funny.
Oh mom, as far as Christmas goes, the half size PMG, a photo album, ties, those are a few ideas but really actually one of the best ideas I think is just plain old money. It sounds boring but it's probably cheaper to send and that way I can get things when I need them. Also, I think one of my favorite presents will be the family newsletter!
Well, our area is huge. There are tons of small towns all spread out! Swink is a town a few miles away from LaJunta and a few days ago we tracted the entire town in about three hours! So far Elder Downs and I have no investigators due to the fact that we were flushed into the area. Meaning that there have never been four missionaries in this area. So we have no history behind us and no investigators left behind by the last elders...because there are no 'last elders'.
Oh, so to explain the picture with the cat...we were tracting and we pet this cat at a doorstep and it just followed us for about half an hour while we went door to door. It was super soft and it looked like it had been abused a little. We took a bunch of pics with it.
Well, I can't really think of anything else to tell you about...
We did have a zone conference on Tuesday and it was really good. We spent a lot of time setting up a Book of Mormon so that it's really easy to find scriptures for each of the principles in each lesson. Then we did some role plays and stuff. It was such a good meeting. My testimony of the Book of Mormon has grown so much since I've been out. It's really been aparent to me how we have to use the Book of Mormon if we want to truely convert someone. We can help people act differently but only the spirit, which comes from the Book of Mormon, can really help people change.
I just want you all to know that I love this work. I'm glad that all is well back home!
Love Ben