Day 82 Hermiston, OR

Hey hey hey!!

Good gravy this week went by fast.

Thursday we had exchanges, which meant I got to go to Walla Walla for the day! Hooray! I spent the day with Sister Haddock and taught a bunch of her investigators with her. I LOVE Walla Walla. It's full of little Victorian houses and it's a pretty decent sized town. It's a college town as well...almost like Provo, except their college is Seventh Day Adventist. So everyone and their dog there is SDA. The whole town shuts down on Friday night and doesn't come back to life until Saturday night. (They believe the Sabbath is on Saturday.) But we had plenty of adventures the day I was there. We taught this one guy who was high as a kite...throughout the lesson he kept going off about going into a trance and seeing lights and other random things that won't be mentioned. Ha and he kept opening up the Book of Mormon to random pages and reading a verse and just saying "Wow. Yeah." And sometimes that random page would be a page in the index. hahaha Sister Haddock and I should win a medal for not laughing while we were there. Super funny.

I have a new weather hatred...WIND. Sweet Buddha, I hate it. Apparently March around here is wind season, and it gets up to around 50mph...on a good day. We've heard stories of previous years when it's gotten up to 120mph speeds. Ridiculous.

Anywho, the two Jensen kids Miles and Whitney are getting baptized on Saturday!! The mom will (hopefully) be getting baptized next weekend because she's still working on quitting smoking...but she'll get there! She's really working hard. The dad was raised in the church, but was very less active...and he is getting worthy so he can baptize his family!! AUGH!! Oh haha did I tell you Miles' hair used to be blue and down to his shoulders...and he cut it missionary short and he just looks great! Woo! (The funny part is that Sis Hovorka and I have called him Elder Miles since we met him...and now he looks like an Elder! Hopefully one day he'll serve a mission and he'll really be one haha)

Oh to answer your question about seminary teachers...all the ones at Salem are AWESOME. I highly recommend Brother Simmons, Campbell, or Gividen. I think he'll like Simmons best, but they are all seriously amazing.

Ha that's so weird people are coming back from their missions already...all of my friends from high school are making their way home now and it's kind of a bummer that I have to wait even longer to see them. But it's all good! Ha and random, but apparently my comp knows my friend Jaime! Small world!

Anywho, the work is going great here in Herm-town. Our ward is BOMB and we've met some seriously incredible people. I love it here.

OH OH one more story for you all:

On Saturday we had a study with the AP's and talked about ways to find new investigators. We talked about how to leave a blessing on a home. We role played it, and AP Draeger was a guy who had recently lost his wife. So we came in and said a prayer with his "family" and blessed the home. SO later that day, Sister Hovorka and I went with a ward missionary to her neighbor's house to bring him some bread. After talking to him for a while, we decided to give the home blessing thing a try and prayed with him. The Spirit was really strong and he invited us to come back to teach him! The interesting part? He had just lost his wife earlier this year in a car accident. It was just cool to see how we were prepared and directed by the Spirit to teach him.

Love you!! Until next week!

Ash