Hey Family!

Well... Twas a crazy week here in Tigard. In a good way, for the most part. To start off with, just a random side note, so Dillon Jonah Cody and I came up with a quick test our senior year to check how chill a girl is. A very simple thing. From our observations, girls who have seen the movie cool runnings

are generally 10x cooler than those that haven't. It's a real life example of small and simple things bringing to pass great works. This week, I decided to put it through the trial of faith, and ask a sister in my district if she has seen Cool Runnings. And, hallelujah, she hasn't seen it!!! Don't take that the wrong way, I'm not looking to date any of the sisters I'm serving around, my heart is locked and I am focused, but, it was just nice to put it to the test, my comp and I had a good little laugh.

ALSO, just so everybody knows, I haven't sworn since before I went through the Temple the first time. Which, after what just barely happened to me, is an accomplishment! Freaking we were playing soccer and an Elder in my district did a dirty little little cheap shot and slide tackled me. Boy my left ankle is HUGE.

freak that hurt. I was on the ground for like 5 minutes, however, to my credit, I did not swear in English nor Spanish!

And we are about to go play frisbee golf, my ankle is gonna have my game off but that's ok.

On Wednesday/Thursday we did an exchange, I went with Elder Smith to Beaverton #2. It's been a year since we did an exchange, I was with him when the snow storm hit last year. It was a bomb exchange, their area is brand new so we just did some finding and taught some good lessons.  Later that night we made a fire in their apts fire place and cooked up some smores... It was good to just chillax a little bit.

Thursday was a freaking rough, trunky day! It started at like 6, we went by Ester and Ferzulis, and they were watching Divergent, and as we walked in it was right in the middle of an intense make out scene... Engman and I just looked at each other, and back at the tv, and at each other, both of us were just thinking freaking heck...

And then, like every apt we went to for the rest of the night, people were playing video games or something. It's not so much the video games that I miss, but the just being able to chill and not have to worry about what I'm doing every second for the night... anyways... glad we made it through that little stretch.

Freaking last night I was legitimately afraid that I was going to get kissed by a man.... We were knocking on the door for an appt, and a guy was walking by us, so I said hi and asked how he was doing. He said good, how are you? When I told him I was good, he got super confrontational and was asking "are you sure?! how do you know?!" and then I don't remember what I said, but he told us to go up the stairs and talk to him, so we did. He was a little drunk, that should have been our first hint, anyways the interesting part came when I asked if he believed that God loved him enough to call a prophet to guide him today. He said "yeah, I believe that God loves me. For example, if we were at war, and someone were to shoot you, and I were to take the bullet for you (at this point he had his arms on either side of me and was pinning me against a wall,

trying to shield me from danger. my only thought was if he tries to kiss me, I'm going to freaking lose it)... anyways, thankfully, he didn't kiss me. We talked for like an hour and then he had to go in and tell his mom what he had been doing (40 years old and still lives with his mommy.... hrm). Then he wanted us to meet his mother, who is Buhdist, and he pulls us inside, and to introduce us, he grabbed my arm and said, "Mom, look at this kid! He's @#$%^& beautiful, and I'm not even gay!" What a weird, strange experience.

I don't have much else to say... our district is still on fire, last week we picked up like 37 news as a district... that puts us at close to 90 as a district in 3 weeks... last month our zone found 103 and killed everyone else. So if you are looking for things to keep in your prayers, BBB needs to know where her husband lives so that she can get divorced and baptized, and she also needs to not work on LLLL's baptism....

Any other questions? I love you guys!

Oh and ps dad thanks for sending your conversion story, I used the part where you talked about how you didn't really get a confirmation it was right until after all was said and done, and I used that when I was teaching on the exchange, talking about how sometimes God makes us wait a little.

Anyways... thought you'd wanna know!

And actually this took so long to send because as I was saying earlier about spraining my ankle... the mission nurse wanted me to go to the urgent care center to get it checked out because I really could barely walk on it, its swollen as freak, and anyways... so just made it back from that, and nothing is broken, but pretty much everything is torn, and it will be a 6-8 weeks in the boot... pictures to come... the pic of my foot was taken like around 430 any questions hit me up with them and I'll get back to you.

Hey family!

Well, last week was pretty good here in Tigard. We set 3 baptismal dates, all with members of HHHH's family. The best one was her son, VVVV's. Yesterday was his 10th birthday, and no one else in his family could come to church, so we got him a ride and he came all by himself. Later  that day we passed by to wish him a happy birthday, and we started talking about baptism, he said it was something he wants to do. HHHH was right there and she said she was fine with it. HHHH is also super solid. We can show her like a 3 minute mormon message and she gives us a 5 minute explanation about it. Every time Elder Engman and I teach her, we always say she should teach us. So what's impeding her from baptism currently is that she wants to get divorced. She doesn't need to according to the rules, but it's something she really wants to do and when she told us about it, both Elder Engman and I felt like it was something she needs to do. She can't do it though because she needs to know her husband's current address, which she doesn't  know because they aren't in communication and he won't give it to her... so that is our current dilemma here in Tigard... however, my district is getting work done.

So my district is 6 companionships, one of which is a senior couple. My branch is my area, a set of sisters, and the senior couple, we cover the Tualatin and Lake Oswego Stakes. And then the other half of the district is the beaverton group (different than the ward I was serving in). There are 3 companionships in that group, one of which is the zone leaders, and the other is a brand new area that just got made 2 weeks ago. So my district is my area, the sister's area, the senior couple, the zone leaders, and 2 other companionships of Elders. It is the biggest district in the mission by 2 companionships, which I think I said already, but, anyways, we are DOING WORK!!! In the first 2 weeks of the transfer, as a district, and not counting the senior couple's numbers, we have found 58 new investigators. That is more than most English zones of 10 companionships find in a month.

Everyone is working hard and I love it. I'm glad I'm in Tigard, I feel like I haven't actually liked an area that I was in since I served in Nike.

Other random sidenote, we are still giving a crazy amount of blessings here. Last week we gave 7 blessings in 2 days, probably the hardest one was to a 14 year old in the branch who was hit by a car going 45 mph when he ran across the freeway. Miraculously, externally there wasn't a lot of damage. He had bleeding in is brain has been recovering quickly. The other one was to Elder White, the Elder in the senior couple, he had a blood clot in his lung but he is doing better too.

Elder Engman comes from a decent sized family, he is number 3 of 4.

Ok Mom I will send you another email about housing later... I love you guys, I hope Wes gets feeling better! Maybe during his time of illness he could take time to remember his long lost brother!!