11-29-08

Hey everybody,                                                                               

 Sorry for lagging with the letters. It’s been pretty busy up here. The tape was nice. It was good hearing all your voices. Thanks Dad for the scrolls and other things—good stuff. Thanks everybody who talked on the tape. If anyone else wants to send me a cassette tape instead of writing a letter, that’s cool.

 Like I said, is busy up here. Last transfer we usually got one person out to church per week, never more than 3. We got 6 out last Sunday, even a guy who flaked on us Friday showed up with his Book of Mormon in his hand. It looks like this Sunday we’ll get more. We’re teaching all these people and we’re finding new people to teach pretty much every day. It’s nice, with the last transfer, we got rid of the old and more dead missionaries and brought in 2 greenies and we have the youngest district in the mission by far, in the most successful district in the mission. We’re pretty driven right now. More got done in the first two weeks of this transfer than all last transfer. We should be able to put at least 4 solid people on date his week (Martineau and I). So things are going well in Mt. Vernon.

 There are a lot of homeless people in downtown Mt. Vernon. We’re working with three right now. This last week one guy, Tony, gave up on working to get over his addictions and another guy, Denny, relapsed back with alcohol. It’s pretty sad seeing people making all the right moves and working to get back on their feet and then watching them stumble and fall back. Denny and Tony were both doing great, each about a month of sobriety under their belts and their faces started lighting up and they were happy and doing well. Denny was pretty close to moving out of the homeless shelter in town and getting a place of his own, but now he’s barely in the shelter since he just racked up two strikes and is on thin ice. We’ll still work to help them both, but neither are willing. No bueno.

 On the brighter side, the other day, Brian, the guy we’ve been studying with for probably two months, is doing really well. He was a pastor for six years so he knows his stuff. We got him a quad about a month ago and he’s loved it ever since. He’s been reading the D&C and loves it. The other day he said, “When I’m a Mormon, I’ll call myself a Latter-Day Saint.”  I was speechless. He’s pretty excited about everything and the whole process with him that’s been baby steps for the most part has strengthened my testimony a lot.

 Raiders fan, Mike, and his wife, Amanda, and their lads are pretty excited too. The girls came out last week and loved it, so this week Mike should check it out. I’ve never seen Mike and the fam happier that they’ve been this last week—it’s pretty cool.

 Then Ashley, the girl we taught once, a month and a half ago at her friend’s house, is pretty amped too. After she called us, out of the blue, last Tuesday, we’ve visited with her a couple of times and she’s bringing her friend, Elena, along this Sunday. So overall, things are going really well.

 It’s getting cold up here, and windy. The wind is pretty gnarly in this valley we live in. It peels back metal shingles on barns and the rain feels like darts when it gets intense. What’s funny is that it’s been sunny as often as it hasn’t been. It sunny right now, and the whole time I’ve been here I’ve said that and people are always like, “Oh, you just wait, you won’t see the sun for years,” but they make it sound all crazy like that. Then it will be sunny with no clouds in the sky the next day. All I have to say about that is 2 Nephi 9:34. Booyah! Whether it’s sunny or not, it’s still sweet up here. I can see the Cascades and the beast (Mt. Baker) behind them. It is huge. It’s probably 50+ miles away and looks gigantic. It’s stays snow capped all year, pretty schweet!

 I’m learning a lot about this little town. About six months ago, some guy out in the boonies started a rampage killing a deputy and four or five other people, shooting at people on the freeway and stuff and turned off in Mt. Vernon where they ended it and somehow cuffed him. Also, I guess 30 or 40 years ago there was a big mental hospital here and it lost funding and closed down and all the patients left and just lived on the streets. And I’m pretty sure they reproduced, because there’s a fresh crop. There are lots of homeless people downtown and I know about half of them. This area used to be the shaky baptism area for the mission because of that. No retention. Now we’ve got standards and focus on the more solid people who are hard to find in certain areas of downtown. But in Mt. Vernon, it goes from 100% Spanish-speaking pockets to super ghetto apartments to lower/poorer class areas all the way through the spectrum to the Coto de Caza-ish neighborhoods on the hill. And we’ve got farmers and hillbillies in the mix too. It’s great!

 This area is nice. The people are humble and, for the most part, pretty religious. Sometimes the people who already go to another church are pretty closed off to even hearing us out, but there are a lot of people who have been receptive. It’s funny a few times a day we’ll be talking with people and we’ll talk about how important prophets were in the time of the Bible, people are always like “oh yeah, those guys were extremely important.”  Then we’ll talk about how God is the same yesterday, today and forever and people always agree with that. Then we’ll talk about how by their fruit we can know if people claiming to be prophets are prophets, “oh yeah, definitely.” So we propose that a prophet lived in the 1800’s and then ask if they’d be interested in finding out for themselves if he was a true prophet or not. “Yeah, I’d like to know.” So we tell them we have the “fruits” to judge him by and that they can find out. And they’ll be like, “You know I’m ok, my church doesn’t believe that.”  It boggles me. Oh well. Missions are great. I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else doing anything else.

 Love,

Nate