Third Transfer

Well this last week has been really painfull. Well to start it all off, on Monday I woke up with a really bad cough and headache so I just slept through studies. I could not consentrate. After I tried to work a bit so we went to teach some lessons. Then when we were going to interview a person for baptism, some one rear-ended us. The guy was going like 30mph. He it us so hard that we hit the car in front of us. The crazy thing is that our car didn't get too banged up, just a small little dent. Then we went to the hospital to get checked out to see if everything was ok. This took up all of our evening. Tuesday was bad. I was still feeling sick and my body was aching from the accident. We canceled all of our appointment and just slept the whole day. On Wednesday my companion was feeling really bad. He also got sick and it mangled him. Also his back started to hurt really bad from the accident. Then to top it all off, he got word from the zone leader that he had been replaced as district leader. He was really bummed. He really enjoyed being district leader and I liked it too. Its fun going out on exchanges and getting to know the other missionaries. Too bad. Well that was my crazy week.

ELDER ARCIA
(stripplingarcia@myldsmail.net)

Three months!!

Sorry for not writting yall last week but we had Zone Activity and we were busy the whole day. To catch yall back up, I baptized Linda Willis on the 11th of July. It was a sweet experience. She really felt the difference from just attending the church to being baptized and receiving the Holy Ghost. I would have never guessed that I would baptize a 70 year old woman but hey it was worth it. After that we had three more baptisms. Jose Pech, Alicia Bonilla and her daughter Magali. We are really havign a lot of success because of the members here. The Tongans give us a lot of references and the leaders of the group are always willing to go out to teach with us. We cant take all the credit. Last weeks Zone Activities were really good. I actually went to two, the spanish zone and the english zone were we serve. It was nice. For the spanish one we went to a field and played soccer for like 2 hours. I have never had that much fun playing soccer since I was little. We hung out and relaxed afterwards and took some pictures (too bad i didnt have my camera). But I will tell the other elders to give me some. Then after that my comp and I and a few other elders went to the english zone's activity. There we ate steak and hamburgers. We talked a bunch and we played Capture the Flag with shaving cream. It was really fun. I had never played it like that. I have a sweet story to tell but its ganna have to wait till next week cus im running out of time. Well take care and be good. I love you all.

ELDER ARCIA
(stripplingarcia@myldsmail.net)

Independence Day!!!

The Fourth of July was, I think, the best day I've had on my mission. Our mission president told us that the best way to spend the Fourth of July was to be with the members. Unfortunately our tongan ward had an activity outside our mission bounderies so we couldn't go. We were really bummed out, we wanted to spent time with them and eat some of their wonderful food. Since that didn't work out, we decided to go to a breakfast that some elders invited us to. We went there and we ate and got to know more people from our stake. After that we went to our english ward's breakfast get-together to spend some time with them. Before we left, we saw some tongan brothers settign up a grill. We asked them if they were ganna have a party and they said, "No we're ganna have a tongan feast." My companion and I decided that this was something that we HAD to attend to. So we went home to study for a while, and we called the same elders from the morning to invite them also. So we went to the "feast" at around 2pm. We got there and some other elders were already there. Then eventually the Sister Missionaries got there. We chilled, we talked, we ate wonderfull tongan food and had a blast. We had a crazy experience happen to us while we were there. Some guys were popping some fireworks in the church's parking lot. We saw them playing around and having fun but something had to go wrong. So they were playing with illegal fireworks and some tipped over as they lit them so when they went off they hit some trees that were near. Those poor trees didn't have a chance. They went up on fire like matches. The flames were like 15ft high. We called the fire department and they actually got there pretty quick. The good thing for those guys was that they didn't run away, they took to the consequense. It wasn't too bad but we had a huge scare. After that the sister missionaries and the elders went to see the fireworks in Down Town Portland. We went to the Willamitte River were we could see them. That day was a real fun one and I dont think Ill ever forget it.

ELDER ARCIA
(stripplingarcia@myldsmail.net)

2 1/2 Months!!!

I can't believe that I have 2 1/2 months in my mission. Its weird, it doesn't feel like that long. That's crazy!!! Well this week has been full of ups and downs. My companion Elder Myers is still dealing with depression. Its really been really hard to go out and do the work and talk to people. We're still teaching our investigators but we don't really go out to knock. But I feel that it should be getting better soon. Like on Monday, we had Zone Conferene and he was reallly good. After he was excited about going out to work. And Tuesday we went to a funeral and he was fine after. But yesterday he was just not feeling it. Good thing we had exchanges with the Zone Leaders. It sounds bad but it really helped out. I went out to Beaverton and he stayed in Portland. I went knocking and it felt so good. I didn't think that knockng could be such a relief. All in all the exchanges were pretty good. The only bad part about it was that the elder I stayed with snored really bad. He kept me up most of the night. Other than that it was fine. I got to know more of Oregon and got to know my Zone Leaders better.

ELDER ARCIA
(stripplingarcia@myldsmail.net)