What Makes Missions Fun

This past week was a fairly normal week as far as how the missionary work went.  For the most part, the days were spent tracting and contacting people in the homes near our apartment.  There are a lot of people that are fairly difficult to reach without a car, but so far we are managing.  While tracting, we met a truck driver and a home full of people who are attempting to recover from addictions who wouldn't mind talking with the missionaries in the future.

One of the most interesting things that I have learned in Oregon is that people act however they want to here.  Due to the liberal nature of the state, we will see a lot of people who are obviously high doing funny things like taking pictures of the sky all day or screaming gibberish from car.  But that is what makes the mission fun, there is always some new adventure that we will inevitably run into.  The people who do listen to the missionary messages are very awesome though, and those who don't listen usually have a high opinion of missionaries and what we are trying to do.

The largest events this past week were more lessons with Chris, where we committed him to live the Word of Wisdom and Law of Chasity, along with attempting to teach about the Plan of Salvation to him, though we will probably need to go over a lot of stuff to better help him understand what we believe.  I also got to go on an exchange with another missionary named Elder Garrard.  It was a fun time.

Beyond that, the other highlights was the Spanish Elders, Elder Ellis and Greer, taking us to a driving range earlier today for P-day, and a lot of bike repairs.  Overall, the work is going fairly well and I look forward to seeing where it goes from here!

Thanks for reading,

Elder Baxter

An old fashioned plane the stake patriarch is building that he showed us when we ate at his house.

So I did get the bike fixed, we just patched the tube and everything was fine.  The funny part is that I went on exchanges with another elder this past week and I popped his companion's bike tire, ha ha.  I think I just have horrible bike luck, though we got it fixed before the other elder came back. 

Fore!

The Medford Temple which is located next door to the Stake center.