Faith is like a cinnamon

(Elder Slade)

To the best friends and family a person can hope for,

It's been a good week. We did lots of service this week, consisting of helping someone move a dresser, building a fence, and painting a woman’s house. (Not all at the same time, though that would be pretty impressive!) It felt good to take a bit of a brake from all of the teaching, texting, and calling and just help someone out. We also did an exchange this week. I went with Elder Vea, who was a reassigned missionary who served in Zimbabwe, and who's from Tonga and the U.S., so it was fun talking with him. During that we got tons of food! We got zucchini bread, cake, ice cream, hot dogs, potato salad, and coleslaw, all given to us to take home. The struggle is real.

This week, we've really been focusing on finding new people to teach though. Most of our prayers included asking to help us find. We've also tried to especially focus on activities that would lead to finding in our planning. Because of this a miracle happened! We went to one of our dinner Appointments the other night and when we got there, they said that they had just randomly invited an entire nonmember family to dinner as well! We started talked with them, and they said we could stop by sometime. So, we stopped by a few times this week, began growing a relationship with them, and they said we could come over next week sometime and start teaching them! Hopefully we'll be able to catch them! But this to me shows how the Lord really does answer prayers. There are many blessing in store, that are just requisite on us asking for them, and trusting in God's will. The power of prayers is real!

This morning we also got transfer calls. While Elder Baron and I are both staying in our area, we are being moved to a different zone, the St. Anthony zone. They are also making me a district leader. I don't know what they were thinking, but I know that the Lord will help me! As far as I know, my role is to organize exchanges with the Elders in my district, and lead our district councils. It will be good. The title this week actually comes from a few weeks ago, when Elder Baron was trying to say "Faith is a synonym " when he actually said "Faith is a cinnamon". I think Elder Baron was on to something there. If you think about it hard enough, I think he found the meaning to some of life's greatest questions.

For those of you who are potato enthusiasts, put in your calendars August 19th and October 27th. They are National Potato Days! Exciting!

Pictures:

1. An awesome bumper sticker. I'm Elder Slade, and I approve this message!

2. A cute dog at on of our service projects.

3-4. Elder Vea and I with the house we helped paint. If you look closely, you can see that I got brown paint in my hair. I'm not very good at staying clean when it comes to paint.

Do tapeworms have ears?

(Elder Slade)

To the best friends and family a person can hope for,

This week has been a good week! Above all else, we had the baptism for Jessie and Jill Bough! Yay! It was a wonderful experience. After 3 or so months of teaching them, it felt great to see them take the next step. They were so happy and I could see how much it meant to them. If I don't find anyone else on my mission, I'd be satisfied because I've been able to meet and teach them. I saw so much change in their lives. They have a better relationship with each other and their family. They are happier, more patient, more loving. They've seen several miracles in their lives that have shown them how much God loves them. I know that when we follow Jesus Christ and the gospel He's given us, we will be blessed in ever aspect of our lives (see Mosiah 2:41). I've seen it in my own life, and hundreds of other lives as we've met with members and nonmembers we teach while here.

Another highlight or my week was that I was called a Sister by a General Seventy (basically one of our leaders) in our church. We had a devotional over zoom with him, and a sister, Sister Varney was asked to sing a song for him. So she asked me to be her accompanist for it. Afterwords, the General Authority was mentioning the musical number and called me Sister Slade. Do I really have that feminine of features? It hasn't been the first time I've been called feminine. Is that a bad thing? I don't know. I'll take it as a compliment though! But, it was a cool experience to hear him speak!

Other than that, it's been the same old thing, lots of texting and calling to see up member messages. The title this week came from a question I had during a texting and calling session. My thought process went something like this: "Why does my stomach rumble so much? How does the sound even come out? Through my body? What if I have tape worms in my stomach, and they're causing my stomach to make lots of noise? Or maybe, there just along for the ride. Is the rumbling louder if you're in my stomach? Could tapeworms hear it if they were in there?" I then spoke out loud, giving no context to Elder Baron and asked him if tapeworms have ears. He was a bit taken aback, and pretty confused. Pretty funny though. We were able to do some service for a nonmember family this week as well. We helped him pull the plastic onto his greenhouse he was building. We also met someone from Russia, which was super sweet! I was thinking of giving some Russian puns to her, but we're meeting with them again next week, so, what's the Rush(ia)? I know what your thinking, "(Ru)shut up Elder Slade! Your pun's aren't even good!" Which you're right. They're not. But, interesting enough, the fun fact for the week, is that a popular drink in Russia, Vodka, is made from potatoes! Logic time! So, alcohol's bad for you and makes you do stupid stuff. Vodka has alcohol. Vodka's made from potatoes. Thus, potatoes must be bad for you and make you do stupid stuff. Nuff said.

Pictures:

1. Jessie and Jill's baptism. I'll probably have more pictures next week, but I was only able to get this one for today. Jill and Jessie are in the left, Brad Hirschi, their cousin is on the right, who baptized them. Elder Leavitt was able to come as well!

2-4. District pictures

5. A family we visited had baby kittens. So cute! They also had about 200 rabbits. I should have taken a picture.

6-8. Another family we visited had peacocks and a beautiful view.

June 10th 2020

(Elder Petersen)

Hey Y'all what's. So this last week a lot has happened ranging from a transfer board last Monday to breakfast at and area 70s home.

To start out as I just said we got a transfer roster Monday and had transfers Wednesday due to an influx of reassigned Missionaries into our mission. Nothing changed on my end however I an still up here in Malad Idaho with my companion Elder Davis. On Wednesday we got a call from the Assistants to the President telling us that we were getting our truck back Thursday which was really nice. Then we had a few uneventful stress filled days with meetings and setting up meetings. On Sunday however we got a call from an area 70 named Elder Hess who lives in our area asking us if we would like to come over to his house the next morning (this morning) and have breakfast with him, because of COVID-19 and all that we are still in isolation so we were uncertain if we could accept his offer so we told him that and just don't worry about it I'll get you permission which I'd how we ended up having breakfast with an area 70 this morning.

We also went on a hick during P-Day today it was an amazing hike with beautiful scenery. Enjoy these pictures!

So that has been my week this week hope yours have been going well.

June 3rd 2020

(Elder Petersen)

Hey y'all what's up!

We just got a transfer roster today two weeks before our normal transfer because of the amount of missionaries that were resigned to this mission after there missions got closed. So this week we a getting 29 new missionaries into our mission. Just from these Missionaries coming into our mission our mission president President Hobbins created 2 brand new zones. But in other news from this week we tried to be as busy as we possibly could which resulted in us having 15 appointments alone this last Thursday which was really nice until we tried confirming with them to see if we were still good to share our message. What sucked about that was that 8 out of those 15 canceled on us😭. I hope all of your missionary efforts are going well and not as sucky as that day but other then that day our week has been awesome. Hope yours goes great! Love y'all!

Agua-Te Big Mess!

(Elder Slade)

To the best friends and family a person can hope for!

Not a very interesting week. A few highlights: I found a new license plate! I'm not sure if I've told you, but I've been making a list of the different state license plates I've seen while here in Idaho. Eventually I want all 50. Today we found Wisconsin! Only 12 left to go! If any of you see a Hawaii license plate in Rexburg, let me know! We also were given a 5 pound bag of French Fries. The blessings of living in potato central.

The title came from something I said. We were texting this one guy to see if we could meet with him. He's a farmer, and so he's super busy right now. He said he couldn't meet, "He was changing the water." What does that mean?! I'm not a farmer?! The response I wanted to send was "Wow. That sounds like it could be agua-te (a great) big mess!" I lost it after that. I thought it was the funniest thing ever. Elder Baron just thought I was being stupid, which looking back on it, I probably was.

But the real highlight this week was hearing that we could now have 50 people at a baptism. So Jessie and Jill set a new date to get baptized: June 6th, this Saturday! Let's gooooo!! I'm so excited. They are the kindest, sweetest people. Now I'm just going to have to figure out how to set up a baptism, because neither Elder Baron or I really know what we are doing. It'll work out though. Watching the Boughs progress had taught me that there is no reason to fear anything. (Or should I say, there's no reaon to be frie-tened! Ha!) The Boughs were a little bit timid at first to have us teach them, but as they came to see how their lives changed, they didn't need to fear anymore. They had family that might have not liked their decision, and they had to change their life styles, but as they relied on Jesus Christ, they were able to get through all the things that the adversary threw at them. I know, and they know, that this is the path that they needed to take, despite any roadblocks they encountered. There's been miracles in their lives to discount that fact.

I love you all! I Idaho-pe you are doing well!

Pictures (Sorry. Really not many at all. I'll do better this week!)

1. What kind of mom would give there kid this for breakfast? This is why America has the highest obesity rates.

2. Five pounds of frozen french fries

May 29 2020

(Elder Petersen)

Hey how are you all doing this week? It has been a pretty good week this last week. And this next week is looking to be pretty good as well. We are finally getting to the point where we are actually busy in the course of a week and it is going to be nice knowing that we are going to be able to do something in the next couple of weeks. One thing that I am excited for is that our district leader just challenged us to set up as a district 250 appointments for this next week. In a district of four sets of missionaries that might be thought of as an extremely hoped for and far reaching goal but I know that we can do it. And one thing that I love is a challenge. I hope y'all are challenging yourselves to become better member Missionaries even at this time where we can't get out as much as we may like. I know that missionary work is possible, I know that it is hard sometimes not being able to see your friends in person. But one thing that I truly do know is that God loves each and every one of us each individually. He knows us so he will never give up on us and he will never give us a challenge that we cannot overcome. That is one thing that I do know. I hope y'all have a great week! Love y'all.

Cows can get depressed?

(Elder Slade)

To the best friends and family a person could hope for!

I hit my 4 month mark this week! Other than that, it wasn't a very eventful week. We did see a miracle the other day though. As we were driving, we saw a family that we've been trying to work with for a while now, playing outside. We havent been able to get a hold of them since the quarantine. We parked, and walked back to them and now we have contact with them again. And it was all because we were randomly driving back from an appointment. So yay!

On Saturday, it was Elder Baron's birthday! And as celebration, mother earth decided to send snow, in the middle of May. It's a birthday miracle! We also were given a random sandwich from a family in a park we were having companionship study in. That was a highlight of the week. I also got attacked by a random really chubby kid! Were supposed to try to keep social distancing, but when we were over for dinner at one house, this kid came out of nowhere and hugged me. It was a bit awkward.

The title comes from me. We were in the car and we hadn't talked in a few minutes. We were driving past fields and pastures and I broke the silence by saying, "Can cows get depressed?" My companion broke out laughing, but I thought it was a valid question! I mean, they eat the same thing day after day, they are always looking down, and they only can say one word. And depression is just physiological, so wouldn't it make since that cows can get depressed? The train of thought that got me there was a lot weirder though, and I won't get into that deep subject. Thinking about cows being depressed is depressing though, so I'll stop. But food for thought, aye?

Something that's been on my mind lately is the idea of hope. There is hope in every situation! No matter what the circumstances, there is always hope.

Hope for the quarantined missionary, hope for the struggling student, hope for the jobless parent, hope for the lonely, sick, and afflicted. There's even hope for the depressed cow (lol, sorry!). When we have hope, especially the hope that comes from the Atonement of Jesus Christ (see Moroni 7:41) we can get through all things, and we can do it with happiness as well. I'd invite you to look for the hope in your lives. It can always be found.

Interesting fact: potatoes are among the most environmentally friendly vegetables. They’re easy to grow, and don’t require massive amounts of fertilizer and chemical additives to thrive like many other vegetables do. That's probably why they don't taste good. Because they don't take as many nutrients from the ground. Thanks potato for your contribution, but I think I'll pass.

Pictures (Sorry, not many taken this week):

1. The snow

2-3. We made some impressive cookie creations, including: The Mohawk, The Threesome, The Sdoughman (you get it! Like snowman, but with dough! Haha...nevermind), The Collosal cookie.

They all just ended up as piles, but they tasted good.

4. The perfect representation of the Idahoans desire to give us food. They offered to feed us dinner, but we already had a dinner set up. I'm seriously surprised I'm not fat right now.