It's Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas... Somewhere else

December 22, 2014

Hello !

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in Alaska! Not in Oregon. It's been so crazy here! This Christmas is so weird. This week has been way crazy. Full of many, many unexpected events. Some of which I will not enclose in this email, and will save for future dates. Maybe my Skype call home. :) So it's been super rainy and hot ! It's crazy ! It's like 50 here. How can anyone stand December with this hot of heat! It blows my mind. And it's super funny because people will see us and offer us rides because "it's so cold". Cracks me up. I remember a November back home where it snowed like 5 inches and was negative degrees and we played the turkey bowl. Good times! Miss it. But I'm sure there are people in Siberia or Antarctica who would rather trade me places so I won't complain too much! :) Maybe I'm the next Santa in training. I already got the gut, and the cold weather love. All I need now is a nice thick white beard, some elves and the funds to make a toy plant.

Anyways... I got a new companion on Thursday. His name is Elder Howard and he seems pretty cool. He's from California. He is a very nice kid. His dad is the founder of Dragon clothing. Dragon is s professional surfing and snowboarding company. It was sad to see my best friend go but I know Elder Dyorich and I will be buddies forever. 

We had some miracles this week. We had a really bombin lesson with Erin and Alyssa. It's incredible to feel the spirit and this week I have felt it so much. In this lesson we read alma 7 and heavily discussed the many amazing verses in this chapter. I had the opportunity to bear testimony of the Savior’s earthy ministry. I believe due to my recent studies of his life and the 4 gospels it has strengthened my testimony so much! It's great. They have started to keep their commitments. Eventually they will be baptized.

Met some very interesting people this week as we have been going through our ward list and seeing who would like visits. One day we ended up at a memory facility. (Some lady’s house) That was a crazy visit! She forgets everything after like a minute and her speech was worse then mine. So it was intensely hard to understand her. We basically left her with a little lesson. It was a miracle to even meet her really.

Anyways. That's all I really have for this week. Rock on! Love you all and Merry Christmas!

GRIZZ 👻

Family… I can't wait till Thursday either. Better ask questions, dad! So we are shooting for seven in the morning my time so 8 there :) does that work? No mom, you don't have to have your make up on :) lol I don't care ! :) I'm just excited.  I'm so excited! We are eating with the Wrights on Christmas.  I'll talk more on Thursday. I love you ! :) .

Happy birthday Daddy on Tuesday!! I miss you and I love you.   

I love you so much mom. You crack me up with your emails ! :) I am so blessed with amazing parents. I love you todeath!  Xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

We have been taught... as Nephi of old.

 PHOTOS: I found this string on the gym floor and I was just messing around with it. (no, it’s not the net) Elder Pirrene called me Nephi. We are with all the missionaries now playing :) We can't play full court basketball. That’s probably why I do so good haha :) We've heard our mission has the strictest rules in the North American continent. People from the missionary department have asked how we do it. Rules are there for a reason lol :)

The other Elders in the photo with Elder Dyorich and I are Elder’s Batt and Kunz.  Right after we fixed this water line, they wrecked the car. They were not hurt.  It's getting fixed right now. The waterline is all done and fixed too.

Well Hello,

What a wonderful week it has been. The work has been so slow! Holiday season. You would think everything would speed up but this is not the truth here in Oregon. It's been really nice though because we have been able to meet with ward members and build the trust with them. I must say had I not grown up in the best ward in the world I'd find myself at home here in Medford 3rd ward. The most faithful and phenomenal people have crossed my path and I feel so blessed to be in a good ward. Things really are better when the members have sure testimonies of the gospel and they all enjoy sharing it with their neighbors. Every single person in this world needs the gospel. Think about it.. If 15 million members all met with one person (a nonmember) a year... And converted just one person in a year.. Our numbers would double. 30 MILLION people. The temples would not be able to sustain the number of converts. And the gospel would surely be flooding the earth. We all know SOMEONE who needs this message. Weather it reactivation, or finding some new soul, it is accepted by God. That's what I like about this ward. They have this vision. Also they just rock and are nice.

Anywho we had the temple this week. Holy moly it's about time! Thursday couldn't come fast enough! I was almost more excited to go to the temple on Thursday then I am to Skype home on Christmas! Totally not true but the effect is the same. This temple trip meant a lot to me for personal reasons. For some reason the spirit was so strong this session. The strongest I have ever felt it. When I went into the endowment room my heart was just so full of happiness and joy! It's the place where I can feel a security in Gods love and protection from the outside world. I am always so uplifted when I enter the doors. And crave the next time I get to go again. Especially in Utah. Man we have 6 temples within an hour of our homes! Dang! People here have to travel 3-4 hours to get to one! I'm so lucky to be serving in the same area as a temple!

Working at St. Vincent's

Charity. Wow I have seen a lot of charity out here on my mission. It is the pure love of Christ. It is when people genuinely care about others and their needs. Charity is answered in MOSIAH 18:8-10. Elder Dyorich is really good at charity. He always takes care of me. He is so giving and always giving people things. It's service, caring, giving and compassion to your fellow man. An example is seeing a need and helping someone with that need.  Like the water main we fixed. We saw they needed it fixed, they had no money to hire a plumber so we helped them as much as we could.

Medford is dope! It reminds me of St George right now… it's so hot here ! It's like 55 degrees here.  It just rains every once in while. No snow :( I miss it so much! But it's cool in the fact that it’s a lot like Utah. Big freeways crowded shopping malls, and warm weather.

I have once again started to study Our Heritage, great book! Also I'm reading in John. So many amazing miracles! My testimony of this church has increased ten fold! I'm grateful for the time I get to study this wonderful religion and can't wait to share it with my family!

We watched the First Presidency Christmas Devotional with a huge family.. There were 13 people there and lots of little kids. It made it hard to concentrate and hard to hear the message but The Mormon Tabernacle Choir was so good! They are so awesome! I got choked up.  (Yes, he just said that!! It’s in print)

I love you all! Enjoy your week!

Elder Workman

Turkey Bowl

Happy Thanksgiving! Only like a month till I get to talk to you guys! So excited!    

This week was awesome! I had a happy thanksgiving! I absolutely love the W family. We played games all day long. I don't know if you have played killer bunnies mom but it's fun! We played in the turkey bowl for about 4 hours. So much fun. We played about 8 games. Super fun. We went and saw J's and set up more Christmas stuff in her room. And just like any grandma (no offense) everything has to be perfect distances away. But that's ok it preparing me for a spouse haha. Anyways fun thanksgiving. Got to reflect a lot and felt good to remember everything I've been given. The W are from Sandy and will be bringing your Christmas gifts home with them. You will have to meet up with them there. :)

The Ol Riverton Turkey Bowl sounds like a lot of fun! Guess I’ll be part of the old man group in a couple years… 

Saturday was an intense day... We went to St Vincent's and they already had a lot of volunteers so we decided to go finish some service we started a while ago. It was the water main that we attempted to fix but figured out the leak was under the drive way. So they had to hire someone to come out and cut the driveway. I wish I could've cut it and saved them money but we're not allowed to use them tools. But we finally were able to dig where we wanted to. After about 10 minutes of solid digging I found some tracing wire and knew the pipe was near. So continued to dig and found it. Then we were cleaning around it and trying to find the leak when my companion goes HAM on digging and hits the pvc and breaks right through it. Causing a massive leak. So that was fun to fix. We had to tear up more of the drive way to find the actual leak. And we replaced that.. Now everything is back to normal. No more leaks ! So that was fun because it was raining and we got soaked from the main break. Then yesterday it rained a good portion of the day. 

The other elders we share the car with now got in a wreck. So the car is out of commission. 

We had 3 lessons last week. They went ok. We found some great investigators…we are in the “finding stage” of missionary work. These guys were awesome and bought us chocolate.  However, they are out of our area so we had to pass them off.  

Pday is cut really short today because … WE GET TO GO TO THE TEMPLE ON WEDNESDAY! 

I've almost gotten all my Christmas presents for my family :) so that's exciting and I'm excited to talk to YALL on Christmas! Well that's about how my week went! Love everyone !

Elder Workman (Grizz) GRIZZ