Happy New Year!! My OneZZZ's

The new "find" in the new apartment. THEY FIT!! 

This is Cottage Grove!

Totally blessed to be here!

What! Holy moly it's already 2015! Seems like yesterday I was up all night with my brothers and a couple of friends for some most epic New Years Eve battles! This year brought a little different surprise. I must admit though it has been a wonderful week!

So on New Year's Eve we get this call from one of the older ladies in our ward here in Cottage Grove. Unexpectedly, I'm sure as all things like this are, one of her sewer lines had broken and crap was all over her yard and she needed it fixed immediately. Mostly everyone here in Cottage Grove is old or really busy Fixing up his or her own estates (as I call them). I feel as though I'm with Lewis and Clark exploring a new region of land. Its crazy awesome here! I too am sooo excited to be here in Cottage Grove. It's a marvelous area. I have been praying to come here lol. Which is so funny because there are seriously 100 other areas in my mission I could've gone too. So this is a blessing and a half. Anywho, so this lady asks if we could come over and dig up the old pipe and replace it with a new one. Thanks to NPL for the knowledge I had, I used my best tracking skills to find he pipe, unbury it, cut, remove, and make sure it was at a 1ft. 1inch slope so the inspector who was coming around later that day wouldn't get mad. We spent a solid 3 hours digging than another hour fixing the pipe. It was great fun!  No worries all you city people out there, we had our permit in the window. So that was a stinky fun job to get New Year's Eve started correctly. The rest of the night, Elder Billmire and I played Settlers of Catan and games.  However, we didn't stay up all night. Instead I fell asleep reading a really good book called Trial of the Stick of Joseph. Such a great book! I shall later enclose my testimony of the stick of Joseph.

New Year's Day we partied as hard as we could. We played games again. We watched How to Train your Dragon 2 again. Great show! Loved it. Then we finished the evening playing volleyball with our zone. Volleyball is always a great time. I finished the 4 gospels finally, and started the Book of Mormon over. I'm pumped to read it again.

Saturday was great! So basically Saturday's are service day. Which I Love! We went over to a recent converts house. He owns a farm and his farm was too thick of animals, so he decided to kill his goats by slitting their throats.  So we split and stacked his wood than we made a huge Bon-fire and burned the goats. Then I went over and played with his pigs. Those things are funny! It's like 20 degrees outside and they are rolling in the mud, snorting. What a great time. Overall I've had a pretty awesome week.  I'm in a sweet area. We have a full car here. Our car is a Chevy Cruz. (The least favorite of mine out here.) It's kinda gutless. But it's all good. My bike is still in its box where it belongs. lol  Our area is massive…Bigger than Bandon. 

Now for something spiritual. As I mentioned before I had finished a book called “Trial of the Stick of Joseph”. What an incredible book that has been brought fourth to witness to everyone of the divinity and truthfulness of the BOM. My testimony has been greatly strengthened. I know with all my heart that the BOM is true and that Joseph Smith is a true prophet. Plus I must add the The Nephites were the GREATEST civilization to roam the earth in those times. Greater than the Romans, Greeks, Chinese, and Egyptians. You can truly tell that inasmuch as they kept the commandments of God, they prospered in the land. There is no doubting the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. It is true. It was written 1700 years ago by ancient prophets. It testifies of Christ, and supplies us with HIS true and ONLY gospel. We have the restored truths. We have the plain and simple things that have been lost to the world due to the many translations of the bible. We have the covenants needed to get back to our Father in Heaven. I know this is CHRIST'S church. As you can tell folks I'm passionate about this. The Holy Ghost has whispered to me time and time again that this is His only true church. Sincere happiness in this life can only be found in the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We have the blue print provided for us, from the teachings of Jesus Christ. I must add that I will never sway from this church. For it is Gods, not mans.

GRIZZ 👻

I love you Mommy I just wanted to let you know I love you more than the air I

breathe :) thanks for being the best ! Miss you.  I'm actually going back to Eugene 1 ward next week for an exchange with the DL. I'm excited to see all the old friends from almost a year ago.

Elder Bilmire is from Texas. And that's all he talks about. He is 18 year old. He just barely like three months ago turned 18. Ryley is just barely younger. His dad is an eye doctor. He has a huge family. Loves to play sports video games, and plays basketball. We went over to this recent converts house and played skip Bo. Yea it was tough for me to adjust to the cold. I've been in 50-70 since last March haha. But I'm finally used to it again. I love it! I get in my one-sies Jamie's and cuddle in a warm blanket and read. It's fun because I haven't worn one of these probably since I was 3, (onesie pajama with footies and a hood) I think Elder Pickett left them. It's fantastic! My finger is ok. I showed it to our mission nurse and she said I would live and just needed to exercises it.