Happy Presidents Day!

2011 February 21
Dear Mommy,

Okay, so you said you just finished the C.S. Lewis series? That's sweet! I want to read Mere Christianity and the Screwtape Letters pretty badly.... but first, I've gotta read all of the books I've got! I feel a little silly, but I've been buying books like a madman out here!... especially in the last couple of weeks! This week alone, I more than doubled my collection of books because of a trip I took to Deseret Industries on exchange in Portland, but I'll talk more about that when I get to it chronologically.

So Monday, we had a little zone activity and took a trip out to Multnomah falls up on the I-84, and it was beautiful! Holy cow what a sweet waterfall and what an amazing view from the top! it's right on the Columbia river, so when you hike clear up to the top, you have an amazing view of both the waterfall and the gorge through which the river runs. Luckily, just as we reached the top to take pictures, the sun came out and we got some amazing views.

After the excitement of hiking the falls, we headed back down and enjoyed the rest of our P-day. For dinner that night, we were invited by a group member to come out and teach her mom who is visiting from Mexico for a couple of months... we'll see if we can get her baptized haha. Anyways, right before that appointment, we had a dinner with a group member, and then headed up to Maru's house for the lesson. Unbeknownst to us, she had prepared a dinner, so when we got there, we got trashed with food again! Ah I was so mad that they gave us more food and I was super full! It's okay though because the lesson went all right. I tell ya man, sometimes I feel like a counselor though. She didn't want to talk to us at first really, but after being there for about a half an hour, she was telling us about how she's held a grudge against one of her childhood friends since the age of seven because she had a dolly stolen by her because she's "una persona muy rincorosa" (a big grudge-holder basically). She went on to tell us about how things between her and her husband had damaged her emotionally and spiritually, so we played counselor and taught her about being healed of those things through the atonement of Jesus Christ.

Okay, so that was Monday. Tuesday, we went to a district meeting with Portland, and President Dyches and his wife were there. While we were there, sister Dyches came up to me and said "now, you're taking ibuprofen and muscle relaxants, right?" I replied in the affirmative, and she said, "all right, well as long as you're taking the ibuprofen, your driving privileges are revoked." I kind of giggled and said okay... Oh goodness I love sister Dyches and her authoritative negations :-) One of the highlights from that day though was the lesson that we had with Oscar and Franci. We taught them about the Godhead, but a little more in-depth, teaching them that Jehovah was Jesus... Man I feel like we burned their eyebrows off with that one haha. It was super sweet though because the spirit was there to teach them, not just us with our talking heads.

Wednesday wasn't anything super exciting, just district meeting with Hillsboro and dinner with Mateo and Nelly Lopez. They're such sweet people, dad's gonna have to meet Mateo for sure. Other than that, we tried to teach Mario, but he was working, so we talked with brother Muniz's inactive son Yahir. It was pretty rad because we got him stoked on getting active again and changing who he has been for the last couple of years. He's way stoked on helping Mario to change and actually might be able to baptize him if we postpone the baptism a week or two.

Thursday was planning day as usual, and we used it to do a little cleaning since we don't have tons of people to plan for haha. We vacuumed the apartment, cleaned the bathroom, washed the sliding glass door, and even made sure all of the dishes were washed and put away (our dishwasher is older than I am and doesn't work unfortunately... luckily I have Van Hook and he's the best dishwasher ever! If he stops working, I just smack him on the butt and tell him to get back to work :-))

Friday turned out to be the most eventful day of the week for me... hahaha. I went on exchanges with elder Kevin Hawkins out in Portland, and oh my gosh it was a blast. We started off by staying up talking until 1:00 in the morning, and then waking up (on time) to do some re-arranging of the entire living room just to mess with his companion when he got back. We decided to go to lunch at L&L's because it's one of the only ones in the mission (aside from one we have in Beaverton), and we hadn't gone yet on our missions. We got some spam misubi's and chicken katzu, which is super good stuff... I was a little sketched out about the misubis because they're a piece of fried spam with sticky rice wrapped in seaweed. sounds disgusting, tastes amazing. Try it!

After eating to our gut's content, we went out to do some knocking. Once we finished the complex we were working on, we decided to drive to another one. As we were waiting behind another car to turn right onto a semi-busy street, a UPS truck wanted to turn down our street, but there wasn't much room, so the guy in front of us, trying to be a good samaritan (and not even glancing behind him) threw his car into reverse and slammed right into us without time for us to react haha. Luckily, there was no damage to our car or his (a freakin' miracle if you ask me), so we just exchanged information and parted ways. After that, we went to pick up a member who was getting interviewed for a job at DI to work there for a year before he goes on his mission, but he wasn't finished yet, so we decided to go inside to take a peek at the books. Yeah, it was a bad idea. They had a set of books including the journal of discourses of Brigham Young, Articles of faith by Talmage, Doctrines of Salvation volumes I, II, & III, Gospel doctrine by Joseph Fielding Smith, and a couple others, as well as the comprehensive history of the church with all six volumes, and they were only $10.00 total! I apologize mommy, but I couldn't pass it up haha... they're super sweet! There were also a couple of other manuals that I bought as well, so in total I spent like $14.00 there... holy cow I like it though... they make me feel wise or something... luckily I have a huge tote to put all of these in when I'm called out of Beaverton :-P

Aside from book-buying, we had a couple of lessons planned, so we went and tried with them and they went really well. For some reason, the teaching dynamic between elder Hawkins and I was really smooth and natural, so it made it a lot easier for those we taught to really catch our drift. Anyways, that was the excitement for Friday with elder Hawkins... oh that and that we didn't make it back to end the exchange til about 9:30 or so because we were in a lesson late and had to drive from east Portland all the way to our apartment in Beaverton haha.

Saturday was okay and we had a couple of lessons and Sunday we had nobody in church... Mario failed us :-(. It's okay though. It happens.

Anyways, that's been about the excitement for this week. I love you mommy and I hope that you have a blast with aunt Mary while she's out there.

I love ya Mom. Send my love to the rest of the family, okay?

-Elder Kurt Mooney