Elder Kurt K. Mooney Oregon Portland Mission

Dear Mom,

Okay, so I suck at life and I haven't gotten the address yet, so I'm gonna pull it off of the white pages really quickly hang on. Okay, here it is:

18073 SW Parrish Ln
Sherwood, OR 97140

I hope I get a boatload of letters for putting this on here because I haven't gotten squat in the last two weeks aside from the package that you sent me for Easter... granted there is a pile of letters sitting on my desk waiting to be responded to, so maybe I should get my rear in gear and actually send some off haha... it's just a big effort and it makes it even worse that we're dealing with a lot more time-consuming items of business here in Sherwood than in my other areas.

Last p-day went all right... dangit I hate having to wing these emails without my planner on me because that's where I write down all the funny things from each day so I know what to write home about lol. We ended up hanging out with elder Cox and elder Falslev and doing a little bit of shopping for new shirts because mine are getting kinda trashed, so I bought three and they look pretty dang nice. One nice thing about being in this English area is that it's helping me to get my body back to the way that it was once upon a time haha. I'm actually down to 188 lbs as of this morning... it's sweet! I've shed a lot of the fat (and muscle mass) that I used to have, so now my suits fit baggy and I'm gonna have to get them tailored while we're here in Sherwood. The nice thing is that there is a lady who will tailor our stuff for free, so I'm gonna ask her to do it for me. I love free hookups!

On Tuesday, we had a combined district meeting with the districts covering Sherwood, Tualatin, and Tigard (although there are only two districts) and did a little training on the revolution. We came to the realization that if we really want these elders to work, we're just going to have to keep our standards of excellence high and hold them accountable for the work that they do. We taught them about teaching the members and getting referrals that way as well as effective tracting instead of just "80 contact"ing it to reach that goal. After we finished with that we had a productive night where we talked to the Jarmin family. I know this sounds weird, but I think I knew the guy from Utah. He said that he used to live in Provo in those apartments up by grandma and grandpas that are kind of the party apartments by Y mountain. He has some brothers and stuff that live in the Orem area as well though, but he looked really familiar. Anyway, his wife isn't a member and has not had a super good relation with missionaries in the past, but we've got her in our pocket now and they're gonna have us over for a barbecue in a week or two :-)

Wednesday we went to the McMinnville district meeting... holy mess! President Dyches put Elder Wilde and I together simply to keep them under wraps I think... they're a mess! There are two companionships that are okay, but the other three have disaster written all over them. I'll tell ya more about them in the Thursday paragraph. We kinda let the district leader crash and burn in the meeting and just took notes on what we were going to talk to him about.

That night Dr. Feelgood struck again! We're teaching a couple whose names are Mark and Alex (Alejandra... she's Mexican, not a guy, don't worry. This is Oregon, but I couldn't deal with that on my show if she was a guy! haha) Basically what happened is that they just had a baby boy and Mark's brother is a jerk and was planting seeds of doubt as to whether or not it was his kid, so Mark talked to Alex about getting a paternity test which deeply offended her, so he dropped the subject. Unfortunately, he ended up getting it behind her back and REALLY made her mad. Anyway, they asked us to come over and talk to them about it. I basically used it as a time to call them both out on being prideful suckers as well as lazy in the things of the gospel (they don't read their scriptures or pray together) and used it as a springboard into active investigation so that Mark can get baptized, she can return to activity, and we can save their sinking ship of a relationship. Dr. Feelgood strikes again!

That night we got some info from a couple elders that some missionaries out in Mac (McMinnville) might have some apostate materials, so Thursday morning we took a little trip out to their apartment at like 8:30. We found them still asleep. We separated them and sat them down for basically PPI's, and I was the one picked to talk to the elder who supposedly had an ipod and a nintendo DS. He told me a sob story about how everyone in his old area was against him, how he's trying the best he can, that he makes mistakes, blah blah blah (playing the victim like a good sagaist does). I told him to cut the crap and just give up the ipod and his ds so President Dyches didn't have to come down here. He lied to my face. He told me he didn't have them, so I told him that I trusted him, but that if Pres. found out that he still did, he'd let him keep them and enjoy them on the plane out of here. We left and talked to a couple more missionaries to gather intelligence and found out that he for sure had them and lied to us, so we talked to Pres. Dyches. He then proceeded to talk to him, and he lied to President, but with a different lie than he gave me. He told me he never had those things, and he told President Dyches that he had bought one for his sister's birthday and shipped it directly to his house after two days of having it... too bad his companion that he had two weeks ago saw him with both as he left for Mac town haha.

Anyway, we had a good beatdown session with him on Sunday night again. His comp said that he sent them home, so we should be good.

Aside from that, on Thursday we went golfing with Mark at Pumpkin Ridge for FREE because he works there... I totally sucked, but it was fun anyway even though it rained like crazy.

Friday we had ZLC and were there basically all day.

Saturday, we tracted all day in the sun and found some new investigators :-)

I ran out of time, so my email is short, but I love you and I'm gonna call Sunday around 8:45 your time, okay? I know it's late, but that's the only time that we have throughout the day. I love you guys!

love,

Elder Mooney