March 26, 2009

Hey family (and friends who read some or all of this email)! How is everyone?! I hope well!

So, what’s new with me and the mission? Well, not a whole lot. Transfers were yesterday and I’m still in the Tigard 1st/Fanno Creek wards serving with Elder Nelson. Yep, no transfers for me. That’ll be 6 months in this area. And I really can’t complain. I’m happy to be here another transfer. I love this area, I love the members, I’ve loved my companions so far, and I just love the people! The work is progressing along and we have people that are progressing as well. Yay! Our investigator, John has a baptism scheduled for April 18th (and hopefully it’ll go through!) and work is still progressing with our other investigators. I’m not sure the last time I mentioned our other investigator - Nicholas, but things are going well there as well. He’s progressing (though not as fast as we would like!) and he is reading the Book of Mormon. We’re continuing to encourage him to read it from cover to cover starting at the beginning and working through it. Speaking of that, I really would like to get a copy of Journey of Faith (I believe that is the title of the film). It’s a documentary-type film produced by F.A.R.M.S. (the Foundation for Ancient scripture Research and Mormon Studies, at least I think that’s what it stands for) that we watched in District Meeting last week and it is AWESOME! It chronicles the journey of Lehi and his family from Jerusalem to America and does a wonderful job of showing how unlikely it was that Joseph Smith knew the description given by Nephi of their journey across Arabia was so accurate. That is a movie I think everyone would enjoy seeing if they haven’t…and it’s something I would REALLY like to have while out serving a mission. It would help (at least I hope) people like Ivory who are very through and do lots of studying before they will join the church. Ultimately, the only thing that matters will be a person reading and praying about the Book of Mormon themselves in order to get an answer of whether or not it’s true from the Holy Ghost. That’s the only way to have a deep and abiding faith, but it’s so cool to see that the Book of Mormon is constantly being proven to be accurate and true as modern research continually prods at its validity and reality.

Anyway, what else is going on. We’re tracting more (well, kind of anyway) and that’s always fun. There are lots of interesting experiences associated with that, and I’ll hopefully relate some of them at a later time. Right now, though, the story that comes to mind the most is what happened to me yesterday. We were trying to track down some less-active people and we were taking a road that all of a sudden dead ended and then started up again about a block away. Great! But, there was this small little walking path we could see, so we decided to take that on our bikes to not have to back track and go around in order to get one block further. Anyway, it had been raining, and since I was a little frustrated with our maps and I went first, I went a little faster than I probably should have. Needless to say, about half-way through I lost traction and fell over. Hooray! I was in the suit I had just gotten back from the dry cleaners and I landed right in a large mud pit. Fun times. My whole left side was pretty much covered with mud and let me tell you – I was really happy about that. Anyway, I’ve got a couple of pictures, but with time I’m not sure if I’ll be able to attach any right now. Huzzah! I was mad for a little while, but looking back on it, it was actually pretty funny. Especially since it wasn’t a fast wreck, being in the mud, my bike just kinda slowly slipped down a small (3 or 4 inch) ledge and I slowly tilted over to the left until I made contact with the mud. Elder Nelson got a good laugh out of that, so I suppose one good thing came of it! Also, since it was mud and all, I didn’t get hurt (besides my pride) and nothing was broken (aside from a small hole I found later in the side of my pants). Good times though!
I could go on and on, but I’m running short on time. I hope everyone is doing well and I hope y’all know I love you!

Read the scriptures! Study them!

Take care everyone! I hope things are going well and that all know I think of them regularly.

Have wonderful day!

I love y’all!
-Elder Michael Starks