Going to Twin Falls Idaho Mission!

Hey everyone!!

  Sooo this has been a crazy past few days!! We got the transfer calls Saturday Morning and I'm heading down to Jarome Idaho. Its in the Twin Falls mission! that was pretty carzy! I deffinitely didn't seen that comeing! I'll be training a new missionary down there and I'm pretty excited about it! I'm not going to lie leaveing La Grande was hard though. You deffinitely make some good friends in 6 months and you develop alot of love for alot of people. It hurt but I did get a comforting feeling that I worked my hardest to build up The Kingdom of God in La grande and it feels good. I am deffinitely going back there after the mission!! Its a pretty incredible place with some pretty incredible peeps! haha plus a few people said if I came back they would take me around and show me all the fun unmissionary approved things in Lagrande lol! haha blowing up refrigerators with explosives is apparently a must lol! I'll send pictures of people I've been writeing about next week! I'm in Boise untill Wenesday and these computers are super slow...

So the week was really good! S is on track to get baptized in a few weeks! saying goodbye to her was kinda hard.. she is such a sweet woman and she is just so grateful for the knowlege of the gospel she now has. She says she has just felt alot more peace recently. D is doing well! we had another really good lesson with him up in his mountain cabin by candle light! He is such a spiritual giant! he has been having alot of concerns lately.. but we taught the plan of salvation and it awnsered alot of his questions. His health is going down pretty quickly.. He can't eat alot of solid foods anymore.. and his voice is slurring alot more. I know he has to be hurting so much. He told us some experiences about looking forward to the life to come, his faith is so strong. I hope to beable to see him again but I'm not sure if I'm going to in this life time. I love that guy so much. JT left for home on Wednesday but we had a couple lessons with him before he left. We gave him an Ensign to study so he can gain a testimony of our modern prophet. It's sad I wont get to see him baptized but he has changed so much! He's awesome and we are definitely staying in touch! 

Saying goodbye to A was kinda hard haha. She is so funny. I'm glad that she has missionaries still to help her and be there for her! She's doing awesome! The Members were hard to say goodbye to for sure. There are some awesome families that have been a really amazing example to me of a Christ centered home! Its made me pretty dang grateful for our family and how we were raised and how we made church and the gospel a priority!

Thank you so much for all of the love and support! I love you all so much! it makes a world of difference to know that I have a loving support group back home! It give me some pretty solid motivation!

Idaho Twin Falls Mission Office

421 Maurice Street North

Twin Falls, ID 83301-4932

This is my new mission mailing address! you all should send me some mail ;) haha love you all!!!

Goodbyes & Gratitude

Hello My amazing family!!!!!!

Holy good it was to talk to yall's yesterday!! haha I'm feeling really good today actually! Like it was hard for a sec after we hang up but after that I just felt super and was able to focus the rest of the night! Today we are going up to a place in the mountains called Catherine Creek lodge! It sounds like it'll be pretty cool! there are some hikeing trails and stuff we are going to explore so ya! I'll get lots of pictures again!! They have a pipe that brings natural glacier water down from the top of the mountain and we are bringing some empty milk juggs to stock up for the week!  So ya it'll be fun! we also have some good lessons planned for this evening and The Baker city elders came up to hang out with us today so it should be really good! 

Well this week seemed really busy but we had a bunch of extra things we had todo along with our proselyting. We had a Zone Conference on Friday in Caldwell which is pretty much right next to Boise so we had to get up flippin early.. like 430.. but it was definitely worth it!

It was soo good to seem some of my Buddies from Nampa and the MTC and all of that so ya it was cool :) It was President Cannon's last Zone Conference with us so that was kind of sad.. He shared some awesome experiences and I learned ab bunch! Haha he asked each of us to think about what our Mission has meant to us. That was so crazy, You don't really think about all of the experiences or people or just everything that you have learned and how things have changed about you untill you take a step back and look at it as a whole. As I was thinkin back on all the things that I am grateful about my mission hit me like a wall. I kinda teared up with P-Cannon as he told us what his mission has meant to him and I really realized just what its meant to me. That probably one of the reasons I teared up so much yesterday.. lol. I really am so incredibly grateful. I've had the opportunity to be a part of some really amazing things. I'm also glad I have some more time to get work done and have some more experiences on the way!!

Me and Elder Bennet on his last night in the area

Anyways something that was super awesome this week was Brian Davis came to church!!! we have been trying to get him out for awhile! On Wednesday morning while planning for his lesson we had a few things stick out to us that we felt Brian needed to hear! We were teaching the Plan of Salvation and we felt that we really needed to spend some time focusing on Divine potential and individual worth. We read some scriptures with him and talked about it for awhile and he told us at the end that he needed that message really badly..  He said that he had extremely depressed and felt kind of worthless recently and that he had never really though about what he could eventually become! It was a flippin powerful lesson!!

We taught this less active guy Roddy who has a bunch of Word of Wisdom problems about the power of prayer. That was so awesome! he broke down and told us how he's been afraid to prayer because of the mistakes he's made and everything going in his life right now.. We just told him about how much he Is loved by Heavenly Father and he asked him to pray every morning and night. We also invited him to say the the closing prayer as well and we knelt down and had a BOM prayer!!! He also invited us back for family home evening with his fam! We are super excited! He came to church as well!  Soo after talking with yall last night we decided to try some people that are hard to get ahold of during the week.. 

Me and Elder Rogers on his last day in the mission!

We finally talked to the less active guy named Blake! He is living with his Girlfriend who is a Prior investigator that we haven't been able to meet with yet.. We talked to him for a solid 40mins and he said that he was forced into the Church and that he just never gained his own testimony and that he has been to lazy to try and find out for himself if the church is true. We talked about what the gospel means to us and how it could help change his life! The spirit was crazy working on him the whole time! We talked about him and Sabreina(his GF) getting married and what would help breing them closer together. He's going to start comeing to church with her for now on!!! Also we talked about how if he wanted his own testimony and if he Wanted Sabrina to get one as well they needed to Read the B.O.M together and pray together every night. He said he would! We are going to go have a lesson with them on Saturday and text them dureing the week to see how their reading and stuff is going. He know's he's the reason Sabrina hasn't got baptised and so it was so good to just talk to him! I deffinitely was way more bold with him then I am most of the time and the spirit just testified of all the things we were telling him! Hopefully we'll see a wedding here pretty soon and then a Baptisim! I'm so hyped!!

Everyone else is really well :) We have a super busy teaching week planned out so far! Hopefully we'll set Bap dates With Colton and Brian!!! I love being able to do this work yall! when ever I get feeling down or missing home or whatever I focus on all of the crazy awesome thing I get to do and It gets better!!

I love this Gospel! haha its the "Good News!!" I've come to know my Savior so much these past few months!!! I love him! and I love my Heavenly Father for letting me help in this work! Love you all so much!!!!!!!! I'm super excited for the next few weeks to see what going to happen! Keep on sending the prayers my way and send a few down to Hermana Conger In Orlando to!!! :) Love you allll!!!!!!!!!! have a great week!!!!!!!!

Speaking Chinese, 21-day Member Missionary program

Hey Family!!! haha so this has been a good week! alittle crazy... but good!

Soo after I emailed last Monday we whent to take pictures up in the mountains and Elder Lhemuller drifted our car into a snow bank... The damage wasn't to bad but its enough that after this transfer he will lose his driving privledges. That was super stressful but we are bringing our car in to be fixed today so it'll be nice to just get that done with! haha president wasn't that happy that he crashed the car after 2 days but he is awesome and very forgiving! Other then that me and Elder Lehmuller have been getting along very well! we both love sports and sold security systems and we've clicked pretty well. He is also very willing to work hard so that deffinitly helps to!

We were able to teach 18 lessons last week were this area has only thought around 11 for the past 4 months so that is exciting ! We are also seeing some blessings form that. We were able to pick up a new investigator yesterday at church! he's this super cool Chinese kid who is going to Easter Oregon right now but he just transferred from BYU and was meeting with the missionaries and wants to meet with them again! haha he obviously speaks Chinese and I'm realizing just how rusty i've gotten over the past 2 1/2 years but we are gonna meet acouple times a week and talk some Chinese! We have a lesson with him tonight and we are both super excited! We also have 3 more potentially promising investigators in Union that we are going to start working with this week!

We also have this 21 day member missionary program that we are going to start with our wards so we are hoping that some progress will sprout from that! We also gave talks this past week and will be teaching at a youth fireside in 2 weeks. I'm so glad that the area is beginning to pick up again and we are hopeing that we can bring it back to what it was last year! Our wards also get together at 630 Saturday morning's and we've been going to that and that is super fun! its been good for letting the members get to know us! Im definitely loving the area and the missionaries i'm working with and hopefully in the next few weeks we will find a bunch more instigators and start them on the path toward baptism!

Anyways thats about it.. I did have a question though, Could you guys burn me a cd with those super cheesy scripture mastery songs and also a few EFY cd's I know you can get them for free somewhere on lds.org. Anyways I love you all a ton! Thank you so much for the support! P.S its snowed every night for the past 3 days and we are suppose to get 8 inches Tomorrow sometime... That will be crazy! I'll take some pictures for sure! 

Getting our feet wet in Oregon

Hey all! 
So its been a hectic week here in Oregon! I took most of the week to get used to the area. I really like La Grande, it's in a valley surrounded by mountains so it is extremely beautiful around here! The people are awesome! there is not nearly as many members out here as the were in Idaho so it makes the work a whole ton different! I've noticed that nonmembers out here are much much friendlier and willing to at least talk to you. In Idaho most nonmembers turn us away pretty quickly.. so its a neat experience! 

This stake had over 60 convert baptisms last year and have high hopes for this year so I'm excited. My area is sorta dead right now though.. We don't have many current investigators or people that w met regularly with in general. So a huge focus for me and Bloom is finding people to teach!!! it is kind of cool to come in a dead area, it just means that I'll get to work like crazy and build this area back up! we got to give talks on Sunday and we met with our stake president about our missionary efforts! we have a ton of stuff that we want to start to try and get people excited again! we also are working with a bunch of the recent converts in the area to get them to the temple which is pretty cool! we got to help plan and set up a stake temple prep class! I'm stoked about it! anyways.. its cold and we been trying to keep warm. 

We have a bunch of stuff to get done this week for sure! My comp is awesome! we get along really well and living with another set of missionaries is a lot like the best 2 years so that's interesting lol! haha its fun though the are cool guys Elders Razzo and Bennet. 

Anyways thats about it! haha p-days are going to interesting because the nearest set of missionaries are about 45mins away!! haha! Love and miss you all a bunch! Dad i'm glad to here the surgery went well!!! Miranda get better!!

P.S we cover 2 really small towns named Cove and Union and they are both up in the Mountains and it way pretty up there!! I'll get you all some pictures soon! I forgot my camera cable today...

First week in the mission field!

tHE FIRST WEEK IN THE FIELD HAS BEEN CRAZY!!! haha since I emailed you on Thursday we have had a full schedule! On Friday we got out after doing morning study and started trying to contact previous potentials.. Haha I met a ton of people! We are teaching this woman named Cynthia and we have gotten her from not even really beliveing in Heavenly Father to her praying every single day! and she says she can really feel the differance in her life! we have only visted her a couple time so we are going back this week to finish theaching her the restoration! I'm freakin stoked!!! We do a ton of less active work! haha we visit around 4-8 less active or part member families each day and most of them are super friendly and awesome!!! Thiers this on family named the curtis's who have flippin 13 feet sunflowers! As we go around and visit people unless we are going for a lesson we normally will just talk and be thier friends, get to know them and then share a brief testimony and message. I love doing that. It feels good to see people who haven't been to church in like 10 years feel the spirit! It makes me flippin happy! we have a few less active and partmembers who we are going to teach full lessons to this week! I'll keep yall informed on how it goes! 

The members are freakin awesome here! On Saturday our dinner apointment canceled so we ate cereal for dinner and whent tracking for awhile. We left our bikes in a members yard and when we whent back to get them they had just gotten home and they told us that cereal was not a dinner so they drugg us inside and fed us dinner and made us cookies and drove us home for the night! It was seriously touching to see them( The Merrits) do that for a complete stranger.. Haha I talked on sunday!!!!! hahaha I had 15MIN talk on how missionary work brings us closer to Christ!! It whent pretty good! I'm glad I had the opportunity to make a semigood impression on the first sunday! The people here are seriously awesome and I really am loveing the work. I miss you guys and love yall tons! Write me letters! send em to my home address! I sent a letter today that should have that on it!

Elder Aaron Macfarlane

Idaho Boise Mission

1111 S Cole Road

Boise, ID 83709