A Little Bit of Everything

It’s approximately 7:10 Sunday night, Pacific Time. My companion and I just finished our (second) dinner with a recent convert family after church (this is what happens when church doesn't get out until 5:30). We step outside and pause. We are at the bottom of the driveway of a house on a hill overlooking most of the Tri-Cities. It’s dark out, and there are lights shining throughout the horizon. The air is surprisingly still. Not much to be heard. Around the corner the Angel Moroni atop the Columbia River Temple is shining. There is a feeling that permeated everything. We look around. It’s a feeling we hadn't felt in a while. We look at each other, and come to a silent agreement. The state of Washington in its entirety is lamenting the loss of the Seahawks at the Super Bowl.

And in other news, our week, despite the loss of the Seahawks, managed to be pretty good this week. Tuesday and Wednesday was a pretty exciting experience for us. The JustServe project I had mentioned something about last week happened on those two days and ended up being super successful. There was a giant section at an intersection of previously empty dirt. Just dirt. Not terribly pleasing to the eye. So the City of Kennewick bought tons of rocks to spread out over the area to help in weed control and make it look nicer. The rock showed up in approximately 12 piles of rock that needed to be spread out, and who better to do it than 10 18-24 year old missionaries who would do anything to not have to tract in the rain? The project itself was pretty labor intensive and we are still exhausted from it 5 days later but it turned out to be really beneficial, not only to the City of Kennewick but for the relationship we are beginning to build between the City and the Church. My companion and I are the go-between the High Councilor assigned to JustServe and the missionaries so we have been able to see all the behind the scenes stuff and how it all gets worked out. I’m excited to see where this goes later on.

So just a random side note I thought of the other day. You know your area is awesome when you park outside of your Mission President's house to try by some potentials and look over and see the temple (which is still in your area). Anyways moving on.

Cool story from church yesterday. We were in Gospel Principles class when our phone goes off and my companion checks it to find a text from one of the bishopric, requesting that we go to the bishop's office quick if we are still in the building. So we do and as we get there, a man named Justin (not his name) was sitting there and by the looks of his clothes (namely not being in a suit) we knew something was up. Come to find out that Justin has just been left by his girlfriend who took his daughter and another one away and was battling with an addiction to alcohol which he wanted to overcome. He felt super alone and destitute in life and was looking for direction. At this point the bishopric has to go start a meeting (we are still in the middle of church at this point) so they leave us with him and we talk to him for a bit trying to find out more and teaching him a little bit to help reassure him there is hope. We ask him what made him come into the church and he relates to us the story of how he was driving down the road to go up the hill and look out over the city (the church/temple is backed up onto a hill) to ponder what he wanted to do with his life and he said that as he drove by he saw people coming in and out of the church building and felt like he should go in and was like "Why not?" So he did. It was at that point when he was sitting on the couch in the foyer and the bishopric member saw him and invited him into the office to talk with him. We had to get going to an appointment at this point so we left him with a Book of Mormon and a copy of the Restoration pamphlet with a link to LDS.org (he said that since he was changing his life around he might as well go all the way so he asked if we had any music since the stuff on the radio was not the best stuff to be listening to) and gave him our contact info and told him the missionaries that pertain to the ward he would normally attend would contact him in the next few days. If that wasn't a miracle I don't know what is.

So for the quote this week, it comes from an experience we had Thursday night. The Activity Days girls (which up until Thursday night I had little to no knowledge about; I just knew it existed) were having an activity and they asked us to come and talk to them about the joy in missionary service. That in and of itself was a suprisingly spiritual experience seeing how excited they all were to serve missions and share the gospel, but the quote comes from the question and answer session they had at the end. One of the girls up front was raising her hand so high she was about to fall out of her seat so we call on her and she asks us both how old we are to which we reply 19. She gets super excited and then responds back with:

"You can marry my sister! And so can you!"

The look of shock and alarm on the leaders' faces was almost as hilarious as the answer itself.

Anyways, that's all she wrote for this week so I'll see you again next week. Happy February to all!

Elder Kupferer

Just One of Those Kind of Weeks

Looking back on this past week, I feel more like a glorified secretary than a missionary. Tuesday we spent 2 hours trying to fix a report we got from the office to give to the Stake President here in Kennewick (he's the man over all the members in the city of Kennewick; there are bishops – most similar to a pastor – that’s over a congregation of about 150 members and then the Stake President is over 8 of those congregations) in a meeting we have once a month to let him know how the missionary efforts are going here in this zone. The meeting went well but it was just a pain and a half trying to fix the report. Thursday was pretty cool. There was a set of sisters in the next stake over (Kennewick East - we are very original in our naming protocols) who wanted to get baptized, but they speak Spanish, and since there wasn't anyone that could speak Spanish and was allowed to do the interview, they normally default to our APs, the only problem is they were on exchanges with some zone leaders up in Othello so they asked us to do it, since my companion and I both happened to speak Spanish. It was a neat experience going back to Spanish mode (haven't completely lost it yet) and helping these people make the last step towards getting baptized.

Friday is when the true craziness began. That morning my companion and I spent two hours planning for a meeting we had to give with all the District Leaders in the zone the following day before going to an appointment that fell through, only to return home and start our weekly planning (where we discuss what we are going to do the following week and the needs of the people we are working with) just in time to get a phone call from some missionaries that needed a ride somewhere for something (we give a lot of rides seeing as we don't have a mile limit; they all just fade into a giant blur), and then return home and start planning again only to turn around and head to an early dinner to be able to be on the road down to Umatilla, Oregon. There was a similar situation happening down in another zone across the way where they were in need of another Spanish interview and since the APs were in Moses Lake this time we got to make the trip down across the river into Oregon to make this interview happen. There was some intense fog on the way down but we made the hour drive safely and relatively uneventful only to come back up for yet another meeting, this time for the high councilor over missionary work and the JustServe committee. JustServe is the new initiative that the church is starting to get members and missionaries more involved in the community so each stake has a representative called to that position to be in charge of making things happen. The representative for our stake has done a good job thus far in making things happen so we met with him to discuss the finer points of a project coming up this week. It’s gonna be cool. Anyways by the end of the night my companion and I were dead tired (sitting in a car is surprisingly exhausting) so we decided the only logical solution was to go get a shake.

And then Saturday started. We had the aforementioned meeting with the District Leaders followed by lunch at a mexican restaurant (trying to curb my need for handmade tortillas; it didn't work) followed by even more planning since we weren't able to get to all of it on Friday like we were supposed to. We had a baptism to attend a few hours after we started planning for some of the missionaries in our zone which was a good problem to have and afterwards we were so sick of planning and sitting around we gave up trying and just went to work. From there it was a relatively normal night. We had correlation with our Ward Mission Leader and then a lesson with our recent converts and then came home to finally catch a breath. If nothing else, I've been sleeping really well the past few days.

So the quote for this week I think originally came from John Bytheway but a missionary - who had got it from the member he lives with - handed it to us as we picked him up for a meeting this past week, and I think it is known as the unofficial '14th Article of Faith' but is very fitting to the events of this past week. Just a little background really quick for those of you who may not know: Back when the Church was first reorganized in the early 1800s a newspaper asked Joseph Smith to write a quick article summarizing the beliefs of the Latter Day Saint faith. The article - 13 points stating our beliefs - then came to be known as the 13 Articles of Faith, which do a very good job at describing in simple terms the basics of our beliefs. And with that in mind, this is the very unofficial (like so unofficial this is a joke; don't take this seriously) 14th Article of Faith:

"We believe in meetings - all that have been scheduled, all that now are scheduled, and we believe that there yet will be many more great and important meetings. We have endured many meetings and hope to be able to endure all meetings. If there is a meeting, we seek after it."

And with that, I wish you all a very tired goodbye until next week.

Elder Kupferer

Freezing Rain?! Intense Weather Conditions?!

Things just keep getting crazier and to be honest this week probably takes the cake. So Tuesday we had a little meeting about the JustServe program (this isn't the crazy part) which was pretty cool. I have explained it before but just in passing it is a program designed to get members and missionaries more involved in the community for a myriad of reasons. If you want to know more check out the website justserve.org. Just do it. It’s pretty cool. 

So the real craziness that was going on this week. Let’s start Wednesday morning. Wednesday was transfer day which in and of itself was all sorts of craziness, but thankfully we stayed out of most of it since neither of us got transferred until we got a call from some missionaries that was actually our ZLs calling from Moses Lake (about half an hour up the freeway) saying they forgot their phone down in Othello and needed us to go pick it up so we did and by the time we got around to giving it back that afternoon things in our day had gotten pushed back and we were running way behind schedule and running from appointment to appointment. So dinner time comes around and we are just finished with a lesson and start heading towards dinner when we check the phone and see we have 3 voicemails (it’s about 5:15 at this point - dinner was at 5:30) with a text from the ZLs to call them. So we just assume the voicemails were something they can explain to us super quick and call them to find out what’s up. With an unexpected urgency in their voice they tell us to listen to the voicemails, which surprised us so we did. Now before I explain the voicemails, let me explain to you what was supposed to go down Thursday. 

Elder [Mervyn B.] Arnold of the First Quorum of the Seventy came to tour the mission this week and our zone conference was scheduled for Thursday morning. We were supposed to start at 7:30 AM with a leadership meeting followed by the rest of the meetings down in Pasco (about an hour away) so we were going to get up at O-dark-thirty to head down with the other Elders in our area that morning, attend the conference, and then be on our way back to Othello around 3. Well ladies and gentlemen that is NOT what happened. Now back to the voicemails. 

The mission office had received word that there was going to be a huge storm of freezing rain coming in Wednesday night which would freeze over the 40 miles of freeway we needed to drive to make it down to Pasco for the conference. Since that obviously is not good they decided to send all of us down to Pasco that night (Wednesday night) so we didn't have to drive so far in the ice. They said be at the church at 7 PM so we can caravan down which gave us literally 15 minutes between dinner and when we needed to be at the church gassed up and ready to go, in the which we had to pack everything - blankets included - to spend the night down in Pasco. So we head home after dinner (which thankfully was nearby) and pack our stuff super quick to meet everyone at the set time. Everything ran relatively smoothly despite the unexpected craziness that was occurring and we all made it down to Pasco safely around 9 Wednesday night. But wait, there’s more. 

Since there were only two beds in the apartment we stayed at (we stayed with some other missionaries that were down in Pasco) 4 of us spent the night on the floor/couches/whatever we could find. All six of us needed to be at the church for the conference by 7:30 so we started the process of showering and getting ready at 5 since the apartment was not built to handle that many people getting ready all at once. Imagine our surprise when at 6:30 just as we are about to head out we get another voicemail from the assistants saying that everything was frozen over so we needed to stay in our apartments until further notice. We kind of just throw our hands in the air not terribly surprised by any of this and just lay back down and start waiting. And waiting. And waiting. Around 8 we get another voicemail saying that everything was still semi frozen over but super dangerous regardless since the residential district where the church is located hadn't been salted so they gave us two chapters to read in preparation for the meeting, 3 Nephi 11 from the Book of Mormon where it talks about Christ's visit to the Americas and then Numbers 11 which starts off thusly: 

“And when the people complained, it displeased the Lord: and the Lord heard it; and his anger was kindled; and the fire of the Lord burnt among them, and consumed them that were in the uttermost parts of the camp.”

We were a little scared but kept reading and realized that the leaders weren't actually scaring us into repentance and discovered it was talking about councils later on in the chapter. But anyways we read the chapters and begin discussing it amongst ourselves and then at long last around 9 we get another voicemail saying that the roads had defrosted enough to drive safely on BUT they wanted drivers who were "more accustomed to driving in the ice and snow" and continued on to say "so for example if you are from California or Arizona please let someone from Idaho or Utah drive." I felt a little rebuffed seeing as I did just fine last year in the snow of Chelan but interestingly enough since our car was the one we drove down no one else felt like driving so I managed to get us to the church safely. 3 hours later the conference starts and we all were able to enjoy the conference and feast on the words of Elder Arnold. After the conference ended we all got in our cars and made it back safely to our respective areas around 6:30. 24 hours later our ice adventure to Pasco finally came to an end. 

The rest of the week went rather normal with the exception of Friday night where Elder Arnold came and had a conference here in Othello for all the Spanish speaking members in the north half of the mission. We expected our stake center to be jam packed with people but when we show up we see the chapel just barely being filled (don't get me wrong; it was still an awesome sight to see just not what we were expecting). We ask our zone leaders why there weren't more people and apparently half the stakes involved with the conference had received super intense snow storm that day, and road conditions were horrible. I know at least in terms of missionaries, while we were supposed to be seeing upwards of 50 missionaries show up, there were 10 of us. Either way though, the conference was amazing. It was nice to see such a group come together and have a General Authority come from Salt Lake and talk to a group that unfortunately doesn't get the attention they deserve. The conference brought a ton of miracles we had been desperately praying for and will be remembered for many years to come. 

So in closing I pull the quote from something Elder Arnold told us at least 10 times Thursday during the missionary conference. He was talking about goal setting and said:

"Try your best, and then sleep well."

Sometimes in life, our best can only get us so far. But if we are honestly giving forth our best effort we can rest easy knowing we did everything in our power, and rely on Jesus Christ for the rest. 

So, I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving and warm weather back down in Sunny SoCal. Until next week.

Elder Kupferer

JustServe. It's that Simple.

So this past weekend we had a zone meeting where a new program was introduced that is gonna be the next big thing. It’s a program the church is starting to roll out where it tries to get community members involved in the community. Basically, whenever there is a service opportunity for something in the community (i.e. food banks, blood drives, clean-ups, things like that) somebody puts the project and information into the JustServe website and then from there members (or anyone really) can go in, search for projects listed in their area, find a project, and call the person listed for said project and sign up to come help out. It’s intended to help people help others and provide opportunities for people to get involved and closer with their community. Because of this, our mission president has taken steps to implement for us as well. His desire is that each companionship is providing ten hours of service a week in their area, which will be reported with our regular key indicators of conversion. I am super excited to see how this will work out and show the sincerity we as missionaries have of being Disciples of Jesus Christ and loving and serving those around us. For more information go to: JustServe (by the way, I looked, and there are projects in the Irvine area; check it out!). 

And in other news, the car struggles of my mission continue. For this week, may I present the saga of being stuck in Tri-Cities. So this past Thursday we had a meeting down in Kennewick with our mission president from 9 AM – 12PM. We had made some calls in our ward to see if we could find a ride down to no avail so the plan we came up with was to drive a little ways to the nearby town of Mattawa to get a ride down with the elders stationed there since they had to go anyways for the meeting and to put their car into the shop. Well Thursday morning comes and we get up at 0-dark thirty to make the time frame we needed to be where we needed to at the right times. The other Elders in Mattawa had made an appointment to drop the car off at 8:30 AM so they could start looking at the car and hopefully be done by 12 when our meeting ended.

Well 11 O'clock rolls around and still no phone call from the dealer and so the Mattawa Elders call the dealer to find out what’s up, only to find out they hadn't even looked at the car yet and would maybe get to it that afternoon. Well since we were 50 miles away from home, that caused a problem for us since we didn't have anything to do in Tri-Cities except just wait for the car now. We talk to the mission president after the meeting and he basically says to this effect "Don't they know you're important people? You have things to do and appointments to keep. Here are the keys to my car. Go drive over and put some pressure on so they will start looking at the car. Oh and while you're out, can you go wash the car? And go get yourself some lunch too." We warily accept the keys and then all pile in to start heading out on our errand. Ladies and gentlemen, that was the singular most stressful backing job of my life. Thankfully it all went okay (the driving that is; the car story continues on) and we were on our way.

We get to the dealer and the guy was on his lunch break but they would call us soon to let us know what was wrong and give us an estimate. All in all, things should be done in 2 hours (it was 1PM by this point). We sigh and continue on with our errands, which included getting lost in downtown Kennewick (all of us were serving in tiny farming communities that have no more than 7 stoplights; the big city was confusing), a stop at Carl's Jr, and a quick trip to the mission office to pick up a package for an Elder in my district. Well the time comes to return the president's car and we still are at a loss of what to do so we kind of just wait. Well about an hour (it is now 4:30) and a few phone calls later we discover that the part that was needed in the car they didn't have on hand so they would need to keep the car overnight (naturally) and give it back to us tomorrow. But since we still had to get back to our respective cities (we had cancelled three appointments by now) it was imperative that we get back that night. The solution? Cramming the four of us plus the two AP's into their Silverado (don't ask me why they AP's are driving a Silverado; they don't know either) and away we go. We make a quick stop at Panda Express (the biggest thing we have is McDonalds and Taco Bell in Othello we are not missing the opportunity for some quality fast food) and then hit the freeway.

By this point it is now about 6 in the evening. But wait there's more! As we keep driving back, we see off in the distance a giant cloud of smoke but it appears to be on the other side of the river so we make some speculations and pay no heed to it. Well the road continues and lo and behold, we drive right to it. Apparently a truck had tipped over on the side of the road and its contents - large bales of hay - had fallen off and caught fire. Just our luck. Thankfully by the time we got there they had cleared it from most of the road so they were able to let traffic through one lane at a time and we arrived just when our side was going through. Fortunately after that the trip was uneventful and 13.5 hours later, we roll into Othello at 8 PM. We had a good laugh and salvaged the remnants of the day. 

And in other news, somebody already had Christmas lights set up on a tree outside their house. It’s not even Halloween yet! This is insanity. 

So for this week's quote, it comes from the wise words of wisdom from my Zone Leader sitting right next to me quoting the scriptures as I type this email:

"Oh be wise, what can I say more?"

'Nuff said. Stay classy everyone. 

Elder Kupferer