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

'Muurica!

Well I hope everyone had a fun and safe Fourth of July weekend! Mine wasn't terribly fun but it sure was safe. With a 6 PM curfew and instructions to avoid Chelan like the plague we basically just did a lot of service all weekend. From what we heard, it sounds like the firework shows up here were pretty cool. At least I learned how to put up sheet rock though. And, how heavy ice cream machines can be. But it’s all okay because we helped some members pick cherries off their tree and an investigator pick some blueberries and let me tell you, it is impossible to beat freshly picked cherries nor blueberries. Those made the weekend totally worth it. Especially when you combine it with soft serve. Best. Stuff. Ever.

There was a pretty big disappointment this week though. As some of you may recall, Tuesday mornings we help out at the local food bank and they usually let us take some food home with us. Well this week somebody had donated a box of Samoas. Not Caramel Delites, but Samoas. At first I was a little apprehensive and commented to one of the sisters that I thought they had stopped making those and so the box had to be several years old. She said no they had actually started making them again so I thought I was the luckiest man alive and grabbed it like it was going out of style and contemplated how delicious it would be crumbled a top some soft serve ice cream. Fast forward a few days and we are at home and as per the norm I was hungry so I grabbed a bowl and served me up a nice size helping of soft serve and then walked back inside to grab the Samoas. Well I open the box and the five cookies in one tray were stuck solid together. I manage to break one off and try it really quick to see if the taste was still good and ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you it was not. It was one of the most disgusting things I had ever tasted. Girl Scout cookies do not age well. I was so sad I almost started crying. And then I remembered the freshly picked blueberries in the fridge so that helped but it was still a rather disappointing night. I'm not sure I can ever trust a box of cookies from the food bank again. 

And in other news, if you want to seriously confuse a set of missionaries, drive past them when they're walking down the street, slow down to a crawl right next to them, and very conspicuously take a picture of them on your iPhone, and then speed away. It will leave them speechless for a little bit, make them contemplate fame as the picture goes viral, and cause one of them to mention it on his blog. Don't ask me how I know this. Just trust me on this one. 

So unfortunately no quotes from this week come to mind at the moment so I am going to go back a few weeks (months? I don't even remember) to a Stake Conference we had with  Elder Aidukaitis of the First Quorum of the Seventy. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, a leader from the church that covers a large area came and talked specifically with the members in the Wenatchee/Cashmere valley. Since it seems to be the only topic today, he was speaking on “Hastening the Work of Salvation.” He was commenting on how there are a lot of good ways to invest our time but right now the work of salvation needs to be the #1 priority in our lives, whether for the living of the dead. But he said: 

"If you were God for a day and saw the state of the world, wouldn't you want to hasten YOUR work?" 

I know I would. With the moral decay happening at a faster and faster rate we see today, the only choice we have is to stand firm in our morals and beliefs. And I'm not talking just Mormons. If Christians and Muslims and Jews and Buddhists and Atheists around the world would just stand up for the beliefs that worked pretty well the past several millennium, the world would be in a much better place. 

And with that food for thought, I sign off. 

Stay awesome America. 

Elder Kupferer

Three Big Events

Hello everybody!

Not too much to report this week. It mainly comes down to three big events.

Tuesday our car got backed into and the back passenger’s door barely made it out alive. Thankfully no one was hurt so it’s mostly an insurance game at this point but we spent way too many hours filling out paper work and dealing with the body shop. Always fun.

Then Saturday we were coming back from Wenatchee with some members (you'll see why in the next paragraph) and long story short we found ourselves in the Fred Myer's parking lot at 10:00 PM changing a headlight and a taillight. Things I've learned from this experience: In order to reach the tail light on a minivan, you basically have to disassemble the entire trunk and that when you go to bed at 10:30 PM for 9 months and then all of a sudden find yourself getting home at midnight, midnight is pretty dang late.

So this weekend we had the opportunity of having Elder Aidukaitis of the First Quorum of the Seventy attend our stake conference. The Saturday night session was only in Wenatchee so that’s why we had to drive down but Sunday they telecasted it to our building up in Chelan. But it was a great experience either way. He had a lot of wise words of wisdom for us and we learned a lot. I wish we had it recorded.

So for the quote this week, the only background information needed is that someone asked someone else what type a dog was. This was the reply:

"Well, I think it’s a mix between the neighbor’s dog... and its mother."

Stay classy America. Until next week.

Elder Kupferer