Central Point, Oregon and Teaching the Gospel

Dear Mom and Dad,

Thanks for the Email, and I'm glad to hear everything's still going well there.Thanks for all the questions too. I guess I'll start with that.

1. I don't think you need to bring my bike down, because I'm all the way down in Central Point Oregon (right by Medford), and that would be a long drive. We have a car, but we're only allowed to drive 200 miles a month, so we pretty much have to bike everywhere, and then we use the car to go to Wal-Mart to get groceries on P-day. So I guess we're supposed to just use our bikes so the members can see that we're out working. It seems kind of weird to me though, because it takes about 40 minutes to bike to some of the farther places in our area, so we can't get nearly as much done when we're only on bikes.

2. I think I'm good on rain gear, because it doesn't rain too much down here, but if you want to send something you could send just a cheap pair of waterproof pants that I could slip over my slacks when I'm biking through the rain, because I get pretty whet when that happens.

3. Actually they don't let us use Ipods in this mission for some reason, so I don't think that would work. Everything has to be on a CD. If you have time, I would absolutely love a copy of the vocal point CD too, because I'm not allowed to listen to it when it's on my ipod.

4. None of the other Danish speakers are with me. I think they're within about a half hour driving distance from me, but I'm not sure exactly where.

5. Church went great. I met a bunch of members and two of our investigators came to church, so that was good.

6.My companion is from Tokyo, Japan. He's been out in the mission field for a whole year, and to be honest I think he speaks really good English. Sometimes when we're talking to people they don't understand everything he says because of his accent, but I can understand him fine. I asked him if he wanted anything and he jokingly said he you could send him a plane ticket to Japan haha. Don't worry he was joking haha.

7. Umm, my eating is going fine. I generally eat cereal, yogurt, a banana and a protein shake for breakfast. Then for lunch I make a sandwich or make pasta roni or macaroni, sometimes I eat rice with some cool spices my companion has though. Then we have a dinner appointment pretty much every night, so we get at least one good meal a day.

8. Yep we have one pretty much every night.

9. No, I actually had no clue there was an earthquake. Where was it and how big was it?

10. Yep, I'm still wearing my Danish nametag.

11. So on a typical day we generally have around 2 or three appointments with investigators set up, but it seems like at least half of them  cancel at the last minute. So we generally have at least one good appointment a day. Then we generally try to go to some other investigators or potential investigators houses to see them. It takes a lot of our time each day just to bike everywhere though honestly. Most days we end up tracting for at least around an hour also. We also visit a lot of less active people too.

       By the way, my address is, 226 8th St. Central Point OR 97502. If you send stuff to the mission office they'll forward it to me too though. It would be great if you would post that address on Facebook or something. So now I'll just tell you how everything's been going for me. The first day I got here I was really tired from flying and everything, and then we had a really long training in Eugene that was pretty good. Our mission president is really nice and we all got to talk to him, and then we all found out who our companions would be and then we drove three hours to Medford. I randomly started feeling super sick and threw up in a paper bag in the car haha, and then to make things worse, we didn't get back until about 11:40 at night, so we didn't get much sleep either. So the next day I still wasn't feeling very good, but luckily we had the car that day or else I might have died. I honestly don't remember what happened that day very well, but I'm sure it could have been worse. The next day I know we taught a lesson to some inactives, but as I recall all of our appointments got dropped, so I was definitely a bit discouraged. Then we went tracting and had someone yell at us and tell us we don't believe in Christ and we should throw away the Book of Mormon. So by then I was really discouraged. Then we met Andrea though. She had requested a book of Mormon online, so we went to deliver it. Her Dad was a member of the church and it's just an amazing story how well she's been prepared to recieve the gospel. We've already taught her the first two lessons now, and she came to church and started making friends, and we have a baptisimal date set for June7th when her Dad is driving down. So her Dad is going to be able to baptize her into the church. So now everytime I'm feeling discouraged I just think of her, and all the happiness the gospel has bringing her, and I don't feel so bad anymore. I'm just thankful that I was able to be one of the people to meet her. I admit my mission is really hard and discouraging at times already, but I'm really starting to feel love for the people and I'm really enjoying my mission. I hope everything keeps going well for you. I'll be keeping you in my thoughts and prayers.

Love,

          Elder Redd

May 23- Letter from Oregon Eugene Mission

We are so happy to have your missionary here with us in the Oregon Eugene Mission.  We had great fun getting to know them  yesterday.  They are  going to be  awesome missionaries!

We have attached 4 pictures for you.  One of the entire group of new incoming missionaries ,one of your missionary, one of their first companion, and one with President Young and Sister Young.  Please know the prayerfully chosen “trainer companion” will take very good care of your missionary.  The  first few  weeks of training will be some of the greatest weeks of their  mission!

President Young is a wonderfully spiritual and loving mission president.  He takes great care in watching over his missionaries so please know that your missionary is in very good hands!

Thanks for sending  them our way!

PS:  Don’t forget to watch President Young’s blog at “oregoneugenemission.blogspot.com” for happenings in the mission.

Sister Rout

OEM Office

541-342-2344

 

May 21, 2013- A Slight Detour on the Way to Denmark- The Eugene, Oregon Mission

                         

Hey Mom and Dad,
      I'm glad everything's going well at home even if they're super busy. It's kind of sad that I'll miss Katherine, but tell her I miss her, and I'm sure she'll have a wonderful time in the MTC. Is Dad going to Shanghai for his new job? Also tell Katherine to watch the District if she has time, because it's really good. I've had the chance to finish it here, but I've had six weeks and she only has two haha. Thanks for the story about the Sisters in Tennessee. It's pretty amazing that they're able to do that. I actually heard one of the Elders in Tennessee actually got his visa already too. Oh and by the way do you know what the ecclesiastical cards emails that I'm getting are about? I'm kind of confused by them. Oh and also I don't know if you need to tell the bank that I'm going to be using my debit card in the US for right now or not, but if so could you call them, and just make sure enough money stays on my card, because tomorrow I need to pay for my bags that I check. Oh and by the way, thanks for the package you sent! I really enjoyed it, and the gummy peppers where hilarious. I actually kind of liked them haha, but one of the sisters in my district about died when she tried one and thought it was insanely spicy haha. I loved the walrus picture from Laurel too haha. It's really cool to hear that you've gotten letters from Kathleen about my mission too. Oh and by the way, if you find any good scarves on sale, I've heard from our teachers that scarves are kind of like ties over there in the winter and the more you have the better. I'm so excited to get to Denmark though it's ridiculous. We've heard some amazing stories from over there.

     Everything's going great for me right now, and honestly, I can't wait to get to Oregon and start serving the people there. I kind of had a negative attitude when I first found out where I was going, but I've been able to get over that and I'm just super excited to get into the mission field. I figure I'll get to meet a lot of interesting people in Eugene too haha. We got up at about 3:30am this morning to say goodbye to most of the Danish sisters before they headed off to St. Louis Missouri. I also said goodbye to my companion Elder Walch, and Elder Wawro as they headed off to Carlsbad, California, so now there aren't too many of us left. I'm excited to go tomorrow though, and you can expect a phone call bright and early in the morning from me. So as for cool things that have happened this week, Elder Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve came! That was really cool. We've had two separate apostles while we were here. Lots of people don't even have any, so I feel pretty lucky. A cool thing Elder Nelsons wife said to us was, there are people on the other side of the veil, eager to help us find their family members, so that there work can be done. If we pray for their help, they will be around us helping us to find those that are ready for the gospel. Elder Nelson said a lot of great things too. He said, obedience brings success, and exact obedience brings miracles. I think that's something I'm striving towards, exact obedience, even if I don't understand all the mission rules I know I'll be blessed if I keep all the rules and am faithful to my calling. Another thing I liked that he talked about is that we have to be happy. We have so much to be happy and grateful for in this life and we need to show it. No ones going to want to listen or believe us when we talk about the great plan of happiness if we look like we've never been happy in our lives. If we're diligent and do our very best, we will have success. Believe you will have success and it will come. I've been told over and over here at the MTC, believe you can bring people to the gospel and baptize them into the church, and you will. Everyone seems to have a misconception that it's impossible to baptize and find people that will accept the gospel, but it really isn't. If you believe you will baptize, you will, because nothing is impossible with Gods help.

     We also had another great story from brother Stacey, our teacher, this week. He's seriously amazing, and I think the best spiritual experiences I've had here were when he was teaching. Here's his story: In one of his areas there was an old widow member of the church that would feed the missionaries every single week on Monday. She always made a huge meal and spent a lot of money on them. During Christmas there are about 5 days of Christmas where people celebrate, and all the members invite the missionaries for all those days. This widow who had previously fed them that week signed up to feed them on Christmas eve. Bror Stacey was kind of disturbed by this, because she always spent so much money on them, and he offered to help pay for the food or help cook multiple times, but she always refused. He even called his mission president to ask him about it, but his mission president just told him "go to her house and eat all her food and have a good time with her." So they went, and she had cooked a huge meal, and had even gotten them gifts. finally before they left Bror Stacey pulled her aside, and just asked her, "why do you do this for us?" She said "Elder Stacey, you have a lot to learn. I don't invite you over because I think you'll starve or not have enough food if I don't. I invite you over, because when I do, I not only invite you, but I invite Christ into my home." As missionaries we truly are representatives of Christ, and if we honor and respect his name, and don' t do anything to disrespect him or our calling, his presence will be with us and others will feel his presence as well. I hope that I can be the type of missionary that can truly invite Christ into the homes I'm invited into. I would just like to bear my testimony to all of you, that I know the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, is Christs church restored on the earth today. I know it's true, and I know the Book of Mormon is true. I love that book, and I know that anyone that reads and prays about it sincerely, seeking to know of it's truth, that they will receive a witness of its truth. I love being a missionary and I'm excited to finally go out and help people in any way that I can. I love you all and I'll keep all of you in my prayers. Jeg Elsker Dig!

-Ældste Redd

So I decided I should send you a funny story also, because I haven't done that in a while. So there's this thing in the MTC some people do called the tower challenge, where you eat one of the entire containers full of cereal that they have in the cafeteria. They're these huge containers that are probably quite a few boxes of cereal. So Elder Swan, one of the elders going to Oregon with me, and I decided to try to eat the whole tower ourselves, when normally it takes more like 6 people to eat it. We went for the Captain Crunch. So we both ended up eating 10 bowls of cereal, and we got some help from two other people, but we only got about three quarters of the container down before we had to be somewhere. By the end my mouth was bleeding from the sharp corners of the captain crunch, and we all felt disgusting haha. So never try to eat a whole ton of captain crunch, you will be miserable. I've been feeling the after affects for the past three days haha. Luckily the cuts all over my mouth from that razor sharp captain crunch are mostly healed haha. That's my funny story for now haha :D.

 

Love,

         Elder Redd

MTC- Week 5

Dear Mom,

 

Thanks so much for the letter. I love hearing about how things are going back home, and I'm glad to hear they're going well. I hope Katherines back gets better though. Haha I bet James was thrilled with his farewell topic. Happy late mothers day again mom, I think I technically broke the rules to send that to you, but I figured it was a good cause. Thanks so much for all you've done for me and for all the help you gave me while getting ready to go to the MTC. It really means a lot to me, and all the vitamins and stuff that I thought I would never use have already been useful, so thanks for making me take it.

     Oh by the way, Rebecca said she was trying to figure out how I was doing in a letter she sent me and she said their weren't any emails or anything being sent out with my updates, so if you could try to do that and post on my facebook that would be awesome. I know Ashley was wondering about some of that too, because I honestly don't have time to write tons of letters to everyone and this is my main letter each week haha. P-day is kinda crazy busy. I'm still doing well in the MTC though, I'm still going crazy and now I've gained about 10 pounds, but I'm getting used to it. Some bad news is our visas might not be coming, and some people think we're going to be reassigned to the states for a transfer, but every time I think about it I get a peaceful feeling like we're going to Denmark. I'm perfectly willing to go somewhere else if I need to, but I just feel like we're going to Denmark, and we all had a fast and I know a whole ton of missionaries and members in Denmark have been praying for us to get our visas. They also randomly moved our travel day back to the 21st so we suspect they might be on their way. I'm really excited to go, and I can't wait to escape the MTC haha. It's great here, but I can't sit still all day long and be happy about it. The language is going well too, I feel like I talk like a three year old, but I can generally say what I want to now and I'm starting to understand more. We learned a great phrase you might enjoy its "Sadan skal geden barberes" Which literally means "thats how you shave the goat" and is used to say thats how you do it pretty much. There are lots of other funny things like the litteral translation for eyelashes is eye teeter totters haha. I really like Danish though, and I'm really enjoying it. Thanks for the package too, I'm really happy to have more ties, and I really like all the pictures too. i've actually been wishing I had some pictures of people lately, so thanks for that. I'm going to reply to the other email now so sorry if this isn't as long as you would like. Jeg Elsker dig!

 

-Elder Redd

Dear Dad,

 

It's great to here from you, and I'm glad everythings going so well. You should read mom's email too, because I'm going to try to send different things to both of you. I can't believe Katherines farewell is in a week! It seems crazy that it's been that long already. It seriously feels like I've only been here for a week, yet every day feels like an eternity haha. I'm really excited to get to Denmark though. I'm not sure if I'm going to miss the MTC food like you did though besides the fact that it's unlimited. We had a TRC skype conversation with someone from Denmark, and he said his favorite thing about Denmark was the food and gave us a big list of things we have to try. I know there's going to be a lot of culture shock too and I know it's going to be hard, but I am ridiculously excited to just get out there. I feel like it will be an amazing adventure, and I'll be helping others the whole time. I also won't be sitting down all day. according to our teachers we'll only have about 4 hours of light in the day in Denmark during the winter, so that will be a change too haha. I'm just really excited to go,  I feel like I'm going crazy in the MTC. I'm still loving it though and we've been having great experiences. Supposedly theres a special speaker coming tonight for the devotional, and I think it might be someone from the quorum of the twelve, so I'm really excited. We lilstened to a great talk by Elder Holland on Sunday from a previous MTC devotional. Elder Hollands wife shared with us that in Elder Hollands patriarchal blessing it said he had been prepared for thousands of years for his earthly ministry. I thought that was amazing, and I thought you might like to hear that. I also really like his talk, he focused a lot on how your mission should change your life forever and should effect everything you do when you get back. Another thing I liked was he said we are on the Lords errand, and we have to do it his way. We have to be exactly obedient, even if we don't understand the rules. I decided after that to try to do what he said. I don't have any big problems with the rules, but occasionally I would do something like rolling up my sleaves on a sunny day when I was to warm, because I think that's a dumb rule, but even if I think it's dumb I'm going to try to stick to it. I'm loving my mission so far and I can't wait to continue in Denmark. Jeg elsker dig.

 

-Elder Redd

MTC Week 4

Thanks, for all the news Dad. It's great to hear that everythings going so well too.

     I have to admit I'm getting kinda sick of the MTC. Our new schedule consists of sitting in the same classroom for about 8 hours a day without any breaks besides meals, so it's really hard for me to focus. I know the mission will consist of working and staying motivated all day, but at least I'll be walking and moving around. I just can't sit still for that long haha. Other than that I still love the MTC though. The food isn't especially good, but I like being able to eat as much as I want. I generally eat 3-4 plates of food for breakfast and then 2-3 for lunch and 2-3 more for dinner haha. I've already gained over 6 pounds and I weigh 160 before I even eat in the morning now haha. I've been doing weights during gym so I'm not getting fat haha, I also think I'm growing, because I swear my pants are getting shorter. I'm also an inch or more taller than my companion now, and he told me he's five eleven and a quarter, so I think I might have beat out dad. I think thats awesome, but my suit pants are starting to get a bit short, which isn't so awesome haha, so I hope I don't grow much more.

      Ok enough of that, one thing I really enjoyed this week was hosting new missionaries. Normally you don't get to do that until you've been here for 5 weeks, but our zone leaders signed us up so we got to. It was actually really cool, because the first person I hosted was actually from Denmark. His name was Stephen Meilsøe. He's from Copenhagen and he's going to the Germany Alpine mission, so he's here to learn German. He actually knew my Danish teacher too, and he told me a bit about Denmark, and it was really awesome to be able to talk to him. I also spoke a bit of Danish to him haha although I didn't understand everything he said. I also hosted someone named Elder Steel going to Louisiana. It was really fun to just be able to meet and help the new missionaries through a bit of their first day.

     Lets see, another great thing we had this week was fast Sunday. We had mission conference and got to hear from all the MTC presidents and another MTC coordinator. It was really great and the spirit was definitely there. My favorite part was when we sang Come Thou Fount. I also really liked a talk that was given on reverence, and how if we stay reverent during all places in the MTC we will be able to feel the spirit and receive personal revelation more often and more strongly. I know I struggle with that a little bit here just because we're stuck sitting down in a room all day. We also had a great fast and testimony meeting although, it was almost a race to get up to the pulpit haha. We got to here from a lot of the people that just left for Sweden this morning, and it was good to here from them again before they left. Now that they're gone, the Danish districts are the senior districts. It seems really crazy that we'll be leaving in about two weeks. I'm really excited to go I must admit. We also had a good fireside Sunday night and heard from Chad Lewis. He was a walk on football player for BYU and played for the Eagles in the NFL. I loved his talk, and he had a lot of really great things to say. Some of the things I liked most is, he said, look past all of the problems and faults of the people you'll be teaching and find their hearts. He also said, that after your mission it can be easy to become the same exact person you were before, but we need to stay missionaries forever, and never forget what we learn. I want to make sure to be that kind of person. I think my favorite thing that he said was that every minute in the MTC is precious, and we have to fight the boredom! haha I think thats something I really need to keep in mind, because it is ridiculously boring sometimes, but I still need to make good use of my time here. It's really hard to stay awake in class sometimes haha luckily everone else nodds off too so I don't feel alone.

     We also had TRC two more times this past week. on Friday, I was able to do decent, but I had a hard time understanding the one person that was actually from Denmark, and to be honest I didn't understand a word she said, but I feel like we were able to give a decent lesson. I had my other TRC session over Skype. It was pretty cool. The only problem was the sound on Skype was cutting out so I couldn't understand much of the Danish. So the main problem I have with the language still is just understanding it. I can speak it, even if I do feel like I talk like a three year old, I just can't seem to understand it super well. So lately during language study I've been listening to the same general conference talk in Danish over and over. It seems to be helping a bit too. I'm also to the point where I can read the Danish LDS pamphlets pretty well and understand it. I admit I still can't really understand Mormons Bog, but I think as long as I keep speaking the language, I'll learn well. On Wednesday we actually had an English fast, so we spoke Danish pretty much the entire day. It was pretty hard, but I feel like we did a pretty good job, and by the end I was actually starting to think a little bit in Danish. So I think the most important thing I can do right now is just speak as much Danish as possible. We're doing two more English fasts this week too, so I think that will help more.

    One of our teachers Bro Stacey told us a really cool story that I thought I should share with you this week. He went on his mission to Denmark a few years ago. He told us about one day when he was out contacting people and trying to teach two greeny missionaries how to do a good job at it. One was fluent in Danish, but really shy and didn't wan't to talk to people, and the other couldn't speak Danish well at all but was super outgoing and wanted to talk to everyone. So finally Brother Stacey just sent them off alone together (within sight of course) and told them to talk to as many people as possible. as he was watching them he got the impression to go down by a castle they were close to. He didn't see anyone there so he ignored it at first, but then the impression came again. So he went down there, and sitting on the ground behind a sculpture or something, was a man. Brother Stacey said the man was balled and scowling, and just looked like a really mean person that you wouldn't want to talk to. He did anyway though. he told the man that he had felt like he was supposed to talk to him and that he was a missionary. The man scowled and said he didn't wan't to hear anything about that and that if there was a God, God hated him. It turns out, the day before he had lost his job and his wife had left him and he had been evicted from his apartment. So pretty much everything that could go wrong for him had happened in one day and he was left homeless with nothing, and he was just on his way walking to Sweden to start a new life. Brother Stacey couldn't think of anything else to say besides, can I pray for you. The man said yes, so Brother Stacey just prayed for him there, and as he prayed the man started to cry. And he told brother Stacey afterward, that because of him, he knew God loved and cared about him then. He took a Book of Mormon, and headed on his way to Sweden. Brother Stacey doesn't know what happened to him, but he suspects he has or is being taught by the  missionairies in Sweden now. I just love that story and thought I should share it with you.

       I think thats all for now, I'm about out of time, but I want all of you to know you're in my thoughts and prayers, and I'm doing great here. Jeg elker dig!

 

Love,

         Ældste Redd