Elder Zach Fillmore

Hi everyone! This week has been filled with so many emotions with the 2nd anniversary of my sister Maddie's passing, her 25th birthday, Christmas, and missing family.  As I shared in my last email, without trusting God, I would have a tough time getting through some of these rough potholes. Super grateful for my fam and I know there are always there for me. Family is so important and I'm so glad I have the best one hehe, yep said it again!   There is also one other thing that got me going through each day. The mindset of one day at a time . This mindset is so important and I can't express that enough. Until this point in my mission, I have been looking a week or two out, planning and scheduling over and over, and thinking about all we had each week and it was giving me very little motivation to get up in the morning. But once I got over worrying about what's gonna happen tomorrow or the next day I had to remind myself that I need to get one day at a time. As I've be...

Hi everyone! This past week was ok, I say okay because I had to say goodbye to two of the OEMs best, my trainer Elder Nelson and Elder Willoughby. The other Elder Nelson and I are staying in Klamath. We four are the OGs in Klamath and we clicked from the beginning. We all rocked at service, teaching, and all things wood chopping, loading, moving, and stacking. My new comp and follow-up trainer is Elder Kjar, a good guy but not the same as Elder Nelson. He has been out for 15 months and I am his FIRST trainee, curious I know. He is also going to be our new district leader. But, woot woot I am now designated as the primary driver and phone contact for our area.   As the full week began, I knew we were going to have our differences and that's okay as I knew from day one and the hour-and-a-half car drive back to our area that he was going to be a tough cookie to crack lol. We spent some time talking about communication and trust. Grateful that this month's family meeting (OEM-wide ...

Hi everyone these past couple of weeks have been very snowy and slow with the holidays coming up. Even with the super bad weather we've been meeting with a lot of non-members. But we Elder Nelson and I have been contacting a bunch of people to set us up for a successful next transfer!   A couple of days back we had a guy call us from a Facebook post. We talked to him for a little bit, he was wanting to learn more about God and how he was really struggling to find the true church.  He said right after that that he wants to get baptized and learn as much as possible. We learned that he is homeless and living in an abandoned Sizzler restaurant, which is a big difficulty. Yeah, so in order for him to even be considered for baptism he has to have a physical address. Anyway, so I guess we will see how that all pans out when we first meet him this upcoming week. This week, we (Nelson and I and Willoughby and Nelson) had a trip planned to the Medford temple, but both Nelsons got the f...

  This week I feel right at home because of the weather. Hahah the weather is freezing but where we live there's no weather at all, just freezing and no snow or rain super lame just like at home. This week has been super slow when it comes to talking and teaching to people because of Thanksgiving with families being out of town and people having family over, so we weren't really able to have lessons this week, but, we did do a lot of wood moving services. Basically, that means that we move the wood from their wood pile and move it either closer to their front door or inside their house.  It still blows my mind that people still use wood-burning fireplaces but wow the difference between dry heat and a normal heater is honestly crazy idk what I like better lol   But yeah once Thanksgiving day came around I was expecting it to feel like Thanksgiving and nope it didn't feel like that at all just felt like another day. But, that all changed when we had Thanksgiving dinner with...

With the weather being 85% humidity and a high of 35 and a low of 15, this is next level cold that I have never experienced before.  Tuesday Nov 15 I had my first Zone Conference! After the 3½ hour drive to the stake center in Medford, OR it was super good to meet everyone from the south part of the mission! Super cool to bond with everyone! President and Sister Weekes taught about temple covenants and the wonderful blessings that we receive when we attend! Super good talks! After the zone conference, we went to IN&OUT!! I miss that food so much. We also went to Chick-fil-A to get a shake so that was yummy!! Definitely miss the fast food places lol. In Klamath we don't get none of that rip haha Wednesday Nov 16th  We did wood service the whole day for a lot of people! Super fun cutting wood with a hydraulic wood chopper lol. There is a lot more work to do helping everyone prep for winter.  Awesomeness too as we were able to set up some appointments with some new peopl...

This week went by so fast because it was filled with surprises and other highlights below. Tuesday Nov 8th Today was filled with service and moving apartments. We did service at a thrift store called Treasures. We sorted a bunch of wires and put them in a massive bin so untangling them took forever lol once we got done they said we could go shopping around and I found a sick sock tie and a sick old handheld FM radio.  After we got done with the service we found out we were moving to a different apartment! So that was exciting and a big surprise but also a small hassle because I finally got all my clothes and desk all organized, but now had to pack it all up. Our new place is an upgrade from our old apartment so that was a massive plus! It puts us 15 minutes closer to our Keno area, but just that much further from the Yonna Valley area. I found God loves giving us surprises; sometimes they are good in the long run but also a hassle in the moment, just like the hard points in our li...

Hi everyone this is Elder Fillmore emailing from OREGON! So crazy I'm here! Wednesday, November 2nd!  At 6:30AM we checked out of the MTC and headed to Provo Station to catch our train to the airport. Once there, my comp and just chilled while we waited for our flight to OR. We landed in Eugene, Oregon early afternoon and as expected it was pouring down rain and I was like oh boy haha here it all starts. We made our way to grab our luggage and walked out of the airport and boom the sun was out so that was a tender mercy!  We were met by the APs Elder Yeager and Elder Hepworth, super cool guys. We got loaded up and on our way. We traveled to the mission offices in Eugene and when we arrived, we were greeted by President and Sister Weekes. It was so awesome to meet them F2F for the first time and they are super cool people. It will be hard to see them go when they finish their mission in July 2023.   We then got going with a short welcome meeting for all 19 new ...