The one where I see cars!

August 07, 2023

Helloooo I completely forgot how much time flies by when I don't write an email hahah. It's crazy that we are a week into August, summer is coming to an end! It's still kinda hot here, it's around 90+ just bout every day, and living in a two-level apartment makes for very hot nights when trying to sleep. Super glad we have a lot of fans haha. Tho I will take our temps over what's at home in Utah.

A couple of days after my birthday, we went to visit some less active members and on the way, we stopped at this super cool spot where there are big trees on both sides of the road. It's kind of one of those spots where missionaries take pics in the middle of the road! It just happened to be on our way that day.

Later that evening, we go to the gas station because I had to go to the bathroom hahaha and my companion, Elder Larson starts talking to the checkout person. He started talking about anime with him because he was wearing an anime t-shirt. They got talking for a lil and I'm just sitting there understanding nothing about anime. After the conversation, we start walking back to our bikes and before rode away, the check-out guy goes, "Hey u guys want a whole pepperoni pizza it's on me and 711! We are like bruh uhhh yes, please. We manage to bike from the 711 to our apartment it was a only 5-minute bike ride but we managed to get home safely and the pizza was a good reward after all that door-knocking. A super cool example of how my comp was able to connect with this guy over something random but personal and we cant wait to talk more with him.

Last week we had Zone Conference. We got there super early to we help a member out from one of the wards in the stake. We helped her with getting stuff out of the attics in the church to donate to someone in the stake. Our reward was she got us donuts so that was sweet!

We were sup excited for Zone Conference to start! We started with lunch and I definitely have the best Mission President because he cooked us brisket and cheesy potatoes and salad...... but of course, I didn't eat the salad hahaha. President is a big BBQer back home in Idaho and he had his big BBQ smoker shipped here to OR. After lunch we had the meeting start.

We talked a lot about the importance of the sacrament and how the next covenant we make on a weekly basis is always going to be the Sacrament and a quote that I love from something our President brought up was "When you join Jesus Christ's true church you're not joining a church, you're joining a covenant path that will lead you to live with Heavenly Father again." I love that quote and I've been using it in our lessons!

Halfway through the zone conference, our President was like "I know everyone is having a food coma right now," so he said "Let's get up and go get some ice cream and cookies in the kitchen!" and we're all like oh my gosh it's the best Zone Conference ever so that was awesome and after that basically just wrapped up with doing some role plays with our zone of different teaching scenarios. Super awesome spiritual high coming from that Zone Conference!

Mostly, this past week was filled with full of teaching appointments, but as you can guess every single one fell through, so that was not very fun at all, but we may do and get a lot of Facebook in, so basically just messaging people on Facebook about the gospel which is also super cool!

The biggest highlight of my week was on Saturday, 5th of August. We were able to volunteer at the Coburg Oregon 32nd Annual Classic Car Show. Yeah I got to go to a car show on the mish and I was able help with many many service opportunities at the event. We got to wear these super cool t-shirts with our mish tags and we just helped out with anything they needed. We helped them set up the signs to direct people where to go for food, or help hand out tickets for drawings that they had for prizes, help with parking. Later we got to walk around and look at the cars and "spread the word," that they were doing prizes at the same time so it was cool. Definitely going to have to come back with the family! Super great day and best of all we got to talk to a lot of people about what we do as missionaries, so amazing.

Mid-week, we also had exchanges with our ZLs for a day. I was with Elder Wells and we were talking about goals of finishing the Book of Mormon and really wanting to study it more and more. So we both set a goal together to complete it by January 17th and that means I have to read one to two chapters every single day. I'm trying to like actually super study them instead of just reading them really fast like I have at the beginning of the mish. I'm so excited to see how much my testimony expands and to testify of the Book of Mormon more when I am out in public!

So that's my challenge this week for you guys is to set a goal and set a date when you would like to finish the Book of Mormon and study it hard as well!

Love Elder Fillmore