Arriving in the mission field

I flew in from the MTC on tuesday and spent the night at the mission home in Yakima, the next morning I was assigned my companion his name is Elder Christiansen he is super cool. The area that I am assigned to is called Sunnyside it is about the same size as Brigham and is made up of entirely mexicans. I am pretty sure that me and my companions are the only white people here. The first day that we got here we went trackting and most of the people that answered the doors would start talking to us in english and then a soon as they realized that we were missionaries they would pretend they couldn't understand us and only spoke spanish. Most of our appointments though are through the sister missionaries who find people that are interested and can speak english and then they refer them to us. My first day we got someone to commit to being baptized on February 6thher name is Tonya. We don't have to go trackting very much because the people here are pretty open minded and like it when the missionaries come over. Yesterday I went to church here and it was pretty cool the people there were all really nice and they had me introduce myself during sacrament meeting. Yesterday was a pretty good day because we were able to teach a lot of lessons one of them was to a new investigator named Jose, he claimed to be racked by evil spirits and me and my companion had to cast them out, our next lesson with him is next week so we will see if he is any different then. The other lesson we had was with the Gatica family there dad is a member but he is the only one and they have 12 kids so it was really hard to teach all of them at the same time. The people here are all super poor and most of them have to share there houses with other families, they all work for the fruit farms. I have seen more drug deal go down than i could ever imagine sometimes right after giving a lesson to someone we will see "Gator" the most well known drug dealer come to there house. I am also almost certain that there is an underground dog fighting club here because we always see dogs that are all chewed up and some people have like 20 pitbulls. This is a mural on a restaurant that I think perfectly sums up Sunnyside.

First handwritten letter from Kaden

Shanee made this jar for Kaden.  Take one marble out for each Sunday he is gone.   A lot of marbles! :(

January 12, 2016

Dear Missionary Family,

We are delighted to report that your missionary has arrived safely to the Washington Yakima Mission.  We already love them and are excited to serve with them.  We are confident that they will become an effective instrument in the hands of the Lord in sharing the gospel with the people of Washington and Oregon.

We have assigned them a companion who is an experienced, devoted, and motivated missionary.  All of our missionaries understand that one of the greatest privileges available in the mission is to train a new missionary.  This first companion will be a special person in your missionary’s life and will help give them a great start here.

We feel that our greatest responsibility is the care and welfare of your child.  We want to assure you that we will be in regular contact with them and will be observant of their physical health, happiness and spiritual well-being.  We will work closely with them throughout their mission to help them succeed and fulfill their calling as a representative of the Church and as an ambassador of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Please be assured that we will be in contact with you if we encounter any concerns that would call for your attention.  You are a great asset to the success of your missionary while they are serving here and we will work closely with you if the need arises.  Please keep us apprised of any changes to the address, phone number or email for you, your bishop or your stake president.  We want to keep our records current so that we can contact you whenever necessary.

Attached is a photograph of your missionary taken with us at the welcome dinner at the mission home.  Please feel free to contact us at the mission office with any questions that you may have.

Thank you for the sacrifices you are making at home to have your missionary in the field.  We have seen the Lord bless the families of missionaries who are serving in untold ways.  We know that His blessings will be upon you as well.

With love and appreciation,

President John C. Lewis and Sister Ann Lewis

Washington Yakima Mission                             

1006 S. 16^th Avenue

Yakima, WA  98902

Office Phone (509) 571-1290

Office Fax (509) 571-1292

Office Email: 2040417@ldschurch.org

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January 9

Hey, Mom

Today is my last day at the MTC, tomorrow I leave the mtc for good at 330 in the morning. You were asking me about my companions names, they are Elders, Mcintyre, Despain, and Peterson. I sent you a bunch of pictures earlier today, I just wanted to make sure that you got those. I am technically not supposed to be on the computers right now but its my last day and I really don't care. You asked if we were really teaching investigators, yes we are. Saturday we were teaching a mock investigator played by our teacher, even though we knew it was fake it still felt extremely real and we had a lot of success in getting him to pray for the first time in his life. Yesterday they made all the departing missionaries go to a bunch of devotionals, it was super boring and it honestly didn't help anyone prepare for the MTC any more than normal. 

January 5:

For my plaque I want to have 2 Nephi 5 for my scripture. The MTC kind of sucks, I am not used to having to sit in a classroom and studying for nine hours every day, and I have been getting kind of bored lately. The second day we got here we started teaching investigators, right now i am teaching two investigators Andrew and Chad. Today I got to go to the temple and that was pretty fun. I got your data cable that you sent me thanks. That's great that Shanee has been doing so well, tell her that I love her. I got my flight plans I will be flying on Alaska airlines to Seattle and then flying to Yakima. I bought a phone card so I will be able to call you when I get to the airport, I leave the MTC at 3:30 in the morning so it will probably be at a really early time. I leave next Tuesday. If you use a website called dearelder you will be able to send me letters that will get to me the same day that you write them. The computer that I am using doesn't let you upload any pictures so I wont be able to get them to you for a while. 

New Years Eve 2016!  Looks like a party!

Opening the Call

Kaden had been living in an apartment in Logan and attending his first semester at Utah State University.  In early October he decided he wanted to put in his papers to serve a mission.  We were surprised by this because he had been saying that he wanted to complete two semesters and leave in the summer.  But he quickly got his papers in and on October 31, 2015  Kaden opened up his call. We even got him on video tape.  Kaden wanted to open it up by himself but I insisted that he do it in front of the family.  I later e-mailed our extended family the video. We were very surprised to read he would be serving in the Yakima Mission and would be leaving on December 30th!  The timing was just what he wanted so he would be able to get back into school immediately after returning from his mission.