Category: James

This week feels like it has gone waay to fast. When I woke up to my p-day alarm, i thought my phone was broken. It’s not, so here I am!

7: Eugene Saturday Market is WEIRD We found out that there was a Saturday market going on and thought it would be a great chance to go talk with people! Also I wanted to see if I could pick up something cool. I’m going to give you the highlights because detailing everything would take up the character cap of this email. Highlight reel: Lots of high people, lots of girls who have GREAT relationships with their fathers, plenty of homeless people, quite a few guitar boys entertaining everyone, a really good lemonade and chat with the stall owner, a Spider-man magnet, but no knives (What is this, England?) Elder Evans talked with a stall owner in Spanish for 45 minutes, so I just sat to the side and talked with a lady who was selling handmade paper for $20. Didn’t buy any though, because it was really crappy paper. But hey, it’s good for the environment?

6: Patrick is a cool guy Last week we found a guy named Patrick, he was the first one who opened his door to us all night, and was also the nicest person we met that night! Well, he has continued to be the nicest person! We’ve had a couple lessons with him, going over the plan of salvation, and answering all sorts of questions he has. Good dude, has plenty of Scarface memorabilia

5: Being with Elder O’Bannon again! We had exchanges with our zone leaders, and I went with Elder O’Bannon, while our companions went together. It was great to be able to tract with him again, in an actual neighborhood!

4: Cereal is too dangerous I decided to TReAt mY SeLf and buy a fat bag of fruity pebbles. Well, because cereal is too easy to make in the morning I haven’t been making good breakfasts. Also I’ve gained a couple pounds. So I’m no longer going to listen to the siren song of Fred Flintstone’s breakfast delicacy.

3: Repentance is a happy thing We’ve been talking a lot about repentance this past week. A lot of people’s perception of repentance is that it is a scary thing, and something that you should avoid. But that’s not a feeling that is of Christ. He wants you to come and change for the better, just because you slipped up once on something doesn’t mean that you can’t access the eternal power of the Atonement. That’s Satan’s line of thinking, and he’s a punk. Screw him. Repentance is really a joyous occasion, you get to be better and feel better.

2: You know what else feels better? Air Conditioning! After weeks of hot, almost sleepless nights, we decided to jerry rig an AC. It’s sketchy and ghetto AF, but hey, we can sleep at night.

1: You cannot breathe Coke. No matter how hard you try. We have been doing service for the Eugene mission, and they had several large pallets of soda. The mission, should you choose to accept it, is to open all the soda cans/bottles and pour them out so the empty cans and bottles can be recycled. Because all this soda is expired, or can’t be sold for whatever reason, a good portion of them will explode. I regretted taking a shower that morning, cause I just took one as soon as I got back to the apartment. We spent several hours breathing caffeinated air. It was a barrel of fun!

Ya boi

Elder James Berky 

I don’t have much time, so ill go over some quick stuff. 

4: Tracting has finally turned up!  After hours and hours of fruitless tracting we found Seth and Kat! A wonderful young couple who invited us in immediately! Turns out they had both been meeting with missionaries but since they had moved they lost contact. Kat loves coming to church, and the fellowship it provides! We are really looking forward to meeting with them again!

3: Somebody sure is confident  I’ve included a picture of a doorstep we were on, where they left the keys just hanging next to the door. They might be fake, or booby-trapped (doubt) but it was funny either way.

2: church was awesome! We had some great talks about listening to the prophets, and Sunday school was awesome as well. Plus we got rice crispies! 

1: addressing the title So, elder Clark woke up with a really bad migraine. So he took some pills and passed out. For 4 hours! Yaaayy, time to clean the apartment cause you can only study for so long. When he woke up, I asked him how he was doing, and he told me we were going to the Urgent Care so be could get an IV drip. We got a ride over, and he got taken care of while I watched one if those home-makeover shows on the clinic TV. I don’t think I miss TV all that much, cause they kept running the same few ads, ugh. We were only there for a few hours, and had dinner at a Mongolian grill with a Sister Cook.

Well, I’ve got to get shooping But I know this church is true, and if you follow the guidance and council of the Lord’s anointed, you will receive blessings. 

Ya boiElder James Berky 

P.S. I made a BLT by weaving the bacon strips and it was 

So this week started off great, but then just hit a brick wall.

6: Wow, look at all this graffiti  Because Eugene is a city littered with people who have too much time on their hands, there is naturally a lot of graffiti. Some really cool, and some… really lame. We see a lot of it on the bike path that we walk every day, and every time we pass this one hammer and sickle I spit on it.

5: can I buy motorcycle? Saw a nice motorcycle for sale, only $1000!! We talked to the owner of it, and he just wanted to get rid of it. Could use a little bit of tuning he said but otherwise it was fine. Dang, don’t think that President Orton would want a couple of missionaries cruising around on that type of bike.

4: How can I become an elder? We got a call on Sunday, a call from Zach who wanted to know how quickly he could become an elder. Well, the first step is baptism we told Zach at our first lesson with him. He agreed to be baptized on August 10th! He’s got some trouble under his belt, and isn’t in the best situation, but wants to change for the better. We can try to take the people out of the slums, but they’ll fall right back in. That’s why we give them the knowledge of Christ. Who will take the slums out of the people, and they in turn will take themselves to higher places.

3: Hello, is anyone home?? I wish I could have shared that message with more people this week, but for some reason, we just couldn’t find anyone to talk to!! Only one out of every ten doors would open, and those who would answer were “fine where they’re at”. Ugghh it’s fine. We were working, and that’s what matters.

2: I miss the coastal weather The Oregon coast is it’s own micro climate, where the weather never got over 70° F. It was so nice, but here it has gotten high 80’s. I’m so spoiled, but grateful, so is it really spoiled? I don’t know, I’m just tired of the spicy sun that is trying to burn my skin off.

1: Spanish missionary work is fun! Elder Clark and I were trying to figure out a way to get into this one trailer park. It says “no trespassing” and “no soliciting” etc. Normally I’ll obey the “no trespassing” because violating that could land you in court and court sucks. But this was a PHAT trailer park and we wanted to knock it anyways. Normally if we have an “appointment” set up the park management let’s us do our thing. We didn’t have an appointment, but we did have a member! Sister Garcia, don’t know her, she might be less active. So we sent, said “screw you” to the park management (only joking) and said hi to sister Garcia. She was a Spanish speaker, and didn’t know about Come Follow Me, so after briefly explaining what it is we said we’d be back with a booklet. The next day, we talk with the Spanish elders and go on splits. One set would talk to Sis. Garcia, and the other would react some janky apartments that had plenty of Latinos in our area. Win-Win!

That’s all, imma go make a dank BLT cause I’ve been craving one this past little bit.

Love ya, but the Savior loves  you more.

Ya boi Elder Berky 

This week housed the greatest day of the year! The 4th of July,  which is also Elder Clark’s birthday!

So we went out for a birthday lunch, and then when everyone’s fireworks were going off, we took a walk, enjoying them. So we spent all day playing volley ball and all I have to say is; I don’t like sand. It’s course, rough, and gets everywhere. As a result of that, I didn’t have time to put together a regular weekly. So here’s some pics.

Love ya, love the Lord. 

Ya boi Elder Berky 

P.S. I make an ugly woman

We got transfer calls, and I’m heading back to the Valley! Santa Clara, to be specific. I’ll be with the other Elder Clark, Elder Cole Clark. Elder Chris Clark (My current companion) is also leaving! He’s going up to Newport! I’m Jealous. Replacing us in this area are sisters! 

5: Packing and Cleaning time! We have been packing ever since, and cleaning. Because sisters will be taking over this apartment, we just can’t leave dirty counter tops, and unvacuumed carpets! Luckily we did that deep clean of the floors and bathroom the other week. 

4: Why isn’t anyone home? On Tuesday we were tracting for 2+ hours and only talked to 1 person! She was a member, so while that was nice, it still was a little discouraging. So we decided to head to the shops and see if we could talk to people there. It was pretty successful, we talked to plenty of people, and saw some pretty cool shops. That’s definitely one thing that I’ll be coming back to Coos Bay for, check out the shops with actual money.

3: Haircuts are very nice, especially when they’re free! I was getting a little shaggy, so I needed a hair cut, but I also wanted to save money, so I asked if any of the missionaries cut hair. Elder Weston did, and he hooked me up! Besides, even if he didn’t, the only difference between a good hair cut and a bad hair cut is 2 weeks. 

2: Swap Meets are fun, if you have money! Elder Hyer really wanted to go to the swap meet, and I was down. After all, Grandma and Grandpa sent me a very nice card and some cash, (thanks by the way) and I promised myself that I would buy something responsible with it. There isn’t  much responsible stuff at a swap meet, I looked for some weights. They didn’t have any, but they did have some tempting stoner hoodies and Murcia belts. But I am strong, and definitely didn’t buy an ammo box. 

1:Beach time is a good time! Because it’ll be the last day a lot of the zone will spend on the beach, naturally we were over there for a good time! I flew my kite, we played ninja, and just had a good time!

Love you all, and hope you have a great week, I’ll be emailing you next out of Santa Clara!

Ya boi Elder Berky

5: Two exchanges in one week? is that legal?

We had exchanges planned with the other Coos Bay elders, but we forgot about our exchange with the zone leaders. So we hastily scrambled and moved appointments around so we could fit both. They went like so;

4: Chris might be dead now

Elder Mooney and I were out tracting, and we saw a junkyard — I mean house that could use a little cleanup. Somtimes these kinds of houses will get a little upsetti spaghetti when you try to talk to them, so I was looking around for a “no tresspassing” sign, hoping to have an out. I didn’t see any, so we started walking up to the house. As we were picking a path through the yard, a man came out of his trailer. His name was Chris, and he was dying of heart problems. We had a great conversation about the plan of salvation, and gave him a Book of Mormon. He’s a referral over to the spirit world elders lol.

3: Exchanges with the Zone Leaders!

We did some work in both of our areas, Unfortunately Elder Weston and I didn’t really find anybody. Well I guess we ‘found’ a nice Jehovah’s Witness named George. He was nice. 

For some reason, I was the only one in the exchange who wanted to drive, so I got to drive a Nissan Rouge again! They’re nice, and I’m sure I won’t drive a car so nice ever again. 

2: Bannana Bread!

Elder Clark loves banana bread, and I’m just along for the ride. Every week he gets a bunch of bananas to brown and prepare for bread. For a whole hour our apartment smells like heaven. Then 5 minutes after it comes out of the oven, it’s gone.

1: Burning a shirt!

So the tradition when you reach 1 year is to burn a white shirt. I hit a year a couple weeks ago, but I just didn’t have the time to burn a shirt. So when we were on exchanges I brought a shirt along to burn. It was fun, we burned a lot of stuff besides shirts. It was a lot of fun. I think I posted it on instagram if you want to check out the full video. Lol, gotta get that shameless plug in.

The first chapter of Saints 2 is out! so go check it out and get hyped for history+gospel=a good book!

I know that Christ’s gospel is the only way to peace and happiness, both in this life and the one after. 

Love ya

Ya Boi Elder Berky

The biggest news I have;

WE FINALLY HAVE A CAR!! But that’s not all, so let’s get talking about the week.

7: The Car An area in our zone got combined, which meant there was an extra car floating around. We got it, and are in a car-share with the other Coos Bay ward. Now we can finally go out and do some good work, not plan the whole dang day around as few trips into town as possible.

6: Exchanges I wasn’t going to put this in, because I thought we had exchanges last week. I’m all turned upside-down right now. Dunno what I’m thinking.But yeah, we had exchanges, I went with Elder Hyer, we set up some things with our people, and did some street contacting.

5: A Cursed Experience As Edler Hyer and I were walking, I noticed some papers on a pole. Thinking they were a missing child poster I checked them out, but it was actually screenshots of a youtube video. What were the videos about? Olympic gymnasts. No information other than that. Weird right? Right as I was figuring this out, a middle-aged crackhead wearing big snowgoggles walked up, more papers in hand. He began to staple them to the pole, and I asked him what he was doing. “Did something happen to these girls?” The man looked at me through his colossal snowgoggles, “No” he replied, putting another girl’s motion-blurred face up. “So why put these screenshots up?” I asked. “It’s better than sleeping with ’em” giant snowgoggles replied. I… I……. I had nothing. I’m usually pretty quick when it comes to responding to stuff, weird or otherwise. But this caught me like the French after the 3rd Reich walked in through Belguim.”Can’t argue with that” was the only thing I could say as we walked away. My boy Hyer turned to me after we were out of earshot, and said “That was the most Cursed Experience I have ever had.” I would most certainly agree. 

4: Church is cancelled Yesterday, instead of going to church near us, we got a ride all they way out to Coquille. It was good, a nice ride, and some good talks by the Coquille elders. But supporting Elder Larsen and Young wasn’t the reason we drove 30 minutes to church. It’s because our building flooded. That’s right, the ocean has heaved above it’s shores, with nothing to hold it back it raced inland and…I’m just kidding, a waterline broke. There’s been fans running all Friday, but the carpet near the kitchen is still sopping. The solution? Shut off the water for the whole dang building. This meant that church had to be cancelled. Probably because bathrooms don’t work. Which sucked because Vera and Linda were going to come to church. Well, there’s always next week.

3: I thought the floor was just that dark. We got a dollar mop, because I’m tired of our floors being slightly sticky. As we began mopping the kitchen, the floor was changing color. It was really gross, but it had to be done, who knows the last time it had been properly scrubbed? Then we started to work on the bathroom, and a similar situation occurred. So Elder Clark and I said, ‘Screw it, today is a cleaning day’ Changed out of proselyting clothes, and deep cleaned the whole dang apartment. It’s so much nicer now. Don’t know why we waited this long. Ugh. The dollar store mop was just as bad as you would expect, but because it was a dollar I did not complain.

2: The Future of Groceries! Safeway has this cool program where they will deliver groceries right to your door, and Elder Clark has an even cooler mom who will do that for him. I’m so thankful for that, because she covered some of the costlier necessities, leaving room in our budgets for other things, like different cheeses (so I can try out which cheese makes the best grilled cheese), nice dishwasher soap, some air fresheners so our apartment doesn’t smell like bleach from our cleaning spree, etc. Thank you Mama Clark! <3

1: Why weren’t you here yesterday??  After Elder Clark had put Linda’s car back together, we set up for a lesson on Thursday. Come Thursday, we walked up the hill to go teach Linda about the gospel of Jesus Christ. When we knocked on her door, she was kinda upset with us. She had been sitting out all day yesterday, waiting for us. Linda had thought that Wednesday was Thursday, and Thursday was Friday. After she realized her mistake she was in a much better mood. We taught her the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and she loved it. She had something to add to everything we talked about, it was more of a discussion than a lesson. We extended a baptismal invitation, and she said yes, but she needed to receive answers to a few questions she had. That’s great, we said. That’s what your baptism should be. not just a thing to do because you should, but because you know and love the Lord.

Sincerely,

Ya Boi

Elder Berky

Usually we wear our suits once a week, at church. But this week we wore them a total of three times (3)! That’s almost more times than I can count! Let’s talk about that.

5: Zone Conference Was very good this week, we had it in Roseburg, and all the talks were good. Elder Ward got  V E R Y excited over some fruit, our sisters had a great segment about personal study. Personal study is nice, because it just makes the day go by so much better. The days where I don’t have a personal study just seem, darker for lack of a better term. So do yourself some personal studies and see how much better the day goes.

4: I can sing a song (so can 4 others in our zone) I totally forgot, we had a musical part in zone conference! We sang “Saviour Redeemer of my Soul” and it went down great! I’ll have to see if we can do it again so it can get recorded lol. I was singing the harmony and it was pretty difficult because I haven’t done any actual singing for a hot minute, but I got it after a little practice. (And audio recordings of the piano)

3: This one’s also about zone conference It was just an eventful day okay? The first event that we started off with was getting up early. Like 5:00 early, because Roseburg is 3 hours inland, and we wanted to be there early to practice our piece. We got a ride with Port Orford, and as soon as we got in the car, Elder Clark and I fell asleep. Or as asleep as you can be in a little Corolla. After a couple hours I woke up, and said “Oh hai ocean” But Roseburg is inland remember? WE HAD BEEN GOING IN THE WRONG DIRECTION FOR TWO HOURS Cowabunga time. Elder Ream flipped the car over. Around, he flipped it around and floored it. You know how we have those little government wiretaps in our cars? To track our speed and make sure we don’t do anything too crazy? Well, the Lord understood that we REALLY didn’t need it just then and the little Orwellian-nightmare box stayed off for the majority of our way back. We definitely topped out around 85-95 on our way back. We changed our arrival time from 10:30am to 9:15am. That right there is a miracle. Another one? We didn’t see a single cop. 

2: Interviews took all day Our interviews were at 1:00, but the Coquille elders were at 9:00. We did not plan on going to interviews with them. But the Coquille elders did! So we came to interviews with them. And were there all day. It was good though, President Orton and I talked about training, which I’ll probably do in next transfer, or the one after that. So I’m excited. It’ll be a great experience. (That was the other time we had to wear a suit)

1: Dodgeball is a very good thing A kid that we’re working with, Mason has come to dodgeball quite a few times, but this time was evidently the best. We had plenty of people there, and it was just fun. I need to get some pictures, it’s a good time.

Bonus: Stake Conference/Sunday was fantastic! Unfortunately we didn’t have anyone we are teaching come, but it was a spiritual experience nonetheless. Elder Acosta of the seventy came, and shared his re-activation story, it was wonderful. Then his wife shared a story of her family in Mexico, who she didn’t know if they stayed active or not, but was able to find out through family history. Moral of the story? Do your family history.

After stake conference we had lunch, and went to go talk to a lady named Linda, who was out working on her slug bug. I know jack squat about cars, but Elder Clark does! He helped her put the headlights in, and I kept the dog busy. It was a good way to go. We set up a lesson with her this Thursday, and it will be fantastic. She’s ready to learn, and has some real promise! 

After putting her car back together took longer than expected we had to book it to make it to the F- (everyone say Hi!) who had us and the other elders over for a dinner/lesson. Dinner was curry (very good) and the lesson was on the commandments (even better) the Spirit was testifying so strongly of the message of the commandments. They aren’t here to hold us down, but to lift us up. All of the commandments bring blessings, ones we see with our eyes, and those we don’t see. We have to feel them out, seek them out. 

Well, that’s all I’ve got for today, and in case I don’t see you tomorrow,

Good Morning,
Good evening,
and Good night!

(That’s what he says on the Truman Show, right?)

Ya boi,
Elder James Berky

6:We biked to the other end of the world and back. Twice. First off, my bike’s fixed. I kinda wish it wasn’t, cause we have been biking absolutely EVERYWHERE

There are just parts of our area that we just don’t visit because it’s so far out. But with bikes we can get out there! We got to talk with a really nice lady named Linda who was working on her lawnmower. We talked with Linda for about an hour and a half. When we went back to talk with her we saw her talking with her neighbor! So we talked to the both of them about the gospel for a good long while.

5: Scones are easy to make if you don’t actually make the scones.  Pillsbury biscuits, when split into pieces make very good scones. They puff up and are very good. But more importantly they are cheap! Gonna be making those more often.

4: Don’t trust Google!  We were going to go on a hike at Golden and Silver Falls, but No one knew how to get there. So we plugged the name into Google maps and headed out on our 45 minute journey. Well, after arriving at our destination we were told by Google that it was a u-turn, and we had to head back 10 minutes in the other direction.We eventually did get to water falls, they were cool. Here, have some pictures!

3:  I kinda fixed my glasses. Kinda So after waaay too long of wearing my square glasses I decided to fix my circles. Well, I don’t have any glue, or tape, or flex seal, so what do I do? What do i have? Thread. I have thread. So I wrapped the leg with thread and tied it to the frames. But as you can expect it didn’t work out all that well. Guess I’ll just have to take it into an actual shop or something. 

2: We talked to another Linda! She s talked to missionaries in the past, and liked it a lot! So We stopped by and saw her working on her VW beetle, good thing elder Clark is a car guy so we helped her out. Or he helped her out. She might be coming to church next week!

1: Giving a blessing on the side of the road is Very spiritual. As we were taking a (much needed) rest on the side of the road after biking to east side a car pulled up. A lady leaned out the window and asked if we were okay, I lied and said I was fine, and then we got to talking. She’s a homeless member of the North bend road, and wanted a blessing. It was loud but spiritual, and if that were the only reason we rode over there, it would’ve been worth the whole ride. 

☠-us round! Anti-mormon zombies! The lady Gail wasn’t actually a zombie but her anti might as well be. What I’ve learned about all anti is that it has been shot down, blown up, and disproven so many times, but it just keeps coming back. Like zombies. Get it? Any ways, we knocked into a lady named Gail who left the church when she was 19, and has been an enemy of it ever since. We tried to resolve her concerns but once people have been like that for 50+ yrs they just don’t want to. As we were leaving she asked us to pray and the Lord will reveal the truth to us. So I took her up on it that night, and (shocker) the Lord re-affirmed what I already knew. It’s always good to keep praying about the gospel, and keep growing your testimony.

Love yall 

Ya boi

Elder James Berky