Category: James

5: Yeah, big news, it’s kinda weird So I called home this morning as soon as P-day started, and talked to Mom for 20+ minutes. It was kinda weird, as the only other time I’ve called home was on Christmas. Surreal is the best way to put it.

4: Put somebody on date on the doorstep!! We were talking to this guy named Brenden, who has very little gospel knowledge, so after describing what baptism is to him, he accepted to be baptized on march 30th! Now we have to meet with him to actually teach him about how much God loves him, and the blessings that are in store for Brenden!

3: The Spanish Elders got kicked out of sacrament meeting! (and Relief society) The Spanish Elders who we share our ward with got kicked out of sacrament meeting! Why? Did their phone go off, playing loud Mariachi music? Did they bring chips and salsa and hold a fiesta during Gospel Doctrine?No.They were “too loud” while translating for the Spanish people who they brought to church. Yeah, the ward council told them they can sit out in the foyer to translate, but not in the back. This isn’t the first time that they have gotten backlash from our leadership, Bishop has repeatedly said that he thinks they shouldn’t be speaking Spanish at all, as they are in an English speaking country. Well, sure, but it’s better for people to learn the gospel using language that they know! We teach to understanding, not integration. Our leadership is wack.

2: Elder Tarazon and I found a game-breaking exploit in one of his card games Elder Tarazon has a game called “Smashup” it’s a lot of fun, and we have been playing it at night. The game is card based, of different factions, which are things like; Zombies, Dinosaurs, Superheros, bugs, Mythical heroes, etc. The way to win the game is by getting 15 victory points. These are gained by putting cards on bases and scoring. There is this one faction, the Aliens who score victory points just by playing one card. I figured out how to exploit this by picking the scoring cards up, and playing them again! This makes for a quick game, and a huge oversight on the game devs part. So we have added them to a ban list of other combos that are exploitative.

1: Interviews went well! (And late, as always) President and I talked about my potential as a missionary, I feel like I’m trying, but not hard enough. Going to be working on that more, studying harder, praying more fervently, and focus on getting out of the apartment more. That was the majority of my interview with president, but Elder Tarazon’s went for 30+ minutes. I really don’t know why President tries to keep to schedule, I’ve never had an interview day go according to plan. But that’s alright, it went well for everyone, and we got Mongolian Grill afterwards, it was pretty cheap too! (only 2 bowls tho)

Well, I’m going to call home right about now, so see ya next week!

Ya boi, Elder Berky

This week was pretty good at the start and then got crappy towards the end. Lets get riiiiiiiiigghht into this email!

6: Do u play fortnite?
As we were cleaing out our areabook, we texted this one number, and here is how the conversation went;

Me: Hey is this Ken?

Not Ken: No

Me: Sorry, wrong number then, God Bless!

Not Ken: Do u play Fortnite

Me: Haven’t in a while, been doing other stuff. You any good at it?

Not Ken: No I only have 2 wins
…

Me: Darn, I’d love to help ya boost that, but as a missionary, I just don’t have time for video games

Not Ken: Ah
Well I hope you have a great day

Me: You too buddy. Just remember when playing, do a double ramp rush. It’s easy but intimidates the opponent.
God bless

5: Actual snow!! Wow!!
After missing out on a white christmas we had a good snowfall this week! Unfortunately nothing really stuck, so kinda disappointing, but whatever. Which leads into my next thing;

4: Oregonians are a weak race
This one needs a little background. The Oakridge elders had a baptism on saturday so they came down to Springfield, on account of their building is lacking in the baptismal font department. They stayed the night, and we had district council and exchanges Friday! Come Saturday, the Oakridge elders got lots of texts and calls from their members telling them that 6 inches of snow is enough to postpone a baptism. The best part? The girl (9) who was getting baptised was coming in anyways to visit some family! After considering going forward with the baptism, but not because members would get angry at the elders, we finished our exchange, and they headed back. They encountered no snow. On Sunday Oakridge texted in that church had been cancelled. For the same reason. Bad Drivers + light snow + no testimony = church cancelled

3: I finally burned a tie for my 6 month mark, 2 months late.
The tradition goes; burn a tie at when you hit 6 months, burn a shirt when you are at a year, and a pair of slacks at 18 months, then a suit at 2 years. Of which I probably will not do, cause I don’t have the resources. But I might if I find the right stuff. Which I did for the burning of a tie. Elder Tarazon was igniting his pants, so I grabbed a spare tie lying around the apartment and joined the party. It seemed to be primarily plastic, so it stank.

2: Interzone Gatorball today!
So we got a call last night telling us that we will be doing p-day activities with the Eugene zone, mainly a big gatorball tournament. It’ll be fun especially since it’s pretty balanced.

1: My Phone is kill
So during zone lunch on friday, mt phone was losing power oddly quickly then it just died at 30%. Kinda odd, I guess the battery didnt charge enough last night, and the phone was just displaying the wrong percentage. When we got back to hte apartment and I plugged it in, the phone said that it was at 90% during the charging screen. Okay, that’s really odd. So I unplugged it, and the screen went black. Plugging it back in seemed to work, and the phone started up, and started up, and started up… just this constant cycle. So I called Elder Klingler, one of the office missionaries and he sent me some directions to perform a hard boot. Still nothing. It’s got to be a problem with the battery. OUr next course of action was to head to a sprint store, since that’s where the phone was originally bought from. They told me stuff that I already knew, and sent me to a better equiped store in Eugene. After going the wrong direction a few times we made it there. (Saw a couple people who looked like they were from the Witcher 3, or Oregon, either one.) My boy Jose was going to hook me up with a brand new battery, but this saleslady was asking if I wanted an upgrade. I said no, she told me it was free, and I said something to the effect of “I’m not using sprint cause I’m using the churches sim card.” She shuffled quickly to the back and told Jose to not help me. Luckily cause Jose was cool he let me know where I could go to get it fixed. But being about $20 short I had to wait until today for my loving mother to spot me. (Love you Mom! I’ve told you it already, but I cannot state it enough!)

This has been a week of ups and downs it’s been hard, but I’ve met some really cool people who probably wouldn’t have heard the gospel if we weren’t being diligent. That’s the lesson I’ve learned this week, Diligence. Keep doing what is right always, from small things of doing the dishes (still don’t like it) to following through on promptings.

I love you all, have a good week.

Elder Berky

Wow, this week has been pretty spiritually fulfilling.

10: Zone Conference was great! We talked a lot about finding, and how we need to have more faith while being out.

9: Elder Tarazon got scared by some cool kids So there were some 12 year olds riding on scooters a couple blocks down from us, and Elder Tarazon just booked it. I was really confused, and followed him into the burger king parking lot he was being all sneaky in, and heard him muttering “Oh crap, it’s the cool kids, we can’t let them see us.” Apparently he would do that joke with his last companion. Just a weird experience and overall. Oh well, it’s whatever.

7: I found a cool “How to Play Hymns” piano book So whenever we are at the church for P-Day or District council I’ll bring it and practice. I’m sure it will be a useful skill to have, especially on the mission.

6: I got sick! Yaaaay! Nothing really bad, but more of a pile of inconveniences that led to a unproductful day. We did a little phone contacting, just to start on cleaning out our area book.

5: Had housing inspections today It was the most chill inspection, Brother Birdsoll didn’t really look for anything, he just walked in, checked the smoke alarm, and asked if everything was working. I am glad that I spent plenty of time after hours making everything clean though. It feels good.

4: Elder Tarazon really wanted to watch the superbowl, but we didn’t have anybody that we could go to. So we just heard the news (RIP the Rams) from other Elders that night.

3: On exchanges with the Zone Leaders we found a new, played some Catan, and helped some old people! Elder Leifson and I talked to this guy named Terrance, who had been through a lot o crap in his life, we played some more Catan, but it did not take 3+ hours, thankfully, and did service at the Eugene Old Folk’s Home! We helped set up and serve lunch, it was great!

2: It snowed!! WoW!!! A light sprinkling of snow awaited us this morning, not enough for anything fun, except maybe a snowball or two, but it was nice to see some snow anyways.

1: We talked to a guy who had a ton of Batman logos plastered all over his car. He was pretty cool, we talked about Batman for a little bit, some comics things, and I found out from him that Ben Affleck might be hanging up the cape! Darn, I thought that BatFleck was pretty cool, oh well. He said we could come back, and I think that was because we shared common interests. It will be cool to see where this goes, as he wasn’t too interested in the Gospel. I’ll have to make sure that we establish that expectation with him.

I love you all, and hope that you have been able to see the blessings that the Lord has sprinkled all over this week for you! That’s something that I have noticed, you need to notice the things that the Lord is doing for you.

Ya Boi, Elder Berky

So this week was really normal, mission-wise. Nothing really funny happened, so this email is going to be kinda short. 

5: Tracting was fun, we found 7 new people, who were kinda cheese, so I’m not really counting on them being solid. We might not meet with them again.

4: When we headed to uptown Springfield to drop off some mail, we stopped by the famous Simpsons mural and took some pictures. Very cool

3: Last night we spent the night at the Zone leaders, and because elder Leifson wanted to play Tarazons settlers expansion we played. Now, as you play settlers with one other person it goes pretty quickly. However, with 4 people, it will keep you up till 1:30. Once we hit 12:30 I just started giving away my stuff to help the game end faster.

2: We put 2 people on date to be baptized! A younger kid named Alejandro, and a single mom named Tonya. Nobody came to church, so that felt awful, but we got plenty of administrative stuff done that had to be.

1: In the closet of past missionaries stuff, I found a nice pair of boots that fits me! I have been worried about what I would do if it snows, but now I’m covered!

I love you all, and hope you all have been doing well.

10: A new area!Now that I am in my 3rd area, I am no longer considered a ‘new missionary!’

9: A STOVE!!!! HALLELUJAH!!! Now that I am in a normal apartment, I have an actual kitchen instead of a cabinet and a microwave. The only hard part is that it’s not well stocked, so I’m going to be buying some basic kitchen stuff in these next couple of weeks. 

8: Late Mexicans let me play the cello! We share a ward with the Spanish elders, so we have shared dinners, and they were late, so I got a chance to play the ‘decorative’ cello that the Andersen’s had sitting on top of their China cabinet. Unfortunately the G and the D string were wack, and I didn’t want to mess with the pegs too much, so I just played the two outside strings. Plenty of fun, I definitely regret not keeping up with that?

7: Can you break into a sisters apartment? As we were getting out of a dinner on Saturday, we got a call from the sisters, who informed us they had locked themselves out of their apartment, and that they will need some help breaking in later that night. So, at about 9:30 we headed over to the sisters apartment, (they live in the same complex as us) and tried to card their door. No luck. So we went and got the 5th ward elders, because they know how to card a door. Turns out, the sisters door is situated in a way that it can’t be carded. So elder Simper and i head around back, make sure no one is watching, because this would be a difficult situation to explain to the police. After trying the back door, the kitchen window, to no avail we noticed that there is a bedroom window, we asked the sisters if it was locked, and they said no. Bingo! So we yeeted elder Tarazon up to the overhang, and he cut open the screen, slid the window open, and fell through. This whole ordeal took till 10:45

6: Our ward has… problems. There’s not too much I can say about this without disclosing sensitive information, but this will be interesting, not being sure if I want to bring people to church. Yeah, at least I’m not a Spanish elder.

5: lots of board games! Elder Tarazon loves his board games, so in our down hours we have been playing Catan, (pirates and explorers expansion) and boss monster. Lots of fun, especially with more than 2 players.

4: morning racquetball! This morning we played racquetball with President Lowry, the mission presidents 1st councilor. Lots of fun, but has reminded me that I need to start running for morning exercise.

3: I almost forgot my new companion! Elder Tarazon!  He’s from Gilbert AZ, and has been out for ~17 months. We get along well, a little too well sometimes, and while we are talking over breakfast notice that we should be out and about. Oops. We are going to be working on that. 

2: Biscuits and gravy cook off! Not really a cook off, but elder simper and I are going to compare biscuits and gravy recipes tomorrow. Will be fun! 

1: D&C 138 is dope! I love you all, and am doing well in my new area.

If anyone wants to know my address it’s; #### apt # aster Springville OR, 97478

Ya boi, Elder Berky 

10: See ya Merlin/Grants Pass!
We got transfer calls on Friday, and I am going to be heading up to Springfield 3rd ward! I finally am getting my dream fulfilled and living not in the boonies! I’ll be with Elder Tarazon, who has been out for 18 months.

9: Moving. Multiple. Fridges. In our exchange in Cave Junction, one of the families there needed help moving a fridge from their neighbors house to their own. However the one that we were moving that took several hours to figure out how to get out of the kitchen, was the wrong one. That felt good. Then we visited this one lady who wasn’t interested until we asked her if there was any service we could do for her. She needed a broken fridge, a broken oven, and a broken washer. So we grabbed brother Gill and came back with a dolly, and spent forever moving appliances. Should open a business. After all that she was interested in what we did as missionaries. 

8: Strambauchers are cool cars Looking around our areabook, we noticed that we were in the area of a part member family, so we decided to stop by, and see how they were doing. As we were talking, the member showed us his classic car collection, all Strambauchers, in the process of being restored. Very cool, and I got a picture in one off them.

7: Elder O’Bannon will be getting a problem child  The elder coming in to replace me is apparently a “problem child” and Elder O’Bannon is excited. He hasn’t had a difficult companion yet, and he is going to change him to being a good missionary. 

6: A member in our ward passed away Saturday. Leo Freedman was out cutting trees, and his chainsaw bucked and his son found him. We taught Leo earlier that week, and he explained what he did for work. Making wooden bowls. He served in Oregon on his mission, and decided to come back. He is a great man, and I know that he is continuing the missionary work that he started here, only on the other side of the veil.

5: Packing is fun! I’ve realized that I have too much stuff, like desk ornaments, and Christmas decorations. So I’m sending that home. I now have much more space for the really important stuff, like clothes.

4: Church was wack. You’d think that the bishopric would have cancelled the other talks, which were on the self reliance classes, and give a talk about the plan of Salvation. But no, even though Leo’s non-member family were all that there. Then in Priesthood session the discussion drifted to some really obscure deep doctrine that has no scriptural basis. That was fun, might tall with my next ward about what church is, a place for learning basics, and not for deep doctrine.

3: that’s really all I got for this week, I need to keep packing.  Sorry, but stuff gets busy as a missionary, so I’m going to have to get going.

I love you all, and will let ya know if my new address in Springfield. 

That is the main take-away from our meeting with an apostle.

10: Elder Cook came to the mission Because this doesn’t happen often, the whole mission gathered in Eugene. It was great seeing the missionaries that I haven’t seen in some time. But…

9: Standing for an hour on a stage with 151 missionaries can get very hot. In order to get a picture of the whole mission, all 151 missionaries packed onto a stage, and because we wanted to get one with Elder Cook, we stood up there for over an hour while he took his time eating lunch. I did get to chat for a while with everyone though. That was nice.

8: Just before the meeting, we ate at IHOP (for FREE) Because we got up very early for the ride to Eugene, we didn’t really have a breakfast. So we went to a place that I haven’t been since I was a young boy. As we ordered, some members came in, said hi, and sat down. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the members get up and talk to one of the waitresses. It didn’t take much to figure out that they just paid for our food. That was a blessing in disguise, because I have exhausted my eating out fund. I’ve allotted myself $20 for fast food, and I used that all up within the first week of the month. 

7: We have the first uninterrupted week of this transfer. This whole transfer has been weird, and nothing has been normal. Stuff has been postponed, we haven’t done a solid weekly planning session since the beginning of the transfer. Never thought I’d be complaining about that, but here I am. Luckily, this week will be normal, and uninterrupted. 

5: Elder Tinney’s Birthday!  None of you would know him, but it was his birthday on Friday. 

4: A sense of urgency That was the main thing that I took away from the meeting with Elder Cook. Which, to me signifies a couple of things. The work of gathering Zion is becoming increasingly important, because of the difficult times ahead. The only way people will be able to make it through these upcoming decades is with the knowledge of the Gospel. Two, Christ is coming. I will be able to see him come, I have felt this for a while, and have had it confirmed to me by the Spirit. Even now as I type this.

3: Hit gud scrub Last week, when we watched Coco at the Becks, Elder Haws game-shared Dark Souls with Kayden. He finished downloading it, and asked for Elder O’Bannons help. Elder O’Bannon knows that game like the back of his hand; best armor builds, enemy placement, parry timings, everything. Is he helped Kayden out with the eternal Dark Souls mantra. “Git Gud”

2: List of study material is growing  Whenever I have a question about something, and need to take it to the Lord, I just add it to my list of things to study. As I have been working through it, I have found that Gospel Library can help all questions. Anything from finding out the significance of the word father in the Hebrew language/culture to blacks in the priesthood. (Elder O’Bannon is still the reigning authority on that, cause he’s, well, you know… studied it.)

1: Sister Steele gave us a pound cake so dense, the boys at JPL used it as heatshield paneling on the space shuttle. The lady who does our (now only) weekend dinner calendar had us over for dinner, and she baked a cake so dense it bends light. Naturally she gave it to us to finish, cause the Steele’s are an old couple who couldn’t even finish her rice. Sorry I didn’t get a picture of this miracle material.

I love you all, and hope that the new Sunday schedule helps you come closer to having a relationship with Christ, rather than a testimony of the church. One is full of imperfect people, and the other makes those people perfect.

Look closely at who you love most, and evaluate.

Ya boi, Elder Berky 

Well, I would like to First say sorry about not sending an email last week. But Christmas Eve was kinda wack. Christmas was awesome though! Thank you all so much for what you sent me! The sweaters are great, and the blanket is really cool! Unfortunately I can’t really use the new pan, because it needs to get seasoned, and we don’t have an oven to season it in. Or even a hot plate that works well enough. Oh well, that’s fine.

10: We helped clean up Tim’s computer, and helped him set up his VR headset! After seeing how nasty his setup was, Elder O’Bannon spent the next 3 days deep cleaning Tim’s computer, and whole desk. We got to watch him play with a first gen VR game called GORN. It’s really funny to watch him just swing around yelling.

9: I filled up another notebook of twitter thoughts. So to help me cope with my lack of social media, I have 3 character-capped notebooks full of stuff that I’m going post on twitter. As you can expect, it’s all garbage.

8: Jim and Darla are feeling better, and shopping! We haven’t been able to meet with Jim and Darla for the past couple of weeks because they have been sick. However, they got better, and we ran into Darla while shopping!

7: We are going to see Elder Quinton L Cook!  On Friday, the whole mission is going to be gathering in Eugene to hear an Apostle of the Lord!!! I’m also going to see my mission buddies after other Zones!!

6: Deep Fry Night!!! Elder O’Bannon has a deep fryer, and so tonight we are going to be getting FAT!!!

5: I took my first trip the the Dry Cleaners, it was uneventful.4: We had 3 day splits with the Zone Leaders! On the days leading up to Christmas, and after we didn’t go back to our own beds for 3 days. I was running out of new clothing, it was great to get back to our Christmas decorated apartment! (Thanks Seevy’s!!!!)

3: I got Gay Cheerios for Christmas! From some members that we had breakfast with, (in the Zone leader’s ward) gave me these unicorn Cheerios that don’t even taste good. So they are gay.

2: I got a sore throat from all the Christmas sugar! So I got permission to take a nap to get better, and that, along with Vic’s Vapor rub helped me out.

1: I realized that I really don’t want to be in Leadership After hearing about some problems with the sisters in this zone, and in being a small part of the decisions there, I realized that I don’t want to be in Leadership.

I love you all, and hope you have made some good new years resolutions. 

Elder Berky 

Sorry i don’t have more pics, but my phone had been weird.

10: We had a 48hr exchange! We had a 48 hour exchange with cave junction. Usually it’s only 24 hours, but they came in to Grants Pass for a tire change, and it was interviews the next day, so they decided to stay! In our small, box on an apartment. It was good, we went out and did some tracting, and the other elders did plenty of contacting. It was super fun.

9: Christmas party was very rushed. The Christmas party was quite obviously rushed. There were also dad jokes aplenty courtesy of the Bishop. Luckily we left early because;

8: Chopping wood! We went over to the Becks house to chop wood. We almost go through their whole stack of wood, but we had to cut it a little early. We went to our Christmas party, stayed there for long enough, then came back to the Becks to keep chopping wood, and have Tim cook us up some nice cubed steaks.

7: On exchanges we played Axis and Allies, over the course of a couple days. So we were talking with Brother Seevy, our landlord about board games for some reason, and so we played Axis and Allies for a whole 2 days. That was not fun. We stayed up till 2 playing that.

6: Interviews We had interviews with President Orton, and it went really well, except everything was a whole hour late. 

5: Helped move a lady from the ZL’s ward That’s why this is coming out later than I wished, but that’s okay, we helped someone out.

4: We had a district council about Blacks in the Priesthood. Elder O’Bannon has studied the crap out of the whole issue of the Blacks in the Priesthood. So that was really cool. Putting it really simply; Everyone was racist back then, and hated the church even more for treating black people well. So if the church kept treating black people well, then the church might not have survived because of people’s hate and anger.

3: Crockpots are easy I made one of the soups that could be done in the crockpot and it was really good. But no one wanted to try it. That was sad. But I got to enjoy all of it.

2: Morning basketball Very fun, especially because the church is right next to us. I might be getting really good at basketball.

1: Christmas is coming!!!!! Christmas is going to be really fun! We are going to be watching Incredibles 2!!!! We are also going to be getting a ton of ribs at the Becks!! Smoked Prime Rib, here we come!!!!

Love you all, merry Christmas, remember the reason for the season, but more importantly, he’s the reason for life.