David & LaReita 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.