OREGON!!!!!!

8/1/16

Hello everyone!!

I'm in Oregon! Oh my goodness!!! I love here so much. I'm in Bend in the Cascade Crest ward. I'm in a tiny little apartment with my companion. We have a car so that's nice, but I don't get my Ipad for 5 weeks because I have to go through training first. So Wenesday morning, 3am, we got up and brought our bags down the three flights of stairs, that was rough. Then we checked in at the travel office to officially check out of the MTC. The Elders were so great and helped out a ton with our bags. We took a ten minute bus ride to the train station. Cool thing, we saw three deer in the middle of Provo just walking down the road. So we got to the train station and the Elders loaded our bags and we went to the upper level. On the train, a guy that works for the church magazine talked to us about how the training manuals and Preach My Gospel are made. And he told us about how important we are to the church. He was pretty awesome and it was nice to have something to distract me from my motion sickness. After that ride ended, we got onto another train that took us right to the airport. It was murder trying to get all my bags into the airport because some genius decided to put cobblestone along the whole front of the airport. Thank you so much Jennifer for getting me bags with four wheels! I was like the only Sister who was able to take all of her bags in without help. So we finally get into the airport and get our tickets and then in the line to check our luggage I was just praying so hard that my bags wouldn't be overweight. Miracle!! They were overweight when I weighed them at the MTC and the were just fine at the airport!! Yay!! So I got to call home at our gate and that was the first time I cried since I got to the MTC. Happy tears though :) So then I had my first plane ride. That was fine, I did good, but I got motion sick, even on medicine. When we got off the plane, we were immediately hit by the humidity so that was cool. It was dark and cloudy :) President and Sister Tateoka met us there and got to know us as we grabbed our luggage and waited for the Assistants to the President to get there with the trailer for our stuff. They took us from the airport to the Portland, which was under construction so we just took pictures outside. We ate lunch on the way to the beach. They took us to see the Haystack Rock which is the symbol of our mission. We did an awesome devotional where we wrote our fears about our mission on a paper and then like the Anti-Nephi-Lehis we burried our fears (instead of swords), giving them to the Lord. It was great, our shoes were full of sand haha. So one of the Elders got sick on the drive there :( We had to pull over for him to throw up and I gave him some medicine to help. I felt so bad for him. After the beach, we went to the mission home and ate dinner. That was delicious, especially after eating cafeteria food for the last three weeks. We got to know everyone while President did interviews. By the way, President and Sister Tateoka are so great! They are just so happy and kind and excited to be apart of this mission. They are new here too so we are all learning together. 

Thursday Morning we got up and went to the Stake Center where our trainers were waiting for us with posters :) It was awesome, they sang Called To Serve as we walked inside. We ate breakfast, did some training, and then finally we got our trainers!! Sister Densley is my trainer! She is great, she is always so happy and full of energy. I love her. We got to eat lunch together and then we got our luggage and bedding. Sister Densley and I had to wait a long time at the church because we were getting picked up by a member. We helped clean while we waited. When our ride got there, we loaded up and were on our way. The drive from Newberg (where the mission home is) is three hours from Bend. Oh and all of the roads in Oregon are extremely curvy and winding. Needless to say, I get sick a lot. I slept most of the ride to Bend so that I wouldn't get sick. We got dropped off at our car around 5:45pm and had to go straight to dinner with a member from there. After dinner, we took my bags to the apartment and then went out to try to contact people, but had no luck so we went home. 

I wish I had enough time to tell about everything that has happened, but I don't so I'm just going to try to cover the miracles and stuff like that. So there are more less-active members in our ward than active members, which makes me so sad. Our biggest goal is to get people back to church right now. Very few people are interested in hearing our message, the rest of the people are never home or available. We were able to set up an appointment with someone for this week so I hope he doesn't cancel on us like he did on Sunday. I got to go sing to old people and that was awesome :D it was like going home. So I can't tell details, but there are two people that we visited this week that were going through really rough trials with their families and at the end of each visit they told us that they know God sent us at the right time because we completely changed the Spirit in their home and calmed the arguments. I know that is ver vague, but I don't want to disclose anyone's personal matters. 

So the last thing I'm going to right is my favorite thing that happened this week. It was a miracle!! So it was Sunday night, we finished dinner with a member and we got in the car to go contact. Normally we pray when we get to someones house, before we go knock on the door, but I asked Sister Densley if we could pray before we left plus when we get there. So we prayed that the family we were going to go see would be there, specifically the mom so we could go in. After the prayer, we drove there and then paryed again. We were quickly discussing what we wanted tot say to them, when the mom pulled into the driveway!! We got so excited and they let us in! So we were just talking, getting to know them, and I got to play with their puppy :D So their TV was on this whole time and I was trying to think of a way to ask them to turn it off so that we could teach them, when the dad told them to turn the TV off so "the Sisters can teach us their message." I got so excited when he said that!!! So they turned it off and gathered around Sister Densley's Ipad to watch a video on Obedience to the Ten Commandments. The spirit was so strong!!! After the video, we discussed their thoughts and I felt like I should ask them if they had the Gospel Library app on their phones. When I was telling them about it, their fourteen year old son pulled out his phone and downloaded it :D So we challenged them to read the talk that the video was based off of. Then, the dad goes, "You know, something that we haven't done, probably since we were baptized, and I would love to do again, is pray together." 0.0 What?! Thats so great!! I was thinking he was talking about like after we left but then he looked at me and asked me if I would say it. YES!!!!! We gathered together and I started to pray. Through this whole lesson I have just been feeling so much love for these people and I could tell how ready the boys were for the gospel to be apart of their lives again. Because of the spirit being so strong and the love I have for them, I started to get emotional during the prayer. We asked if we could come again and they were more than willing to have us back :D We left their house on a spiritual high!! Oh my goodness, I have been praying so hard since then and I will continue to pray that they will come back to church and strengthen their relationship with God. THE CHURCH IS SO TRUE AND I LOVE BEING A MISSIONARY!!!!!!!!

Sister MacKay

P.S. My new address is: 2500 NW Regency St. #184H Bend, OR 97703