Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Hello all,

Well this last week was a hard one, and one that I had never really thought would come. So Thursday was Pres Belnap’s last zone conference as the Pres of the WKM(Washington Kennewick Mission). It was really kinda surreal. The whole time I just kept thinking to myself, well now what am I supposed to do, I mean really it’s taken me 18 months to get this one figured out how the heck am I supposed to do the same thing with this new one. Well I guess I’ll just have to deal with it because I don’t think that mission presidents can get extensions and plus he has already served for 3 years, it’s just hard to imagine the mission without him.

Then on Sunday I finally attended the ward here in Longview I have been out in Cathlamet the last two weeks to help get the work moving a little quicker, Elder Romero struggles with them because he gets flustered and so he had me take care of branch council and what not in his place.

Longview is awesome though, we had a return Sister missionary speak along with her mother and younger sister, just the way that it got assigned I guess, but they all gave such powerful talks and the spirit was so strong.

So I don’t remember if I told you but we have 2 Hispanic people on date for July 3rd and we are super excited, they have been coming to church for the last year and just never were really challenged to get married and well we did, and so they did and now they are getting ready for their baptism, and we are really excited.

Also I talked to Elder Petersen over in Milton last night and he told me that Debbie and Chance O'Neal are on date to be baptized on July 13th which also makes me really happy, the ward there is really starting to take a hold of missionary work, that will be 4 baptisms this year.

Oh this brings me to another thing. So at the end of the zone conference Pres and Sis Belnap gave all of us a hug and Pres talked to each of us a little bit, it was really kinda neat, but he told me something that I had always wondered about. Almost all of my mission, with the exception of Vancouver, I have been in what he called pioneer areas, basically areas that are in a slump and that have had some rough missionaries in the past. I had always questioned why I was put into slow areas but I guess now I know, Pres knew that I could just touch the hearts of the people to help get them back in a missionary mode, the biggest being Milton. Ya so that was nice to be told. And now I know kinda understand why a lot of the things that have happened, have happened.

Well that’s about all for now. Everything is going good here and the sun is shining when I need it to. I love all of you so much and hope all is well.

Elder Couper Millar