July 5, 2011
Wow, this week was absolutely crazy. The 4th of July in Seaside was pretty intense and a lot of cool things happened. It was packed and people from all over the country have traveled here for vacation and to see the fireworks last night.
President Dyches left last week and he was a really awesome President and now it’s time to make our new our new President, Charles Morby and his wife feel welcome in the OPM. They are from Saint George, Utah and arrived here a couple days ago and we all have interviews with the President this coming Friday. We are going to have 5 minutes to tell him about ourselves so he can get to know us. He seems like a really awesome guy so far because he let us stay out until 12:00pm for the 4th of July yesterday and the latest I’ve stayed out so far on my mission has been like 9:30pm. So that was pretty awesome and watching the fireworks was crazy. People were setting off their own illegal fireworks on the beach and it was packed. So it looked like a war zone and I have got some pretty good videos of it to send home later. I’ll tell you more about the 4th in a little bit.
That's cool that your Spanish is improving Dad, we will rock out in Chile one day and maybe we can go visit my boy Elder Rangel in Mexico too. That’s cool that the UFC is taking off more, I met a guy out here that is trying to get me to join his Jujitsu club but I told him that I didn’t have any time ha-ha. He's a pretty cool guy and I might show up on a P-day and roll around on the mat for a little bit. I'm getting in better shape cause I’m working out with this isometric bar thing that works out your whole body.
Well let me just tell you a few things about what has happened this past week. The Seaside Ward was packed this Sunday with all the tourists and it was awesome. The whole building was full of members and I shared my testimony about how Mom came to this country from Chile 32 years ago and how it has been such a blessing that she came. Isn’t it amazing how the actions of a few can impact the lives of so many people in a positive way? Now I have the opportunity to help others come unto Christ just like the missionaries in Chile helped Mom’s family way back in 1967 and lives continue to change. By the way, I took some money out of my new debit card because I just ordered the new OPM tee shirts I told you about and I’m selling them to the guys in my district at cost. They look really awesome and I’ll send some home to you so you can rep the OPM.
We hit a road block with Juliana last week and it was pretty sad. We went to go visit her and she started smoking again. We understood it was difficult for her to quit after 55 years so we were sympathetic. Anyway, when I told her that we would have to move her baptismal date back a bit until she could quit smoking, she slammed the door on us and told us not to come back. It was sad but I had to be real with her. We will continue to pray for her and try to help her is she lets us come back again. Our other investigators seem to have been pretty busy as a result of the 4th of July so we didn’t really get many of them to progress to much this week. We did teach this new lady we found street contacting named Heather and invited her to be baptized. She accepted and then we found out that she lives in the other Elder’s area in Astoria. Well, we are all playing for the same team so I’m excited to see how she progresses up there. I love the work here and things are going great. We have hit a little slump but nothing faith in the Lord and hard work can't fix.
The 4th of July was pretty crazy because it was our P-day and we were asked not to tract because most of the people out here would be wasted. So we spent the night with members and it was way sweet. We had a Ward breakfast in the morning and then went to the Seaside Parade! There we saw some awesome floats including bubble man and Brother Symonds Hat float. After the Parade I met bubble man and asked to take a picture with him and he is some 60 year old guy that is decked out in all tie dye clothes. He is a super hippy and he goes around town riding his bike blowing bubbles ha-ha. I got a picture with him and I will send it to you next week. After that we went 4 wheeling on the beach with a member and then set up this huge bonfire for the night on the beach. After that we went to Bruce Smiths house where he played the Jimi Hendrix version of the Star Spangled banner. After that we went to the bonfire and watched the fireworks for the rest of the night. It was weird having pretty much the whole day free but I guess it was a well needed rest. This week was pretty cool and the members here are so awesome.
Any funny things happened this week? Well we went over to Brother Symonds house last week and he showed us a float he was making for the 4th of July parade. It was a hat that can do 360 turns and rides up to like 40 miles an hour. It was pretty funny to see him riding around in a little hat that he made ha-ha.
Well I have got to go,
Love you guys,
Elder Payne
