Month: March 2019

So the distance between p-days was short, but the days have seemed very long. Don’t know why, we have been pretty busy.

3: The Temple!! After being up here for 10 months I got to see the Portland temple in person! It was great, after our session we came outside to take pictures, and we saw Wendell, a guy from LA who just walked in, wanting to learn about the temple. Guess what we do all the time?? Learn people about the gospel! 

2: Chatted with a comic store owner for an hour  His name was Nick, and had a sweet SHAZAM! Tattoo. I asked him about it and we just spiraled into a big old conversation about marvel comic events, funko pop toys, the Captain Marvel movie, and anything under the nerdy sun. He wasn’t down to hear the gospel, but after a day of nothing, it was good to just have a nice conversation. 

1: Could give a talk on missionary work in my sleep.I wasn’t asleep, but I did give a talk about missionary work Sunday. It went well, only a couple of minutes, and here are my notes;

Missionaries kind of have it easy when bringing up the gospel. We stand out, people expect us to tall about it, but you members are just regular people, to bring up the gospel can be awkward.

Don’t see it as an awkward thing, see it as offering your friend a glass of orange juice. 

Us missionaries have pretty high standards, raising standards, elder Russel M Ballard said: But as we raise the level of expectation for the performance of our missionaries, we must also raise the level of expectation for the performance of all of the members of the Church in fulfilling our missionary duties. We need your help, brothers and sisters, to support and assist our missionaries in finding and baptizing many more of our Heavenly Father’s children. We need you to watch over, protect, and inspire the missionaries, who are servants of the Lord. If the standard is to be raised, it is raised for all of us. We must be more faithful. We must be more spiritually in tune. We must prepare ourselves to assist the missionaries in finding those of our Heavenly Father’s children who will embrace the message of the Restoration. Remember, brothers and sisters, we’re not marketing a product. We’re not selling anything. We’re not trying to impress anyone with our numbers or our growth. We are members of the restored Church of Jesus Christ, empowered and sent forth by the Lord Himself to find, nourish, and bring safely into His Church those who are seeking to know the truth. Viewed from that eternal perspective, what we are to do seems so simple and clear, but I know that member missionary work can be challenging and sometimes frightening. Mosiah 17- story of Abinidi, he didn’t know Alma listened. Planted a seed however.

I’m sorry if it doesn’t make all that much sense , it did when I gave it, ýou know, stringing it all together and such. 

Love you all, here’s our photo shoot that we had at the Portland temple. 

Sorry for not getting to ya on Monday this week, but P-day was moved to Thursday today, on account of a temple trip. I’m really looking forward to the Portland temple! Anyways, let’s get into it!!

7: But can yours do THIIIISS??? As we left a good lesson with Todd, we saw a nice gaming chair sitting out in someone’s yard. We went up to the house and asked if it was abandoned, it was so we took it. We were kinda far away from our apartment, so just wheeling it back wasn’t the best idea. But we were close to a member, and shared a spiritual message about the plan of Salvation. Then we asked for a favor. Now we have a chair that is in need of repair, some screws, duct tape and the removal of the arms. 

6: Sacrifice brings forth the blessings of Heaven Sacrificing a few minutes of dinner led to a good night. We talked with a former Atheist, and then with a cashier who got kicked out of the marines for medical reasons and worked with missionaries to help lift his spirits!  

5: No hãblo Éspanõl We went on exchanges with the Spanish elders and I got a taste of Spanish work! It’s a lot of racial profiling, and me being confused. You know, one semester of me not paying attention in Spanish class didn’t really help, but I picked up a few things. There was this one guy who saw a red devil dog, a lady who had 3 children (Wednesday worked best for her) and a woman gardening who really liked the First Vision. 

4: Burn Pile! We helped out the Birdsalls again this week, more gathering branches, tossing them into a pile, then Molotov’d it. Afterwards they fed us a light lunch and talked with us about poetry. Brother Birdsall wrote a little book of his poems and gave one to each of us! (I’ll have to use those when I get home

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3: Call us up DC! We got bored one night, and started to plan out a DC movie universe. Wrote an outline, and started scripting a Clark Kent: Superman movie. It’s not fantastic, but it’s fun. 

2: Exchanges with the zone leaders! Always fun, especially when one of them is your previous companion. We tracted a good amount, and met some interesting people. A nice lady who didn’t need help moving, a guy named Bill, a very humble and rich man named Jarrett (super solid), and a man who thought we were Jehovah’s witnesses for a good 20+ minutes. 

1: I need to learn more about cars We have talked about cars to sooo many people, this couple of guys who were working on their Ford Focus who were interested in the temple. We taught them about the book of Mormon, and compared it to their ford focus that they were working on.

I love you all, and want you to know that Christ loves you as well. 

5: People have really been down to chat this week! We have had plenty of door-step conversations that lasted for quite a while! Which is a good thing, because we talk with people, but a bad thing because it takes up all of our tracting time. Our nights have gone something like this; Door 1: No answer Door 2: Took a pamphlet Door 3: No answer Door 4: Talk for a couple hours about life stuff. It’s nice to talk to people and be seen as human, but at the same time, we haven’t been finding as many people as we did last transfer.

4: We did not have a dinner Sunday night, so we had one with the Spanish Elders! Elder Griffith made some good pasta, and we played a game of Bible trivia that they found at a good will. (The Old Testament questions were the hardest) 

3: Elder Randall without his meds is nuts! Because Elder Randall’s ADHD meds need to be taken on a full stomach, he decided to skip them on fast Sunday. Because his meds take a day or so to kick in, he was going nuts for a couple of days, which is what the video is. He’s fine now, but I was really worried to be tracting with him for a bit!

2: Service is picking up branches for hours on end!! A member in our ward had a ton of fallen branches due to the snow from a couple of weeks ago. So the zone leaders and us spent forever picking up sticks.

1: We saw a door chicken! As we were tracting, we saw a house that was being worked on, so even though we knew that no one was living there, we knocked it anyways. Right after knocking, Elder Randall noticed a chicken sitting in the screen door. He got scared, and I don’t blame him, after all, we weren’t near any farmland. A chicken is the last thing I would expect to see. (pic attached)

I love you all, and encourage you to read Alma 36:12-21. Repentance is rough to get through, but the joy that you feel is so much better.

Ya boi, 

Elder James Berky

Due to the snow, our transfers were delayed by 3 days! People were packed up for 3 days, and living out of their suitcases. Elder Tarazon was not happy about that. I doubt anyone was happy about that.

5: Elder Randall enters the fray!! My new companion is Elder Randall. We have served around each other before, but not been companions. So it was cool to know the guy that I was going to be living with beforehand. He’s always ready to go out and talk to people, which is a good thing and a bad thing. Good because we get to talk to a lot of people, bad because he insists that we knock doors even after 8:30 (Nobody will talk to us, because it’s too late) 

4: I listened to “Conversion of a Catholic” while waiting for the transfer van. If you have not listened to this talk, or even heard of it, I highly recommend you do. It’s about an hour long, but it is a fantastic story. 

3: Talked with a guy, Mark, for a few hours to help him stay awake As we were out contacting we saw this dude who was grinding some rust off of a trailer. We went up to him and asked what he was working on. We found out that his name was Mark, he used to be a scrapper, but when that became an unprofitable business, he became a truck driver. He had a been up since the past day, just working on stuff, and we chatted with him about all sorts of things. (Who knew that LASIK surgery involved hooks??)

2: There’s a reason those ribs were $10 While grocery shopping (on a Thursday, how odd.) Elder Randall spotted a rack of ribs for only $10!!! It was a pretty good size too, so he didn’t even think when he snagged it. So we gave it a Good Ol’ Rub, (

?)and marinated it overnight. Come district council, when everyone came back with Arby’s, or Subway, we were sitting fine with a rack of ribs. As the prayer was finished we dug in, and found why it was ten bucks. These ribs had sooo much gristle and fat, there was barely any meat to speak of. Sure, had we BBQ’d it, it would have been fine, but because we could only roast it in the oven, that fat and gristle didn’t fall off quite right. 

1: It’s nice to just have a gospel conversation. Often times, when we get into Gospel conversations with people, it’s not really a conversation but a debate. I get really tired of this, of making sure that I watch my words so that I don’t say something that people will misconstrue (If that’s how you spell it) So just talking about the nature of God and his love, is really refreshing. Even if we don’t end up baptizing them, we let somebody know what it is we believe, and we know what they believe. I guess it’s nice to be seen as a person and not “One of those Missionaries”I am very thankful for those opportunities, and I make sure that my Father knows I’m thankful. IN fact, that’s one of our companionship goals, to pray for thanks more often! I invite you all to do the same. After all, D&C 59:21 says “In nothing doth man offend God, save he confess his hand in all things” God is really not a dude that you want to offend, so show him you’re thankful!I love you, and I miss you…HHHHHHHHHNNNNNNNNGGGGGgggGGGGG

Ya boi

Elder Berky