Monday, June 3, 2013

Goodbye Salem (See ya soon) Hello Bend

First matter of business, I got transferred and i am now in Bend Oregon. A missionary who was serving  in the ward i am in had to go home for some surgery, and some visa waiters in other parts of the mission got their visas, so there had to be a mini mid transfer. My new companions name is Elder Richard.  

He was just serving in Corvallis, so he is new here to. The missionary who had to go home for surgery had only been here for two weeks and his companion had been here for a while, and they did not have anything going so they decided to put Elder Richards and in here new. Elder Richards is great. I have served around him a lot and we were already pretty good friends. He is from Sandy, and, fun fact, his dad the owner of Creamies ( the ice cream bar company.) to bad there are not creamies here in Oregon or i am sure would always be well stocked. It was hard to leave my last area, even though i had only been there for 10 days. I really loved being with Elder Thompson and Elder Raulston, but they will do just fine with out me. I have always wanted to serve in Bend so its exiting. I will only be here for four week, at the end of this month i will be getting transferred to Newberg, for when the new mission opens. Another exiting this is that I am not with the Zone Leaders this time around, so i pretty much get to be normal missionary for 4 weeks! 

Bend is pretty much the Park City Oregon. It is 3 hours east of Eugene, and high altitude. And like Park City it has a Nike outlet! to think i have been serving in the State of Nike for 21 months and have  yet to see a Nike outlet, but the time has finally come, and we are going today!

I am really exited to work this ward for these four weeks. We talked to the Ward Mission Leader yesterday and asked him if there were any investigators or less actives that the missionaries have been working with that we should visit today his response was "its kinda like 9 11, we are at ground zero." Elder Richards is a great and very skilled missionary. I am exited to work hard and get things going here.

For the past few months i have been thinking a lot about how sometimes as missionaries, we get caught up with being good at missionary things and maybe we dont put a lot of focus on being a Christ like missionary. In Preach my Gospel there is a whole chapter about developing Christ like attributes, and we don't use that chapter nearly as much as we should. I have tried focusing developing those attributes and what it means to be a Christ like missionary. What a wonderful thing that Christ showed us a perfect example of how to act and how to be, and then commanded us to be like him. As i have focused on being a Christ like missionary, i find myself using the "that's just the way i am" excuse much less. In a way it has been very overwhelming to to try to gain those attributes because in order to do it you need to recognize your weaknesses, and i am so far away from being completely Christ like, but i think I am making progress, and i hope we all are. Its crazy how it really takes a focus to gain those attributes if we don't think about or set goals towards it, we are not going to change. Years can go by without any change in character, but if we use those years, and focus on becoming more like Christ we make a lot of progress. I hope that anyone that reads with will find a Preach my Gospel turn to Chapter 6 (Christ like attributes) and pick one to work on, i don't think there is anything more meaningful we can do.
I love you all

Elder Covey
--Fearless Via Faith

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