Working hard and serving well!

Jared’s Mission June 4, 2017

It’s been quite a while since I have made an entry.  Everything is going well.  We have moved into our new house.  It’s very nice and large.  I am no longer working at the Bike Shop because they hired a new employee to work there full time.  They couldn’t get the larger working area they wanted so they had to cut back on volunteers to make room for the employees.  I am still waiting to hear for another opportunity to fulfill my Friday assignment.

We moved into our new home in April and I like that we have more space to do things and have big group gatherings.  We have a shop area that we have set our ping pong table up as well as a pool table and other fun things to do there.  This move put us into a new ward and Stake.  I have still been going to the Forest Grove Young Single Adult ward, but when Garrett gets married in July, I will transfer to my family’s home ward. 

I still love my missionary work.  The one change that is coming is happening at the DI (Deseret Industries).  Two of the job coaches are switching places.  One is coming to run the clothing department and the other is going to move out and run the sales floor.  I still like talking to my co-workers.  We’ve had a few new employees join our group and I’ve liked getting to know them.

They are remodeling the Bishop’s Storehouse all this last week so it should be different when I go in tomorrow.   I didn’t have to go to the DI or Storehouse last week since they were closed on Memorial Day, but I still fulfill the meat orders and normal food orders, if we finish the meat orders.  One of the other volunteers had his last day there a couple of weeks ago, as his mission ended.  He was an older gentleman.

I am still enjoying my time at the Family History Center on Tuesdays.  I do indexing and find names and dates of births, deaths and marriages etc.  This helps families put together their genealogy and helps them find names of their ancestors who need their temple work done.  I like working with all the people at the Family History Center.

I have been going with the new missionaries from my family’s ward on Thursdays.  We have been doing service projects for the past 3 weeks.  We have helped a man with yard work, stack wood for the upcoming winter, move rocks to make more parking space for him.  We also pulled weeds for a couple getting ready to sale their house.  Last week we helped paint some of their house.  I have liked being able to do these service projects with the missionaries.

I have been practicing with my Special Olympic Track team.  We had our Regional meet yesterday.  I got third place in the 200 run and First place in the Long jump!   One of our relay team members for the 4x100 wasn’t able to come, so we had to scratch.  It was a lot of fun and good weather for it.

In my scripture reading I have learned from another author who wrote a Book of Mormon Study Help manual that the way Joseph Smith wrote about the destruction in Ancient America is proof that he could have not written the Book of Mormon, instead translating it, due to the lack geological activity where he lived at the time, as well as the books that he would have had access to, along with the little formal education he received, would not have given him the ability to write about such things.  It helped my testimony of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.  I’m thankful that this opportunity came to me to serve in this capacity because it would have been more difficult for me to serve away from home in the typical mission setting.

I have 5 months left to serve and I will put all my heart and soul into the service of the Lord and my ward and community!

Elder Markham

JJ, Elder Gordon, Elder Beckstead getting ready to do some service.