Hello everyone

That’s interesting to hear about bro Yager he seems pretty cool now he’s funny and his son James is our bishop now. oh and almost everyone here knows the Chilsons which is kind of cool and it was a little weird to have people tell me oh the Chilsons said you your coming. Oh and the reason why my Facebook status updated was because there was a youth in my last area that did it he thought it would be funny to see what everyone would say about. The biggest difference is the size of the ward we have like 5 or 7 active families and a huge area and the area at least Scott has been tracted at least 10 times this year so we are now trying to work though members. And i do like this area lot it nice even though the ward is small we get feed every day but the bad thing is i might gain weight from it. and i think the thing that i would love to be able to to do is to trian a new missionary but Elder Arend has consider me as his second trainer so that pretty cool it’s still weird to think how long I’ve been out it just weird because I remember when i just came out it seemed like the mission would last forever and now it all of a sudden it doesn’t seem like it been two years and that’s been the hardest part but for them most part I really don’t think about just when ask how long I’ve been out when I got here at first I would tell 21 months then I started saying awhile then Elder Arend would 21 months but I’m working hard and trying not to think about it.

Elder Birch

Hello everyone

Scott City is pretty awesome it’s really small and we cover a lot of little towns around it as well and it was weird to hear people say that they got emails for Sister Chilson and the weirder part there’s a member in the ward his name is Tom Yager and he was down in Anaconda NM when dad was down there and I think they said he was a scout master over dad or something that was really weird even he was surprised and the best part of all this is the previous companionship has been work hard to gain the ward trust because back in the other mission this area was known as a dead area so no one did anything and my comp has already been able to tell how much the ward has been trust us more since I got here.

Oh yea my comps name is Elder Arand he’s from Newtown Connecticut he just got done being trained so he’s been out for as long as I have left which is really weird

My address

207 E Park ln Apt 2F

Scott City, KS 67871

I’m excited to be able to serve here hopefully for the rest of my mission

Elder Birch

Hello everyone

so I’m getting transferred this Wednesday out to Garden City to a town called Scott City when I checked it said it was a population of about 3.5 thousand in a 2.2 square miles area and it looks like the next closest town is about a 30 to 40 min drive so its pretty small town and it will also be weird because my whole mission I’ve been told that this area was outside my mission and now I get to go out there 😀 Elder Hudrlik isn’t too excited to take over the area but hell do fine. that’s great to hear that you did send them off because I’ve been out for about two days now I’m really excited to go out there because I like to country feel of areas and it seems like this area is really country. Oh and my camera died so I’ll send you some pic next week. Oh and the bishop is sad to see me go which is cool well that’s all this week

Elder Birch

Today is the Kansas, Wichita mission has officially started yay

that the most exciting thing that has happened so far last week we have trying a lot of less actives and unknown members on our ward roster trying to get to know everyone and cleaning up the roster we have found that a lot of people have either moved or the houses don’t exist so it has been good in a since but other than that not too much else has happened and we haven’t been told about thing things we could on the internet yet so well see when it happens.  The heat sucks but it’s not so bad right now. we have a car every other week, today we are going bowling, there’s a zoo on the west side of Wichita and a couple of museums and that’s about it…

Oh and I don’t understand what that temple chart is saying?? What do the dots and colors represent?

Elder Birch

Hello everyone

The temple trip was awesome we all rode busses up to Kansas City so that was fun too. but right when got home Elder Hudrlik and our district leader got sick so Elder Landroche and I were together for basically two days while they got better then when Elder Hudrlik started to get better I got a little bit of what he had so at the end of the week we weren’t able to do much. And that was about it

oh and if you send thing to the mission offices you need to start sending them to the address 7011 E 13th N Wichita, KS 67206

Elder Birch

(from Pete: I work with Elder Landroche’s father and Danelle knows his mother)

Hello everyone

Thanks for those pictures I can’t believe that Tim and Jeremy are already home. We will be staying in the same place. and on tomorrow we will be having a temple trip to the Kansas city temple with everyone that will be in the new mission that is very exciting it will take all day so that is very exciting nothing to exciting this we had to take the man we had on date off of date because he is still smoking but is working on quitting it has been really amazing to see how much he is improving mentally he isn’t having nearly as many random outbreaks then when we first met him and he is always introducing himself to the other members trying to get to know them so that has also been great.

Elder Birch

Hello everyone,

this week was alright I had some pretty bad allergies so we weren’t able to do a whole lot and I will be in the Kansas Wichita mission and we are going to have a big zone conference with all the zones in our mission that will be in the new mission so that will be fun Elder Hudrlik is pretty cool I think I said it last time but he’s been out 18 months so just 3 months less than me and this is his fourth area and I’m his 7th companion so he hasn’t moved around a lot or and that many comps and this is his first time in Kansas and all his previous area will be in the other mission which he is a little bummed about. Oh and President Keyes wants us to avoid tracting now the best week can and trying using the wards now so we haven’t done too much tracting. Well there wasn’t anything exciting this week so that’s all I guess

Elder Birch

Hello, this week has been good Elder Shurtz got transferred to Warensburg and my new comps name is Elder Hudrlik pronounced hurd lick he’s been out 18 months so just two transfer behind me and he is from California. Nothing too exciting happened this week except the guy we have on date ends up to be schizo but he is really nice and wants to learn more so we’ll see how that goes other than that not much has happened well write you all next week

Elder Birch

this week is transfers so elder Shurtz will probably be getting transferred but we’ll see what happens and I still don’t really know which mission I’ll be in but I’m pretty sure that I’m going to be in the Wichita mission this week we were on bikes and it got pretty hot and humid so that was fun and I got an awesome “missionary” tan from riding so much and it was almost always against the wind somehow. and while we were out on Thursday we stopped by this Mexican store so elder Shurtz could see if they had this one kind of candy and when we parked our bikes this guy came up to us and asked if we were giving out any reading materials we told him yea and gave him a Book of Mormon and a restoration pamphlet and was able to get his address and a return appointment and earlier today was when our appointment was and he welcomed us in we tought him the restoration and at the end of our lesson we invited him to be baptized he accepted it is for the 29th of June so we will see how that goes . It feels like it’s going to be a fun summer because it has rained and snowed a lot more than last year and it is already feeling pretty humid. Well that’s all for this week write you all next week

Elder Birch

Hello everyone

well i survived my first tornado it happened Sunday night we just got back to our place for lunch then we get a text saying that a tornado warning is in effect and to check local news for more info well we couldn’t check local news so we just waited to hear the tornado sirens it started once and only for a minuet be we were getting ready to go into the shelter our apartments have then it stopped so we just thought oh well let’s just see what everyone else is doing and some were walking to the shelter and other were just hang out outside looking up and the sky which was starting to get stormy and grayish greenish color to it then the tornado  sirens went off again so we thought might as well go in and we were do there for about 45 minutes and when we went up it was still raining pretty hard but the storm had passed and was heading up northeast. Our car had tiny dents from hail but other than that it was fine. but there were some other elders north of us about 4 miles or so and they got hit pretty hard there front window was broken their car had golf ball size dents in it and the sides of their buildings looked like it was hit by a bunch of pellets from a gun it was crazy to see the damage and there was at least one touch down and it was only an F2 so that was pretty exciting this week.

oh and earlier this week when we left a member that we visit every week this guy yelled over to us saying “hey elders” we went up to him and he told us that he had served a mission back in 08 and now he just moved in to that apartment complex we asked if he still needed any help moving in he said no but his roommate needs some help so later we came back to help and as we were heading over there we weren’t sure if he was active because of the way he seemed and when we were helping his roommate move in we learned that he really hasn’t been active since he had joined the Air Force and he “just happened” to move right above our high priest group leader. After we helped get everything moved in we invited him to church and he told us that he hasn’t been for a long time but he does want to help out with the scouting program and maybe that will help we’ll see how it goes

Elder Birch

Here’s some pics right before we went into the shelter

Then when we got back to our apartment

The other elder’s window and some of the hail after about an hour or so