Letter from July 24 Well, Im here, just chillin here in Walla Walla.  First week out in the field. I LOVE IT HERE. When I first heard that I was being sent to Walla Walla I thought it was just little farm town, which it kinda is.. but it isn't very small. Our area covers the entire city of Walla Walla and College Place combined. There is a HUGE population of Hispanics here because they are all field workers. Its nuts. The first two days we were pretty chill, We flew into Pasco at about 10 am, met President and Sister White and then headed to the Mission Home. We sat there all day waiting for Interviews with President. During that time we read a bunch of talks and the rules and everything. Nothing really exciting happened until later when we went out to work. I went out into the streets with Elder Munoz and we talked to this one fella for about 35 minutes about the Book of Mormon, I introduced it to him and then bore my testimony about it. It was a good thing to start out with...

July  18  Elder Cole sager arrived safely in Kennewick Washington.  The mission office sent  an email with pics attached. We  have yet to get an email from him, his Pday is on Monday and cant wait to hear from him.   Attached pics of him and President And Sister White. President and Sister White and Elder Sager  Incoming Missionaries new to the Washington Kennewick Mission  Elder and Sister Rasband and Elder Andy Sager (Coles dad)  1988 in the Canada Montreal Mission. Notice he is wearing the same tie that Cole is wearing in his pic with his mission president. 

Letter from July 15 What up what up its Elder Sager here, wowowow, i can not believe that I have already been out for 6 weeks. It has flown by so fast. The days here in the MTC feel like weeks, but the weeks feel like days, It is nuts how fast it has gone by. I feel like I was thrown out of the truck just yesterday. And now I am packing my bags again to get ready to leave here at 4:50 on Tuesday morning to hop on a plane and head out of Utah. ~A few of my highlights from the MTC: ~I threw up 10 times in the first week (I am better now) ~My companion passed out twice in one day (also better) ~We got stuck in an elevator for about 5 minutes ~I shook Elder Bednar's hand (he is SOO short) and listened to an amazing talk by him ~I have been outside the gates about 12 times (half of them were for me) and one of the times we took a 10 minute drive to the chyropractors because my companion broke his back when he was 11 and has been going since. Anyways, when we were there, about...

Letter from July 8 Hey homies... I GOT MY TRAVEL PLANS YESTERDAY!!!! I AM OUT OF HERE. WOOT WOOT. I leave here at 4:50 am on July 18 and my flight leaves at 9:30. I am so glad to be leaving the MTC and getting to the field, but I also wish I could have like 3 more weeks here to learn Spanish... but I mean I can hold myself with out the extra time. Guys, I seriously love Spanish. We are learning about all the grammar and it is blowing my mind and I am so confused hahah. But I am doing my best and learning slowly.  There isn't anything really exciting going on rn other than I am leaving Utah soon. YESS. I am so excited. I am going to be in Washington in a short 10 days. So this week has dragged on, every single day has felt like a week and the week feels like a month. 15 of the older elders in the zone left we picked up 36 more. It is crazy. There are some really cool kids like this one from Finland, he speaks perfect English and loves motorcycles and cars so we are...

Letter from July 1 How's it goin? This email is going to be super short because. Haven't had much time at all to do anything. I just barely got back from cleaning the temple for the last 4 hours and that was AWESOME. We took down the curtains in all of the Ordinance rooms and took down some lockers because they are redoing the wallpaper on the entire first floor. I got to go into the celestial room and look around and walk around the whole temple about 12 times. It was a blast. Such an amazing experience. Also, I got to wear my Red Jordan's with all white clothes. It was pretty cool. I am really doing great. This week has been amazing, I shook Elder Bednar's hand and listened to him talk and also sang "Praise to the Man" to ten of the twelve Apostles and every MTC around the  Elder Bednar, Holland, Cook, Oaks, Christopherson, Stevenson, Renlund, Anderson, and Ballard.  I will give more details about his talk and everything later. Thank y'...

On  Wednesday June 28 I got a text from an unknown number with a picture of Cole.  An hour later I got this response. Sorry I didn't introduce myself!! I am tammie belliston I volunteer at the mtc on Wednesdays to help the missionary hosts welcome in the new missionaries. - the boy in the picture with your son is our neighbor- also going to the Kennewick washington mission!  Your son was so excited for me to send you this picture!  Here is what I sent his parents- I want you both to know that when the hosts showed up today I was drawn to one in particular as I was giving them their weekly speech 😊 I talked to this elder and found out he was going to elder Crump's mission!  ( a total non coincidence! As brett and I call them.) I told him I know an elder going to your mission - you are going to host him! HE was so excited about meeting elder c and he waited and watched for your van.  Heavenly Father wanted someone going to elder c's mission t...

Letter from June 24 YOOOO!!! How are all y'all? I am doing great! This week has been so crazy. We picked up 2 or 3 new investigators and are teaching them like 3 times a week, some of them we see every day. And boy do I love them, they are so loving and I love talking with them, well....listening to them talk. Because I can't really speak Spanish lol.. but I mean I am learning faster than I thought. So on Sunday, Donny Osmand came and spoke to us and it was very interesting. I liked it because he is a normal guy, well kinda haha.. he is kinda famous. He sang to us a couple of times and that was really cool. The first song was from Mulan and them the second was a song that he had just written for his son. I recorded it so I will send it in this email. He spoke on four topics, perseverance, obedience, confidence, and experience. We have to know why we are here and we have to fight for it. The reason I am serving a mission is because I love my Savior Jesus Christ...

Letter from June 17 Hola mi familia!! I could not be happier than I am right now, I am absolutely in love with being a missionary and with serving Heavenly Father every day. Everything about this place is just amazing, the new buildings are just beautiful. On every single floor there is two big paintings from floor to ceiling and two pondering rooms where music plays and you can only hear it when it is silent. It is amazing how strongly it brings the spirit. Okay, so I have some explaining to do... on my first day Right after y'all dropped me off, my host took me brought the buildings to get all of my books and everything. Then we headed off to my room where he told me to leave my little folder that had my Keys, the room number for my classroom and pretty much everything I needed to do the orientation. So we get to the new buildings where my classroom is and we didn't know where to go. So after asking around and trying to find out which floor the Spanish elde...

Letter from June 10 HOLA!!! This week has been really challenging, amazing and beautiful. I have still been sick, but I am feeling a lot better. I could not keep any food down at all, I ate and threw up every meal. So I decided to go to the doctors and they made me get an ultra sound and everything is okay. They also gave me medication to control the vomiting and to settle my stomach a little. As of yesterday, I have eaten a whole piece of pizza, orange chicken bites, and an egg roll. It was soo good. My companion is awesome. His name is Elder Misseldine and he is from South Carolina. He is about 6'4" and well built. He is huge. All of the Elders in the district already speak some Spanish and then there is me, but I am learning. It will come with time and faith. I am currently sitting in the Laundry room next to Sister Pogue (Sierra from YMAD) and listening to her tell stories about her about her companion. I have seen everybody that I know here at the MTC, i think.. ha...

June 7, 2017 Today Cole entered the Provo MTC.  The day you look forward to but dread at the dame time. We went to provo early to eat lunch with Cole. As we finished lunch and were walkin to the car Andy saw some missionaries entering JDawgs.  He sent Cole with some money to pay for the Elders lunch. What a fun way to start his missionary service.  We then went to the Provo Temple to say our good byes.  It was a really beautiful  day to drop off a missionary.  Once we got the the MTC its quite a process.  Its a Drive throgh drop off service.  We took Cole's suitcase's out of the truck, The host Elder asked if he could take our picture, we gave one more hug and off he went, without even a look back!   It was quick, but not painless.   We were at the point that we had prepared for for months. I wouldn't want him anywhere else.  On our way home we got a quick email from Cole. So this first day has been Pretty chaotic.. I got lost, ...