Liv the senior

Hard to believe our girl is a senior! She’s sure an awesome kid and has grown into a beautiful young lady inside and out! She had a great soccer season even with a broken arm for the past few weeks. She’s worked hard with cross fit in the mornings and soccer practice after school. She is one fit chica!

She loves her job at Touchmark and Enjoys waiting on the old folks there. We sure love our Liver Lou! 

Random photos

Summer 2019

Well, I’ve been horrible and at taking pics and even worst at updating the blog...only have a few more years to record life with these kids. It’s sure hitting me with two already out of the house and Liv graduating this next year! Daws is a good sport to hang out with Matt & I. He’s come camping twice with us without siblings and we’ve had fun even though he’d much rather have his buddies (siblings) along... here’s a few pics from my phone from the last few months

Boating w/Chad & Kristi's family-Tri Cities

Deschutes County Fair-Our favorite time of summer

Our First campout in Clarence...going to have to add a pic of Clarence our new camper!

Daws built a pretty sweet motorized bike (motorcycle basically)

Klint & Kim made a quick visit to Bend!

Spent the 4th of July in The Dalles w/Olivia's best friend Skylee

Adam the Aggie!!

Dawson and I dropped Adam off to Utah State last week!  Gosh we already miss that kid!  We had such a fun weekend getting him settled.  Dawson is feeling ready to go to college!  Adam isliving on campus in one of the new housing buildings.  They have a sweet sand volleyball pit out front that has been keeping him busy all week.  His good buddy Payton lives just a few doors down and they are already making lots of new friends.  We haven't heard from him much which I guess is a good thing...that means he's busy having fun!  He started classes this week and so far is really enjoying them. 

Dawson is pretty homesick for his big brothers!  Luckily he still has Olivia for one more year.  It's her senior year!!  She took senior pics yesterday so I'll be sure and post them soon! She and Dawson are both playing soccer this year and have been busy for the past month with lots of practices/tryouts/crossfit etc.  They are both excited to start school this week and are each others best friends!! 
Hard to believe how quickly our kids have grown up!  I wish time would slow down a little...

We contacted a Bus! June 24,2019

Hello!
On monday i got a package from my family, and I love my family so
flippin much! They sent me SPAM, and for those of you who dont know
what that is, its only the MOST IMPORTANT INGREDIANT in a SPAM MUSUBI.
They sent some seeweed too so you know were gonna be making some
musubis this week haha (pic below)

This week we also had to move apartments which was kinda fun, and now
we have a balcony overlooking our sweet town of Famailla!

This week I went to do a baptism interview for the Hermanas in
Monteros, and on the way back Elder Booze looked at me and said, "you
wanna contact this bus?" and I was like heck ya lets send it. Im not
gonna lie I was a little nervous but we just stood up in front of
everybody and introduced ourselves as Missionaries of the Church of
Jesus Christ and that we share a message of happiness and we handed
out pamphlets to almost everybody. It was a great oppurtunity to get
our message out there and let them know what were all about.

Lately I have learned SO MUCH about Gods patience and Love for us. Its
something Im learning to have myself with the people we teach, and Ive
never come to know my father in heaven as much as I am right now in
the mission. We see his hand on a DAILY basis and Im truly finding the
Joy in my work and not just the results.

con amor, Elder Blackburn

FOTOS
1. Spam baby
2. new pension
3. balcony
4.making tacos as a district

Believing in Christ VS Believing Christ (meant to post this on Isaac's missionary blog but I'll just leave it here too)

This week was great! Halfway through they took away our water filter
because the water is so dirty here. Now we have a water dispenser that
works pretty good. We had more sun and less rain which was awesome,
and my sons training is going awesome! hes a stud and Im learning a
lot from him.

Tues I went on splits with Elder Baum, my trainer! And that was a fun
time. Crazy to see how much has changed and how much we've grown. I've
learned a lot from him, and its cool that were in the same zone again.

Wed we helped an hermana in the branch with her little pool she had to
take down and that was a lot of fun!

Thursday Elder Gonzalez got sick and had the runs like crazy, but its
all good, thats usually what happens to new missionaries haha. He's
doing good right now but for a day or two he was struggling.

Friday we helped a lady make bread and then taught her the plan of Salvation.

Saturday WE TAUGHT SEMINARY.
I slept through MY time in seminary, so didn't remember a lot haha, but
it was great to teach the youth of the branch (all 3 of them) and
share our experiences and testimonies and teach the lesson for that
day.

Sunday we passed by Gabriel (a kid that we found a couple weeks ago)
and he went to church with us, and went with white shirt and tie and a
vest and everything. Hes 18, has a strong testimony of his savior, and
we've had some great lessons with him. Church was great and the Gomez
subiri family went too!

After we went to a house in the middle of nowhere thats 3km outside of
town. They were a reference from a family in the branch and we walked
the whole way along the road in the middle of the country side and it
was awesome. WE ended up teaching them and they're a great family! and
they had ostriches so that was wild

I've been reading a book called Believing Christ, and everyone should read it.
Because the Grace of God is the greatest news of the Gospel.

with "Gods absolute demand for perfection and our absolute inability
to come up with it. We cannot be allowed to live in the presence of
God, sinful and imperfect beings as we are"

Grace is the goodwill that predisposes God to act positively toward
human beings.

Its the same with parents and their children! They love their tiny
infants even before they can respond to that love, and Gods character
is love, and he cares about our eternal progression.

"We CANT do it on our own, but Jesus Christ will share,
HIS PERFECTION
HIS SINLESSNES
HIS RIGHTOUSNESS
and HIS MERITS with us.

By becoming one with a perfect Christ through his gospel covenant we
are accepted as perfect"

Sometimes we are too hard on ourselves, but if we are doing all we
can, if we do our best, WHATEVER THAT MAY BE, it is enough, and Christ
makes up the rest.

How great is our GOD! as we come unto Christ we find peace.
I know it

Hope this week is great! -Elder Blackburn

FOTOS
1. mi papi
2.splits con Baum
3.seminary!
4.servicio

Spring Break w/Liv & Daws

Adam has to work most of spring break so we missed having him along on our adventures! Liv and Daws and I took a last minute quick trip to the coast when a worldmark opened up. We stayed at Gleneden Beach and had an amazing view of the ocean.  

These two are cute buddies! They are enjoying High School together. They’ve said they get a lot of comments on how cool it is that they are good friends.

We came for a couple days and then hit the road again to Boise for 3 days of a soccer tournament for Liv. Matt was able to join us while Adam and Kona held down the fort at home. My parents met us there and it was so great to spend time with them. We went to the old Idaho Penitentiary which was pretty nutso. It was still in use until 1973!

Weekend at Crane Hotsprings

I deactivated my Facebook acct. I didn’t delete it entirely because there is 10 years of our life in photos! I wish they were here on the blog. I’m hoping to be better at updating photos here as a family journal. The kids still love going back and reading the older posts on here.
I’ve had the last week off work! It’s been awesome to be home with the kids this last week of Christmas break. Matt took the day off yesterday and the 5 of us headed to the big town of Crane, OR...actually a few miles out of town to Crystal Crane Hot Springs. We drove there by way of the Malheur National Wildlife Preserve. The kids were great sports about going. They weren’t super excited about our destination being in the middle of nowhere but we had a great time soaking in the hotsprings pond, playing board games and testing out our new phones. Pretty awesome photos to follow. We all loved it. This is Definitely a do-over and we’re excited to check out some other hotsprings in our area. Before we headed home we drove into Crane to check it out. The kids humored us with a hike up BLM “stinking waters access road” And then had lunch at a Mexican restaurant in burns. We missed Isaac. We always do. We sure loved talking to him inn christmas! He’s doing great and oh so happy!