Week of July 19-25, 2010

Monday, July 19, 2010 (11)
Had a really good day. It was P-day and just had a lot of fun. Started out the day by cleaning our home share because we need to do that every P-day, and we hadn’t done that for awhile, so we decided to start out by cleaning the home share because we are supposed to. Then we wrote some letters real quick back for home and some other stuff—wrote my mom and dad. It’s always fun to write them and tell them how the week went and stuff, a little deeper even though they pretty much know everything already. Today went really well, we went and played basketball after we wrote some letters at 9:00. Just had a really fun time at that and played some volleyball too—half court basketball and volleyball. I played a little of both, just switched back and forth and I’m not real good at either. Then we came home and I was about ready to jump in the shower and Brother Jenson, a member of our ward, called us and asked if we would go give his daughter-in-law a blessing that is just about to have a baby. She was like in labor and that was my first time to go in the labor section of the hospital. Kind of weird—wouldn’t think it would be on my mission or anything, but that’s OK. It went really well. It always seems like prayers come in like three for me—like blessings—people asking us to give blessings. Saturday it was Dave Fisher, Sunday it was Mario Jr., and Monday it was the Jensons. It’s just really crazy how it comes in threes, but it’s really great—I enjoy it. It’s great to see the faith people have in blessings—you’ve got to have faith, ya know! It was really good. Other than that, after the blessing, we went shopping real quick because we were already in our Pros (prosthelyting) clothes, and so we just went shopping really quick. Then we went back and rested up a little bit, I was really tired and so we had a good time. Then we went emailing, emailing was really good. Nothing really good, just talked to my parents. Did find out that one of my best friends from Oregon is coming to my mission—it’s pretty cool to serve here. That will be awesome! Then we went and had dinner with the Palmers. They’re always fun and is always an enjoyable time. Then we went and had a lesson with Vivian Lee—she’s a less active person. She’s just awesome; I wish she would come back. She knows the Church is true and stuff, but she just has some hardships with the Church, but she lets us in every Monday to come talk to her. So that’s always good. And then we went back to the Arnold’s to clean out our car and just clean it out. Then we went over to the Malones, which they are a family in the ward that are way sweet. They just got back from a boating trip at Lake Mead in Nevada. They are so sweet, hung out there for a few minutes to see how the trip went and stuff. Then we came home and planned, and tomorrow they have a 4 day training conference because they are switching to the new Preach My Gospel. We have to host 2 Elders for the next 4 days, so we will see how that goes. It should be good. And that’s pretty much my day.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010 (12)
We had district meeting in the morning, but they have a big 4 day conference for all of the leadership in the mission, and so we didn’t have it. We ended up going out tracting in the morning, and ended up tracting this street that was really close. We haven’t tracted it ever, I haven’t even been over there. It was such a long street; it was like a 5 minute walk in between each house. It was tough and took a lot of time, but the very last house that we knocked on, this guy answered and all happy and stuff. This guy’s like so red-neck, you can tell! He’s got wranglers on with no shirt and a tattoo on his chest, and the hairiest chest I have ever seen in my life—like even twice as hairy as my dad’s chest! It was so weird. So he invited us in and we sat down and we talked. We found out that he used to be a member of the Church way back in the day. It was pretty amazing. Then we had lunch and me and my companion took a nap because it was so hot, and then for 2 or 2 ½ hours we went and contacted some less actives. We actually had some pretty good success with that and had a lot of visits and talked to a lot of people. We found out a lot of people moved—that’s one problem in our ward. There are a whole bunch of people that we know aren’t here, but we don’t know who they are because their records are still here. So, we are trying to find out and we had like 30 names of people that need to be taken off the ward list. After that, we headed to the big, mission wide meeting that they are doing for the next 4 days for the District leaders, Zone leaders, and trainers for the new curriculum. It’s like way sweet. Basically, now we start out with God’s a loving Heavenly Father, God loves his family, and the Gospel of Jesus Christ or the teaching of Jesus Christ. After that are the principles of Faith, Repentance, Baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end, and then after that is when we extend the baptismal commitment so they know right off the bat that we are serious and we want them to come unto Christ. It’s really good and we’ve had a lot of successes when we started. Then we had dinner with the Arnolds, which is always fun. They took us out to this place called Coco’s, and it’s actually way good. I had this hamburger, which was bomb, and then they had the pie but I didn’t have mine until later because Sister Arnold doesn’t like me having sugar, so I don’t. I didn’t have it in front of her. So that was good, and then went and saw the Alvarez’s (couldn’t quite make out the name, but I think that is what he said—Mario Jr.’s family). They are the ones that we gave a blessing to on Sunday. Their son is in the hospital and I guess he’s made a lot of improvement since our blessing that we gave him. We talked about him and what he’s up to. They said that once Mario Jr. gets better, they are going to start going back to Church and they want him to get baptized, and so hopefully that comes true. He has said that before, but I am really hoping this time he seems sincere and stuff, so I’m hoping. Then we went to the Palmers and I dropped off my GPS so that they can give it to my mom and dad when they go visit them. They are just a SWEEET family! I love them and they actually called my mom because they are going to go see them on the 31st of this month, and so that will be way sweet! So, we had to pick up those missionaries at 5:00 and they are actually staying with us. They are from Yucaipa, which is about 30 minutes from Riverside. It was way sweet and they are way fun missionaries, and what we did is we split up. One went with me and the other with Elder Shallenberger, and so we came back here and planned for our day and it was such a sweet time. We talked about stuff and it was just an all around fun day. Just had a really fun day and really enjoyed it, but that’s my day.

Wednesday, July 21, 2010 (13)
Today was a really good day actually. Started out by doing our personal study time. Had a really good study about that you have to work to have faith in Jesus Christ, you just can’t have it. Here they have this Church, The Grove, and they have the “Harvest”, which is where they go to Angel Stadium every year and run across Angel Stadium and they are saved for a year. Then they come back next year and do it again and it’s just ridiculous. I studied about that and how it is not true, and that you actually do have to have the faith. There are a couple of scriptures that are clear that you have to have the faith so that the Lord will provide a way, and he won’t provide a way unless you work for it if you have that faith. And then we performed some service. It was fun—I took out a palm tree that was tall and about 100 pounds. It was sweet. We were trying to get it out and couldn’t, so we went and borrowed a rope from the Arnolds. I tied a knot around it and then walked to this tree and then I started pulling it out and Elder Shallenberger was cutting it out. It was pretty funny actually. And the person we did it for is a lady that we are trying to get as an investigator but she’s not really open right now, so we just keep doing service for her because she will come around. Then we went tracting, and actually had a pretty good tracting session. We talked to a lot of people, not very many doors opened, but there were a lot of people out that we talked to. It was just way good actually. After that, we had a list of names that we had that we wanted to go and see. It wasn’t very successful, but it is always good to get names down and try to meet the members of the ward and the less actives. So, we did that for awhile and then we met up with the other elders because, remember, we have the meeting for the Zone leaders, District leaders, and trainers that are going on this week until Friday. We walked around for a little bit to try to talk to people before we went to dinner. We talked to a Viet Nemese guy that I could not understand, but that’s OK. I handed him a Book of Mormon, so it’s all good. Then we went to dinner until like 8’ish, and we try to get out of there by 7:30 or so. We are supposed to leave a spiritual thought, but we didn’t leave one because we were running late. We were there forever. After that, I went to get my GPS because I forgot something for my GPS. I had given that to the Palmers because they are going out of town tomorrow to see Idaho and all of that and they are going to stop by to see my parents , and they are going to drop off my GPS to my parents. Then we came back and did our planning, and tomorrow is our weekly planning. It is always more fun to do our weekly planning. That’s about it—that was our day.

Thursday, July 22, 2010 (14)
Today was, once again, weekly planning and we somehow got done really early. So we did our comp goals where we go over our goals and what we want to get done for the upcoming week and a whole bunch of other stuff. We just got done way early and we were talking. We said that we should call everyone on the ward list and set up some appointments, so we did and we only got, like, 3 or 4 that said we could come back. It was ridiculous. Most of the less actives don’t want us to come over. Then we had lunch and took a quick nap for the rest of our lunch time because it has been so hot here and it is really hard to sleep at night. (They live in an attic above a member’s house and he says it stays over 95 to 100 inside their home share—no A/C and no windows except a sliding glass door—just a fan!) After lunch we went tracting and talked to quite a few people, considering. I think our OM’s are really improving and we got a lot more return appointments where people said that we could come back and share a message. So that’s good. I think we talked to 18 people and then we had a lesson with Sister Decker, who is a less active and her husband is not a member. It went really well actually. After our lesson with Sister Decker, at 5:30 we had a lesson with Brother Savage who is a less active too. That is one of the people that said that we could come back and share a message. He wanted us to come meet him and so we did and then we extended the opportunity that we can go and do the ward mission class (could not understand what he said there—oops), which is basically practice for us to teach less actives and members, and all that. We had dinner with the Rikelands (spelling???)--they are so nice and they are cool. They have a daughter with Down ’s syndrome and she is sweet. She loves Michael Jackson, so we were talking about Michael Jackson and stuff. It was pretty hilarious. I didn’t know it, but her Aunt is Sister Alvarez, which she is the grandma of Mario. He is the one whose son was in the hospital—Mario Jr. So, we were talking about them and then Sister Alvarez calls us and asked us to go give her grandson a blessing who just got back from the hospital. So, we wrapped up dinner pretty fast and got over there as soon as we could because we wanted to teach them a lesson. We had a whole lesson planned to extend the baptismal commitment and stuff, but that ended up changing because Mario was talking about how he was smoking a lot, and he says that he is going to quit smoking and that he is going to come back to church. He knows that he needs to do this, and so that’s really awesome! I never thought that would happen, but it did so I am way excited about it. So, we gave Mario Jr. a blessing because he had some kind of a kidney blockage or something like that and they had to take out some of his intestines. It was pretty nasty. He looks a ton better though. Then we started talking to Mario and he told us that he needed a blessing for strength and so we gave him a blessing too. It was such a good blessing. I gave the blessings and it was just so awesome because he has the true desire to change his ways now and stop smoking and come back to church. I’m hoping that we can get him going and that we can get him ready to enter the Temple with his family, and actually be able to go to the Temple with his family and be sealed. That would be so cool because that is what they want, I know it. We were there until 9:00 or 9:30, and so we left and came back here. Low and behold, Elder Shallenberger and Elder Matty (they were on exchanges because of the meetings) got lost somewhere—they were over by K-Mart and I was trying to think of where the nearest K-Mart was. It was just so funny, but that was it.

Friday, July 23, 2010 (16)
Today was a really awesome day—had some solid lessons that happened. First, we started out by tracting and did this on a street right next to our house. It was a really good street and we talked to a lot of people. Then we had lunch; I went to Del Taco for lunch which was way sweet. So, we had lunch and rested for a little bit because we had those other elders for the other meetings and we were really tired. Then we went and saw some less actives and they invited us back. We made a big call list and we just called all of the less actives on the list. 3 of the 100 that we called asked us to come back, not the greatest outcome, but it was good. So, we had 3 lessons and they were awesome. It was a great day. Then we went to dinner and we actually had dinner at Chili’s, but we got it to go because the Whiteheads had given us a gift card because they were out of town. So we did that, and went over to the Arnold’s and had dinner and left about 7:10 and went over to the Alvarez’s. The Alvarez’s are the ones that wanted us to come over and give their son a blessing in the hospital in Redlands. He is out of the hospital now and yesterday we just had an awesome lesson with them. He kind of said that he wants to come back to church and start doing all the right steps. It’s awesome and really great, so we had a lot of fun with him. We talked about Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ , and the Holy Ghost and we gave him some really good scriptures that actually applied to his life. That was kind of cool! He has just completely changed and has a complete desire. Before, when his brother died, he was like, “Well, I’m going to come back to church sometime”, but I think with this it really opened up his eyes that he almost lost his son. So that was way cool to see that blessing happen. We just had a really good lesson with him—it was only supposed to be 20 minutes long, but it ended up being about 40 minutes long. We were able to talk with him quite awhile and then we went and saw Mario Jr., the little one that’s been in the hospital, and he looks awesome, and even the mom sat down with us and we had a awesome lesson. We just talked with them for awhile and just had a straight up legit conversation with them. It’s such a blessing to see the hard work that I’ve put in, and Elder Shallenberger and I have put in these last 5 weeks, is really starting to pay off. People are starting to be prepared; Mario Jr. is going to get baptized and Star (not sure what name he said there) is going to get baptized, and Mario Sr. is going to come back to Church. They are coming to Church on Sunday with his Grandma and he sees the blessing that Church brings. So, that’s really cool. Today, we got done early with them, so we went over to the Arnold’s again to pick up our leftover food to take home. Then we tried to go see the Garcias—they are a less active family that were just recent converts and got moved into ???crest Ward, which is the ward right next to us. They don’t even go to our ward that they were baptized into. The Bishop hasn’t even talked to them or sent over anyone to talk to them, so it’s not that great of a situation. So, we went over there and tried to talk to them, but they weren’t home. We will try to go back tomorrow again. Then we came home and looked at our miles and found out that we were 150 miles over, which isn’t really that bad. We are just really trying to stay in the limit, and so we found out that we are going to be on bike the rest of the week, actually like the rest of the month so that is about a week and a half. That’s about it—I’m just really excited for the Alvarez’s and Mario to come back to Church and feel the love of the Savior and that it is true. He’s felt it, but there is a greater love when you are following the commandments and understanding what you should be doing. He is a smoker, but he wants to stop now—he doesn’t want to do it anymore. So, he is trying to stop and it is just a great blessing. Talked to 19 people on the street, taught 3 other lessons and had 3 awesome sit down lessons from the ward, so it has just been great. Just an all around awesome day!

Saturday, July 24, 2010 (17)
Today was a really good day. Just had a lot of good success with stuff. We found out that we are over on miles, so we will have to bike the rest of the week. So, Brother Merrill came and picked us up in the morning to take us to our bikes at the Arnolds and we got out bikes and we are riding all day long to just tell you. We ended up going garage saleing and I almost bought some things—some cool pants that were pretty sweet for like tracting, but I decided not to. That took quite awhile and we ended up stopping and talking to someone for quite awhile about the Church and everything—it went really well. Then we went and took lunch, but we didn’t go all the way home because we were on bikes and the hill is a killer. So we went to Subway for lunch and we ended up not getting done with lunch until like 3:00, and so we had dinner in two hours. So, then we went tracting for a little bit and that took an hour or so. After that we went over to the Arnolds to see if he could take us to a baptism tomorrow (Sunday), and it ended up that he could so we were there for about an hour talking about some ward mission process stuff. It seems to be going really well actually; really starting to get some good progress going with everything again. Then we had dinner with the Malones, and they are a really sweet family and I really like them, and we were there for like 2 hours just talking. Their parents are non members, so they were just having questions and asking us about stuff. It went really well and I was really happy with what was going on. Yesterday we got a referral from the deaf elders that were out tracting in our area, so we went over there but she wasn’t home. Her dad told us that she was reading “the book” last night. I wasn’t sure if he meant for college or something like that, but I didn’t know it was from the missionaries, and he said that we could come back any time. I thought that that was so sweet! After that we went and saw one of our investigators. He was the one that stopped us on our bikes last week and wanted to come to Church. He called us again and said he wanted to meet with us and I want to come to Church tomorrow, so we went and met with him and had a great lesson about the Gospel of Christ and everything and how important it is. Then we asked him to come to a baptism because they say that 90% of the people who come to baptisms get baptized. That would be sweet. We asked him to pray and he said the sweetest prayer! He opened up just like normal, like “Heavenly Father please bless” and then he said, “please bless the guys at Del Taco, and my boys up in Hollywood, and the homeless people that they may stay out of the sun they don’t get heat stroke” and all this other stuff. It was the funniest thing in the world—like anybody that was ever nice to him he thanked Heavenly Father for them. It was so nice—the best prayer ever since I have been on my mission. That pretty much took up the rest of the day and then we rode home—it took us 45 minutes to get home, it was CRAZY! It was such a long bike ride home, we were on one side of our area and we had to go clear to the other side of our area. It took forever, I couldn’t believe it. When we got home, I was just SO tired and wanted to die, so we planned real quick and we ended up going to bed early. It was a really good day though. We talked to 8 people and got in an hour of tracting and was a great day!

Sunday, July 25, 2010 (18)
We started out by going to Church and going to meetings. We got some really good information about some families that we got to see and some other things. Then we went to all of our meetings and had a good Sunday. We had 2 investigators in Sacrament meeting and both of them stayed for all of Church. One of them was Chet Trupp, which he has been investigating the Church for quite awhile (they are the ones that called my mom and dad when they were driving through Idaho) and then Keith came to and he stayed for all of Church too. Then after that, we went home and took lunch and I was so tired from our bike ride yesterday I took a nap. Then we went and did some work around here because we had dinner around here at the McKells, which is right down the street from us. So we went and did a street and tracted for about 45 minutes to an hour, and then went to dinner. We had a really good dinner. They are a really sweet family and their oldest son is getting ready to go to school in Utah at the University of Utah, so UVU. That’s the one right by BYU and Provo, so that’s pretty sweet. Then we got a ride from there to the Arnolds because we went to a baptism with Keith. He really liked it, he thought it was really sweet. So, that’s a good sign. Then we got done with the baptism and we talked with some of our buddies at the baptism. Some of the missionaries were some of our good friends, one was Elder Yarn’s baptism (my old companion), so that was cool. Then we went to see the Arnolds and started talking about the ward mission process and stuff. We are starting up a class for members on how to break the ice for missionary work and it seems like it be great. The missionaries and Brother Arnold are going to be teaching it, so it should go really good. It should be a great class for members to take. Then Sister Arnold made us a sandwich and we just talked. We talk a lot with them and they enjoy having us there. Then we came home to get ready for P day, which P day is tomorrow. The time is flying by, I can’t believe it. It’s kind of good, but also a bad thing at the same time, so I hope it doesn’t go by too fast. I hope it goes by fast too, cuz you know… I’m really excited to be out here—it’s been a fun week and a good week.