Monday, October 28, 2013

New Area - Corona California


October 28, 2013
Dear Family:

So I have had a crazy two weeks! I will try and run through all of it really fast!
Actually now I think back I don't really have much to tell you about last week. It was either really uneventful or I actually just don't remember ha. Last Saturday I saw a possum for the first time in my life. That’s about it. Last Sunday I got to go to a ladies baptism that I helped teach on exchanges. So I guess to this week! It was pretty crazy, I was homeless for like two days.

Monday was a weird p-day. Oh wait I thought of something that happened last week! Sunday night we had our whole apartment back up. We walked in and it smelt like poop. We found some water on the floor so we went into the bathrooms and the tub was full and the toilets were full. Then something happened and they all started over flowing! We emptied out our garbages  and started bucketing out water. We couldn't keep up with the sewer ha. I called the maintenance guy and he came and pulled the plug of the sewer line somewhere. That night they had a carpet guy sucking up all the water and ripping out carpet. They are lucky we were there to fight it. They neighbor apartment is just a showroom so the whole place was soaked. I bet they have to redo a lot there. We even had a member bring a shop vac and we were fighting the sewer with that. We ended up sleeping at the ZL's place cuz ours stunk.  So Monday I went and saw everybody at the office before I took off to Corona. By the way I am in the Temescal Valley Ward. I am with Elder Hammond from Alabama who is waiting for a visa to go to Australia. We split the ward with two sister missionaries. Anyways mid-day I moved all my stuff to Corona so it was there when I got there. I met my roommates Elders Wilkinson and Janks. They are cool, Wilkinson was actually Elder Allen’s last comp before he went home. He also plays basketball for U of U. The coolest surprise though is that Elder Feist lives in the same complex as me so I got to see him while I was unloading my stuff. Then I went back to the office to be companions with the Office Assistants Elders Cook and Braithweight. That night I got to go to Ronny's mission! I rode with them to L.A.X! It was super cool. We took Elder Cram there who was headed to Australia. I don't think I have ever seen a city that big! We drove through at night. It was like 8. The airport was sick. Lots of lights and cool stuff. We missed our road on the way there and accidentally went past Knot's Berry Farm. That was weird. I looked at the GPS and we were super close to the ocean for quite a while. That was a cool trip. Once we got back to Riverside at like 9:30 or 10 and ate some Wendy’s for dinner. That night I slept on the floor in their new apartment.
Tuesday morning I hung out with the ASL missionaries so I didn't have to chill at the office all day. They were going to volunteer at the deaf school though so they took me to Elder Hawkins. I helped him and his new comp clean a little bit and then they took me to the office so I could go to the trainer meetings and get my new comp. Meetings were super good. There were only like 5 Elders training and then like 15 sisters. It was weird... A lot different that the first two times I was in those meetings. That night we drove to Corona, It was a good thing I bought a GPS. We had some of the sister’s suitcases in our car so we took that to their place. Then we went to ours. We unpacked a little bit and then just crashed in our beds. Elder Hammond at the time had about 3 hours of sleep for the last two days. I was pretty tired too. 

Wednesday we had district meeting. After that we met with the sisters to work out where we were going to split the ward. Then they gave me a bunch of records for my area so my area book wasn't completely empty. We have a brand new one because this is the first time this ward has had two sets of missionaries, just like my last area. We had a meeting with our ward mission leader because I asked for it. I think it just confused me more. He isn't the kind of guy who just gets things done, he would just beat around the bush and not answer any of my questions. All the names we got were from the sisters.
Thursday morning we met with a guy from church headquarters. S.L.C. They were from the Research and Investigation division or something like that. Chose our mission to come visit, and President Smart chose our zone. We had a little focus group kind of thing. We have a large zone so they split us in two. Somehow it ended up being Elders in one and Sisters in another. That was a blessing in disguise. Because we were in different rooms we told them things that they hadn't heard were problems in other missions probably because the sisters were in the room. They mostly asked about the age change and how it has affected our mission. It was pretty cool. Both Elder Feist and Elder Hammond got to talk about their individual experiences on how the age change effected their choice to come and how it affected them once they got here. That day was boring until night time. I got to do baptismal interviews for the 3 people the sisters were teaching in our ward.

Friday was slow as well. Mostly just trying to organize the area and stuff. I think I forgot to mention. Once we had our areas all figured out and got working on it one of the sisters had a feeling that we needed to switch the areas. So we had to call the Pres and say just kidding we want to switch that. I didn't think it was a very good idea for a few reasons but oh well. That night our dinner canceled. We started making some visits with no luck. One part member family was home. We had a little chat and then they invited us in for dinner which was super nice. We had a bomb dinner and then a lesson. This guy knows he needs to be baptized, so I pretty much just asked him why he wasn't and then let the lesson go from there. After the lesson we were walking to the car and the sisters called us and told us we had a dinner all the sudden. I was stuffed and we didn't have the miles to go up there. Luckily they covered for us!
Saturday We finally got to meet with the Bishop. We got a few names from him. We had to try a lot harder than I thought we should have though. I dunno why. Elder Feist’s comp went to a baptism so he got to be our 3rd comp for a little while. It has been fun being able to hang out with him a little bit. We went to the baptism of the 3 I interviewed. I will have to hurry, I only have 5 minutes left!

Sunday was good. Got to meet for a minute with the high councilman over missionary work. He is going to be a big help. We picked up a really solid potential investigator because a kid invited his friend to church and then just decided to ask him if he wanted to get baptized and he said yes. The Spanish Elders and sisters were having a baptism right after our ward. He started asking questions and wanted to look at the font. It was super cool. We had some other meetings and then that was pretty much the day. Well it was a good week, but a crazy one! Love you all!

Elder Wood   

Hey just letting you know my new address so you can send stuff there. 1172 Chestnut Lane #204 Corona, CA 92881. Also I got a package from Suzie I will have to tell you about later that was awesome!! But your letter didn't make it for some reason. Talk to ya soon bye