March 3, 2014
Dear Family:
Hi! It has been a really long but a really short week. It
depends on how you look at it. Either way, it was a good one. So Lake Elsinore
isn't quite what I was expecting. My area here goes from more humble than Hemet
to way nicer than Hemet. But still not as nice as my last two areas. There are
some nice areas in Lake Elsinore, it just isn't in my ward. Canyon Lake where
my trainer served is right around part of the lake and it looks like it is a
pretty rich area. I think our ward and maybe Ortega Ward are the two ghetto
ones but ours is a pretty small chunk of it. I am sharing a ward again with
another set of Sisters. Sister Haycock and Sister Sterner. Haycock is a really
good missionary, she just got done being an STL and is now training a new
missionary (Sister Sterner). They seem like they will be good Sisters to split
the ward with. We shouldn't have any problems there. It is good working here. I
haven't had this many names to work with since my first area.
So Monday was pretty crazy. Between E-mailing, taking care
of a few other Elders and their transfers, and chasing down flowers, I didn't
spend a whole lot of time to packing, but I got it all taken care of. Packing
isn't any fun anyways. My ride brought a Nissan Frontier. We almost got all my
stuff in it (I have a lot of stuff....). My bike didn't fit so we left it in
the garage and he just brought it to me Tuesday morning. We actually went and
picked it up from the Walters first and then didn't have room for it. It was at
the Walters cuz that is where the sisters left it so I could get it back from
them. I was hoping I would get to see the Walters for a minute but by the time
we got there they had to leave to a dentist appointment. I missed them by like
5 minutes. We drove to meet Elder Ringwood (my new comp) at the stake center.
It was actually 2 miles closer for me to drive there than it was more me to
drive to the church we went to in Corona. Where we live is only like 2 miles
from there. I live in another home-share. It is a family. The couple has 3 sons
who all live there right now. John, Jason, and Kimo (his name is actually
Andrew but nobody calls him that.) John will be moving to Utah soon. Jason will
be going back out on his mission soon. He had to come home for a little while.
We really only see the two sons, and they will only be here for like another
month and then it will just be us. The mom works out of town so she is only
home on the weekends, the dad works nights so we have to be really quite all
the time. Even at night because he works from home (I think in customer
service?) so we don't want them to hear us. So in a month it will probably just
be me and my comp all by ourselves, pretty boring. I like living with them but
I miss the Hoyts.
Tuesday we had District Leader Council. We have all new
district leaders so we get to form them they way we want them, (to do stuff).
It is nice. It was close to a 2 hour meeting. That is how the one at the first
of the month always is. The other ones are normally just an hour. We went
through accountability, setting a zone goal, and making action plans for this
next month. Elder Ringwood reminds me of
Lance Frandsen. Quiet, funny when he says something, pretty shy, but a super
good guy. He is from Holiday Ut. He went
to Olympus High not Skyline High, so he doesn't know Trent (Blake's brother who
is my age). Plus he wasn't really a social guy. We visited a ton a people. The
two main ones were Michelle and the Fernandez family. Michelle is on date to be
baptized on the 12th but has major depression and mental issues plus she smokes
20 cigarettes a day. Right now she is down to like 7. On the 5th she has to go
cold turkey. Fernandez are just crazy. Missionaries have been there for a
while. I don't know how well they absorb what we are teaching. We will see how
they go. Hopefully we don't have to drop them. We got a Mormon.org referral (it
was weird I haven't gotten a referral in a long time!) When we went to visit it
we nailed a den of J-dubs. There was like 12 to 15 of them. They said they were
about to go "pioneering" and I was like whoa.. Mormons are the pioneers
take it easy. You guys just showed up. It is actually another way of saying
they are going out to teach, he just thought he would try and seem all smart.
We saw like 4 German Shepherds that day. People really like those dogs here.
Wednesday we got two lessons in before lunch. I didn't even
remember that you could do that. In my last to areas people weren't around
until after 3 or 4pm. All in all we got 6 lessons. We had splits though. It was
weird because I didn't really know anything about the people I was going to
visit but it was fine. I found out that this ward? stake? I don't really know,
has one of the largest welfare loads in the church. That really surprised me.
Some of the places in this stake are pretty well off communities.
Thursday we had MLC (Mission Leadership Conference). It is
the meeting that used to be ZLC (Zone Leader Council) but we have the STLs now.
That is where the President Smart, AP's, ZL's and the STL's all get together to
direct the work of the mission and set a new month goal. It was from 9 to like
2. It was cool to work with all the leaders and get extra training from
President. This month we have a goal of 100 baptisms. We committed to our zone
doing 9 of them. We had lunch with all the district leaders and then they had a
meeting after. It was cool. Between the two leaderships all of my mission
friends were there pretty much. I guess I just like good missionaries!! That
night we had a lesson with Art, Elva, and Justin. We did a lesson on church
attendance and the atonement. It was what the AP's trained on in MLC. They
chose that because that is what has been holding a lot of people back from
getting the Standard of Excellence and baptizing. We were doing a short
training on it the next day at ZDM so we figured we better try it out. It was
good, they have seen the missionaries for a while and haven't been to church.
They committed to coming. We met with Michelle. We do everyday to help her
overcome her addiction.
Friday was ZDM (Zone Development Meeting). This is where we
train the Zone. It was as lot different this time leading the meeting. ZDM as a
missionary is normally something that is exciting but not as exciting as
multi-zones. It surprised me how much it felt like I was just in a large
district meeting. It wasn't out of my comfort zone at all. I actually really
enjoyed it. The rest of the day was crazy ha. I forgot my camera, I will have
to send the pics next week. It rained super hard. Some sisters in the zone hit
a big rock and busted the tire right in the worst part of the storm. So Elder
Ringwood and I went and changed it for them. I tried to get them to sit in one
of the cars. They wanted to watch I guess ha. I was wearing a rain thing so I
let one of them use it cuz she didn't even have a jacket. That is the fastest I
have ever changed a tire! It was record pace, I felt like it qualified us for
Nascar, but only a few passerby's witnessed it. One of them used my camera and
took pics, but I totally forgot it. Elder Child texted me and told me they got
Jacob Hicks back on date to be baptized. We ran out of stuff to do. We went to
the stake center and built our report we have for the stake presidency and
mission presidency when we meet with them on Sunday. We only had one
lesson with the Micini family. One of the kids just got baptized so now we are
working on his mom.
Saturday we met with quite a few people. On Friday Michelle
dropped us. She had been going through some hard stuff and decided to give up
and would not meet with us. We knocked for a while but they wouldn't open the
door. We picked her back up on Saturday. It wasn't easy though. I had a moment
that reminded me of Jason's mission. When he came back he would always say
"What It Is!!" and I never got it. He just said that is what a bunch
of the people there would say. Well I taught one of those people but she would
say "Ya Mean?" after like every 5 words even though most of the time
it didn't make sense. It just kept reminding me of Jason talking about
that.
Sunday we had to be at the church at 6:00 to meet with the
Stake president, one of the mission presidency, and the high councilman over
missionary work. Art, Elva, and Justin came to church. If we would have gotten
Michelle to church we would have gotten the Standard of Excellence. She got
sick though. We had a lesson with Art and his family that night. As we were
leaving Justin asked if he was sinning living with his parents because he isn't
married to them (we had just resolved a concern about stuff to do with that) I
just was shocked and didn't know what so say (he is 9), his dad said he would
explain it. I was relieved ha. That was pretty much the week! Well that's all
for now! Love ya tons! Bye! :)
