Goodbye Elder Hancock

Laguna Niguel 

Dang mom! Those YPM's sound like they're a pretty jolly bunch! I could never do that....although it is only for 3 months so I might be able to handle that! But that's so cool that you got to go through the Nauvoo Temple. Was it really different in anyway or about the same? 

That's so crazy that Taylor is home! It seriously feels like he left like only a year ago. I bet Clarissa was super happy! 

We had transfer meeting on Tuesday night. It was way cool to have it be Elder Hancock's last trasfer meeting. Both me and Watts ended up staying in Laguna Beach At the end of this transfer, I will have been here for 7 1/2 months! That's pretty unheard of! Also in that meeting I got called to be a District Leader. Not too sure how I feel about that. It's cool that they trust me, but it's more responsibility. 

Anyway, we dropped Hancock off at the mission office at 7:30 in the morning on Wednesday. It was crazy just how fast he was gone and we were right back into our work. We had quite a bit of success this week. Don and Gavin are up in San Francisco till Saturday for the funeral for Alyssa. It's going to be down on the beach so we have to get permission to go down there, but we are most likely going to go. It's more of a memorial for her. We had to "drop" Rommel and Michael this week. It kinda sucks, but they just are too hard to meet with and not really progressing. We have had a few really good visits with a few people and a bunch of potentials that we are working with. 

We had a really cool experience the other day. We did a thing called a "window of heaven". It's where we pray to be inspired for a place and a time to be so we can see the hand of the Lord. Anyways, we showed up at a place called Top of the World and the first people we walked up to were a bunch of guys that just love Jesus. I was a bit skeptical, but they ended up just wanting to know what makes mormons tick. So we got to teach them the entire restoration and parts of the Plan of Salvation. We also talked about the connection between faith and works. It was cool! They ended up agreeing with us on so many things and they started to use bible verses to back up what WE were saying. They brought up a few points of conflict but we were able to explain stuff to them that they ended up agreeing with us. The only bad thing was that we were in such a hurry that we forgot to get their contact information. But it was still a way cool experience. 

We are doing really good out here. We have a few possible baptisms for the month of August... maybe one in July. We are having a great time doing the work. It's tough at times, but me and Elder Watts are really getting along great and I am learning a bunch as I go along. I had my first District Meeting that I was in charge of on Friday. It went pretty good. We got some goals figured out and got to know everyone. Then I talked about how we as missionaries are qualified for what we are doing cause the Lord qualifies those that He calls. I then asked everyone to come up with one Christlike attribute that they wanted to work on and then one that they feel they are naturally born with. It's easier to build on what we aren't good at when we recognize what we excel at.

Anyways I could keep rambling on for weeks so... I love you guys so much!