Changes This Week

Laguna Niguel 

So I did get your package! I was so confused about who brought it! I just got a text from Hale and Butler and they said that a really tall guy and his daughter brought it and dropped it off real quick. Thanks so much for all the food! The Nutella is probably the greatest thing in the world. 

We had a family in the ward here drive through Santa Clara and they said that the weather there is amazing, sunny and clear. I wish that's what it was like here. For the last 3 weeks we have been waking up to over cast days that clear up a bit in the afternoon and then gets dark again. It's been forever since I have been able to see Catalina Island. Normally I can see it very clearly. 

I did tell you that I got moved to a new apartment! So I will have to send some pics of the new pad; it's pretty nice!

I am not getting transferred!! Nor is Hancock! And to make it even more interesting, we are dual training a greenie! So after this transfer I am probs going to stay one more transfer in Laguna Beach to finish the kid's training. There are like 23 new missionaries coming out and there is going to be 4 trio compainionships in the zone with a total of 5 greenies in the zone. There is one companionship that has a dying elder with a 6 week newbie that's also getting a brand new guy also. So this is going to be crazy! Also they said that we are losing 90% of our leadership in the mission in the next 2 transfers, so there is going to be a ton of change happening. I am just super happy that I get to be with Hancock to watch him die. It has been the greatest experience getting to be trained by him and become pretty good friends with him.

We weren't able to set a date with Michael yet. We did go golfing with him which was great! We played at a private club called Laguna Hills (or woods? I don't remember). But it was way good to get his trust a bit more. He loves the church and he has said that he feels that it's true! The only thing that kept us from asking him to be baptized was that we didn't feel that it was right at the time. We don't think he understands what it is that we are trying to do, so we are going to have a more formal sit down and talk about it a bit more. I will let you know how it goes!

I got to go to the new training about trying to keep sacrament a bit more focused. What our ward is doing is letting the ward council choose who talks based upon the needs of the groups and ward. There is a bit more they are doing so it should be good to see what happens! 

We have a bunch of stuff happening... just waiting to get tipped over into the font. I am absolutely loving the work! and I love all of you so much! 

Got a Brand New Corolla, Red, Out in The Parking Lot

Laguna Niguel 

So, to start off I figured that ya'll would know by now, but the ward is called the Laguna Beach Ward....sorry I never actually told you guys what it was called. 

This week was amazing. We started off kinda slow; we didn't have much planned out for the week so we just kinda went and did drop by's all week. One of the best things that happened this week is that we got a new car! Whenever a car gets 50,000 miles on it, they sell the car and give us a new one. So we got a brand spankin' new 2015 Toyota Corolla. Ya it's tricked out. We have a usb port and back up camera in it and blue tooth so we can sync our phone. We get set up a bit more than Drew did on his mission HAHAHAH! 

But even better than that was we went and did baptisms for the dead with Rob. It was the single most spiritual experience in my life. He was baptized for his dad and younger brother and great grandpa and an uncle. Then we had a lady in the ward come and get dunked for his mom and grandmother and an aunt. He totally felt the Spirit. But the crazyiest thing was that when we got done, Hancock was sitting on a bench and I was a witness - we both felt as if there were people standing next to us. It was the most warm and amazing feeling ever!!!

Church yesterday was great. Michael (a members boyfriend) showed up to church. We have taught him once before and he has come a bunch. We have been trying to teach him since but he has been way busy. He is the guy that wants to go golfing with us. So we talked to him and we are going to go this Thursday and after golf we will go over to a guys house and have another lesson. But the coolest thing is the fact that in the Gospel Essentials class he was sitting there and there were 2 recent converts in the class and Michael and these 2 others were just talking and participating in the class so much! Michael is just blown away by the Spirit and love that is had in all of the meetings. He said that when everyone says they know the church to be true he says he can feel it. Needless to say we are going to invite him to be baptized this week, hopefully with a date of June 6 so pray for that!

It's so crazy to think that Josh and all those other guys got ordained Elders! It seems like yesterday that they were juniors. I feel so old!  But that is way cool and good for them.

The last week and a half we have been getting a fair amount of rain. Like we will go into a meeting and it will be sunny and we will come out and its raining. It's good that we are getting rain cause the drought is pretty bad, but not so much that anyone's really freaking yet. The rain just dampens my mood and I don't like that.

Well it's going to be a good week! I hope we have a couple of lessons set up for the week but the worst is that transfer calls come in this week, so I am kinda freaking out but it's like whatevs. 

I love you all and hope you have a great week also.

Pictures

Laguna Niguel

We kinda talked about everything yesterday during our phone call, so I will just send pics cause they are worth like, at least 100 words each so...

I love you all so much!

Pics of our humble abode

Snakes and Rats

Laguna Niguel 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD! I LOVE YOU SO VERY MUCH!!!!

HAHAHAHAHA! I totally forgot that I never told you guys exactly what "rats and snakes" is {from last week}! So in one of the wards in our stake there is a non member guy who runs an exotic snake business from his house. In order to feed the over 100 snakes, he has to have a ton of food for them. His garage is converted into a little rat and mouse breeding ground. He has literally thousands of mice in there and it's our job to pull out each little tub and pull all the mice or rats out and put them into a new cage then put them back. He has 4 racks with about 40 tubs on eack rack with at least 10 mice in each. Then in the middle, there are 2 tubs on each rack that has about 50-60 mice in each! And then he has about 50 rats total. 

Ya, it's super disgusting and weird. But the cool thing is that he really likes having all the missionaries come over and help. There's usually about 20 of us missionaries there every Thursday doing that. Then, while we are doing that with the rats, we also go in and do the same thing with the snakes! It freaks me out so bad! I have done it several times and every time the snakes get really fussy and try and run away while I am holding them while the cage is getting cleaned. So ya, that's just about the sum of rats and snakes. The best part about it is that all the tubs have to be washed and set in the sun so that's what I usually do and I get to work on my tan! I am getting pretty dark -- is what i have been told :)

(Ignore my super bright red face - camera settings were weird)

We weren't able to have a lesson with Rommel for about a week and a half cause he has been working so much lately. But yesterday he randomly showed up at church with a member in the ward and his friend who loves the church but also isn't a member. The coolest part is just how many friends he has in the ward already, There are about a thousand people that served missions in Brazil, so everyone comes and talks to him. Also there are several people that found out he is a contractor looking for work so they have given him some jobs to do and paid him. So all in all the members are fellow-shipping the crap out of the guy! We have a lesson planned for this Wednesday and it was him that asked for it so he is a super hopeful!

More kinda fun stuff happening... We have a guy who wants to get the lessons but he also wants to take us golfing so we said, why not do both? So we are probs going to go golfing tomorrow on a really nice and classy course called Laguna Hills! He is a member and can get us in. And we also decided to to golfing today as a pday activity just to get warmed up! The course wasn't the best but it was way fun, and literally, I was hitting the ball the most consistently I have in my entire life! The Lord really does bless us! THE CHURCH IS TRUE!

I am so sorry that I can never remember when everyone's birthday is, I will really try and do better with that :(

I am figuring that we are probs going to try and call some time after church next week Our church gets out at 1 but we might be in a correlation meeting till like 2 and then it might be a bit till we are able to get to the members house to skype or face time :) We are going to be doing it at the Corcoran's house in Emerald Bay so I am going to show you guys the view that I have to look at every day and not jump into the ocean ;)

And I heard that BYU won again! I think they beat the same team they played last year. That's like 3 years running, I think!

Let everyone in the ward know that I love them, and know that I love all you so very much! 

Sunshine, but Only in My Soul

Laguna Niguel

It's been quite a long week of work. We did a bunch of service towards the end of the week that just has me really tired. Like I just dont feel like I can get caught up on enough sleep to get the energy back. We helped a lady move out of her house but we also had another project that was happening at the same time so we were trying to hurry. The worst part about that one was that this lady was not nice about all of the stuff that she wanted done. I love helping people that are really thankful for the help and don't just expect us to do everything. Moving that lady exhausted me physically and emotionally. 

Right after that we rushed off to help in a huge stake thing. They partnered with Stop Hunger Now and the stake raised enough money to package 85,000 meals to be shipped off around the world. As part of that they want the community to be the ones to do the packaging. So 600 volunteers showed up and in 4 hrs and made/packed all of the meals. Our bishop had a huge camera in the building and he is sending the videos and pictures up to Salt Lake to be in the church news. Hopefully they will make a Morman Message about it with his video. And then also during the week we did rats and snakes again. 

So we also had a bit of rain (it is much needed) on Friday and a bit on Saturday night. But it has been cloudy most of the week which sucked very really bad. It just seemed to put a damper on things. Then on Sunday, when the sun finally came out, it totally lifted our spirits!

We have a ton of work that is happening during the coming weeks! We have a guy who is investigating the church now because his girlfriend is a member of the church. He is really interested. We did the Restoration Lesson with him on Thursday and he loved it. His favorite thing about the church is the fact that we preach and learn on Sunday but then everyone goes out and lives their faith. He is a guy that has been working in the rehab world for most of his life and he loves the whole community of the church. Then we are going to start teaching another lady who is dating a member of the ward. We also have 2 baptisms in the ward coming up in 2 weeks. We haven't taught them at all but we are going to jump in on the teaching here in a bit cause they are going to move into the ward. 

Any who, it's been crazy and it's going to get a lot more crazy. Today we cleaned our apartment. I will get some pics of the apartment and send them to you next week cause I don't think anyone really realizes just how ghetto it is. It basically looks just like that pic of Kade's apartment. The inside is not that great either. We had to do a deep clean cause our fridge has been leaking and we have had mold problems since the beginning of my mish.

I can't wait to be able to talk to ya'll on Mother's Day! I LOVE EVERYONE SO MUCH!

I Just Thought it Was a Good Idea if you Were Baptized

Laguna Niguel

So this first pic is of me and Rob doing the thinking man pose. The second pic is, from left to right, Elder Hancock, Mcgary, Jardine then me!!! Elder Jardine got here at the beginning of this transfer and he was a visa waiter for the Netherlands. We took him to the air port this morning at 5, so ya that sucked! But it was good to say good bye to him. Elder Mcgary and Hancock were companions in the MTC and they are like best friends, so we hang out all the time and Mcgary is just way cool. I freaking love all the people that I am working with and those I am teaching!

So the baptism was incredible! Rob showed up and the ward just kept filling in. It was insane the number of people that were there for his special day! There were a few non members there and the spirit was incredible! There were about 6 companionships that were there in attendance because people had heard so much about Rob and they wanted to come see him. Me and Elder Hancock prepared a few videos for the half time entertainment and then said the opening and closing prayers. We had a few people in the ward that he knew give talks about baptism and then the Holy Ghost. Probs the best part about the whole thing was that at the end Rob bore his testimony and it seriously made the whole place bust out in tears. So ya, it was quite the incredible first baptism!!!!! 

After the baptism we went to dinner with a family in our ward who we have been helpping out with some yard work. They took us to Pei Wei (it's like the best place on earth) but that is like the 3rd time in a week they have fed us. They are quite simply the best people ever!!! 

On Friday we did another lesson with Rommel who we talked about the concept of baptism a few days before and he didn't like to think that God hates the people that don't get baptized so we talked to him about the Plan of Salvation. He loved it! It was incredible to see how happy the whole concept made him. My favorite thing he told me was the concept between the word for happy in Portuguese and the word for joy in the Portuguese. The difference is that happy is a smile and acting happy but joy was really feeling it in your heart, no matter what your circumstance! It was awesome to hear how he didn't like other churches talking about how they try and scare you into joining there church by talking about the devil and stuff. It just made me realize that everything we talk about has nothing to do with fear or doubt, it's all about love of our Father in Heaven and how we have the choice to do what we want but that we will ultimately make the choice that makes us the happiest. 

So I am just a tad bit jealous about the whole Elton John thing! Thats so sick that you guys went and did that. It's apperent that I was holding you guys back from partying hard by living at home!!! Oh and HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM! Sorry that I forgot. I don't mean to be cheesy but I got a baptism for your birthday soooo ya you're welcome :) I hope that you had the best birthday ever!! 

So the happiest news that I have gotten so far is that I am staying in my area for another transfer! I would have been so mad to leave cause there is so much that is happening and I dont think that I can bear leaving the members here. So I am super happy! A transfer is 6 weeks, so ya it's crazy to think that I am on to my 3rd one. Time is flying by!

I hope ya'll have a great and glorious week and know that I love you all so very very very much!

PS...

Oh yah, and our dryer just died this last week so this is what I have to do from now on...