December 11, 2012

It was the slowest week we've had in about 2 months.  We probably needed the extra time to slow down.  We have been putting up the best numbers in the zone for a while now.  We have the trust of the members, but it isn't turning into referrals.  Yesterday (I hate you for this) I had our mission leader meet us at the church instead of his house for the coordination meeting and had a bunch of graphs looking at our statistics for the last 4 months and talking about where all of our investigators are, how many referrals we've gotten, how many investigators we've added, and how many lessons we are teaching.  To point out to him that all of the people that we are teaching live in the same neighborhoods and that everyone on all of the streets that we walk on already knows us (so they've already either accepted or rejected us before) I had him look at all of the progress records from the last 6 months, and start reading investigator's names at random.  He very quickly realized that I was getting at the idea that all of them were in the same area, and that the only ones outside of a certain 3/4 mile radius were met through members.  He asked the branch president if we could do branch council in the relief society room where I had put all that up so that we could give the same presentation to the leaders in the branch.  At least I didn't do any excel worksheets.  You can hardly tell that Christmas is coming in most parts of our area.  Especially in Pacific beach and La Jolla (the most famous parts) which missionaries have aptly nicknamed Sodom and Gomorrah.  We have been trying to get her there before, but she is throwing up lots of reasons not to listen to us.  She will come around eventually though.  Ricardo has been bearing his testimony to just about everyone he meets and is really excited to get a calling.

Never assume that I hear anything, so Rachael getting a mission call is news to me.  That is exciting for her though!  I think that they want us to call you using a calling card so that it doesn't waste church minutes.  Christmas falls on a p-day, but they're making it a normal proselyting day with a phone call.  What number do you want me to call on?  It would be easiest to do the call in the morning.  We have a dinner appt in the afternoon and then we are at the temple from 5-8:30.

December 4, 2012

The viejito that we bautized said it was the best day of his life.  He is trying to get his wife and neighbors to listen to us.  The blind guy needs more time before he is ready.  He needs to come to church more and he also spends the first week of every month in Mexico.  I wish we had the money to make tacos.  We don't get jack for money and the members are pretty inconsistent about feeding us.  Money is what I need for christmas.  I have had to use my personal card for a lot of things because I can't get cash out on my church card and a lot of places only take cash. As for anything else, just surprise me.
Have you been teaching Giselle in the house?  It will be a lot easier for her to feel the spirit there than in her place.  Also, if you are there when the sisters are teaching, let them do all the talking.  Go with their lesson plan.  It is really really really really really annoying when we make the arrangements for a lesson, spend hours studying and planning, and then the member comes in and ruins the lesson.  We had one that we spend half an hour beforehand telling the member our lesson plan, and he managed to talk about foreordination, the grand council in heaven, the differences between the aaronic and melchizedek priesthoods, and then some of the things that go on in the temple that he shouldn't have said.  Or this week, a family that we have been working with since I got in this area finally agreed to do a FHE with some members.  We prayed and studied for hours trying to find the best thing to meet their needs, planned it, and set up a time with the members to do it.  They showed up early to the members' house (before we did) and when the member called us to let us know they had arrived, we told them to wait before they tried to start anything.  The member thought he knew better, and we arrived just before he was finishing up what he thought this investigator really needed.  Needless to say, the spirit was nowhere to be found.  I was pissed.
 Tell Braden that I expect an email from him every week as well!

November 27, 2012

 We were invited to our branch president's house for thanksgiving dinner, so it was decidedly white.  He said the reason that he invited us for thanksgiving because he wanted to make sure that we had traditional thanksgiving food, but I'm pretty sure the real reason is that there is finally a set of missionaries in the branch that he likes.  He texted us on the morning of transfers last week to ask if either of us was leaving.  Also, do you mean the assistants? They have abolished the "office elder" as you knew it.  How are the Pateys? How many computers do you have in the house now? 5? 6? I'll let you read what I sent to Dad and brynne about Ricardo, but he is doing very well.  He will be baptized this weekend, if everything goes according to plan.  Victor is struggling because his mom is in the hospital and he has not been able to meet with us because he is busy taking care of her and his dad.  He actually emigrated to the states to take care of his dad; he had a job in mexico and was living on his own.  He is very independent, but very shy.  We are getting him to work towards december 15 as a baptismal date, just at his own pace.  

November 20, 2012

I am still with Elder Villalobos, and since tomorrow is transfers/my training being over, I found out today that I will at least be with him through the end of the year.  Ricardo is sharing the gospel at work and with his family, and they are starting to have their hearts softened enough to listen to us.  He is more than excited to be baptized.  He paid tithing (even though he's not supposed to) this week and grabbed enough envelopes to last until the end of the year.  We also recommitted Victor (the blind dude) for the 15th of december.  His mom had whisked him off to Mexico for 2 weeks without warning and so he wasn't able to tell us and our impression was that he had literally dropped off the face of the earth.  He is progressing (at his own pace) and had already listened to most of the book of Alma.  He got stuck in 2 nefi because he didn't understand anything and then we told him to listen to alma 32 and he is almost done with the war chapters now.  We assigned him the story of Alma the youngers conversion and he seemed excited to listen to it.  Also, call Megen and tell her I got her package, and thank her for me.  I would have written back, but I threw away the packaging and forgot to write down the address.  Tell her her fried chicken recipe was really good too.  The battalion has a teaching room and every missionary's goal is to take an investigator there.  We have only been once, but we are going tomorrow.  

 Not to brag, but we are getting some serious work done in our branch right now.  Our mission president is very much aware of the changes that we have made in the past 3 months in our branch, and, like you said, the members are starting to trust us.  Our branch president, who used to hate the missionaries, had us over for dinner last week and is having us over for thanksgiving as well.  His wife served her mission in Costa Rica.  We are doing our best to improve the ward council, which is especially hard considering that we do have to respect the organization.  Part of what we have done is just stop showing up, because we were losing almost all of our Tuesday nights to the meeting and accomplishing nothing with the work.  99% of the meetings were 2 hours of talking about one member who is kind of sick or sad or something and then never actually getting anything done about it, and then none of the real issues (i.e. missionary work, reactivation, getting people to the temple, etc. etc. etc.) They wanted us to be there at every meeting, especially because we practically run the branch at times, and then they would give us about 2 minutes every 3 weeks to essentially mention the names of our investigators, what they needed, attempt to get people to assign things for them, and then jack squat got done.  We have been pushing really hard on the mission leader to actually do his calling even though he has asked to be released and he is finally starting to pick up a lot of the slack.  We do a lot of work with less actives, especially because they are almost always surrounded by non-members that we can teach. The only issue with that is that the focus 15 or 5 or whatever it is never gets used.  The list constantly changes, and they constantly ask us to visit people who aren't on it, and so our efforts end up being spread out and not accomplish anything. However, as my mission president says, there are very few situations that you can't baptize your way out of, and that's what we're working on.  If I have things my way, we should have 4 by the end of the year.  We only have 2 with a date, but there are a couple more that I think that could do it. 

October 25, 2012

Things are going pretty well here.  They just called a new RS and Elders quorum this week and put in people who actually want to do their callings.  We are trying really hard to get the members involved in missionary work.  We have a blind dude committed to be baptized november 17, so pray a lot for him.  His family tries to get in the way of us, and on saturday we actually had to teach him in the garage so that it could be quiet enough for him to feel the Spirit.  He is super prepared and really excited.  We gave him the audio discs for the book of mormon, and when we asked him to listen to 2 nephi 31, he listened to the whole disc (ch 24-33).  He actually understood everything and was able to summarize to us everything he read.  He really understood all the stuff in 28 about the church that was the whore of the earth etc and agreed with that and also about the people saying they didn't need any more than a bible.  He also really liked that several of the members stepped up to help him out at church on sunday.  Also, in Ecuador do you remember a dude named wilfrido gonzalez? He is from Quito and was in the stake presidency when we were there.  We were in the Inasquitos ward right?


> We teach in English and Spanglish all the time.  There aren't enough Brazilian members to make their own branch, so there are three that come to ours.  I taught one of them in portuguese.  Yeah...English people have big cars according to the people in portugal.  I really liked the quote from Pres. Uchtdorf about not being able to imagine Christ going from one place to another without stopping to help anybody while multitasking.  Very true.  I did get the package today, so thank you.  Also, saw the video of the Jess family and going to the temple and stuff.  I can't believe that Jared is considering going on a mission and I imagine that Vinson is now as well.  The camera work there was slightly better than on the MTC videos.  I laughed when they had you going over to their house in the civic and they had two camera guys in there. Was there a sound guy too or were the mics on the cameras?  Vinny is going to the san bernardino mission on November 14.  Also, his marathon is this weekend.  We get tons of crap about the elections, or at least from the whites.  None of the latinos care at all.  I am definitely glad to be able to work in Spanish instead of English.  Even the testigos are cooler in spanish.  Had a hilarious moment the other day when I tried to give one a passalong card and he was all like soy testigo blah blah blah and I basically said so what?

October 16, 2012

I'm going to start off by asking for some things (sorry, before I forget).  Could you send another CD? maybe like the new world symphony by dvorak or something?  We spend tons of time in the car here because of traffic, etc. {How has food preparation going?]  I haven't been able to get to most of those recipes.  They either require ingredients that are too expensive or too much time to cook.  I really only get about 40 minutes for dinner.  I have to go back home, cook, eat, and then be back in the area all within an hour.  Also could you have them send me my soccer training pants? It is pretty cool here in the mornings.  Thanks for the planets cd gem! We have listened it to death already (way better than some of the other stuff missionaries listen to).  The day after we got it we had a training follow up meeting and the mission president was there.  His wife had to leave early and took the car so he asked us for a ride to the dealership to pick up his where he was getting work done.  He heard about 3 seconds of Venus and goes "the planets?!" and then talked about how it was his favorite thing to listen to on his mission.  Since the mission office is in our area, we see his face a lot.  He came to our branch unannounced on Sunday and laid the smack down on the branch and told them how the members need to get involved more.  We shop at Target normally because it's the closest.  There are gay rights people who campaign in front of it every day and they tried to talkt to us so we just pretended that we didn't speak English...works like a charm cause hardly anyone else here does either! I am tempted to share Alma 8:19 with a member and see what they say...We are probably going to drop that family.  The daughters are interested, but the dad knows the book of mormon is true already and just isn't willing to do anything.  Anytime we tell him anything he comes up with an excuse not to.  We go to a laundromat and I just ran out of all the quarters you gave me.  I have to go but I will keep you posted!

> Our mission president gave a talk to us about the Lord hastening his work this week.  [Where town did you visit for the Peace Corp last spring?] I was way up on the Pacific coast on the Nicoya peninsula close to a town called nandayure. [What soccar shirt did you want me to get you when I am in England?] The team is arsenal.  Their logo has a cannon on it and the jersey is made by nike.  Their jerseys are red with white sleeves (I'm pretty sure about the sleeves).  I can't remember their away jersey this year, but I think it's purple? You could also buy me a hereford jersey if you want.  They're a team in like the third or fourth division (i.e. semi-pro-ish) that has a nice big cargill logo on their jerseys.  I found what I call the california scripture the other day.  I think it's 1 Timothy 4:3 or something like that, but it talks about people not getting married and being vegetarian and I laughed.  We are still here, at the very least for another transfer.  We have 2 committed to be baptized on november 17, but one we are giving to the english elders because we teach her in spanglish with mostly english.  Also, she is a recovering drug addict in a really tough situation and our branch is simply not capable of giving her the support she needs. We got a blind guy to commit as well, but his family refuses to help him get to chruch, activities, etc.

October 2, 2012

Our area is the whole San Diego North Stake.  It is mostly within the city limits of San Diego, and the regions are Clairemont, La Jolla, Pacific Beach, University City, and Linda Vista.  If you want to be really specific, my apartment is off of Clairemont Drive (I think). UCSD and the University of San Diego are both within our boundaries.   Try Isaiah 41:10? We just go out and walk around and find people to teach if an appointment is ignored.  We give out ridiculous amounts of referrals to the English missionaries.  We found a family of 5 who have known the missionaries since 2009 and came to church more often than most of the members.  They were about to get baptized, and then dropped off the face of the earth and lost interest.  We started teaching the dad again (lots of doubts, I wanted to give him a libro de mormonazo in the face) and then found his two daughters and his son this week when we were looking for him.  The oldest one said that we were an answer to her prayers because she didn't know which church they should go to and she asked to have people come by her house to show her.  We have to re-teach all the lessons, separately to the kids and parents because they prefer different languages and they have different schedules and needs.  The dad didn't know that we had started to teach his kids and found us teaching them last night.  He was surprised at first, asked what we were teaching them (telling the story of Nephi and the brass plates), expressed his doubts about the story, and then left and told us to keep teaching as soon as we answered them.  We are going to try and get them involved with some family night activities.

> [You asked about the "Joseph Smith in Liberty Jail" experience I had last week.] Basically this dude came up to us and started cussing us out and doing some extremely vulgar things (enough that I would have been offended even before the mission) and then the AP was raising his arm to the square to rebuke this guy when someone else drove up and chased him off.  We had something similar with another person this week who interrupted one of our unplanned/outdoor lessons and held up traffic to try and throw us off.  He was not nearly as obscene though and we actually got his address and an appointment to fix his doubts.  We are supposed to do almost all of our finding through referrals, but of our 19 lessons last week, one was to someone introduced to us by a member.  Most of the members in our branch don't do jack.  Don't mean to sound discouraged, but when the relief society president and elders quorum president don't come every week or even attempt to do their callings, we have some serious issues.  The mission focuses a lot on how many lessons we teach with members present, but we can't improve on that very much if we only have 3 who are willing to help.  One of them is moving to Chile at the end of the month.

> An interesting thought for your studies:  After a not-so-fun discussion with an evangelical about the gift of tongues, I decided to do some research.  Read Acts 2, and give me your thoughts.  1 Corinthians 14 will help clarify that.  After that, think about all of the other places in the New Testament (I don't have specific verses) where people speak in tongues after being baptized/confirmed.  There are several in the book of Acts.  If you are having a hard time thinking of why they would be doing that or what it means by speaking in tongues in those scriptures, look at 2 Nephi 32. I'm sure that you have already found most of these answers, but maybe give it to Dalton to do some research and thinking.
> It is also interesting to go through the New Testament (again in Acts) and note all of the correct principles that are mentioned when the apostles performed ordinances.  Most people don't notice it, but it is very specific about procedure.  Interesting food for thought.

September 25, 2012

Church is better.  We still haven't gotten any investigators there, but they had the highest attendance in like 4 months this week.  They are mostly couples and families, and there are tons of part member families where the wife works hard, supports the kids and family, and goes to church while the husband drinks all day.  We struggle a ton with keeping them active, and the husbands have all already been taught and want nothing to do with the church.  Some of the spanish units are pretty big, it's just that ours is struggling a lot.  We are allowed to go to the temple once every 3 months on p-days.  Most of the kids move on to English units, if they stay active.  All of the youth and primary go to everything other than sacrament in English already.  I at the very least met the elders quorum president this week, and he came for the first two hours of church (he hasn't been in 2+ months) .  There are a few members who do do most of the work, and the rest don't really do much of anything.  Several have gone inactive because they were given callings.  We are at the very least starting to see some measure of success, and have seen a lot of miracles.  I went on exchanges with one of the assistants this week and we were doing enough work that Satan decided to intervene.  We had an experience a la Joseph Smith in jail, and the assistant was actually in the process of raising his arm to the square to rebuke this guy when someone else came up and chased him off.  It wasn't very fun.  Last night we decided to try an investigator that we had stopped teaching and came across his kids at home, and after teaching them, they told us that they had been praying for someone to help them know which church to go to.  It was really cool.  The work is still really slow here, but it is at the very least starting to pick up.


We got someone to commit to a date a week and a half ago but he hasn't come to church so he lost the date.  We at the very least got a few less actives to  come to church.  I have been plenty healthy, and so has my companion.  We had a super awkward sunday school where the teacher thinks that her husband is enganando with another mujer and she came up to us and asked us to teach because she hadn't prepared anything.  We left to go get the manuals and then when we got back she had gotten the class to open all their manuals to the law of chastity and basically forced us to teach that.  Fun times.  Also, since the viejo asked, my companions name is elder villalobos.  He is from Orem, but his dad is from Mexico and his mom is from Puerto Rico.  He speaks pretty good Spanish.

September 18, 2012

I got the package [from the Fullers] and am working on the letter part. We got someone with a baptismal date on saturday and then another who won't commit to a date but said he was going to make it to the temple before he dies.  He is almost 80 and in really poor health.  We had a carne asada for the Mexican independence day but no investigators, even the two who live across the street, came.  They haven't even gotten one to church in like 4 months.  We had a really cool experience blessing a premature baby and his father who are from Tijuana and had to take an ambulance across the border to get him to the Ronald McDonald children's hospital here.  He was baptized in 1999 and then went on a mission within a year but has been inactive for a long time, he is starting to come to church again though.  We always offer that kind of help [clearing plates/ helping with the dishes] but they either never accept it or we never have time because we are only supposed to be there for an hour.  Not that we get fed very often anyway though.
My branch has problems.  There are a few good people, but with rare exception nobody does anything but complain.  We aren't supposed to take over the jobs of auxiliary leaders, but we are forced to help just because we need to get more than 25 people to church a week.  It has been extremely difficult but we are starting to see success.  We got one with a date on Saturday, now we need to see if he can keep it.  We are starting to get some referrals as the members grow in their trust in us, but still not much is happening.  It is also hard because most of the people we teach work 2-3 jobs and are never home.  On the rare occasions they are home, they are tired enough that it's hard to convince them to listen to us.  Also, nobody comes to church because they all work on Sundays.  It's not a case of they work on Sundays to have a nicer car or anything like that either.  They have to work 14 hour days 7 days a week to survive.  A large number of the people we teach only rent a room or have 10-15 people living in a tiny apartment or house.  We are starting to see more success, but it is very difficult to get them to keep commitments.  Also, my companion's family got sealed on Saturday and some relatives flew all the way out from Australia to see it.  The mission president told him on Wednesday that they were doing it in San Diego instead of Salt Lake and gave us permission to go to the ceremony and for him to be a witness.  (It was his mom with his stepdad, he was born under the covenant but then his parents were divorced and remarried, in case you're wondering why he had to get permission and why he was a witness).  It was a really cool experience though.

September 11, 2012

I went out and had some "piksa" [that's how they say pizza in CR] for lunch.  And I know you won't be happy, but I wasn't actually able to get the shot....the medical sister in the mission says it doesn't make a difference so I'm gonna try to get it today, hopefully.  Also I can't look at your e-cards so sorry...the Peruvian dinner was good, he picked out lomo saltado for me.  I like lomo saltado, but I swear 70% of the plate was onions and I had to eat them so as not to be rude....it sucked.  Nobody here plays soccer and it's lame.  A kind of funny story was that one day we were getting out of the car to go to an appointment and a guy who looked like he was in a gang pulled up next to us and was like"are you guys mormons?" I rolled my eyes and told him that we were, and then he said "cool, my dad's a latter day saint.  He lives in utah.  vernal." And then he drove off.  I'm still a little confused, but I guess that's how the cookie crumbles.  One of the counselors in the branch presidency works for either the CIA or Naval intelligence (the Navy's Pacific command is close by).  He is always in some crazy place for work without any kind of notice.  In the last month, he has been to China and Korea.  He called us from Kuwait at about 12:30 our time (or 3ish AM their time) to ask us if we could take out his recycling.

Letter to Brynne

My address is 7404 Armstrong Place San Diego, California 92111.  They send all of the mail to the mission office and then give it to the missionaries all at once so it'll be that address the whole mission.  I'm in San Diego now and my companion in the MTC also came here.  The people in my area here don't actually keep any of the commitments they make so it's really hard.  We have only had people actually keep even just appointments twice.  One time his wife made him and the other time his sister did.  We have given tons of blessings to people because school is starting and people like to get sick here.  In the past 3-4 days we gave 9 blessings.  5 were for school, 2 were for sick people, one was for someone trying to find a job, and then one was because someone thought a demon/ghost/not good thing was in his house.  My apartment is actually really nice and has a cool view.  It is pretty close to sea world so we see and hear their fireworks every night and that's not so fun.  My companion is from Utah but his parents are from Mexico and Puerto Rico and his step parents are from Peru and Ecuador so he's actually pretty cool. 

First Letter from the Field

Thanks for the birthday wishes and the package! I am in the Linda Vista 3rd branch, which covers the whole San Diego North Stake because it is the only Spanish unit in the stake.  Our area therefore includes Linda Vista, La Jolla (where the temple is), Pacific Beach, and Clairemont. Feel free to look on google maps.  There were a grand total of 0 progressing investigators in the branch and not even any who had come to church in about 2 months.  The work was going slow enough in the area that they took out the other Spanish companionship in our zone.  We are not allowed to tract because the mission president wants people to have a different idea of who missionaries are, so we are only allowed to contact referrals and people in the street/on their porch, etc.  I guess that since missions are supposed to be hard that the Lord figured I didn't need to ease into it.  We have had 2 people keep appointments since I arrived, and I would be inclined to believe that they only reason that they kept them was because they had a wife and a sister, respectively, that was forcing them to keep it.  We will have to see.  Almost everybody is super paisa but there are two Peruvians, a Bolivian, an Ecuadorian, and a Colombian in our branch.  One owns a Peruvian restaurant and invited us to eat there on Thursday, and the others are....characters.  Two of the other four are under church discipline, and then one teaches the gospel principles class a la Mitchell family, except that person might even have them beat in the false doctrine category.  The remaining one of the four is one of five people in the branch who actually attempts to help with the missionary work. It looks like I'm in for a fun time.
Thanks again for the birthday presents and wishes!  Also let me know how Barca is doing!

Elder Keaton

PS The alarm clock you bought me caught fire.  I put the battery in it that you bought for me to put in and then it caught fire about 30 seconds later.  Could you maybe send another clock? It was nice having one clock in the room and another in the living room.

August 11, 2012

MTC Provo

August 11, 2012

Forwarded and typed by Papa and Gem

Dear Papa and Gem,

Please forward this via email or whatever other method you choose  to anyone who is interested.

Basically I am here and alive and well and almost settled in. I could use some sleep though. . .

On my first day I saw Dylan Howard several times, as well as Andres for a few hours because as internationals we had to redo some of the medical things. I haven’t seen him since then since he’s in English and I’m in Spanish.

My companion is named Elder Cena from Torino, Italy. His family lived in Spain for a long time and that’s how he knows Spanish. He plays the piano and the drums and is pretty cool. He also has a pretty snazzy suit.

Tell Braden happy birthday. Also, ask the (Vigo?) what that routine was again.

Peace,

Elder K. 

Officially Elder

Keaton officially left on his mission on August 8th 2012.  He will be serving in the San Diego Mission, Spanish Speaking.

He was set apart the night before by his stake president (name?) at about 8pm.  Family and friends joined in the festivities, with a special thanks to Face Time for making it all happen! We celebrated by going to Happy Sumo, a sushi place at the Riverwoods in Provo, Utah before the event.

One of Keaton's long-time Kindergarten buddies from Peru is also left on his mission on the same day, going to the same mission, but English speaking.  Two boys all grown up and ready to serve the Lord.