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?
Thursday, October 25, 2012
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.
> 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.
Monday, October 15, 2012
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.
> [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.
Sunday, October 7, 2012
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.
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.
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