March 5, 2013

  This week we came one short of my record of lessons for a week (22 and 23) and we have been hitting part-member families really hard.  Elder Villalobos and I were never able to get anywhere with part-member families, but all of the investigators we have added the past few weeks have been from part-member families.  Things are fairly difficult in that my companion speaks nearly unintelligible Spanish and he goes home in June, but I am being a tough taskmaster and he is starting to learn more.  Last night we had a really good lesson and he started chattering in spanish about the best I've ever heard him speak.  The spirit really helps sometimes.  Elder Gay from the 70 gave us a surprise visit this week, and he gave a phenomenal talk on how to involve members more in missionary work.  He talked about when he did that as a mission president and they split the mission twice.  On his mission, he also nearly single-handedly changed how missionary work was done in Spain.  Also, his grandmother received a personal visit from Jesus Christ right before she died.  It was a crazy good talk.  Also, the missionary dept just changed the policy on email for missionaries, and we are allowed to write friends now (that's why I'm writing so late).  More info on our area-- one of the assistants came up to us yesterday and putting a third companionship in the branch is a strong possibility with the huge surge and the kind of numbers that we have been putting up.  We just need to get some baptisms behind it. 

We also got to teach victor this week (we had only seen him once in the past two months).  We got on the phone with him on thursday, and cancelled an appt so that we could go see him that same night.  We then taught him on friday and took him to church on sunday.  we were supposed to see him last night but he had to cancel, so we're seeing him in a few minutes.  Because he has made it to church enough times now, we're gonna commit him to pay tithing tonight and schedule a baptismal interview and see if we can't get him baptized this weekend.  It's a huge stretch, but we can make it happen.  As far as pollito/my companion goes, we are getting along pretty well.  He does a lot of really weird stuff, but it's mostly funny.  There are still times where I have to stop myself from saying "what on earth are you doing?" but he means well so I have no problem with it.  He has been out 21 months, so now he is already thinking about going home and always asks me for advice about how he should get himself married.  I've let him know my thoughts about marriage, which is a nice way of emphasizing on staying focused on finding, teaching, baptizing, restoring the gospel, preaching it, gathering the house of israel, reactivating, fulfilling prophecy, and everything else we have to do.  Have a good week! 

February 26, 2013

This week we did really well.  The other missionaries taught 21 lessons, and we had 17, so things picked up a ton.  The mission set an all-time record for new investigators (180) this week, and we added 2 of them.  Both were from part-member families that we had tried before but were more willing this time.  Ricardo gave a talk this week.  The doctrine was all solid, but he was still pacing around and talking with his hands a la evangelica...LOL.   That investigator talked to a member who owned a restaurant about getting a job so that she wouldn't have to work sundays, and he was super rude to her and ended up turning someone else away from the church with his attitude.  The missionaries were able to fix her situation, but it was still kinda rough.   I have had some technical difficulties with some of them and had to throw 2 away and a third one won't last much longer.  I got some beautiful new ties at a discount clothing store, and then one of them (I wore it to transfer meeting and literally got 20+ compliments on it) got stained the first day I wore it.  Two of my nice brooks brothers ties also had large stains, and I was really worried about asians dry-cleaning them (I had my suit dry-cleaned in september and it looked worse after than before), but they all came out looking like new, so that was good.  The wave just started this transfer, and it's really going to hit hard in march.  It will be interesting.  

 

We just heard that there were going to be 58 new missions.  We actually only found out because we went to an arab international store in search of inca kola and heard it on npr while we were there.  That is great that you are helping the missionaries out down there.  Member work is a much better way of doing things. Our youth programs here are kind of terrible to be honest.  It seems like everywhere in the stake that the leadership just really doesn't do that great of a job.  That is really good that you are getting them involved in family history.  We have tried to get lots of people involved, but hispanics here just aren't interested. 

Elder Karlinsey

February 12, 2013

 [Our investigator from Venezuela] goes back on the 20th and was/is doing really well, but he doesn't want to get baptized until after he goes to venezuela.  We were shooting for this weekend, but he wants to talk to his parents and fiancee about it.  He loves coming to church and reading the book of mormon, but wants more time before baptism.  He is flying back to texas in april for an engineering conference and has put flying back here to get baptized and then returning to venezuela, but we are just going to send off his information to the missionaries down there and see what they can do.  We had one investigator who was FINALLY coming to church today after weeks of praying for sundays off and then getting transferred to another store where her boss would let her get some sundays to go to church, and then her boss forgot to put that on the schedule.  She traded shifts to get this sunday off, and then got a call that her pregnant daughter was having birthing pains so she couldn't come anyway.  That was more than a little frustrating.

> That is cool that Giselle is [starting to take the discussions].  Elder Villalobos is getting transferred (we find out where to tomorrow) after being here since July.  I'm staying, so if I leave this area the next transfer then I will have been here an equally inordinate amount of time.  Odds are that I will be here longer though.  You really can't find counselors out of 11 units? We have a hard time with that in our branch, but that's cause there just aren't enough people.  The high priests group leader and mission leader are the same dude, but all of the high priests are himself and the branch presidency so all he really does in that regard is tell people that they need to go to the temple and do their home teaching.

January 29, 2013

We dropped our last investigators who were living in the hispanic neighborhoods this week, so the brilliant irony is that all of our investigators live in the places where spanish-speaking people aren't supposed to live and that the neighborhoods where all of the work used to be are practically untouched at the moment.  We added a guy from venezuela this week who is studying english at the university of san diego and is already progressing really well.  He accepted the invitation to be baptized the first visit, and a date the second.  He made it to church on sunday and really liked it.  He goes back to venezuela in 3 weeks, so that's how long we have to baptize him.  The investigator I talked about in the letter for your birthday is doing really well.  She got really sick and we gave her a blessing, and a virus that has been going around that tends to get people for 2 weeks was cured overnight.  She recognized the miracle, and then prayed to get Sundays off and was transferred this week to another store where her boss will let her have some sundays to go to church.  It is starting to warm up, and the food situation isn't that great.  I don't get to eat that great of food because I don't have time to make anything good or money with which to buy good wholesome food.  We had some members feed us 3 times this week.  They had a birthday party early in the week, then on saturday, and then fed us again on sunday.  Overall, things are pretty good.

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.