"Sorry I didn't email earlier! We went on a hike up to an abandoned mine cave. It was pretty cool. Elder Avery caught this cool black and orange salamander! We ended up taking a wrong turn and hiked a couple of miles but it wasn't too bad. So this week was pretty good! Except I'm upset, while I was writing the first few paragraphs of this letter, a guy from our ward called me and asked me to give a talk this Sunday. So yay. Haha. Anyways, this week we went to this guy named David's house for dinner. He used to be a pro boxer and he killed someone in self defense and went to jail, so he's different. He made this stuff called spread in jail, and decided to feed it to us. It is top Raman, mixed with chile, sour cream, mustard, mayo, Doritos, and all sorts of seasonings. It was not good haha. He's nice though, he's not all there. So we have been meeting with this lady named Vivian, she is also not all there, but super nice. We finally got her to go to church! We kept trying to get her to go, but she always has lame excuses like she doesn't have money or something. Like we get her a ride and do everything for her! But we finally got her to go. I was pretty bold and blunt about things with her. It was starting to get frustrating, but it worked. We just had faith and kept praying for her! It sucks though because we have to give her off to some other missionaries because she isn't in our ward. But just glad we found her to teach! So we were going to find new investigators, and just knocking on doors, and for some weird reason, no one was answering their doors. I felt like something just wasn't right, so I said we should say a prayer, and we did. The next door we went to, the lady was home and wants us to come teach her next week!!! So that's way exciting! There is this cool old guy in our ward, he just got baptized last year. He fought in WWII. I guess he convinced Ronald Reagan to run for president haha. So that's cool. His name is ken Holden. There's this other guy in our ward, his name is Lauren Sorensen, he is 98 years old and pretty much runs around the church. He has more energy than a little kid. He's crazy, but a super cool guy. We have also been meeting with this family that was recently baptized. They haven't been to church for 13 weeks! And we visited them and we got them to go! Their 14 year old son has anxiety, and he stole his moms car and he wrecked it. His 26 year old brother beat him up after that. We happened to stop by that very day. There was just chaos in their house, and everyone was yelling and just upset, and we stopped by and the mom almost said it wasn't a good day for us to visit, but then our ward mission leader stopped by out of the blue! And he came in and we gave a good lesson and got them to go to church. You could just feel the spirit and i know we were supposed to go over to help calm their family down after all that chaos, because our ward mission leader came too! It was really cool! Anyways, pretty great week!
Well the days go by slow and the weeks go by flipping fast! But it still feels like I haven't seen you guys in 2 years already! I miss you all so much! I just want you guys to keep growing your testimonies and stay close to God! Being away from the comfort of home, I have seen the influence of satan on the world, and how easy it is slip away from the gospel. I'm not saying you guys ever would, but I just want you guys to keep being awesome and try to study the scriptures personally and as a family! :) "10 Behold I say unto you, do ye suppose that ye cannot worship God save it be in your synagogues only? And moreover, I would ask, do ye suppose that ye must not worship God only once in a week? (Alma 32)" I just thought I would share this scripture, I think it's pretty cool! It just means we need to worship God throughout the week! Church isn't the only time we should worship!" I love it when he gets all preachy!! Ha! No, it really is good to hear how his testimony is growing and how the church is becoming so much more important to him!
And here is this weeks email--
"Hey mom! I'm pretty good how are you? Yes we still are planning the baptism for this week, but we might have to push it back because the lady did some serious sin stuff a while back and we have to get her an interview with either the mission president or the 1st counselor of the mission. Kinda sucks, and the lady wanted to do it September 3rd because it was her moms birthday and her mom is a member so she thought that would be a good present! Haha. And Ya our ward is pretty cool, me and elder Ross hang out with the Becks, who are a couple that just got married not too long ago, and he is an RM, and the Pasowistys, who are from Canada and they are both so cool. They have us for dinner a lot and they let me watch the first half of the Broncos game on Saturday. Haha. And my first transfer ends today. There are a few buddies of mine leaving the area which sucks. So training is 12 weeks, so in 6 weeks, elder Ross will most likely be leaving. I will probably be in Chico for at least another 12 weeks, unless for some weird reason hey shotgun us out, which means takes Ross and me out at the same time, but that's rare because then the new missionaries don't know anyone or where to go. And uptime goes by fast but slow, like it's crazy to think that I've been in California for 6 weeks now, but I feel like I haven't seen you guys in forever and I look at how much longer I have and it's way more!
I don't do laundry. I just stink. Just kidding. It's not too bad. And grocery shopping isn't too bad either, but definitely easy when you did it haha. The apartment isn't too bad, except the elder before me left TONS of boxes from all the packages that he got, and there is just like a mountain of them to clean up. It actually really pisses me off he left them, because to leave an area it says to make sure you don't leave a mess for other elders to clean up. But other than that it's not too bad. We moved our beds into the kitchen/living room area because there is a swamp cooler there, and it was so hot in the bedroom we just couldn't sleep. It's so unfair, our zone leaders and a couple other companionships live in these apartments not too far from us, that are super nice. They have AC and they are big and have windows. We live in a dark hot basement. I had to give a talk yesterday! It was pretty good. It was on obedience, and I shared a hunting story with it and everyone came up to me after saying they thought I was so cool and they all said they couldn't believe I was 18 because of my talk lol. And after the talk, a really old lady in a robotic wheel chair came up to me and asked if I knew a Helen Stoddard that lived in Utah! Apparently they were best friends growing up! How crazy is that!? So I forgot to tell you, the sister missionaries near us are having their car retired, so we have to give the, ours. So I'm getting a bike today. Yay. Biking in 100 degrees. I guess we are going to share a car with some other elders, but the elder there is a 350 pound Polynesian kid. We went on a hike with him and he struggled really bad. So I doubt he's going to let us have the car very often. I'm mad that they are taking the car from us though, because we cover the biggest area of the zone! We cover most of Chico and a nearby city called Durham! And the elders we are sharing a car with, cover TWO wards! I don't understand why they couldn't take a car from someone only covering a small area?! Whatever I guess It will help get me in shape. I already lost six pounds since last week! A week ago I weighed myself and realized that I'm getting even more fat haha. The members here us like crazy. There's always a salad, some fattening food, and a desert! It's so bad. I weighed 236 last week, but I'm down to 229. I'm going to try to get to 200 before New Years.
So this week was pretty good. We visited Tony this week, the one I was inspired to visit a while back. We brought a member with us too. I guess he has already read a 100 pages of the Book of Mormon! He said it's cool because it goes hand in hand with the bible! He loves reading it! We had a super good lesson on the gospel, and at the end he invited himself to church. He said I want to come to your guys' church some time! He wasn't able to make it this week, but we will get him to go. So we had this guy named Frank on our potential investigator list. The address was a homeless shelter. We went, and opened the door, and no one was there. It was dark and everything was cleaned up! So we were just really confused haha. Then we went outside and we were walking to the car, and elder Ross had an impression to leave a Book of Mormon inside, so we went back, but the door was locked! It was weird! I wonder if the door just wasn't shut all the way when we went in. Anyways, so we didn't find Frank. And at church yesterday, a guy named Frank showed up! We talked to him and he had been staying at that shelter! It was him! Without any invitation, he came to church! We got his number and we are going to teach him sometime! He is a really nice guy and open to anything. He is trying to turn his life around for his 5 year old son.
I don't really have any other cool stories or miracles to share this week, but I could just tell you about some of the people! So we teach this new convert named Beth. We call her deaf Beth because she is SUPER deaf haha. When her phone rings, her lamps blink because she can't hear. And while on the phone, she types, and someone talks for her, and the person types whatever the other person says so she can just read it haha. She is crazy. I don't know if I have told you about Norm, but he is a convert of 30 years. He is inactive unfortunately, so we visit him pretty often. He has a gimpy arm and gimpy leg. But he has this massive left arm and always wants to arm wrestle people haha. And if you shake his hand, he will crush it, so we always fist bump haha. He is obsessed with Elvis Presley and he ends up talking about him forever when we go over haha. He's a funny guy. So we are teaching this lady who isn't all there, and it's so annoying. We have been teaching her for 5 weeks, and we have invited her to church for the past 3 weeks, and she says she will go, but she always calls us a few minutes before and cancels because of some ridiculous excuse! It makes me so mad. I was pretty straight forward and blunt with her last lesson. And she always asks us for food and a job. I'm about ready to drop her as an investigator.
So I had I good week! So how was your week? How is being healthy? I hope everyone is doing well! I hope Mase emails me sometime! You guys are awesome! Love you so much!
And here are the latest pics--
And finally, I just had to share this picture that I took. It is Jayden's countdown chart. One whole letter is completely filled in!! So exciting!!
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