Hey Everyone!
This week has flown by, and it's so crazy to think that I have already completed an entire transfer in the mission field! The work is tough, but Elder Knight and I are determined to get this area up and running.
Tuesday, October 22nd, 2013:
Today was a very productive day, even if our numbers didn't exactly show it. We were able to contact every single person that we stopped by today, and Elder Knight and I set up some return appointments with a few different people. However, the real surprise of the day was visiting Enrique Olvera, who is our "Eternigator," because of how great the lesson was. He basically admitted to us that he needs to change his life in order to receive an answer to his prayers, which is exactly the message that we have been trying to convey to him for the entire last transfer. We offered his wife a Priesthood blessing to help her ongoing ear problem (she is 94 years young), and they both started crying after the blessing. I cannot wait to have a lesson with him this week to see how he is doing. At night, we had a lesson with a potential named Jose. The lesson was awful. It was as bad as the lesson with Enrique was good. A thing about Latinos is that they don't like to let other people talk. As missionaries, our job is to teach, not to be taught to about things in the Bible that we already know or are false personal beliefs of other people. We basically dropped him on the spot, before heading over to correlation. The meeting was very productive, and Hermano Simmons was there, too. He seems a lot more motivated than we all had initially thought, and I'm very excited to work with him.
Wednesday, October 23rd, 2013:
Elder Knight and I have now gone an entire month without a single member referral. We should be getting at least one or two per day, if not more. It is so difficult; we try to talk to everyone and ask if they know anyone that we can talk to; we always get the same response: "I'm too busy, and I don't know anyone or any of my neighbors, either." We taught English class in the morning again, which is always a fun service opportunity. However, like I previously mentioned, we haven't really been able to get a hold of anyone to be able to teach. This area is currently very slow, and we are doing our best to try to get it moving. We ate dinner with the Les Ama family, who live all the way out in Pomona - we had to ask them for a ride because it would be way too far on bicycle. It was a nice visit and we talked a lot about missionary work, but I didn't really feel like I connected to them very much. At night, Elder Porter came over to my apartment to do exchanges with me, and we stayed up really late talking about the Gospel and how to help people here realize why they need it in their life.
Thursday, October 24th, 2013:
As I mentioned, Elder Porter was with me for exchanges. I love having Elder Porter around just because of how easy-going he is and just how intelligent he is. We mesh pretty well. I took the opportunity to ask him a lot of questions, and he gave me some useful advice about staying positive when the area is tough. In the morning, the whole district met up to continue planning for our Family Home Evening lesson this Sunday for the ward that we are in charge of. We are going to do a sort of theatrical skit where four members will dress up as their ancestors and tell a family story before going towards the temple to have their work done. I felt bad that I didn't really have any pre-arranged appointments set up, so Elder Porter and I spent the day trying to contact people from the list of potentials, which was rather unsuccessful. We did, however, contact a large number of people on the street; it was great practice for street-contacting, which I need to be better at doing. It's a little awkward to slam on your brakes on a bike to stop and talk to someone. At night, we had dinner with Sofia Castro again. It was a great lesson with her fourth-grade son, Eduardo, about how he can be a missionary right now. At the end of the night, I got some positive feedback from Elder Porter. It was really encouraging to hear that I'm going about trying to do things the right way.
Friday, October 25th, 2013:
Today was one of the slowest days yet since I have gotten into the mission field. Every Friday is weekly planning, and today we rearranged the investigator and potential list on the whiteboard, which took a little extra time. Elder Knight and I are now trying to start keeping track of where the most effective areas are to visit so that we can really focus our efforts more effectively, but the initial planning always takes a while to complete. Elder Knight and I are also hoping to redo the map in our apartment so that it can actually be read now. We basically rely on the phone's "Tell Me" directions to take us everywhere because the map in the apartment is enlarged from a tiny map and cannot be read. As far as activity today, there is really nothing to report. It was a lot of searching with no one home or interested in talking to us.
Saturday, October 26th, 2013:
Every year, the mission has a "mission tour" in which a General Authority comes to talk to all of the missionaries. All of the Spanish and Chinese missionaries met today in Arcadia to listen to him speak in English, of course (we have four official languages in the mission - English, Spanish, Armenian and Tagalog - but there are seven languages total). Elder Sitati is a Quroum of the Seventy member originally from Kenya and is extremely intelligent. President Becerra asked him to prepare a message for all of us about how we can better apply our missionary purpose into everything that we do. It was really interesting to hear his take on how we need to focus more on the "Why?" and the "How?" to all of the lessons that we teach. It was also really cool to hear him give a statistic about how big the Church could eventually reach: he said that there are approximately 320 members of the different Quorums of the Seventy to serve about 15 million members. In the Doctrine and Covenants, the Lord stated that there can be as many as seventy times seven Quorums of the Seventy; if each of those Seventy served the same number of members as the current Quorum of Seventy members, the Church could grow to be as big as 1.5 BILLION people. That means that there are people out in the world ready to hear the message of the Restored Gospel. We have work to do. After the mission tour, we went to eat dinner with the Morans. It was super cool to find out that Hermano Moran was set apart as a stake patriarch about 45 years ago by the late Bruce R. McConkie, one of the best authors of books relating to the Gospel - not to mention the fact that he was also an apostle. After eating with them, we finished off the night with ward volleyball. I just wish the ward could be as unified in doing missionary work as they are in playing volleyball.
Sunday, October 27th, 2013:
Hermana Vellinga, one of the two sister missionaries in Chino West, found out she is getting transferred to Pomona and is getting replaced by Hermana Bardsley from East Los Angeles. The transfer itself happens on Monday mornings. As usual, we went to Church, but the exciting thing was that President Becerra came after church to join us for ward council! It was the first ward council meeting since I have been in the field, and he kind of called them out (although in a tactful way) about that. Ward Council is supposed to meet every week. President talked a lot about focusing on the 60% of the ward that is inactive and why each auxiliary organization has an obligation to help us as missionaries find people to teach so that we can continue bringing the Gospel to all those who are ready to receive it. The only true way to unify a ward is through missionary work. I never understood it before my mission, and I don't think there is really a better testimony-builder of that principle than to be a full-time missionary. I love President so much, and he is so inspiring. He spoke the most perfect Spanish I have heard my entire mission, and every one of those Latino leaders left that room feeling as though they have a new responsibility. At night, Elder Knight and I ate with the Sanchez family before going to the Family Home Evening lesson at the Church. We had all of the family history people from the ward educate people on how they can do their family history. We, as missionaries, then did our little skit with a couple of people dressing up as ancestors and telling the stories of their ancestors in front of a fake fire. We closed by singing "Families Can Be Together Forever" and opening up the curtains to a picture of the Los Angeles Temple. It turned out very well, but it was very stressful!
It's been a rather chaotic and interesting week looking back at it. There have definitely been some highs and lows, which is to be expected. It's rather odd how I struggle each day with having the enthusiasm to want to go out and contact people because that is uncharacteristic of me. It's just so tough to find lessons, but I know I need to work harder. The Gospel is true, and it is each of our responsibilities to share the truth with those "who are kept from the truth only because they know not where to find it." I love each of you and appreciate your constant support!
Love,
Elder Gabriel Valley
No comments:
Post a Comment