As you have undoubtedly figured out by now since it was the fourth on Sunday we couldn't email yesterday which is why I am doing it now...
Yesterday on P day I played soccer for most of the day before we went out to work. It was a mission wide activity at this park out in Bell Gardens- where Elder Cooley is serving right now... (the city that is almost the farthest east city in our mission, while way out in Malibu is the farthest point west in our mission..) so it was a trek through south central LA to get there. Before the activity Elder Bigler and I decided to buy some cheap cleats so that we wouldn't roll our ankles anymore etc. They will be useful because we play soccer every morning now at the temple with the APs (I am really good friends with one of them- Elder Ellett, he is from small town Loa Utah- sort of near richfield, he is going home soon, but we have some tentative plans to room together at BYU provo... I don't know if I have talked about him before, he is the Elder with one arm...) anyway it is us four verses about 8-12 sisters, it is very fun! We only live about 4-6 minutes away from the temple on the highway.... by the way the LA freeway system/traffic is out of this world insane! There is literally ALWAYS traffic and I have seen 10 lanes in one direction at merge spots and regular 6-8 lane traffic in one way... and there are crazy connecting (like spaghetti haha) highways to others.. I am from Chicago and I am impressed, I know Elder Bigler (who drives because he is the senior companion) doesn't like it...
Anyway, Alan Beck has a baptismal date for the first time in his 5ish years of investigating the church!
A lot of things worked to help him make that HUGE step.
-First off he has a "calling" to teach part time, the Elders quorum, which is helping him gain confidence in the doctrine/himself.
-The ward is doing a 40 fast for missionary efforts. This is really helping to strengthen my semi weak testimony of fasting (you know how much my world revolves around not having a ravenously empty stomach, I am really trying to get past the natural man...) It is strengthening my testimony because we are finally starting to see the success rate (for lack of better terms) pick up since they have started it- with Alan, with less actives finally coming to church (although non have come for more than one Sunday... we are still working on that- they look promising!)
-Like I have said before, we are focusing on the family and how this will be a blessing for Angelica (his daughter) and making a goal with him to get sealed in the temple on July 23, 2011 (their anniversary...)
-We also made this funny, color coded calendar that outlines in detail the appointments we have and the assignments they need to do as a family before then. We decided to go back to the basics with him and reteach him everything like he was a new investigator. He loved that idea because he said that since the Elders see that he has been coming to church for 5 years they assume he knows everything and don't teach the basics as much. He says he thinks that he has holes in his gospel education, while there is some truth to that statement (according to him he has never seen the 20 min long first vision movie- we watch that with everyone and their dead dog...haha) so that was a shock, but we are mostly doing this to build his confidence and have him see that he has been ready for forever to take that leap of faith...
As a zone we "celebrated" the fourth by having a mini testimony meeting at 7 on Sunday and then watching some parts of the new PMG DVDs which were filmed in San Diego and they are supposedly 100% for real, no cuts/edits basically documenting missionaries. They are really funny and educational... They haven't even come out yet but one the privileges of working in an affluent part of LA is that you guessed it-a member in one companionship of sisters in my district's area-Brentwood, worked on it so they have a rough copy of it that they lent to us for the night. It was very fun! I almost felt like I was off my mission, reminiscing about my mission watching a documentary of missions... That feeling of being off my mission very RARELY happens, which I know is good... But it returned back to normal when we fell asleep at around 10:30 to fireworks outside haha
PRESIDENT and SISTER BAKER our new mission president just arrived this past week. It was sad to see the Blackburn's leave but he gave a really good last talk at zone conference and all the elders got to hug sister Blackburn goodbye! It was kind of weird... like hugging you mom... haha but I didn't get all emotional so don't worry! They are now living in Provo.
As for President and Sister Baker... Everyone says that he is me in 50 years. Graduated from BYU provo in econ, went to business school at Northwestern- downtown- so he went to the foster building in 79-81ish for all those horrible/historic snow storms... he has a lot of energy and said that he gets on a lot of tangents because he has ADD... He is really funny and very personable- he moved our interviews to next week so he could spend longer interviewing each missionary to get to know us. (we met him as a zone last Sunday...) Although Elder Bigler and I met him briefly at the mission home last week when we had to stop in to get a loner car because ours was in the shop (no we did not wreck- they were fixing the locking mechanism of one of the doors...) Anyway I am very excited to have him as our mission president. I think he will understand my personality a lot more than President Blackburn did, not that he didn't like me or anything.... I don't know if that makes sense...
I LOVE YOU ALL!
