Elder Myers August 30, 2010

Hello everyone! I love you!

Summer is pretty much over! It sure doesn't feel like it though here in sunny southern California!

Elder Packer came to Zone Conference, which of course was pretty neat. He interviewed Elder Franson (among other missionaries semi randomly selected by President Baker) He talked a lot about the trainings in general and the Spirit in the work/revelation and how missionaries need to work efficiently instead of "the brute force technique" of just finding more people to get more baptisms- apparently they did a world wide study that showed that to double baptisms you needed to double new investigators but they also found if you work smarter (with teaching etc) you don't have to have double new investigators to 4x the baptisms... (I don't really have enough time to explain that in a better way...)

Investigators:
-We are now just starting to work with Sergio's mom. We have recently made a better relationship with her. She comes from a different religion from Cuba, originally from Africa, where they worship spirits, so that might be a little interesting. She has recently opened up and expressed a desire to learn what her son learned, go to church and without much direction from us- said she wanted to be baptized. We haven't had a formal sit down lesson with her yet but she'll have a date after tonight's lesson!

-Oscar is the sibling of a member in the ward. He passed a baptismal interview when Elder Webber was here but then he flaked out and fell of the face of the earth. We contacted him my first couple of days in this area but didn't have much success (besides three lessons and him going to church once) We had one amazing lesson with him and we thought we had gotten to the bottom of his concern with baptism (which was his parents, who are fine with him being baptized it turns out) but he didn't come to church and he is back to not following through with return appointments and commitments (well he only didn't keep one but we cant contact him again...) She is hard to understand because Cuban's talk super fast with a thick accent...
-We are having the same problem with contacting another woman and her kid that we tracted into a month ago... Kind of sad how people fall through the cracks for various reasons...

Recent Converts:
-Sergio is doing well with his repentance process (he had sex with a drunk girl at a party on "accident" according to him- she snuck up on him basically when he was asleep and he succumbed to temptation) (he met with the bishop and he is going to meet with him every three weeks- so the silver lining is that he will have a good relationship with the bishop...) He didn't come to church though this past week because his mom said he was sick. We are meeting with him tonight though. It is sad because the people around here are exposed to drugs, drinking, crazy parties, sex etc so young. The high school has a lot of problems from what we here (more than the average high shcool I mean...) The girls especially are so desperate, Sergio was telling us how a lot of them send them naked pictures of themselves even without the guys asking. It is sad that people think they need to go that rout for affection/attention...

-Jamson Chuc is doing well too.

Less-Actives:
-Still working with the Archundias (Sergio's neighbors), they haven't come to church in two weeks...
-We were very happy that Cesar Ferman decided to go to church this past Sunday after going over to his house that morning. His siblings (most of them are recent converts...) will hopefully follow in the Sundays to come... There is a lot of potential in that part member family and their two friends that are always over...
-We are in the process of prioritizing the work and deciding which Less Actives need a weekly visit (if that) and who just needs a phone call reminder to go to church. We are discovering that this area cant support finding, investigators, recent recent converts and the amount of less active work that was going on before...

--
Love!
Elder Myers

Elder Myers August 16, 2010

HELLO EVERYONE!!!

from another email:

(from my mom's journal from when I was 2)

-wow!!!! I loved hearing about me as a little kid! I am going to see if I can print that here at the library.... If not I might be asking for a copy of it soon...
-Thank you so much for the package! the APs made a very special delivery (I don't even know if they usually do this) and delivered the package to me on a street corner in my area....
-I cant believe Cole is already using the Melchizedek Priesthood! WOW! I gave someone a blessing last night too! I love doing that. It really strengthens my testimony.

I LOVE YOU GUYS SO MUCH!!!

Thanks Sarah for the package! I am so excited to eat the salsa with chips! I am surprised you remembered that was my fav! (or did you just pick it out luckily?)

Q:(from Dad) how does it feel to be 20?

A: AWESOME! but in truth not any different. Same as any passing of a year. I just love the fact that I am not a teenager even though I don't feel any different.

I got to celebrate my birthday by

1) performing a baptism!

2) eating AMAZING homemade tacos and come cake (that I actually liked because it was from a bakery and it was just angel food cake, whipped cream and strawberries...

3)opening up the packages and having a small nerf fight! and testing out the vacuum bags (so cool!)

Having such a chill birthday helped me to stay focused on others and the service/why I'm out here rather than myself.

I also ate lunch with a TV star! yay! Her name is Chelea Hightower from Dancing with the Stars... the story: Elder Ellett (the AP/my good friend - who I just told to look up Kenzie at BYU because he goes home this week) randomly invited me to go on splits with him to a lunch appointment while everyone else continued to work on the Temple grounds as part of our zone service activity. So I got to duck out early and go way up in Beverly Hills (on the way he pointed out the back gate of the Playboy mansion...) ANYWAY, she was very cool, I loved having a lesson (on the power of testimonies) slash talking about the gospel with a pretty cute and famous girl in Beverly Hills (and her female roommate and the male Ward Mission Leader...) I love how she can be a strong member despite all that...

WHAT IS UP IN MY AREA....

We have been exceedingly busy these past weeks between working two areas (every other day) because I went on splits because Elder Franson was at those leadership training meetings all day and preparing for baptisms-which is never something to complain about! We also got to go to the visitors center- which was very cool!

I am excited to go to the trainings this week even though they will be from 9AM-3PM Tues-Fri this week. I have heard a lot about them from Elder Franson (they got trained this past week by President and Sister Baker and now they will be training us this week) Anyway worldwide the missions are going to be more focused on the person and the spirit, asking QUESTIONS by the spirit, getting to know them and their doubts. All in all the General Authorities feel like most missionaries are not really good teachers because while they can explain the doctrine amazingly and the check off everything on their teaching record, they just don't help the investigators, as real people feel connecting to the gospel, they just don't help their personal testimonies progress, they are afraid to ask Qs and let them talk etc. I feel like I need to work on following the spirit more but Elder Franson said that I was ahead of the game in terms of being personable and asking Qs etc. I feel like I need some training at what a lot of the other missionaries are good at- just expressing their thoughts in an organized manner...

Investigators:
-Jamson Chuc was baptized on Aug 8th! You went to his baptism. It went very well! I think I already wrote about it in last weeks email so I don't think I will do so again here.
-Sergio Avila was baptized on Aug 15 and I was lucky enough to be chosen by Sergio to perform the actual ordinance on my birthday. Obviously I could not ask for a better gift to see a baptism. We always like to have people in the ward to be the ones to form that bond between the person being baptized and the person performing it that comes from baptism because they stick around and we don't. Anyway, he would not have it and he insisted that one of us do it.
We were a little worried about his preparedness for baptism. He had to have two interviews with President Guiliani but in the end he passed him and both he and Sergio were excited for his baptism. We were nervous only because his testimony is not as strong as we would like (only strong enough to basically answer the baptismal questions but we know that he doesn't really truly understand or believe) that wasn't the biggest concern though because we know it is a journey and that Elder Franson and I did not have any stronger testimony at age 8 than he does. The real concern was that just the way he was talking to us about some things that we confronted him about and from the stuff that his friends were saying about him, we believed that he is lying about some of his worthiness. We did the best we could though and there is no use trying to call him out after we directly confront him about it. If he was lying than it is on him, as bad as that sounds...
Anyway, after much praying and talking to our leaders we decided that we cannot hold back a baptism based on suspicion of worthiness and lack of testimony, as long as they understand why they are being baptized (even if they don't understand 100% because none of us do, but if they understand enough...) and as long as they have that desire. We know that it will probably be more of a struggle to keep him active because he does not have too much support from his family (although we heard just this past Sunday that his mom is trying to leave her spirit worshipping religion that sounds to be heavily Satanic influenced... so we are going to try to start teaching her...!) Anyway, I am sorry I am rambling so much, we will work hard to have him have a good relationship with the bishop, the young men and his leaders to get him that support that he needs...

Less-active work:
We continue to work with the less active members and 5-5-5 people. They regretfully got pushed pretty far back on the back burner this past week because of the limited time we got to work in our area and because of preparing for Sergio's baptism. We are seeing some success there- a couple of members have come back to church for the first time in many years and some we are close to having them come back.

We did go to the Visitor's Center with Jamson and his family and Alex (who has a baptismal date of Aug 29) and his family. I am so excited to be able to have it as such a powerful teaching tool! I was thoroughly impressed!

My studies:
I have recently revamped and organized/planned/outlined what I will study each day and for how long. I am excited to keep putting it into practice and follow-up with myself, just like I do with investigators (I find that helps...)

oh also- you can check out the bishop of the palisades ward/the building on mormon.org under one of the top tabs under service....

Elder Myers August 9, 2010

Hello everyone!

Today we had a fun p day activity of playing pool at the local bowling alley (we tried to go bowling but they were all full) I decided I really love pool haha. Elder Franson was kind of stressed out planning his first P Day activity as a District Leader but it all went smoothly! We were going to go to Denny's and have a nice deep doctrine discussion (haha) but we decided because of the ASL program being in our district it would be too hard to translate with the deaf elder in the district... After that we played basketball at the Spanish ward building that I went to downtown that we sometimes play- the invite is open to the whole mission... Anyway that is what I was up to today.

Now for the past week:

Our new area is going really well, kind of different without the extra companion now that Elder Weber is home but it is still going very well nonetheless. Elder Franson has a lot of meetings (especially with the meetings for the new curriculum every day this week), baptismal interviews (always a good thing!) splits and just general duties of a District Leader to attend to so that always keeps us on our feet! I love teaching in Spanish even though a lot of the people we teach prefer to be taught in English but still go to church in Spanish because of their family.

Our Investigators:

-Jamson Chuc: Yesterday as you know because you were there, Jamson got baptized! There were a lot of people from the ward there and everything went fairly smoothly. I know that Jamson and his family felt the spirit as us as missionaries spent most of it running around making sure it goes ok. I am glad that Jamson has taken the first step in following Christ and I know that even though he might not show it because his personality is reserved I know that his life has already and will continue to be changed because of that decision. Brother Chuc in particular was so proud of Jamson! Now all we have to do is get some Home Teachers over there!

-Sergio has a baptismal date set for Aug 15 because he did not pass his interview with Presiden Guiliani because of his involvement in the Crip gang from ages 12-14 and because he sold marijuana two weeks ago... Sergio unfortunately did not come to church last week (and neither did the two less active Archundias girls didn't attend either...) We checked up on them and we found out that Sergio stole money from his mom and she grounded him- which included church. We think that maybe it has something to do with her dislike for our religion, but we thought that we had sorted all of that out. She is fine with having him be baptized but we still should clear all of this up before his baptism. Right now we are just keeping him on track for this Sunday with an increase in his daily Book of Mormon reading and introducing him to the bishop... We love working with teenagers because they are usually more honest with you but sometimes you have to pay the price of them making bad decisions and not following through on some commitments.

-We might be picking up Alex Ortiz as an investigator again because he says that he is willing to get baptized but we are still not sure if he is only saying that because his parents are pressuring him to. We will work with him to figure out his motives and to strengthen his testimony that he is not willing to admit he has about modern day prophets/Joseph Smith. He is being very very stubborn but we think he might be turning a corner with his testimony etc. This has been a struggle for about 6months with the past Elders.

Less-Actives:

-the Monge family went to church last Sunday for the first time (besides the active adult daughter) in twenty years! We were just checking up on them last week because they were on our lists... It was a normal everyday thing except that the daughter came up to us and starting balling. She said that she had just finished praying, asking God to bring in 3rd party help to assist in reactivating her parents. I love witnessing miracles like that, it strengthens my testimony of God's hand in aligning His children's paths of life to do His work. It is always random like not leaving right away and stopping to talk to the guy on the bench that stalls us enough to fulfill His purpose of us being there. I know that we are nothing but instruments in His hands when after one contact two people come to church for the first time in twenty years!

-the Archundias girls are still reading their Book of Mormon and besides this last Sunday are really showing that they have made some HUGE changes in their lives... I love seeing people overcome the pressures of the neighborhood they live in to live the Gospel.

My studies are going well, I have started to put less focus on finishing the Old Testament by the end of the summer so that I can dedicate some of my study hour to reading PMG because I feel that is the most effective use of my time instead of pushing to reach my goal that I have no adjusted to match my plan...

Also, I cannot wait to see the new visitor's center! We are trying to get some investigators a mode of transportation to go see it! I know how helpful the VC is in conversion!

Love!
Elder Myers

Elder Myers Aug. 4, 2010

Updates from Centinela East:
We will be having twobaptisms this Sunday!! Jamson Chuc is the 15yr old son in a PMF. We are very excited for him to be baptized! He passed his interview last night and is all ready for this Sunday. He is a really really quiet guy but is slowly but surely warming up to us. Not too much else to say here, except his recently reactivated dad is really happy he is making this decision.

Sergio did not pass his interview entirely last night with our district leader so we have one scheduled for this Thursday with President Guiliani. He used to be a member of the gang "Crips" from age 12-14. He used to sell a lot of marijuana and beat people up as a result of his membership. He stopped his gang activity when his friend was shot and killed last year. He is a good kid and is commited to the gospel and loves progressing within it so we are confident he will pass his second interview. I love all the new experiences that I am
having on my mission, especially being exposed to different walks of life. I loved hearing about the huge change that my investigators/recent converts made/continue to make as a result of accepting and following the gospel.

We are also working with some less active members/recent converts. Six of them came to church last sunday, and we hope that the Ferman family will join of them this Sunday! The Archundias girls, who are good friends/neighbors to Sergio, have come three times in a row! They even stayed with Sergio for two hours of church this past Sunday. They are also coming to all of it this Sunday. We are very happy with the progress they are making. One of the girls is in Jacob in her Book of Mormon reading after five days of reading!

We are also still trying to juggle six other people that are kind of shakey in their desire etc. one of them being a family of 5. We will sort it out this week and hopefully they will all be at church with solid baptismal dates! We are also looking to pick up 3 investigators as part of three different PMFs... We also are going to pass over a really cool African-American family to the English elders.

I am loving all the work to be done!

I am diong great and I love my new comp and it was really really weird to send a missionary home!