Elder Myers July 18, 2011

heyyyyyyyyyyyyy

first off we went to Hollywood after temple pday last wed! it was soooo cool! we just walked up the avenue of the stars and took a lot of pics! we even got a free pic with barney! there are a lot of people dressed up as movie characters and stuff- like we saw michael jackson, darth vader, playboy bunnies, chip n dales guys, jack sparrow, freddy kruger, bumblebee from transformers and the joker and more! it was so cool! I cant wait to go up there with you guys!

well here is an update on da hood!

villanueva

they are now confirmed members and are loving life! they love the missionaries and the church. they always do their reading asignments and we are BLOWN away at how much they comprehend and retain! they have amazing questions. The only problem is that Isela, the youngest daughter age 10, is VERY VERY VERY VERY shy and insecure (she has cried a couple of times when she only read the asignment once and not 3-4 times as they all usually do or when her mom calls on her to say the closing prayer in lessons...) and does not want to go to primary. It is so weird bc she is really tall and kinda big and acts really mature so i am laughing in my head bc it is like convincing a 14 yr old she has to go to primary for two more years haha

raul aliaga and his family

they are still having trouble coming to church every week- he and his daughter alternate weeks while the other one takes care of the shop in the alley (think canal st but in LA) it is really cool! anyway also angela the 26yr old daughter who recently returned to activity is having some problems deciding to take back her husband after they seperated... he is dating a 16yr old crack adddict gang girl (pandillera en espanol) and he is afraid to break up with her bc her brothers and family might come after him and even angela

maritza mecias/la familia moya

i knew her family when i used to go to inglewood... she is the only unbaptized person in her family. she LOVES the church and believes its all true and comes just about every week.,... slight problem: she is 16 has a baby from a gang banger who wants nothing to do with her or the other 3 girls he has had kids from. and to add to it all she is currently dating a girl who is 22. and she wont really admit anything or talk about it with us, despite our very open and strong relationship with her and her family. her 22 yr old girlfriends name is babera, she is from Argentina so that is cool, she comes to church too....

we are teaching some other people and have 2 baptismal dates but besides that there is not too many solid stuff to aupdate you about...

just trying to put my head down and work! and fight off all the cockroaches in our apartment... they seem to be getting smarter and they seem to have bolder tactics now aka they come out more during the day haha

May 29, 2011 Pictures

May 16, 2011

INVESTIGATORS
Amada
Amada is doing pretty well. She is still progressing slowly but surely. Long story short she came to church last Sunday but was not able to stay because of her brothers health complications... We are still trying to help her get/recognize her answer to her prayers so that she can be baptized.

Eric and Heidi (siblings)
They both came to church this past Sunday and liked it. This was a big step for Eric because as of right now he still claims to be atheist, who doesn't see the need or benefit of faith (or according to the dictionary a belief in something without any evidence) in someone's life. He is changing though-his mom ran into our Branch President because they both work at the same hospital and long story short, his mom is noticing that Eric has much better manners towards his mom and the rest of the family since we have started to teach him. She also thought a lot of false doctrine about our church and President explained it all to her and so she is much more open to us coming over now. Heidi has just started listening in on our lessons with Eric. She claims that Eric is not truly atheist and that this is just a phase/something to do for attention.

Jose Luis
is a Seventh-Day Adventist that we teach once a week. We have been praying for the spirit of discernment a lot recently to understand how we should move forward with him. We cant tell if he sincerely wants to find the truth and that is why he is keeping his reading commitments or if he just trying to measure our religion against his.

Besides that we are just trying to build up our teaching pool full of people who want to be baptized as fully converted members.

LESS-ACTIVES
Marina
She is still going well although she unfortunately missed her first Sunday in about a month and a half. We are still trying to start working with her husband.

Zorayda Bowman
We are still trying to work with her non-member kids. One of them, Harold 15, seems fairly receptive. She accepted the challenge to read a chapter out of the Book of Mormon everyday. She did not however, attend church this past Sunday.

Familia Aguirre
Angie and her two sons Kevin and Steve are doing pretty well as well. Angie is doing ok on her commitment to read a chapter of the Book of Mormon everyday, she is on Chapter 6. Steve still doesn't really have an interest in the gospel or going to church. We have recently started working with the YM President to help Kevin and Steve come to mutual every week. They did not go to church this past Sunday.

Hno Alejandro Campuzano
is really excited about receiving the priesthood as soon as he quits smoking. He is really learning a lot from re-learning the missionary lessons in preparation to teach the rest of his non-member and less-active family with us!

Familia Burga
Interestingly enough they are always very committed and interested when we have our weekly appointment but so far all the work we have done has brought forth Hermano Burga coming to church alone every week.

That is pretty much it.

STUDIES/GOALS
I am still working on my goal of completing both Predicad Mi Evangelio and El Libro de Mormon before i go home! I feel like this week we could work even harder, especially on the other lessons and member present lessons taught. We are still working on setting a solid baptismal date!

May 9, 2011

We are working well down here in South Harbor. We are almost done with transitioning from filtering out all the investigators that are not progressing towards baptism and keeping the ones who are progressing. We are seeking the Lord's help as we undertake this often difficult process of evaluting your investigators and keeping only the ones who have already been prepared by the Lord to be baptized.

Eric is making huge progress for an athiest. He is reading the Book of Mormon every day and he even prayed about it! This is obviously a huge step for someone who has very very minimal faith left in God. He really does have a sincere desire to know the truth. We are helping him to relight the faith that he had growing up. We also just started teaching his sister, who is not an athiest. We will see how that goes.

Hermana Marina Suazo is still doing very well and coming to church every Sunday. We hope to work with her non member husband soon! She is one more member closer to the El Cabrillo branch becoming a ward!

Hermano Alejandro Campuzano is another less active we are working with. He has recently started coming back to church. President Jorgenson and we are helping him to quit smoking. This is the only thing that is holding him back from recieving the Melchezidek priesthood. We are helping the branch get the 20 active tithe paying Melchezidek priesthood holders that the Stake has said the Branch needs for it to become a ward.

I am reading through the Book of Mormon in Spanish right now and studying Preach My Gospel cover to cover. I hope to complete my goal of finishing both before the end of my mission!

love,

Elder Myers

Elder Myers April 18, 2011

We had beach p day today! It was fun and a lot of good excersize! We played a lot of ultimate frisbee and a game similar to that called Air Force. It was the first day in like a week that it was not 85 and sunny though so that was a little bummer. I am getting very excited for next Friday's conference with the Arcadia mission and Elder Perry or Elder Nelson I forget which... We have temple p day next Wednesday so that should be great as well. I feel like I just went to the temple with Jorge for his first time Feb 16th.

Things are going great down here! We are working very hard and I am being more obedient and diligent than perhaps I have ever been on my mission.

Amada is progressing, albeit slowly, but progressing. She is still praying for her answer on when or if she should be baptized. She came to church the week before last. (this past week she said she was going to come late because she was going to go to a family members first communion) We plan to take her up to the Visitor's Center to help her receive her answer in a quicker more efficient way.

We are working with a lot of other people that are showing some potential, like two new former investigator families.
-We finally (after one and a half transfers of going every once and a while) got in touch with Ana and Rodney as the last thing we did with our "mini misionero" Alan Rodriguez. (We recognized each other because he attends the South Gate ward, where I just got transferred from. I did the mini mission with the Santa Monica stake last year. It is always a good way to see a little bit of just how different missionaries are and it helps me to remember back to how I used to be and how much I have grown.) They are excited to start learning again! They were taught by Elder Lovelace first and then Elder Tuttle.
-We also set up a return appointment with the Calderon family. They have been through eight or so sets of missionaries, but show some great potential as well.
-We are also working with Maria, a referral from the Harbor City sisters. She accepted the invitation to be baptized but said she felt too rushed to accept a date. She also said she would have to talk to her husband, whom she said was not too supportive of her religious endevours.

We are also teaching and being blessed with some success on the Less-Active front.
-Marina Suazo came to church after around 45 years of inactivity. She was baptized in Honduras a long time ago but has never been here in the States. She lives in an extremely small and humble apartment. It was a miracle of how we came into contact with her a few weeks ago. She was praying with a lot of faith that God would provide food for her. I had been thinking in the previous few days about what to do with the inordinate amounts of food we are blessed with from an Hermana in the branch. We came by 20 minutes after her prayer and she told us about it and I offered to drive home and get it and she gladly accepted. I love being an instrument in God's hands to answer his children's prayers. I have been thinking a lot about the recent service and charity focused General Conference.
-Zorayda Bowman drove the long trip to General Conference at the Stake Center and loved it. She has 2 unbaptized sons.

Elder Myers March 28, 2011

We had a pretty good week except that all four of our investigators we were trying to get to church did not come. Balbina, Amada, Teresa (member referral) and Gabriela (new member referral) did not show. We will find out what happened at our next appointments with them. Besides Gabriela no one is progressing very well.

Amada is kind of at a stand still because she is distracted from her journey to receive an answer to her prayers about Joseph Smith because she is taking care of her brother who just received a chemotherapy treatment for his cancer. He is in the hospital now and not doing so well. He is a very less-active member that we were starting to work with before this happened.

We have only had two appointments with Gabriela but she seems very interested and committed. We haven't figured out the interest and commitment level of her husband.

We are still struggling to contact Teresa on a consistent basis and to figure out the best way to help her progress because she can't read. She is a referral from her semi-active member neighbor- who has given us and other missionaries a lot of good referrals!

Balbina and her boyfriend Juan are most likely switching jobs and will hopefully have Sunday off. I dont think this is a switch on behalf of a desire to attend church, although Balbina has a strong sincere desire to attend church and progress but with her three kids and her boyfriend with a very demanding work schedule it has been difficult to figure out an appropriate solution.

As for me, I am fairly close to being fully decided on leaving early to attend fall semester at BYU. Again I am doing this because if I did block I would lose out on $1,200 of scholarship money and because waiting until winter seems like too much time for me. I want to progress in my own life after the mission not come to a stand still. I am still feeling very uneasy about leaving before my full 24 month service time, despite what you told me in interviews. I am working on those feelings with the Lord in prayer before I make my final decision on when to leave. I will probably be contacting you soon if that is OK with you.

Elder Myers March 8, 2001

I am doing well down here in South Harbor with Elder Tuttle. I am trying to learn from him before he goes home. Right now I am working on trying to comport myself in a more professional manner. It is taking self control so that I am not as loud as I otherwise would have been while still being myself.

The only update from our area from last email is that we are continuing to try to contact some people (including Miguel who has a baptismal date....) We are also still working with Amada. She didn't come to church last Sunday because her son was in town last Sunday from Brazil. We will teach her about the importance of the Sabbath.

A new update is Teresa and her two sons Javier (6) and Emiliano (4). Her husband is waiting on the courts to decide if he will be deported back to MEX because he was caught as an illegal immigrant because he didn't pay a ticket and didn't go to court. She is a member referral and we are really excited to start teaching her. She is excited too. She is really interested in how family centered the gospel and the ward organization is. The only thing is that she can't read, so we will see how that goes.

Elder Myers Feb. 28, 2011

i am doing great! i am trying to learn as much as i can from ex AP elder tuttle before i send him home at the end of march! We work well together. He is pretty obedient. I think i need to learn a thing or two from him in that department.

We got to president (not really a pres in the church just because he is pres of sunrider corp....) chen's MANSION today..... aka the second richest member in the world is right outside of our area (we cover parts of palos verdes and rancho pv,,,,) we wenr tto the members house today for p day as a zone! it is a tradition... we played tennis and went bowling and ping pong and pool., his house was gorgeous!!!!!! we werent allowed to take pics tho.... :(....

the people
AMADA
she is a 60ish year old lady from Peru, where she had been to church with the missionaries a LONG time ago. She came to church last week! The branch (no dad that building in the pic was the english ward in our area- the san pedro building- there is anothe pic of elder tuttle and i standing in front of the cabrillo branch where we go.... but yeas the san pedro building is very nice!) was so warm and open with her! We are excited fro her! The only thing is that her husband doesnt want tolearn... He took her to church and is open to her learning but is not excited himself. We ahvent asked his permission (yet) for her to be baptized, just if we could teach her. We plan to go up to the VC asap with her!

JUAN AND BALBINA
She is the 19 yr old that already has 3 kids. We are currently working on a way to get them all to church because juan works and balbina says that it will be too much to handle her very crazy kids alone... they are progressing though- they read 3nephi11.... So we are excited for them!

MIGUEL
set a baptismal date with him. We had an amazing lesson with him and he doesnt have any issues with any of the commandments but we have lost contact with him and are desperately trying to recontact him. He said we werent allowed to go by his house though bc his mom hates our church....

JULIO
drunk guy trying to help him turn his life around before he gets deported when the cops find him. Has 2 kids. gf works. live in the ghetto.... He would def get baptized if he wasnt drunk all the time

CARLOS
julios neighbor (sadly enough he is pretty much the only reason we stop by juliuo because he is just not progressing. I hate thaat about the nmission because he really needs us... slash help in general slash a good influence....) he is progressing pretty well. HAs a problem with going to any and all churches though. That will change when he truly knows how different and true ours is....
--

Elder myers Feb. 21, 2011

As I said we are doing great down here! I love the El Cabrillo branch! It seems more tight-knit than any of the wards I have served in (besides Pacific Palisades ward which is awesome) I love how it is more personable, especially with missionaries and investigators. I feel like I work better as a missionary with these kinds of relationships.

I went through the temple with Jorge as he received his endowments for the first time. It was such an amazing experience! I hope to do it again with my other RCs! I def know from first hand experience that the temple is the goal of the gospel/missionary work.

oh to add to that: I went through in Spanish! It was really neat!!!

also we have an investigator who is 19 and she has 3 kids with her BF!!! She droppedout of HS halfway through soph year and had a kid at 16... I meet a ton of girls like this but she is only the second I have really talked to... so emma and lucy- how would you like to have kids now? DO NOT DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!! lol

Elder Myers Feb 14, 2011

Well the transfer is coming to a close. I am doing great. It was nice being companions with elder Cazier. Among other things I know that the Lord is helping me to learn patience and focus by being companions with a departing missionary. It has been a little hard to send home a missionary this late into my own mission. I am still working on not being to hard on myself while constructively trying to be better. I honestly believe that getting excersise and being in a bike area is really helping...

As for the people:

-Maricruz continues to have a lot of problems. Perhaps more than I have seen in a single person on my whole mission. Thats ok, I know that it will work out in the end, in the Lord's time. Right now here not being comfortable in the south gate ward is actually on the back burner. The biggest issue is that she committed to live the law of chastity after having it explained very clearly to her (I even used the phrase legally married to) but then we asked and found out the man she has been living with for the past 27 years is not legally her husband. She seems to think, besides her having no desire to marry him, that if she does she will owe the IRS 20,000... we are still confused on that one. We are also working with her to completely give up smoking (only smoked 3 times since she has met with the missionaries and give up drinking coffee. Oh and her baptismal date is feb 28, so yeah we dont have a lot of time!

antonio-

he is a referral that we had received a while ago. We had taught him twice and then for the most part lost contact with him. He has a very busy work schedule. Anyway we called him sat and invited him to church and then he came! and loved it, he participated a lot and met a lot of people. (elders quorum is a lot more friendly after last weeks lesson on basically fellowshipping at church...) The only thing with him is that we are not allowed to teach him at his home because the owner of the house does not allow too many visitors esp missionaries esp mormon missionaries...

besides that we went to the visitors center twice last week:

familia ferrer

Once with the less active family that is on the steps to activity again (been once with us and to a few devotionals...) Their potential-investigator neighbor friend (whom we have met with once and went to the elder clayton devotional) was supposed to come but couldnt.

noemi and co.

she is the daughter of an active member of the ward. She has two kids. They all LOVED it. We will be asking her if she would like to attend spanish or english church (her kids dont speak spanish that well) and then give a ref if necessary.

This being south gate we have a lot of other people that are on the radar but i will tell you guys more about them later

Elder Myers Jan 26 2001

i am great! i love being on a bike and getting excersise- i think it really helps my mental health to get that much excersise. I also love the area- we are really busy, which is good! This past week (and as of today we are almost done) we undertook the gargantuan project of cleaning up the southgate ward list! Spearheaded by elder bluth the south gate missionaries took on the 590ish names (34%of whom do not live within the ward bounderies...) We have 85 members who live in our area so we had a lot of work to do. We are just seeing the activity and PMF status of everyone as well as moving out all the people that didnt belong/have moved.

As a result of us cleaning up the ward list we havent really had much time to do anything else between the trainings etc so we have been doing that and keeping our progressing investigators/LA families going.

Marie

our progressing investigator- has a tentative baptismal date for 20th of feb. There is an interesting thing going on though. She knows a couple of people from hermosa liahona and feels more comfortable over there. That combined with the her extremely demanding work schedule (hermosa's times fit in better) make her wnat to go over there. As a result of that the missionaries have made contact and taught her a few times at her member friend's house down there. They all went up to the VC together. I dont say this because I am jealous or am number hungry its just that this is going to turn into a big mess. WE have tried working it out but the best we can come up with is that we both teach her (bc that is what she wants) we have invited her to our ward and she has been once and 3 times over there... yeah and what makes it worse is that we tried to put our foot down and tell her the churches policy but it only wound up making her tthink we are the bad guys and the other ward and mish are the good guys which obvvi made the dituation worse....

daniel and alberto

as of right now, we cant teach them anymore bc the mom said that because they are in religion class at catholic school and have to go to church there too because of school policy they are getting confused. she has nothing against the church but says she feels it is best to wait until alberto (older one) gets into high school in two years.... shame! they are solid and would 100% for sure be baptized- one step closer to completing the PMF! the grandma sis rivas (lady holding the dogs) is the sweetest lady ever! loves to feed us! huge testimony- elder webers RC of 9months.... btw

Elder Myers Jan. 10, 2010

I love the new area! It is great to have a lot of people with potential to work with. We didnt have really too many solid people that the previous elders had been working with so we have been checking a lot of potentials and formers- and setting a lot of return appointments! We are also doing some tracting here and there, but as for right now it seems like the formers etc is a more productive route.

Two people in particular are worth mentioning: Daniel and Alberto. They are 10-12ish year old brothers and grandsons to an active recent-convert member (they live with their non member mom and RC grandma). They are both very interested in reading the BoM/the missionary lessons. They have kept their commitments to read 3 chapters in the BoM and are eager to learn more. The only issue is that the divorced dad has custody of them on the weekends and the grandma said that he will not be too keen on them going to church (they usually go to chuckie-cheeses or something). We did get permission to teach etc the kids from their mother though.

We have already been to the VC twice. We went once with a semi-active family and their investigator relative who is now going back to Chicago where she lives after having been here for a month or so. We also went with a less-active family and their non member dad. The family, previous to the VC trip, was not very open or close with us but they commented on how good we and the Sisters were with their young kids. The non-member dad rrandomely commented on how he felt a real special spirit and that he wants to go back with us to see the God's plan for families room etc. He seemed more open to baptism/recieving missionary lessons after the trip. We are also planning to use this as a springboard so they can all return to full activity. We are also hoping to go there with two other people/families in the coming weeks.

I love being on bike and I am worrying a lot less! I think a huge part of the problem was being in my last area for so long and not excersising etc. We eat with the members pretty much every night... They are so nice and giving. I love having a lot of work to do and I am working a lot harder- partially because I am the senior and partially becuase of the area. I do seem to pulling a lot of the weight though, which is fine...