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....
--
Monday, February 28, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
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
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
Monday, February 14, 2011
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
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
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
Monday, January 10, 2011
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.
Monday, December 27, 2010
Monday, December 13, 2010
Elder Myers Dec. 13, 2010
Hello one and all! I hope everyone is doing ok and enjoying the holiday season!
Christmas Service
This past Saturday our zone had the opportunity of handing out bags of canned food donated from the bishops storehouse. The pulblic affairs director for the LA area was there and he told us that this was a very unique opportunity because the church usually doesnt do this type of service- welfare style/handing out food for free... He explained that in the churches welfare you dont get stuff for free- you have to trade your skills/whatever you can do etc so that everyone grows. Anyway it was at this African- American church in South Central LA. There was a huge turn out- around 5,000 people. One of the reasons the Public Affairs guy said that we were doing this was to increase awareness/acceptance of missionaries in this area because it was going to be a very well publicized event. We had the opportunity to meet and take pictures with: the mayor of LA' Danny Trejo- movie star in Spy Kids, Machete and others, Beyonce's sister, a VH1 football model lday, another young famous black supermodel, director Robert Townshend and some other people that I cant remember who they were haha. It was quite an expierence doing service (which I have really come to love on my mission) and meeting famous people all at once!
Random Stories
As part of working hard at not having unrealistic expectations of myself/being too hard on myself- I am beginning to recognize the small examples of the Lord's hand in my life/the promptings of the Spirit.
One example is last week when we were out tracting I saw this black lady across the street putting up Christmas lights. She looked busy with that and taking care of three or so little, energetic kids. I thought to myself we should go help with the lights and talk to her. I brushed it off saying nahhh she looks like she doesn't want our help, we are tracting this side of the street, she doesn't speak Spanish and we had just talked to a Latin family on this side of the street etc. But then the thought came again and so after the next house I told Elder Franson we should go help. After a short convo we found out Ms. Watkins wasn't really interested in the gospel and didn't need our help, she was polite but not overly friendly. For some reason we kept talking and we found out she wanted us to pray for her uncle who was very sick in the hospital (this is not unusual for random people to ask us to pray for them- even hobos on the street sometimes ask us to pray for someone) but then we said we could do it right then (more unusual- I have only done that a handful of times...) Anyway she invited us in and we met the family and said the prayer with her mother (whose only brother is the sick uncle) in the prayer the mother started crying and I felt the Spirit a lot. I know that this was God directing the work through me even though they didnt even accept a return appointment let alone were that "golden investigator" ready for baptism three weeks after you meet them. I have no idea what the affect of that visit/prayer was- whether small or life changing that leads them to accept the Gospel later on- but I do know we were lead by the Lord to meet them.
Another one was a miracle we witnessed. A couple of weeks ago one part member family we are sort of working with asked us to give her two year old daughter a blessing so she could sleep through the night without nightmares. I could see how much faith they had in the Lord and even Priesthood blessings even though the very inactive dad could hardly remember what they were called etc... I relied on that strong faith as I voiced the blessing... A week or so later we asked them how she was sleeping and the were very relieved as they told us that she is sleeping very well with no more nightmares thanks to the blessing. Even though they haven't come to church and are pretty hard to contact/teach this was another example of the kinds of things I hope I can be more receptive to and recognize.
I know that I have probably missed a lot of these kinds of things because I was looking for a bigger, more grand miracle/display of the Lord's hand in my life.
The Area/My Thoughts
As I alluded to above- I am realizing that my efforts and desire to serve the Lord and follow his direction through the Spirit is more connected with successfully accomplishing my purpose than I thought. I have been measuring my success as a missionary in comparison to others/outward fruits of our labors- not necessarily baptisms but things like that. I know baptism, church attendance, number of progressing investigators are all part of my purpose but I know that as long as I am honestly doing my best to invite people to come unto Christ- through a return appointment, baptismal commitment, or some other way act on or hear the Gospel I am doing my purpose... It has been hard because I have been in tough areas in terms of outward results of following my purpose. I have alternately beat myself up over not seeing results and used it as a mental excuse to not try as hard- sometimes both at the same time haha.
Anyway we are still doing a lot of finding- mostly through tracting and checking former investigators/less active/part member families... We found a couple of people that have some potential but not too much else is going on. I am doing a lot better at not judging myself when I go on splits and see how much work the other missionaries have... or when I go to a baptism of 6 people for two companionships. I know I just need to work hard and do my best. I am very happy for the other missionaries though by the way... I know that I am here to learn patience with myself among other things. An Elder talked in a District Meeting about President Uchtdorf'sconference talk "Continue in Patience". I loved it.
We are probably going to drop the Flores family (Jorge, Manuel and Elsa) even though they are very nice and love having us over even after some heated discussions about his unwillingness to accept some new and different things. ) He is not very accepting of the Book of Mormon and said that as for him- the only way to "prove" the Bible is true is because it has changed his life and others... I loved it because I was able to bear strong testimony that the Book of Mormon changed my life/is the reason why I repented and went on a mission. He still was pretty hard heated even though I bore powerful testimony and provided his method of "proof" in a very specific way. Nevertheless Jorge (Elsa cant read and Manuel is mentally challenged) said that he will read the Book of Mormon and pray about it but on his own time and would like us not to come by and ask him how it is going- which is what missionaries do... : We will see what happens because they invited us over for Christmas dinner hahaha
I am working hard to catch up on the mission goal of finishing the Book of Mormon in 2010... I am on page 205ish and I am loving reading it! It is amazing how much it seems to change, even since I have been on my mission, as we receive different revelation for different times in our life. Awesome. Good scriptures Mosiah 4:3. Mosiah 26:30, King Benjamin's address, 2 Nephi chapters 2, 4, 9.
Still haven't seen the Christmas devotional which I am sad about...
I am still trying to focus my goals and not worry too much about other things because it is easy to get overwhelmed with all the different ways to grow and change personally that the mission makes apparent in oneself. I am doing very well at not feeding my doubts, and anxieties by thinking about them and instead feeding faith etc by acting like reading the BoM and saying better prayers...
From Our Old Area
We found out from the new missionaries in our old area that Sergio broke the Law of Chastity again this past weekend... They are trying to get him to church, he has only been to a Fireside since Thanksgiving...
We also found out that the twins, Kaela and Korey, are getting baptized after the Holidays and they want us to perform the baptism!
Alex Ortiz is solid and active with his family, his brother is now accepting missionary lessons after we got to know him very well and tried to teach him...
Christmas Service
This past Saturday our zone had the opportunity of handing out bags of canned food donated from the bishops storehouse. The pulblic affairs director for the LA area was there and he told us that this was a very unique opportunity because the church usually doesnt do this type of service- welfare style/handing out food for free... He explained that in the churches welfare you dont get stuff for free- you have to trade your skills/whatever you can do etc so that everyone grows. Anyway it was at this African- American church in South Central LA. There was a huge turn out- around 5,000 people. One of the reasons the Public Affairs guy said that we were doing this was to increase awareness/acceptance of missionaries in this area because it was going to be a very well publicized event. We had the opportunity to meet and take pictures with: the mayor of LA' Danny Trejo- movie star in Spy Kids, Machete and others, Beyonce's sister, a VH1 football model lday, another young famous black supermodel, director Robert Townshend and some other people that I cant remember who they were haha. It was quite an expierence doing service (which I have really come to love on my mission) and meeting famous people all at once!
Random Stories
As part of working hard at not having unrealistic expectations of myself/being too hard on myself- I am beginning to recognize the small examples of the Lord's hand in my life/the promptings of the Spirit.
One example is last week when we were out tracting I saw this black lady across the street putting up Christmas lights. She looked busy with that and taking care of three or so little, energetic kids. I thought to myself we should go help with the lights and talk to her. I brushed it off saying nahhh she looks like she doesn't want our help, we are tracting this side of the street, she doesn't speak Spanish and we had just talked to a Latin family on this side of the street etc. But then the thought came again and so after the next house I told Elder Franson we should go help. After a short convo we found out Ms. Watkins wasn't really interested in the gospel and didn't need our help, she was polite but not overly friendly. For some reason we kept talking and we found out she wanted us to pray for her uncle who was very sick in the hospital (this is not unusual for random people to ask us to pray for them- even hobos on the street sometimes ask us to pray for someone) but then we said we could do it right then (more unusual- I have only done that a handful of times...) Anyway she invited us in and we met the family and said the prayer with her mother (whose only brother is the sick uncle) in the prayer the mother started crying and I felt the Spirit a lot. I know that this was God directing the work through me even though they didnt even accept a return appointment let alone were that "golden investigator" ready for baptism three weeks after you meet them. I have no idea what the affect of that visit/prayer was- whether small or life changing that leads them to accept the Gospel later on- but I do know we were lead by the Lord to meet them.
Another one was a miracle we witnessed. A couple of weeks ago one part member family we are sort of working with asked us to give her two year old daughter a blessing so she could sleep through the night without nightmares. I could see how much faith they had in the Lord and even Priesthood blessings even though the very inactive dad could hardly remember what they were called etc... I relied on that strong faith as I voiced the blessing... A week or so later we asked them how she was sleeping and the were very relieved as they told us that she is sleeping very well with no more nightmares thanks to the blessing. Even though they haven't come to church and are pretty hard to contact/teach this was another example of the kinds of things I hope I can be more receptive to and recognize.
I know that I have probably missed a lot of these kinds of things because I was looking for a bigger, more grand miracle/display of the Lord's hand in my life.
The Area/My Thoughts
As I alluded to above- I am realizing that my efforts and desire to serve the Lord and follow his direction through the Spirit is more connected with successfully accomplishing my purpose than I thought. I have been measuring my success as a missionary in comparison to others/outward fruits of our labors- not necessarily baptisms but things like that. I know baptism, church attendance, number of progressing investigators are all part of my purpose but I know that as long as I am honestly doing my best to invite people to come unto Christ- through a return appointment, baptismal commitment, or some other way act on or hear the Gospel I am doing my purpose... It has been hard because I have been in tough areas in terms of outward results of following my purpose. I have alternately beat myself up over not seeing results and used it as a mental excuse to not try as hard- sometimes both at the same time haha.
Anyway we are still doing a lot of finding- mostly through tracting and checking former investigators/less active/part member families... We found a couple of people that have some potential but not too much else is going on. I am doing a lot better at not judging myself when I go on splits and see how much work the other missionaries have... or when I go to a baptism of 6 people for two companionships. I know I just need to work hard and do my best. I am very happy for the other missionaries though by the way... I know that I am here to learn patience with myself among other things. An Elder talked in a District Meeting about President Uchtdorf'sconference talk "Continue in Patience". I loved it.
We are probably going to drop the Flores family (Jorge, Manuel and Elsa) even though they are very nice and love having us over even after some heated discussions about his unwillingness to accept some new and different things. ) He is not very accepting of the Book of Mormon and said that as for him- the only way to "prove" the Bible is true is because it has changed his life and others... I loved it because I was able to bear strong testimony that the Book of Mormon changed my life/is the reason why I repented and went on a mission. He still was pretty hard heated even though I bore powerful testimony and provided his method of "proof" in a very specific way. Nevertheless Jorge (Elsa cant read and Manuel is mentally challenged) said that he will read the Book of Mormon and pray about it but on his own time and would like us not to come by and ask him how it is going- which is what missionaries do... : We will see what happens because they invited us over for Christmas dinner hahaha
I am working hard to catch up on the mission goal of finishing the Book of Mormon in 2010... I am on page 205ish and I am loving reading it! It is amazing how much it seems to change, even since I have been on my mission, as we receive different revelation for different times in our life. Awesome. Good scriptures Mosiah 4:3. Mosiah 26:30, King Benjamin's address, 2 Nephi chapters 2, 4, 9.
Still haven't seen the Christmas devotional which I am sad about...
I am still trying to focus my goals and not worry too much about other things because it is easy to get overwhelmed with all the different ways to grow and change personally that the mission makes apparent in oneself. I am doing very well at not feeding my doubts, and anxieties by thinking about them and instead feeding faith etc by acting like reading the BoM and saying better prayers...
From Our Old Area
We found out from the new missionaries in our old area that Sergio broke the Law of Chastity again this past weekend... They are trying to get him to church, he has only been to a Fireside since Thanksgiving...
We also found out that the twins, Kaela and Korey, are getting baptized after the Holidays and they want us to perform the baptism!
Alex Ortiz is solid and active with his family, his brother is now accepting missionary lessons after we got to know him very well and tried to teach him...
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