hello everyone!!! i love you!
well first off i went to the beach today! it was beach p day so we got to go to the beach down in westchester... farther south than venice and santa monica. it was very fun! but we were still misionaries of course so we didnt lay out in the sand in our suits and swim and all that stuff... president and sister blackburn were there for a little bit too. it was just our zone. we played volleyball and water balloon toss contests- in companionships were you keep backing up and try to catch it- you know the game... we also made a human pyramid (sp) with our whole zone and even president joined in for one of the pictures on the bottome layer! haha it was pretty intesne...! it was cool because we have been staring at the beach for the past week on the PCH and we finally got to go for our one time!
hmmm what else? this area is very different from my last area and elder biglers last area.... in some/most ways the work is harder. we are struggling just getting on to the members/part member families/less active members' schedules. they are very busy, but very nice! they are feeding us pretty much every night but most of the time thats the only actual lesson we get to teach that day.... but slowly we are starting to develop schedules and relationships with the people so that we can teach more so that they can progress... its just a different game up here. we talked to some sisters who served in beverly hills in the past and we talked about how it really is about networking and having the members trust us. service plays a huge part. and of course they love the simple acts of kindess i guess you can call them- the ward mission leaders wife called us this morning to thank us for the card we had given her for thanking her for dinner... i only wrote like four sentences but she said that it was so sweet!...
anyway i feel like i can really connect to the people though, which is good especially for my personality. I don't really know what i am trying to say but yeah.... this area is def good for me but its def hard there is no way around it. In my last area we taught a lot of "preach my gospel" lessons- or right out of the text book lessons. Thats not necessarily bad but it def would not work in this area, i really feel like i am teaching people not lessons and i love that.... if that makes sense...? Now the only problem is; as I said before- we dont get the opportunity to teach that much... Elder Bigler and I both feel like we could have this area on fire if we could just get into everyones houses and sit down and teach/bond/build a relationship with the people.... so basically there is tons of potential but since bold/pushy tacticts dont work down here- in fact they are detrimental. so that is kind of the reading i am getting from this area so far....
we are both struggling though with the idea of fulfilling our purpose... its hard to explain but you feel so much more like a missionary- well at least the stereotypical missionary in my last area- you watch as investigators accept and apply the gospel and watch as they are transformed by it and progress to baptism. We were teaching a whole lot and finding a whole lot and speaking another language in a very different culture. It felt like sort of how I imagined it from the MTC. for example- daily contact which is something they stressed a lot in the MTC was a big part of my last area. We always talked to our investigators pretty much every day... we pretty much taught them everyday... here daily contact is... i dont want to say bad but you just have to get more creative with it- the sisters told us about how they put sticky notes on the doors of less acticve members or active members when they were in the area- saying something like we were in the area just checking up, looking for an opportunity to help/serve etc or phone calls or something like that... basically i feel like my creativity and patience are being tried haha
another thing along those lines is how much we are working with members... I love how organized the whole thing is with a meeting with the ward mission leader and then a meeting with all the leaders in the ward- i forget what its called but yeah we are feeling a lot of support from the ward/bishop which is amazing... the only thing is we are working with a lot of less actives and even active members. or trying to work/teach them... so far the work has been pretty much "ward-listing" where you get info from the bishop on the ward list about part member and less active families and go around and visit them/introduce ourselves (because we were flushed into the area/both of us are brand new to the area- which i think i already told you....) anyway thats sort of my point- we are doing a lot of visiting and not a lot of teaching by the black and white, strictest definition. In my old area we would sometimes say "we dont just vist we teach" or something like that but here its so much more important to build relationships and not be pushy.... so yeah thats another hard part about fulfilling our purpose in this area- because we as missionaries have a specific purpose from Preach My Gospel (you should check it out...? PMG i mean just a random thought to see a little into missionary work) anyway i know that part of my purpose here is strengthen and serve the ward and reactivate less active members because obviously its all about saving souls as jorge (my recent convert) would say... but still i dunno what i am trying to say....
I dont want you to think that i am all discouraged or that we dont have faith we can liven up this area and get a baptism but its very different... my district leader did comment that you tend to feel the spirit stronger in white areas though... i belive him, although latins have a very good and deep spiritual connection (if you will) and they are "quick to believe" as it says in the Book of Mormon, and they are very humble (this is a horribly constructed sentence i am very sorry...) affluent areas tend to be less humble etc there is something very important with the level of connection between your soul/personality and theirs that really invites the spirit. This connection I feel is easier to make with white poeple, whether it be because of the language barrier, cultural barriers or simply because I was newwer (younger as we say in the mission), more cautious, less observant, different/more naive perspective in my first area I dont know....
all I do know is that I will serve wherever I am sent and that there is always lots of work to do on this earth spreading the gospel... I am welcoming and embracing the change and thinking creatively while seeking the guidence of our Heavenly Father to know how to best tackle this new and very different area.... one things for sure my faith, testimony and patience will be tried a whole lot more in this area than in an area similar to my last one...! but you know me- I like challenges!
more thoughts soon!
really soon- one last thing about my area- A LOT of time in the car! we are being very effecient with how we use our alloted miles but we cant seem to get enough of them!
Love!
