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....
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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...