January 1st, 2024 - 19th Email - New Year and Former Missionaries

 Feliz año!

This week was actually pretty good! Still a smidge slow with lessons but we workin really hard anyway tryna find lotsa new people to teach

First we gotta talk about Christmas, we got fed by the Tongan ward bishop and it was some pretty epic food not gonna lie

And all six of the missionaries in our ward went around caroling, it was quite fun, then for the last person (we were planning on calling it for the day and then we just went anyway) was our new convert Angel's family, and then they fed us Mexican food. We got a lot of food that day.

Tuesday was nuts. We went on a three-way exchange. So basically what happened was Elder Soto woke up super sick Tuesday morning and Elder Taylor said they still had work to do in their area so I stayed at home until like 2 pm while he went with Elder Pittman. Then the Brentwood Bike Elders pull up saying Elder Taylor (different Elder Taylor) was feeling sick so they were just gonna throw the two sick missionaries together. But Elder Taylor (the first Elder Taylor) and Elder Pittman weren't back yet so I just went with Elder Nielsen, Elder Taylor's (the second Elder Taylor) companion, in both his and my area. We  had lessons in both areas so that was weird

So this week we started a new finding tactic, passing by gray dots. Gray dots are people who were taught in the past but for whatever reason were stopped teaching, and I guess it's useful because they might be more interested again with time.

Elder Pittman gave a recent convert a haircut and it was looking good until his friend who lives with his family totally messed it up lol (he still hasn't noticed because it was a couple small spots on the back)

On Thursday we somehow managed to split a bowling ball in half so if you ever wanted to know what's inside a bowling ball you now have the chance it's like a weird sponge thing

Even though the work is slow sometimes, the people we are teaching are super promising and we're going to work super hard to get them on baptismal date soon. We think they all just need pushes from members. We're planning on getting the 2nd counselor in the mission presidency (Presidente Luna) to come with us because he is literally awesome

Ok so the former missionaries stuff

On Thursday we were chilling at home doing studies in the early afternoon and we got a knock on the door, and it was this super tall guy like he was 6'6" probably my brother's age, and he says that he served here and lived in this house back in 2017 when this area was in the Rancho Cucamonga mission (which I don't think exists anymore) and he was telling us how the house hasn't changed at all and he was happy to see that missionaries still lived here. It was super cool actually he was just in the area and stopped by. The Church has owned this house for like 10 years now I think maybe more

And then, the recent convert told us that some "weirdos" pulled up to his house on Friday. We were confused, because we actually stopped by twice on Friday and nobody answered. But he said it wasn't us, it was right after we came by the first time and apparently there was "a lady and two dudes" and they all thought they were Jehovah's Witnesses so they didn't answer the door. Then we go to church on Sunday and we see a former missionary, Elder Davis, who finished like right before I started (back in July probably) and was just visiting the area. He also got a different recent convert to church that we've never met before and have been trying to get in contact with for a while so it was super cool that we figured out the best way to talk to him

But apparently the people that were at the house was just him and his parents, which is weird because they should've recognized him lol

Ok Saturday was funny

We were going to the Farahs' house to do service. They wanted us to pour cement on their side yard to make a walkway. But the problem was it was absolutely pouring rain. It's a little difficult to make concrete if it's raining. So they took us to Red Robin instead and I had the best bacon cheeseburger I've had in a long time. When we got back to their house we still got some work done shoveling dirt so it's all chillin

Then more about yesterday, New Year's Eve. We went on quick exchanges with the Brentwood Bike Elders after church and we went to a small town called Oro Grande in the middle of nowhere trying to find somebody but it turned out the address we were given went to a huge construction site. It was super weird, to get to the town we had to drive under train tracks with a 1 lane space tunnel it was crazy but we saw a cute dog so it's ok

In the evening we had a year-end review missionwide. Our zone got 16 baptisms this month! An all-time zone high, we had just broken the record in November when we got 11 baptisms, the previous record was 10. Two months in a row we got new highs! It was also the highest in the mission for the month and it meant we hit our goal of 15.

Speaking of hitting goals, our mission goal for baptisms in the year was 660. It started at 600, but then they raised it by one-tenth in April. And we got 667 baptisms this year. It's super cool to know that I was able to contribute to that number, but what was also super cool was how Elder Taylor (the not-sick one) said he got here last December, his whole mission so far was working to that goal. Now we ready to take on 1001 this next year!

I know the work is still happening even when it's slow, I know we're planting seeds in people's hearts when we talk to them, that maybe at some future date they'll be more interested! I know that these baptusm goals are inspired by God and I know if we work super hard next year we'll be able to hit 1001 too! (Because last January the whole mission only got 23 baptisms. We got 88 in December. We can totally beat that)

Ok bye and happy new year (the fireworks here are so loud)

Pictures!

-us caroling (Elder pittman and I are in the dark in the back)

-weird half rainbow I saw the other day

-the view of the clouds and mountains was epic that day I wish pictures could capture how cool it was

-Elder Taylor (the formerly sick one) and a dog

-inside of a bowling ball