January 8, 2024 - 20th Email - Exchanges and helping people move and gas card junk

 Hola!!!

First week of 2024. Pretty wild

So I'll start with last Monday. So after our zone activity we did a couple trios, because Elder Pittman wanted to go play basketball and I wanted to get Dominos pizza. So i went with the Mesa Linda (English ward) Elders because they had a Dominos gift card, and we left our truck at the church. They also didn't have a gas card (so basically it's what we use to pay for anything car related) so I brought ours with us to pay for their gas. This will come back to bite me later.

So we get to Dominos and we order and we go to the nearest gas station to get soda and we go home. Then we realized we gave our house keys to the Mojave/Jeraldo (Samoan and Tongan) ward Elders because they do their laundry at our house. And we also realized we left the board game we wanted to play in our truck back at the church. So we decided we were going to drive over to their apartment and pick up the board game on the way. So we get to the church building and they tell us they went to the house and just unlocked the door for us and left the key on the table. So we just drove back home and chilled inside the rest of the day. But I may or may not have accidentally left our gas card with the Mesa Linda Elders. Eventually it fell into the hands of the Mojave/Jeraldo Elders, because they were a trio before the new year, but the third missionary finished his mission mid transfer and accidentally stole their gas card. So they saw Mesa Linda with ours, and probably thought it was theirs. So when we needed gas on Thursday, we didn't have our card with us and then we had to call the Mojave Elders for "theirs" (we didn't realize they had ours yet, we thought for a solid hour the Elder who left for home took ours. Then we realized he left home before we lost our card and we realized Mojave actually has ours. And to this day we still haven't gotten it back lol

Anyway we ended up leaving the house keys on that table when we left for the day so we get home and we realize "heck we're locked out" and we found a sneaky way to break into our house in emergency situations (we found it out from the Elder who went home, he used this tactic to do his laundry at our house when we weren't home) so that's pretty epic

Also we haven't taken down our Christmas tree yet and probably never will

And we also ended up needing a ride to the church building because we left our truck there

Also Elder Walker (one of the Mesa Linda Elders) got a steal on an Orbeez gun (a toy gun) at Walmart, it was $50 but it was put in a spot that was labeled $10 so he got it for $10 it was crazy

So that all happened on Monday after I sent my last email

Tuesday we helped a good friend in the Brentwood ward (English ward) move. It's crazy cuz I first met him and his wife when I saw General Conference with them when I first got here. That was with Elder Gonzalez and Jensen and Steere. I've been here a while.

We didn't have anything the rest of the day so we drove a half hour to El Mirage in the middle of nowhere, and we had just washed the car :( and it got so dirty but we found someone new to teach who was taught in the past

Ok you know gas card junk isn't over yet

So that night we started an exchange. We exchanged with the Barstow Elders for the night. They drove down and accidentally left their gas card at home so they asked us to stop at a gas station and give them our gas card. We thought we had ours. And we didn't. So I paid for the gas with my mission food money and got reimbursed. We went home and didn't find the card, so we then got gas the next morning with Mojave which I already mentioned.

Wednesday was MLC, a big meeting with the zone leaders and sister training leaders and president, but this time district leaders were invited too. In Barstow is our district leader. The other district leader came over to the house too. They got permission to sleep over so they'd save gas the next day and just carpool down the hill. But the problem was both of them are companions with trainees who haven't gotten driving privileges yet. So we did another three-way exchange! I was with Elder Evans (who is from Florida) and Elder Pittman was with Elder Middledorf in Barstow while Elder Gannon and Walker (the dl's) were at the meeting. We went and we did service helping someone move for like six hours which we were eventually told we probably shouldn't have stayed that long but it's all the Brentwood bike Elders' fault because it was their members and they had lessons so we had to do it lol

And then after dinner I ended up just going with Elder Gannon because they got back from the meeting early anf Elder Evans went back to his area with Elder Walker

That was a fun day

Called a billion people on Friday to clear up our area book it was really satisfying

Idk the rest of the week was a lot of lessons and contacts not as interesting

Also now there's a new rule where if you're sick you have to do FaceBook work lol

I don't mind that because apparently it only takes like an hour but I hate cold calls so much lol they terrify me, it's basically tracting but on FaceBook where you call random people

We've seen a lot of miracles this week but we've also seen a lot of opposition. One person we're teaching has covid, and another is moving on Friday and we don't think we can get him baptized before he moves because his parents won't give permission. We've been praying a lot for them but it's been hard

Today has been fun so far we had a cool zone activity and got Chick Fil A and played board games

Also Pablo the dog returned on like Wednesday and everyone went crazy over his return, he got in one of our cars, we caught him barking at a cat on a fence lol

Anyway spiritual thought

Alma 34:31

Yea, I would that ye would come forth and harden not your hearts any longer; for behold, now is the time and the day of your salvation; and therefore, if ye will repent and harden not your hearts, immediately shall the great plan of redemption be brought about unto you.

Cool verse that says as soon as we listen to the Spirit and come unto Christ we'll see the blessings from it.

The work is super hard sometimes but that doesn't stop us from working super hard! We out there finding people all the time and our zone was the first to hit our new standards of excellence (basically numbers we're expected to hit) so we're absolutely crushing it rn

Ok picks

-Double haircut with people we're teaching

-Elder Gannon with a dog

-Me and Elder Pittman

-Honestly not sure why this picture of Elder Nielson is in my photo album

-Me and Elder Pittman again