June 24, 2024 - 44th Email - It's getting hot here too

 Hey

Yeah it's getting in the 100s here again I only got like a week break (after being down in Indio) but yet I still have my jacket on all day somehow I need to stop wearing it lol

This week was pretty uneventful I guess one interesting thing that happened was when we were visiting a referral we knocked on the door to no answer and then we saw a door open on the top floor door and it was this old lady hunched forward (probably from drugs) smoking a cigarette honestly I was kind of scared at first lol but we ended up helping her take bags to her car it was a nice service but also really sad to see how bad addiction is in people's lives because she was actually really sweet and I'm glad I don't have to worry bout any o dat in my life

There wasnt any parking for us in that apartment complex so we parked next to it in a gas station and the parking lot was just covered in trash lol there was random stuff like big gulp cups and even an empty fairlife chocolate milk carton (that stuff is gas) to broken glass and cigarette packets so people just be throwin random junk everywhere

Had some super good (informative for us, too) lessons too this week, our friends kept asking us super hard questions which was tough but I think we answered them pretty well and then we got the goat of answering hard questions to come with us (presidente luna from the mission presidency) but then both lessons fell through which is sad but we aint givin up just yet

So I was actually on an exchange that day but we had this family of 6 that elder mullins visited on saturday with presidente luna and they told him they were busy and couldnt meet and couldnt go to church either but then at church they just randomly walked in and we didnt even visit them sunday morning it was pretty cool that they just came on their own

Went on a couple exchanges to english areas that were pretty fun, it's cool to cover the whole stake as my area again, but also like back in Indio I never did exchanges in english areas because we had an only spanish district so that was really good for my spanish but
again it's good to have a break

On one of the exchanges we literally tractes (knocked doors) for like 4 hours cumulatively and we didnt find anybody to teach until like the very end I felt bad they didnt have a whole lot of people to teach and then we just get so much work in the spanish area (perks of spanish)

They also changed it so now we have the same weekly goals as the english missionaries we used to have to get twice the numbers as them but they just met in the middle so our work was lightened a little bit which is really nice

Also this dude we were teaching has this dog that just doesnt have front legs (just little stubs) so it just hops around it literally looks like a tiny kangaroo it's the weirdest thing of all time

Had a progressing friend move to florida so that was sad we gotta figure out where he lives (he might have gone to orlando which is funny)

Just kinda ramblin at this point but something else cool is that our zone got 3 baptisms yesterday and we went to one of the english ones because his mom spoke spanish and now we're teaching her so that's epic, got plans to baptized a lot in our ward next week (might be upwards of 4) so prayers would be epic

First we got a crazy story from our zone activity today

So we had plans to hang out at a park and play soccer so we go over to the park and then elder watson is like "maybe itd be better to get a football" and we get to the park and nobody is there (and we're 15 minutes late) so we say "we got enough time to get a football" so we go back home and the english missionaries get in their car (we had carpooled to the park) and go to walmart while we go back to the park to wait on other missionaries

A bunch of elders show up and we're playing soccer when some sisters pull up with a football so we call the english missionaries to come back because we already had a football when they were already at walmart lol and then they get back and we start playing football

Pretty quickly we realize theres a bad ant problem at this park when one of the sisters gets an allergic reaction on her foot to a bite so she cant play and they leave to treat that and then it's insanely hot so we all get pooped pretty fast and then the other elders drop some new information that they have to go put down a dog for a member in their ward (she's old so they just took the dog to the vet for her) because it broke its leg and they had to dip and then other elders dropped some other information on us that they had to leave to go do "brazilian jujitsu" because their friend told them if they did it with him he'd get baptized and so they dipped then the sisters came back because one of them still wanted to play soccer and then we start kicking a soccer ball around when we witness a crazy argument (probably between a boyfriend and a girlfriend) it was really bad and loud screaming where we could understand pretty well what they were saying when we were pretty far away so it just kinda killed the mood and we just dipped too and went to taco bell

Ok bye, next week pday is on thursday for independence day (week and a half of working lol but it'll be worth it for all day pday)

Pictures!

-Rocket launch (there were 2 but I didnt get a good picture of the second one)

-sunday stop bys before church

-exchange with elder parrish

-mountain

June 17th, 2024 - 43rd Email - Everything is on fire

Hey

San bernardino is still fun

So basically to explain the title on saturday and sunday we saw a couple random clouds of smoke so fires are starting to pop up which is super cool (not really)

Highlight of the week was me getting a massive sinus infection

So basically i lost all sense of smell and taste and was pretty much hiding the fact that I was dying in pretty much every lesson

I was able to breathe mostly by saturday but I still couldnt really smell

It was nice because (funny quick story)

So on mondays after pday a member takes us out to eat to a mexican restaurant and I was a little silly and forgot to ask for no beans in my burrito (i do not like beans) but it was okay because I couldnt taste it anyway

I need to make sure to ask for no beans today

Also my mom was super nice and awesome and sent me a giant jar of peanut butter m&ms so I just sat there depressingly on my bed munching on m&ms that I couldnt enjoy because I was too impatient to wait until I could taste again

Plus i took some of the best naps of my life

It was really hard though because we ran out of toilet paper so I ended up using paper towels to blow my nose until elder watson (another missionary I live with) snagged a toilet paper roll from the local church building (good grab, those things are massive)

Uhhh some cool friends out here

We get hecka numbers there's so much work we get probably 3 or 4 referrals a day, we found like 16 new people last week (personal high) so we kinda popping off

We had some friends that need to get married to get baptized, they were supposed to get baptized sunday but we've never tried to get people married in riverside before and there were some more credentials they needed to fill in that we didnt know about because we never have people go to riverside (like we needed to have a marriage date and proof that our bishop could marry them) so we hopefully be finna do allat tomorrow theyre super cool so pray for them pls

Had another friend try to get baptized but he still needs more time to get some stuff figured out so he got his date pushed back but its ok we chillin

Also fun fact about our apartment we live on the second floor above the model apartment so we dont have downstairs neighbors which is great because I accidentally dropped some weights on the floor last night and nobody got mad at me

Uhhh what else

This week was our mission tour which means a general authority checked out our mission, it was Elder Ojidiron and this guy is from Nigeria and he was sick he gave a really cool training at zone conference (which included half the mission instead of a third, we got the whole low desert and us and redlands while the other half was rialto and fontana and the high desert)

I ended up getting to go on an exchange with my boy elder stewart because of mlc on friday (where all the leaders in the mission chill out and talk about bettering the mission and stuff) and the district leaders were invited so I was on bike with my district leader's companion and that was actually a really difficult bike area it's super hilly so we're cruising down the hill when we get out then at like 5 pm we have to bike all the way back up lol so props to them for doing that every day fr plus its hot outside not like indio hot but it's still pretty hot

Also we got new devices in our cars so basically we have this thing we call tiwi that checks our driving and stuff but we got a new one that has a camera and an annoying voice but now we have to use a qr code on our phone to log in instead of a card reader which is slightly annoying because the camera is really bad at reading our phones we need our brightness all the way up and do it a specific way its slightly goofy but it's not all bad otherwise it's basically the same thing the camera doesnt actually change a whole lot since they cant actually access the video footage unless an accident happens and they go through a "very thorough and rigorous process"

I hit 10 months out on friday so double digits that's weird

It's super cool being a missionary around here tho some of these roads are sketch fr we totally drove by an underground black market swap meet the other day, it was daytime but we saw a ton of cars driving down a random dirt road and elder mullins was like "i think I know what that is"

Its never a dull moment here and I love it

Ok bye

Pictures!

-cool views

-smog

-snails

-spider webs

June10th, 2024 - 42nd Email - Excessive Heat Warning

Hey

So basically so much happened this week that I probably forgot about most of it

That's the weird thing about transfers being on Saturday because even that one day (Sunday) of being in a new area makes you forget everything about your last area. So I took screenshots of my schedule so when I got to my new area I'd figure out and put some pieces together on what goofy stuff we were getting up to last week in Indio.

My new area is in the San Bernardino stake. I live like 6 minutes from the mission office so that's pretty cool, because we can now just get our mail and supplies whenever we want. We're basically just right in the geographic center of the mission. The mission home is in Redlands, though.

My new comp is Elder Mullins. He's a cool redhead from Utah. So Elder Jones is still my only companion not from Utah lol

I'm gonna miss Indio a lot but I'm also excited because this area has parts that are super run-down. I guess Indio does too, it's actually pretty bad in parts, but parts of this area are so dangerous people talk about them all over the mission. You know what streets not to go down before you even get here. It's pretty funny. The first time we leave the apartment to work we see a car that was definitely in a hit and run, the back left was shattered with a ton of pieces of car on the ground. We see dozens of police officers block off whole roads on our way home after hours. It's pretty funny lol, the homeless people are entertaining too. And the freeway is pretty cool looking, it's like you're driving in a trough or something with grass on either side.

Back in indio, it was so hot last week. It was like 105-107 at the worst times of day and it didn't really get much cooler at night (just more bearable without the sun) so that was fun. We tried to not be out too much during the early afternoon. What was slightly annoying (and it still happens here actually) is that my water bottle because it has a straw like expands or something in the heat and water comes up on its own through the straw. So it kinda spilled everywhere basically all the time if I left it in the car or even just sitting in the sun.

We had elder pittman chill with us tuesday because we had a baptism interview and since he was in a trio he could just hop over and hang out. We were driving to visit an inactive member at like 3 pm and on our way elder jones accidentally cuts off this guy in a big chevy silverado, it wasn't even that bad he was a bit in front, but he said he saw the guy flip him off and doing some lip reading through the mirror bro said some choice words. So we just keep going and the guy then comes up on our right and cuts us off but it's like really bad and we have to turn into oncoming traffic to avoid an accident. If elder jones hadn't slowed down he wouldve hit us. So then we pull up to a red light with a long line and we need to turn right, so we pull to the right and as soon as we do the guy cuts us off again and goes right in front of us and we have to slow down again because he almost hit us again. So we turn right and then we were on a two lane road, we're in the right lane and he's in the left lane, but we have to be in the left lane because we have to get to a left turn lane. So we pull behind the guy and then over again into the turn lane at the next light, but guess what, the guy pulls up in the left turn lane too as soon as we do. We pulled into a floor and decor because we can't park in the people's apartment complex and we park in the closest parking spot as we can as we see this guy just speed off into the parking lot hecka fast and he turns around through the parking lot easily going like 40 and pulls up next to us. He rolls down his window and elder jones does too and the guy says "hey are you guys okay?" And elder jones goes "yeah"

Honestly at this point im super confused because I didn't know yet that he accidentally cut off this guy. He didn't tell me until after. Elder pittman noticed though, he was sitting in the back.

Then the guy says "do you know how to drive?" And so elder jones is super confused too and just goes "uhhhh" so the guy says something along the lines of "stop [fricking] following me!" And jones was like "i wasn't following you we're about to visit a friend that lives in that apartment complex right there" and the guy was like "I don't [fricking] care stop following me" and he gets out of his truck and starts instigating something like "get out and fight like a man" type beat but then elder pittman opened his door and he noticed it was 3-1 but he still wasn't backing down with the yelling until elder jones just said "im not here to fight dude" and he got back in his car and drove off. So that was fun. Elder pittman then said something like "that guy was stupid imagine if someone who was armed was in our position instead that's how people get themselves killed picking fights like that" so if I had any advice just try not to be dumb like that guy good moral of the story

Cool miracle the borrego spanish elders baptized someone with heart failure so that's cool not that she had heart failure but that she was physically capable of being baptized

But yeah so tuesday the interviews with our friends ana and iker went super well and they got baptized on sunday. I was able to watch over the phone. Pretty sad I couldn't be there in person though. It's just a great miracle they were able to be baptized because we had been working with them for so long and then they finally came to church and they were so cool. They really were ready they just needed to come to church first to find that out.

Oh also on Tuesday we had some funny news

So we found this out pretty early in the day because we had one with us all day and we got all the chisme (gossip) with him around but one of the bike elders in the zone (english elders who covered north indio) just straight up fell off his bike and broke his arm. He was in the hospital most of that day. So we found that out like at 5 pm ish and we didn't think anything of it. We had a pretty awesome turnout for our tuesday soccer night and had a ton of fun and honestly kind of forgot about it. Then on our way home we get a call from the ap's. So I answer and im like "hey whats up indio elders" and the ap was like "hey im sure you heard about elder owens" and i was like "yeah he broke his arm is he ok" and he said "yeah but now he cant bike so for the next three days until transfers we're gonna put you guys on bike" and elder jones and I were like "Ughhh" and so I said "uh we have lessons in mecca" (a twenty minute drive) and he said "hmmm you have lessons in mecca uhhhh just figure it out with the other elders switch the truck or something" and we were like "ok" and hung up

So those next three days were something else

It was funny because those three days happened to be the hottest days of the week at 107 and so that kinda sucked so we had some logistics planned out with the others. But there was a little bit of miscommunication. At like 5 pm on Wednesday we were tracting in Indio when elder pittman texts us saying "meet us here at 6:30" and gives us an address in thermal (south of coachella which is south of indio) and i text him "it would take you less time to drive up pick us up and drive back to your lesson than for us to bike there" so we gave them our location on messenger and started biking hoping they would meet in the middle. But apparently when we gave them our location they didn't want to start driving until we stopped biking so they would know where to pick us up. We didn't 100% know that they were planning on getting picked up by other missionaries to go tract up in bermuda dunes while we took their truck, so we ended up just biking all the way down to thermal. The bike ride took about 50 minutes and it was over 100 degrees lol but we made it safely and not sunburnt and our lesson in mecca went really well actually

Thursday we barely biked because the other elders were in the church building most of the day

Friday we got out of biking in the early afternoon because we took the truck and worked in the morning. But we ended up biking all evening saying bye to people because I found out I was leaving that day.

Oh yeah on thursday too we had iker pull up for a youth activity so he could get to know the youth better. It was planned to be a dodgeball night and be super hype but then last second apparently they all went to a pool party somewhere else instead lol so iker and us missionaries just ended up playing basketball lol

But yeah that's a wrap on indio. I'm gonna miss it it was crazy at times but it's crazy here too! The ward seems really good so far, what's weird to me is I remember when I first got to Indio i was worried it wouldn't feel as much like home as Victorville did. But by the end I'd say it felt just as much as home as Victorville did, in a different way though. There are awesome people anywhere you go, so I'm excited to get to know the awesome people here.

Ok this email is way too long bye

Pictures!

Indio

-a caterpillar we found in our kitchen in Indio (we ended up throwing him away because he died)

-cool sunset

-me and jones on bike

-last picture of me and jones before I left

-baptism picture

San Bernardino

-mountains

-mountains the sequel

June 3rd, 2024 - 41st Email - Ive been in indio as long as I was in victorville

Hey

So this is the last week of the transfer

Also our last saturday transfer because our mission was told to change the day to wednesday lol

Anyway it's june which is lowkey crazy

We got 91 baptisms as a mission in may which is hype because it's the most baptisms we've gotten in a four-weekend month (which is a big deal because most baptisms happen on the weekend, I didn't even realize having less weekends would be a thing to even consider since not very many months have five but march did and in march we got 98 bappys)

Also elder jones was a bozo lol (just kidding he's awesome we still get along great) and knocked over a bowl off the table and it shattered which was pretty funny but also not

Bowls have been scarce lately especially since theres five of us in the apartment so after he broke that one I was just like "that's it im buying more bowls" so i called the housing coordinator (my favorite guy elder avarill) and he told me i could buy some bowls and get refunded so we pull up to walmart and it's a green walmart so all they had were these $0.50 plastic bowls so not very fancy but they work and now we dont really run out anymore so w

So we got our friends Ana and her son Iker on date for the 9th plus our buddy boy old pal richard it's super cool cuz I've been teaching them since I got here and now they're finally deciding to get baptized but I'm probably not going to be here so thats sad but its ok we chillin because theyre getting baptized thats the important part and seeing them all progress in the time I've been here has been such a blessing

Although we've been getting to some isaiah chapters in the book of mormon with ana and I don't know how to explain to her what's happening because I don't really get most of it myself lol

We had a lesson on wednesday where we had a member coming with us but then the lesson canceled and the lady told us to call her instead so we decided to go to the member's house and have her with us when we did the lesson over the phone but then the lady never answered so we hung out with the members for the last little bit of the evening and got to know them which was super fun and heard her husband's conversion story which was sick and really cool

On Thursday we exchanged with the spanish elders in palm desert which was fun

But it was zone council that day so we went out for our district lunch to the one and only daves hot chicken (which was fire and overly expensive as always) but then when we exchanged I quickly learned we were getting dinner from a member that just buys us in n out so I got daves and in n out in the same day and I'm probably super fat now or something

Also what's weird is I've been on four exchanges to that area and three of the four times have been with that exact member and they bought us in n out all three times

Back in our area while I was up in pd apparently they had a noche de hogar (family home evening) and they were doing an activity based on lehi's dream and apparently it was hecka weird

Like they fr had a rope acting as the iron rod and everyone was blindfolded and they had some other people screaming at them (trying to distract them from the "iron rod") but for new friends (especially the people that came in late lol) were hecka confused so I'm glad I didnt have to deal with that

But yeah Im super happy ana iker and richard want to get baptized this coming week and just keep em in yalls prayers and maybe that I'll stay here for another transfer too so I can see the baptism but at the same time maybe I want to leave before it gets up to like 120 degrees lol it's already getting above 100 every day

On saturday the other elders and the hermanas went to the temple with some recent converts so we stayed behind and had dinner with this older couple that were so funny (the wife is actually from piura peru where my dad served for a little bit on his mission) 

But theyre the funniest the wife is super expressive and she's saying stuff like "all missionaries should have cars we need to protect them" (i agree) and the husband's just like chilling like "eh" the entire time they're like exact opposites

We even asked if they could go to a lesson with us and the wife was like yeah but the husband said "no lol" and then she gave him the nastiest stink eye of all time and then he said "we actually have to do something (i forgot what it was)" and then she was like "oh wait yeah sorry" it was the funniest thing of all time i ate three hamburgers at their house so after daves and in n out Im probably insanely fat

Met this guy named rocky yesterday pretty cool name

Uhhhh what else

We hit our standard of excellence (weekly goals) as a zone for new people and member presents for the first time in like 3 months so lets go

Uh yeah that was my week

Love you guys bye

Oh wait almost forgot pictures

-we got a foosball table (the other elders found it next to the dumpster)

-a roly poly (havent seen one in a while)

-idk what that bug is on the top of that stick

May 27th, 2024 - 40th Email - Third time's the charm

 Hey

This is probably coming on Tuesday again lol

I can't tell if this week went by super fast or super slow

Because it feels like everything we did last Monday was like a month ago but at the same time I think about other things we did during the week and it feels like yesterday

The other elders still haven't found their car keys so that kinda sucks I hope they find them so they don't have to spend $300

We had president interviews this week too so that was cool just a check up on how we doin

A lot of people be cancelin their lessons on us on tuesday we had a lesson planned and he confirmed in the morning "yeah for sure come by" and then at 6 pm (2 hours before the lesson) he texted us saying "we won't be home sorry" it was sad but it was ok

It's actually kinda a problem throughout the whole zone on people not keeping those kinds of commitments, especially with coming to church has been really difficult

Soccer night was super hype this week so many people came and we had a ton of fun

Also we had an actually progressing friend tell us she was going to be in Mexico all summer  so that's sad

But but but we got our buddy ol pal Richard back on date for June 9th he was a little hesitant but then we told him it would be chillin and convinced him so that was super great

We also had an english class where people actually showed up so that was soups hype

Plus plus

Our friend Ana and her son pulled up to church for the first time which was awesome cuz she had been taught since November but hasnt been able to come to church

We hadn't really been teaching the son but after church on sunday he told us he wants to join in on the lessons! So we're super hyped for that and we boutta put them on date for baptism

We went to the temple on friday that was kinda the highlight of our week it was so much fun we did nearly no work that day and got the best ice cream of our lives up in redlands for half off cuz we're missionaries (there are stores like that here which is epic)

We didnt get home until like 6:40 because of traffic and we had dinner with a member so we didn't get to work until 8 lol

We went to applebees on thursday because a member felt bad for not being able to make us dinner on wednesday so she gave us gift cards

But $10 for each missionary doesn't cut it at applebees we got the $26 deal for 2 meals, ended up costing us like $30 for whatever reason so that was fun elder jones and I split the remaining 10 bucks

It was silly tho because apparently the other elders got a text on thursday saying we had our apartment cleaning check on saturday but we didn't get anything until friday when we were on our way home from the temple so we had to clean our apartment saturday morning (that was the only day we had time) in place of some studies so that was sadge

Also the other elders in the apartment had their traveling ap exchange on saturday but because theyre a trio they split up and got twice the work done so that was pretty cool

Hype baptism miracle btw

The other elders had this friend named Luis who was on date for baptism, but then day of his baptism he was mia, no answer at the door, didn't come to church. (This was the guy who i broke his guitar if you remember that, we actually found out the reason it broke was because the wrong string was in the wrong spot so when I tuned it it got pulled too high and snapped)

Anyway

Then we (us) ran into him randomly at a gas station when we stopped to grab a quick beverage (I like my minute maid strawberry lemonades) at like 9 pm one saturday and he asked us "hey when are you coming over?" as if none of that ever happened (and it's funny cuz we weren't even teaching him) so the other elders got back in contact with him and started teaching him again and put him on date 

again! (This was like three weeks ago)

Well, he doesn't show up for his baptism again.

But then on saturday, elder arvidson was with elder pittman while elder cutler was with the traveling ap and elder arvidson just felt like they needed to go to Luis's house again, and on their way there Luis called them asking if they were coming over. Luis apparently never called them on his own before. So they stopped by right then and put him on date for the next day (yesterday) and it'd be funny if he didn't show up again but he actually did and was actually baptized! (That's where the title is from)

Ok actually kinda crazy

We were tracting with a member on tuesday and as soon as we finish and he gets in his car and drives away immediately a police officer pulls up, a lady walks out of the house where the member was parked next to, the lady walks behind the police officer and he pulled out a gun, and two other cop cars come up but they're undercover, one was a toyota camry and the other was some chevy, and then another police officer walks in from nowhere and they all raided the house, like they all walked in at once it was insane and it was funny how it was right next to where the member was parked

I took a picture of it lol but I probably won't send it here

Anyway that was my week there was probably more stuff I forgot but that's how it be sometimes

Pictures!

-kittens (the mom is the brown one)

-go

-mop of a dog (lowkey is super cute tho)