January 20th, 2025 - 74th Email - First talk on the mission

 Yo

This week was wild

So we start off on monday after pday we just went all the way up to ranchita to have food with a member

And ranchita is an hour drive away

So that basically took up our entire evening but it was a chill drive and we did visit someone beforehand

Tuesday we ended up doing a pretty last minute exchange with my district leader elder allen (who was my companion back in indio when i was on bike back in february of last year, I follow up trained him) and it was fun

We went tracting and found an epic gamer guy but also a less epic gamer guy a couple doors down

We knock the door and im like "ayo hows your day going" and then bro's like "terrible now that youre here" and im like sorry dawg i was just like well would you want a message and bros like "how about i slam this door in your face and pray for you how about that" and im just like dude that wouldnt be the first time and then hes like "you should read your bible you got a bible on you" (rookie mistake we didnt have a copy on us we were lackin on supplies we just had books of mormon) so i pull out my phone and he says to read smth in luke 10:1-7 or smth like that it basically says not to go house to house and then elder allen absolutely went ham on this guy bro goes "what about verse 8?" In the most goofy voice of all time and then the guys like "i dont care about verse 8" and then elder allen goes "what about verse... 9?" And then idk how bro keeps a straight face but he ends up going all the way to verse 11 when the guy finally slams the door on us and i was literally tryna not laugh but at the same time not get this guy too riled up cuz we kept goin knocking on more doors and the guy kept walking out of his house looking at us strangely and im like 99% sure he tried calling the police on us but theres like 2 police down here and theyre dawgs (the english elders have talked to them) and they not boutta do anything they dont care

Wednesday was zone conference so we had to wake up at 5 in da morning to get ready cuz we had to be there at 8:15 and we only have one shower and the drive was an hour and a half to yucaipa and it was chill saw a lot of mission buds and we all dawgs yknow so it was way cool i led the music when we sung hymns so there was that

We also exchanged with the zone leaders after zone conference, it was pretty fun and i ate a burrito at wiener schnitzel (it was definitely the most $2 burrito of all time) but the reese's shake was good plus we had some good lessons

Thursday was a good day nothing too crazy happened

Oh yeah something tho is theres been a ton of wind and dust floatin around and everyone is getting super sick including some friends and members, our recent convert might also be getting surgery so hopefully everything goes well with that

Friday was crazy we spent the whole morning putting furniture in a uhaul and elder harris found an old jacket that smells like cigarette smoke so that's interesting (he thinks its really cool tho so he bought some odor removers to see if it comes out)

Then that evening we invited our branch president to a lesson with us to visit a recent convert and afterwards he told us to give a talk on Sunday so that was fun

Saturday was also interesting we took the furniture we put in the uhaul to the house it was moving too and that took a long time to sort everything out and then we went and visited a member who's brother came back (!) from mexico and hes been to church before and came again on sunday so thats dope

But he also talked for forever and we were at their house for 2 hours trying to get through the restoration pamphlet with him (about joseph smith) so we dont get back home from borrego until like 3 pm to shower and stuff and i had to write my talk (it was on the Holy Ghost) and we didnt end up getting to work until like 6 lol

Plus we met a cool guy who moved here from logan utah and he's a member and gonna start wantin to come to church (he didnt come for whatever reason on sunday but thats ok) and then on sunday we randomly tracted into an inactive member and so hopefully this tiny branch is going to start growing which will be epic to see

Also on sunday it was cool cuz a couple we met the other day who didnt seem super solid about church told us they were going to come and we were going to do a chapel (bingo hall) tour with em but then they canceled the lesson and said "we'll see you at church tho" which usually means we'll never see them ever again but then they actually came to church which was crazy and they enjoyed it

Overall a good week

I found a cool quote while writing my talk from pres nelson in april 2022 general conference when he said that some people think truth is relative that it depends on the person but in reality what is true is true and we can learn by the Holy Ghost what is or is not true and it's not for us to decide

Anyway love you guys here's some pics from the week

-look at this corgi

-conch shell