April 21st, 2025 - 86th. Email - There's a crowd

 Hey

So something interesting about being a trio and covering two areas is that means we have two area books to manage and that means some of the reporting we do is on the other area which i do not have access to so regrettably the archives are incomplete for what we did last monday because we were entirely in the other area

The weeks are flying by and honestly its hard to keep up with everything we do but i'll do my best I have to please my fans

Ive only got like 14 more weeks as a missionary lol

Also this weather is wild beginning of last week was in the 90252s then it rained and it was in the 60s i think earth is confused or something

Tuesday we tracted and went to english class and then tried to get volleyball night to happen but nobody showed up lol

Wednesday we went on an exchange with the zone leader elder blad and what happened was luna swapped with him to go to his area and blad came here with me and strong

That was a WEIRD day

So we start by contacting in front of an el super (its a grocery store that only mexicans shop at) and literally everybody we talked to was intelligent and knew a lot about churches and history and were all really not wanting to learn anything about our church (which lemme tell ya that never happens) i had no idea it was possible to bash with a catholic guy but he made it possible

(Actual conversation)

-hey wanna hear a message about Christ?

-what if i told you the message instead?

So you can probably imagine how that conversation went we were lowkey destroying him but he wasnt having it so we just dipped and bro had even said he needed to get to work but then he kept following us trying to argue and we were like dintcha say u needed to work or smth and we just left because we were tired of all these people

Then we tried to knock on this dudes door but he wasnt home and on the way back to the car cuz we had to park in a parking lot lol we ran into this guy carrying a ton of boxes of pizzas and he had questions about our church and he invited us inside his office turns out bro is an accountant and we sat there in the entrance of his office for a solid twenty minutes and he was interested but it was hard to get information thru to him cuz every time we asked him a question bro was like "depends on what u mean by that" like i could ask him "eho is God 2 u" and hed b like "whatchu mean by that" and i was just left absolutely flabbergasted we just have him a book of mormon and then he got distracted because someone delivered something to his office and we sat there for another ten minutes waiting but we had a lesson so we were like aight we gotta dip so we just did lol we let him know first but idk if that dude is finna progress

Then we went tracting in a trailer park in elder lunas area but the problem was we dont have access to his area (remember hes not in there with us) so we dont really know the boundaries we're just guessing and we actually ended up tracting just outside of the willow branch area and we tract in rialto 3rd's area which is nice for rialto 3rd but not what we were going for and this guy freddy lets us in almost immediately and we tell him all about baptism and church and the book of mormon and we dip and we're like lets goooo baby like moistkritical type beat but then on saturday we had a return appt and we realized because elder luna was like "lol this isnt my area" we were like aight lol and just passed his information off to the hermanas in r3 hope hes doing ok

Then we go tracting again in another trailer park with our recent converts bryan and oscar they were pretty cool to tract with and the first dude we knocked on was a "reformed baptist" (very insistent on the "reformed" part) but he didnt actually bash us he was pretty chill and was like just keep working hard and we dipped lol

Also ran into another intelligent catholic guy that did not bash

We also ran into a lady that had actually attended our church a lot as a kid in mexico but for some reason wasnt interested in coming back and being baptized in the united states since she attended a different church since moving but she still has a book of mormon and a testimony i really dont understand people anymore

Thursday we had zone council idk what happens in zone councils anymore they all blend together

Had a good lesson with our friend ana working really hard with her but she and her dude william arent wanting to get married for some reason argghhhhh (read that in a mr krabs voice to understand my pain) so we are tryna get members to come with us to force- i mean convince- them to get married

Met this chick who also wanted to come to church with a bunch of kids but then last minute she said she wasnt feeling good to come to church even though she told us the night before everything was good for church

I dont understand people

Friday we did more temple cleaning so that was really fun

Elder strong and i were told to go outside and what we did was sand and smoothen a fountain

So we were working with this other guy named dallin (shoutout) and he had this epic machine that easily smoothened the granite of the fountain but the problem was the fountain had little curved indents where the epic machine couldnt reach so we had to do those by hand with sandpaper, a chisel, and a wet towel

Apparently they used some kind of acid to get rid of bacteria so the chisel was for wearing away that layer of dirt and acid that had since hardened and then we sanded off the rest and wiped it off with the wet towel

There was another layer of fountain on top of the fountain (fountain inception) so we had to hop up top to get to those curved indents and then as i hopped off i jumped off in a weird position where i think i pulled both my pecs and it hurt like really bad for a solid two minutes i just sat down and after massaging my pecs (this is really embarrassing) the pain went away so we are chilling

Then my arms were sore for the next couppe days cuz that was hard work we were at it for like two hours and we didnt even finish

Then we were late to a return appt after so we drove straight there in regular clothes to see if we could do at least something because it would be a hecka detour to go home but they didnt answer so it was ok

Then we helped out the samoan ward bishop with preparing for an activity honestly i cant even begin to describe what we did so first they gave us fried chicken which you can never complain about fried chicken and then we got these fake vines with fake leaves (i mean itd be weird if fake vines had real leaves) and we had to clip the leaves on the ends vertically in half and then use the scissors in a way that made the leaves curve and we did that for like 30 of these things and it might not be the weirdest thing ive ever done but its up there it was chill tho

Also my brother's daughter was born on the 17th that was pretty cool congratulations

Saturday i honestly dont remember what we did but we confirmed a lot of friends for church and had a meeting with our ward leaders about missionary work that went on for over an hour lo

Sunday was easter that was pretty cool our friend Sara actually came to church for once so we're gonna talk to her about finally getting baptized since she can now that she came to church she just needs to come one more time

Really good service overall the primary sang a song that was pretty cute but we were stressing because the rialto 3rd elders needed elder strong to go play piano for their sacrament meeting so as soon as our meeting was over for the rialto 4th ward he got picked up by them and luna and i just chilled since church was only 1 hour for easter and then we went to luna's branch's service and everyone was asking what happened to elder strong thinking there was another emergency transfer so we messed with them a little bit but not too much they knew he was coming back next time but it was funny

Easter is cool   i was honestly surprised at how many people i met that dont celebrate easter because theyre all like "why celebrate it bruh" and have no idea that its about Christ's resurrection like its funny but yeah easter is arguably more important than christmas for its actual meaning and i loved talking to our friends all about it so hope you guys enjoyed your easter and that you have an awesome week

Aight peace

Lol i dont have any pictures oops

April 14th, 2025 - 85th. Email - Getting by

 Wazzup

So in case you missed last episode of elder hanson's mission: the series a guy i lived with was told he had to go home because he had a disease

So monday night was weird since the other companionship didnt have their car and didnt feel like riding their bikes lol so we went to a couple lessons and while we were in the lessons they went and visited people with our car

So we visited some members (one of bishop's counselors) and they gave us gas food but the problem was we had already eaten texas roadhouse earlier that day so we were like

Not that hungry

But we still ate it was good

They also said they wanted to help start up the volleyball night again because nobody had been showing up at all which had been kinda sad so they were like yeah we are gonna be there tomorrow so we were stoked

Tuesday morning we had to wake up at 4 am to take bert to the airport for his flight at 6 it was pretty sad he was sad to go but hes doing loads better at home where he can have a better controlled diet for his disease

So since that point ive been a trio with luna and strong and we were able to get strong moved back to our area to report on lessons since i usually drive so everything is back to normal kinda

But its funny cuz the airport we go to (ontario) is outside the mission because there arent any other big airports close by (besides san b but that ones newer and more for freight i think) so that was my first time leaving the mission since i first landed in the ontario airport

Didnt get much time to rest when we got back bcuz we had to leave at 8 am to go to the temple because we needed to clean it

After every general conference they have missionaries go clean the temple and its prettt sick its like cleaning a church building but they put you in white jumpsuits and you go to all the rooms and stuff and vacuum and stuff

Other missionaries went outside and moved a boiler lol and one of the guys had a sick backpack vacuum like ghostbusters type beat for the tight spots

I just vacuumed the hallways and dusted off some light bulbs in the locker rooms it was chill so we did that for three hours and we're going back later this week to do some more

So we had more lessons in both our area and elder luna's area so a lot of jumping around

We went to the church building that evening to set up for volleyball but guess what

Nobody showed up (at first) and the guy that said he was gonna be there with his whole family flipped and was like "uh im busy" so we were freaking out lol calling literally everybody we could to get them to come and we actually got like 5 people both recent converts and friends to come play with us so it was fun but kinda stressful

Wednesday we had some good lessons again in both areas and in the evening we had a member come out with us to two lessons originally it was just gonna be one but after we were like "hey u got time we gon go visit this other chick" and she was like "sure lol" (but in spanish) and she ended up being perfect for the both of em it was neat

Also wednesday night we went to a recent convert of elder luna's in his branch and bro gave elder strong a haircut but it was really funny lookin and the entire zone clowned on him for it i mean honestly you had to look closely to notice the mistakes but it was still pretty funny

Thursday we had zone conference which is always super cool to see everybody we went over to fontana to do that and i saw a bunch of my old companions so it was chill

Then afterwards we went to raising canes because fontana has one of those (bro i swear fontana has all the cool stores and restaurants) and then after we exchanged with one of the zone leaders and i went into his area in colton but i was with his non zone leader comp elder welling who is super cool so that was fun

Also unrelated but fontana baptized like 7 indian guys on sunday theyre working to start the second hindi ward in the entire united states so thats super cool

Friday was a normal day we had good lessons invited hecka people to church and to a cool activity we were gonna have on saturday for easter

Definitely one of the hardest things about being in a trio is that we have two separate dinner calendars and ours is completely full so we just have to cancel one and go to the other :( but its ok

So saturday rolls around and its pretty normal but in the morning the social media sisters had us take videos to be on church advertisements on social media so that was fun had to memorize a quick script

Before we did that tho it was at a park and the parking spaces were on a small ledge and i almost drove off it because there was no cement block but i am a pro driver so i didnt

But the sisters came in right next to us and they parked fine but then kept inching forward slowly and we were waving at them to stop but they just kept waving back lol and they drove the front wheels over the ledge and it was literally the funniest thing of all time and we were all dying laughing and they had to back up super fast to get over the ledge

The Easter activity was super dope it started at 5:30 but the way it worked is you pulled up whenever you want and it was like a self-guided tour and you could go to whatever room of the church you wanted and you saw a different part of Jesus's life through a church video and then someone sang a song about it it was so much fun

Church was cool we got a few friends there but since we also cover the willow branch we had to attend their meeting too and i was lowkey so tired and falling asleep the second sacrament meeting but we had to bless the sacrament so we had to be up but whats weird about the willow branch is they have sacrament meeting second and classes first since they combine youth with the english and so after sacrament was over we were done also an inactive recent convert came which was super fun

So we've been a trio for a week and i have to say its been insane we are just a bunch of goofballs but we're already like best friends and have so much fun with everybody so its really been pretty great

Alright thats everything u guys have a great rest of your week

Pictures:

-Bye bert

-pretty tree

-almost drove off the ledge

April 7th, 2025 - 84th Email - I might have been a silly goofy goober

 Buenos dias

Hey so uh

I forgot to write an email last week

Thats entirely my bad it just totally slipped my mind

But dont worry yall will get a double update

So

Pack your bags this is gonna be a long one

So it all started on a quiet sunny day two weeks ago when it was still last transfer (transfers were on march 27th and two weeks ago pday was march 24th so you can gauge how long ago this was)

Well, to explain a smidge, im not companions with elder barlow anymore (i miss that guy so much lol) hes now in san bernardino (like the northwestern part, its a pretty good area, covers lake arrowhead) and im still here in rialto but there have been some interesting developments

So starting the evening of monday march 24th, We had this friend named bryan we were starting teaching, he had been in our teaching pool for a lil bit but we hadnt been able to teach him an actual lesson we had been over like twice to just chit chat a bit because his life was kinda hard and it was kinda sad bro was crying and stuff honestly he didnt really smile a whole lot but we taught him the restoration that day and it was the start of a really wholesome character arc

Tuesday was kinda a regular day i mean elder barlow was kinda feeling like he was gonna leave and we were all kinda depressed because i didnt want him to leave lol

Bryan came to english class, that was cool, and then we went to check if volleyball night was happening which it didnt for the fourth week in a row (surprise)

Wednesday elder barlow found out he was leaving

But not only that

I moved apartments

I ended up moving to a diff apt in the same complex we were already living in (literally 2 min walk) where other missionaries were living, and one of those companionships was moving areas

So we were hecka confused like why would they do that, we were just fine the way we were and stuff and we were just so in shock at how confusing transfer news was that we didnt really have time to be sad over the people leaving (another companionship also moved apartments that lived down in colton) so barlow packed up his stuff and i just took a couple trips to move over mine it was pretty easy but also a sad day elder barlow was really sad at one of our recent convert's houses but oscar's super cool so he cheered him up a bit

So thursday was transfers and elder barlow moved next door to san b and im now comps with elder strong. Hes cool hes from a few places but he spent all of high school in oregon near portland. Really cool guy we've been working really hard and its been chill.

The apartment switch turned out to be because they moved the zone leaders from our apartment complex to the apartment complex in colton. Before it was one english zone leader and one spanish zone leader (they werent companions) but now both zone leaders are english and in the same ward (they still arent comps tho lol) and theyre also living in their area which makes it easier and i guess they just wanted to put me and my companion in the same apartment as other spanish missionaries. The missionaries i lived with last transfer now live alone but we have them over a lot since theyre super close

So i live with elder luna and bertoldo who serve in the willow branch (at this point in the lore)

Had some good lessons and pretty much just brought him around to our most progressing friends and converts to meet them.

Friday was wild

So apparently i wasnt paying attention to any mission news becausr they decided to move our semiannual thanks day where we tract from 9 am to 9 pm from the saturday after general conference to two fridays before general conference which was confusing but we did it and we found a lot of people maybe it was to have the new missionaries who just came in do thanks day their second day in the field lol what a great wake up call

But the problem was we have zone council every thursday usually but with transfers happening we usually have to move it to friday and we cant do zone council saturday since we like to have saturdays open for doin stuff and so we decided on the great idea of doing zone council at 7:45 am on friday morning before thanks day started at 9 am and because elder strong is district leader (thank goodness im not anymore lol) he had to attend his zone leadership meeting a half hour before zone council at 7:15 so we were up and ready pretty early (and we still were late lol) it was overall a great day great weather perfect breeze so just an overall W day to go tracting we also did an exchange i went with elder bertoldo (who we just call bert) and that was from like 5:30 to 9 pm. Was fun got to know him pretty good

So pretty much to sum up our relationship as an apartment we played settlers of catan a lot and we just really like board games in general (which we actually did last transfer too)

Saturday was normal

Sunday we had church yay we love church and then we were trying to get bryan to go to a baptism in the colton building which is prettt far from our building (the randall building) and he dont have car so we had to get a member to take him but the problem was the member we were gonna ask to pick up bryan ended up just talking to bryan for like a half hour (not that it was a bad conversation it was good for him) and so after they finished talking we left to go check out the baptism and when we got there they were in the middle of the baptismal ordinance and we were like "heck" because bryan hadnt gotten there yet and we left the room and waited another ten minutes and they finally got there and we got in the room and they were in the middle of the confirmation so bryan saw like half the confirmation its ok since the hermano had to visit the ward that met there anyway but i felt kinda bad that he was late but he liked it all things considered

Later on sunday we had an fhe at a members house with recent converts who came too where we watched a video on the plan of salvation it was fun but then they went on a weird tangent pulling up old videos on an old camera from 2010 lol

Okay that was one week now moving on to week 2 if you made it this far and still feel like reading more get ready for one of the wildest weeks of all time

So the week started off pretty normal honestly we had pday and we did an activity that was a bunch of minigames and i messed up on the second one lol and if you lost you had to do goofy stuff like get a bad makeover or something so i just stopped playing lol so i didnt have to do that but everyone else looked pretty funny

Found some people monday night was good

Tuesday bryan brought his brother jeffrey to english class which was dope because he said his family was like

Kinda opposed to him meeting with us

Its kinda weird since theyve never been mean to us directly they lowkey chill but i think after we invited bryan to be baptized (oh yeah i forgot to mention that we were planning for bro's baptism since like the saturday before which was pretty weird and honestly a really awkward topic with bryan for a hot minute cuz he still didnt know if he wanted to do it) and they were like "he can be close to God he dont need a church" so they were opps but its ok bryan knew it was good for him he just didnt feel ready yet

The problem was bryan didnt have a ride again we misunderstood him in an earlier call and at like 7:20 when english class starts at 7 we were frantically calling a recent convert (oscar) to pick up bryan and his brother to come to english class which they did but its a far drive to the colton building for oscar so he got there at 7:45 (lol) but it was ok they still learned a lot

We also committed our friend sara to a baptism date which was super cool but then on saturday her brother randomly pulled up to take her to moreno valley and she wasnt able to watch any of conference (which we wouldve counted as a church attendance) so we had to push back her baptism date but she is now super committed for this sunday to church (crossing my fingers)

We went tracting on wednesday which i was burnt out from tracting the friday before lol but it was fun a little hotter tho had some good lessons too

We were planning on going tracting with oscar but then we ended up chilling at his house for too long and we got a text from a friend saying they were waiting for us (oops) so we just invited oscar to come to their lesson it was a really good lesson too

Thursday was zone council again it was definitely an interesting one

Had a great lesson with bryan again about the plan of salvation. Pretty much got rid of his concerns about messing up after baptism by talking about how we have tons of opportunities to repent and talking about the spirit world he was eating all it up so it was chill

Then bryan came to the volleyball night for a different ward so obviously we pulled up and it was super fun until everyone except us left lol that was pretty awkward but we were honestly still trying to avoid talking about bryans baptism with him too much because we didnt know if he was still worried about it.

Friday was awesome we had a service missionary from fontana come out with us all day his name was elder smith and he was super cool he originally was serving in argentina until he and his companion had a pretty dangerous run in and he had to be sent home because the church was worried bro had ptsd even though he was perfectly fine but they were still being careful and stuff so he serves from home now and goes out with missionaries a lot hes coming out with us again this week and he was only with us till 5 pm last friday but this time he'll be with us all day

We set up a time with bryan too to do his baptismal interview the next day between conferences. Spent pretty much the whole week hyping everyone up about it it was fun

Saturday was my birthday, im 21 now, so im pretty much an adult i think

This is crazy because it was my second birthday on the mission and by the end of this year i'll be home. I finish in less than 4 months and everyones like "oh youre almost done" and im like "yup"

So i called my parents pretty much first thing since i didnt know if i would be able to call them later in the day because general conference is a pretty big thing and we were hopping around everywhere getting people to watch it, it turns out i had time later to talk to them but

Anyway

While im talking to my mom elder strong gets a call from the ap's so i went over to go listen cuz thats usually important when the ap's call you

Pretty much the entire week elder luna and bert had been talking with the mission nurse and the ap's because they were trying to take away their car since there were sisters in fontana that were really struggling being on bike and so they were kinda fighting to keep their car and bert was citing a medical issue he had that prevented him from being on bike and he was like "dont worry guys i got this we wont be on bike theyll have to pick someone else" so we were like "ok lol" and then after talking with the mission nurse guy on thursday that was pretty much the end of that because my area is huge and they cant put us on bike

Or so we thought

So elder strong gets a call from the aps and they ask him "hey can you ride a bike" and hes like "yes" but very quickly says "but our area is way too big we cant be put on bike" and so the ap that was talking was like "yeah i started my mission on bike in that area and it lasted less than a week it was pretty terrible" and he then said "so we're going to be having an emergency transfer within the apartment and youre going to go with elder luna in the willow branch on bike and bertoldo is going to be with hanson in rialto 4th in car"

So we were like

Depressed hardcore bro

Then we got a call from president to explain to us what was going to happen and why it needed to happen more in detail and bert felt pretty bad and we were honestly just all super surprised and they were like "so this is effective right now" and then after we we like "well this sucks" especially since we were planning a baptism for bryan so was we decided to do because they hadnt had their car taken away yet was to just go on an "exchange" and even though i was with bert technically since elder strong was district leader we just "exchanged" and stayed together for the weekend to do the baptism. We didnt tell the ward absolutely anything so as far as they were concerned we were still together.

Honestly the whole situation made it difficult for me to focus at all in conference (especially since it was in spanish) so after the first session for my birthday and since we were all kinda down we got pizza and invited the other missionaries in the complex to come chill with us between the morning and afternoon sessions. But yeah we were frantic and had no idea what to do. Bryan passed his baptismal interview though, and he said he was feeling good about it and that he still wanted to do it, so im pretty glad we stuck through with the original goal even though he was iffy about it the entire rest of the week lol

The other car got taken away right after the afternoon session of conference so from that point on we were sharing a car.

Watched the evening session with some inactive members that the sisters tracted into who have a son they want to get baptized (they just are really busy so they cant come to church rn...) so that was fun and then we got picked up by the other missionaries who were driving our car lol and a member told us about a family he knew where they werent members from colombia and the dad wanted a blessing for some illness he has idrk what it was but it seemed like it sucked anyway so the member told us to meet in this park so we were assuming the family was at the park and the member wasnt responding to us  so we just went driving aimlessly until he gave us the address and it was right next to the apartment complex we were just at  so we had to turn around and go back and we get to the park and the member wasnt there  so we waited like ten minutes and the member pulled up and told us to follow him back into the same apartment complex as the family we visited  and then when we knocked on the door the family didnt answer  so our member called them and the wife answered and said they just left  and to come back tomorrow (sunday) lol

So it didnt really feel like my birthday but it was definitely a memorable one

So sunday rolls around and we honestly had spaced on a ton of the baptism planning process because of how crazy the last couple days had been, we at least had prepared the programs (the papers we hand out at the baptism) on our phones but the only building we had keys to had their wifi completely shut down in the whole building on saturday so we couldnt print them out and we dont have keys to our own building so on sunday when we watched conference at our church building and we asked for the keys to the clerks office to print out the programs there and then we realized we didnt even have a baptismal suit for bryan so we call the zone leaders and between sessions we had to drive all the way to colton to their apartment to grab a baptismal suit for bryan and then we get back and the ward is having food and theres pizza which i was like yes pizza and then i realized there was none left lol but then the members felt bad and a member walked up to us and was like "hey which one of you didnt get pizza" and we were like "both" and they got us two slices of pizza literally out of thin air and my joy in that moment was literally immeasurable and my day was made

And we also had to call the building coordinator for the building we were going to do the baptism in (regrettably our building does not have a baptismal font in it) to make sure we were actually allowed to do a baptism at the time we wanted which we were and it worked out great

Then we watched the afternoon session of conference and i was literally wiped but the bits of the talks i understood were really good and i need to rewatch them all in english for sure

The baptism happened and it went really well and at this point im still with elder strong even though im technically companions with bert on area book

And then we gave the blessing to the guy and theyre super interested

And this emails already way too long but to make a long story short

The next day after our pday activity we found out bert actually needed to go home to figure out his medical problem before he can come back out

So technically my companion went home

Im with elder strong again

And we're a trio and now im comps with elder luna too which i totally predicted

And then we went to texas roadhouse to send off bert and the bikes they got were given to the sisters on bike in our zone because their bikes got stolen lol

So that was my last two weeks! I really hope i dont forget a week again because this took forever to write lol

Pictures!

-look at my parallel parking job

-me and bert on thanks day

-elder strong and cats

-my hand in catan

-pizza on my birthday with the boys

-bryans baptism