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