June 23rd, 2025 - 95th Email - I'm still here

 hEy

So uh

Here we are at the beginning of a new transfer

My bad for forgetting to write this last week youll get 2 emails this week

My last one

22 months later

Yeah its pretty weird (ive been asked this a lot)

But we had a crazy week so lets get into it

So first of all elder strong went home on sunday and then monday happened which was an interesting day to say the least

I was in a trio with elder nelson and carwin which was super fun we just chilled and stuff the zone activity was a slip n slide thingy thing and i was just kinda chillin on the side since i dont rly like to get wet but i was also like sad because strong was gone and i was talking to carwin about life

So that evening i enjoyed a great time of going to a samoan activity at someones house and guess what it was outside the mission (because their area goes outside the mission for the samoan ward) it was dope and i got to wear a lavalava and got a free hawaiian shirt was pretty dope

Tuesday was a sad day becuz we took elder carwin to the temple because he finished his mission and so i was just stuck with elder nelson (i love elder nelson hes a great guy) and it was just us two from then on and we mostly worked in my area with little to do in his but we visited the english ward's bishop so that was fun and he hooked me on tillamook ice cream so

So then wednesday comes around and we get transfer news so nelson and i both got transfered and we spent the day packing, i sent some random junk home to free space in my suitcase and said bye to a lot of friends and members. Im gonna miss the rialto 4th ward but honestly i think change will be really good for them.

So we go to transfers and it was nuts because it was president pinnock's last transfer. His last day is the 24th. Hes changed the mission in a lot of good ways in his time and ill miss the pinnocks a lot but im also really optimistic about the new president oligschlaeger coming in even though itll only be for the last bit of my mission.

So anyway after hanging out with elder nelson we got so rudely torn apart at transfers. He went to hesperia and i went... back to the same zone i was in. Im still in rialto. Apparently theres not a whole lot of spanish missionaries in the mission rn so people are having to repeat areas. Which is a little depressing lol

But now im with elder ploeger who i went on an exchange with last week funnily enough

Bro is from holladay utah and his first name a brock so hes pretty cool in my book because brock from pokemon is pretty cool

He also lived in the netherlands for like 5 years or something

But im also on bike, and the weather has been pretty good the last couple days but its going to get hotter so this sucks and we're frantically begging the ap's to get us a car but apparently the mission has no extra cars to give out so we're just waiting on that

So im in the rialto 3rd ward which has none of its boundaries within the city of rialto and most of it is in colton which has the worst urban planning of all time because all the roads and stuff were built around the already existing train tracks so theres lots of hills and under- and overpasses so its honestly not a great biking area but we manage (aka we get lots of rides) and we also hang out at the church building a lot if we get too tired but honestly we've kept ourselves really busy always having something to do ive knocked way more doors than i ever have before here

Housemates are cool too elder walker is training elder jones (not my past companion) and this is now the first person ive ever lived with who is a first transfer trainee and i went my whole mission without training so there goes my bloodline sorry elder gonzalez u were never a grandpa

Also i laugh because barlow and past companion jones are now companions and on bike in the neighboring spanish area so haha

But yeah ward is super cool they made me introduce myself in sacrament meeting and it was after the trainee hermana said it was her first couple days in the field and i go up and say yeah this is my last month of my mission

But as far as the work goes my bike got hit by a car my first day dont worry it did not hit me it only hit my bike but it was still really stupid and we had to go fix the chain which bent a little bit but it all worked out in the end and the bike is now useable again

Also a miracle is a friend of mine in borrego springs is getting baptized (a cool thing about our missionary app is following people we taughts' information so we can see if they getting baptized)

Also my first day we taught some homeless people and one thing led to another and now theyre not homeless and we're helping them get married so they can get baptized and we even helped them find a job so they can make enough money to move back to their home country and yeah that was a wild development

We also had a baptism for an 8 yo kid named Jacob and hes super cool really excited for him but he counted as a missionary baptism for some odd reason

Also met someone that moved here from san bernardino that i taught while i was in san bernardino! She was happy to see me and we're going to keep working toward baptism with her

Yeah so that was my week bye lol

This is boutta be a great transfer!

5 weeks left

Pictures!

-fancy fit

-samoan activity

-the trio

-just me an nelson (i need to get ahold of the picture we took at the temple with carwin)

- me and ploeger