Week 31

Well, another week here and gone in the blink of an eye. It's so crazy to think I'm almost 1/3 done..... and still not in Brazil, haha. It's okay though, I'm loving it out here in LA, except it's starting to heat up and that means a lot more sweating on the bike. I guess I'll just be a bit thinner when I get back home, haha. Anyway, enough boring small talk, on to the good stuff. 

Tuesday was a fun day due to transfers. I thought Elder Richeson didn't exist for a while because we couldn't find him after about half an hour of waiting and seeing EVERYONE in the mission but him. Elder Richeson is a pretty swell fellow from Nashville Tennessee. I would send a picture but my camera died so I'll just tell ya that he is about 6 foot and looks like a swimmer. He says he played soccer and water polo in school and bass in orchestra and jazz band. He's a good Elder and I see a great transfer ahead of us. We really didn't do too much that day because I kidna sorta lost my wallet..... It's all good though. We ran around a bit trying to find some less actives and not a whole lot else. 

Wednesday was packed full of good stuff! We started out with Temple service at a bright and early 6:30am. We did a lot of yard work mostly, laying sod, breaking up top soil, carrying canvas bags full of yard waste... the works. The cool thing about it was that I had a chance to catch up with a whole bunch of missionaries I hadn't seen in a while, and a few I hadn't met. One of them was Elder Coffman. He served in my current area for about 10 months and finally left so we had a ton to talk about. He's a great Elder and was pretty worried for the people here. It was a really cool opportunity we had to serve the Lord. 

We got home, showered, ate and took back off to start teaching some people. We met with one girl, Crystal, at her friend's house for a lesson. Her friend is a member so we like to use that little bit of leverage as much as we can. She's the one we took to the Visitor's center Saturday. We had an awesome lesson about the Plan of Salvation and invited her to be baptized and she said yes! It was a great lesson and we saw her on Sunday at church too! She's reading and praying and everything! BBBBWAAAA!! It's great!! We had dinner with Chino too that night. That was fun as always, haha. He's a great guy. But the real fun happened on the way to his house. We were on our way biking and we ran into Elders Perez and Lui. It was cool to see Elder Perez because he used to be in this district and he's a fellow visa-waiter. They told us to wait for a second and then we met a woman they were teaching who actually lived in our area. Her name is Carol and she is amazing. She's about 60 years old and blind in one eye but makes up for it with her spiritual ones. She reads the BoM all the time, is already coming to church, loves the doctrine and is the most thankful woman I've ever met. She has a baptismal date for the 20th of April. 

Thursday we had our weekly lunch with Anthony, but there was a nice little twist this time. We got to Burger King as usual and went and got our food, but decided to sit outside for once. It was a nice 70 degrees so we went and sat down at the tables they had set up out there. As we were eating a family came up to us and said "Hey Elders, mind if we get a picture?" It always blows my mind how cool our members are. We're just two boys out trying to do the Lord's work and people think the world of us. It's a great refresher from the day to day rejection I guess. If you ever seen missionaries, do something small to show your love, it'll make their day, I promise. We finished that day with some planning and a dinner with some cool members and an eterna-gator.

Friday was packed full of goodness. We met with a lot of cool less-active members and had a lesson with an investigator named Shante. We were teaching a lesson and her friend Lorenzo was being more than a little difficult. We tried re-explaining some of the principals to him but his heart was just not open. After a while we got sick of it and finally just bore testimony to him of the power and reality of the Book of Mormon and a seemingly tangible wall of the spirit hit the room. He sat back and looked at us silently, not making any noise for the rest of the lesson. It was kind of a strange and sweet spirit. I felt happy on one hand that the Lord and silenced him, but sad on the other that it was necessary. We had a good lesson from there on out and we went home for dinner after that. 

I'll skip over Saturday for now but suffice to say it was good. 

Sunday was even better. We met with a new investigator named Jessica and her boyfriend Henrique. They were pretty cool but have some issues in their lives. They are 17 and 18 respectively and already have a daughter named Bella. Jessica was super open and ready for the message but Henrique seemed a to be there really only because his girl was. Never the less we had a good lesson with them and they want to be baptized on the 13th of April!

We then met with a man named Aquiles. He's a good guy that is less active because he has been offended by the church more than once because he is black and he feels people often judge him for it. Sadly, he is right. We gave him a blessing and the spirit in the room was amazing. He said that we had really helped rebuild his testimony through that blessing and that he was ready to start coming back to church soon. I love to see the spirit in people's lives!!

Okay, quick spiritual thought here. Read Isaiah and study it. I know that sounds crazy but just do it. It's a powerful book of scripture and has really taught me a lot as I have been reading through it. 

That's all for now. Got an interview with the president soon. I hope God bless you all and you have a great week! 

-um no exercito de Deus

Elder Teela

Week 30

Hello one and all again! Happy excuse-to-pinch-your-forgetful-friend-day! I'm doing good (rocking my four-leaf clover tie! Thanks again Bowens!) And it is transfer time here in LA. We are going to have an interesting one for sure these 6 weeks. Elder Watts is leaving the area and I am staying and am being Jr comp to yet another district leader. Well, we think he is district leader at least. His name is Elder Richerson apparently but we know just how well they got my comp right last time. They told me I was getting a Chinese speaker and I got a Texan that doesn't speak even a lick of Spanish, ha ha. Our current district leader, Elder Parsons, is being bumped up to a zone leader. Anyone who knows him is pretty shocked for 1 of 2 reasons. 1). He's only been DL for a transfer (6 weeks) and 2). He's him. Not to say he's a bad missionary but he has definitely seen his share of the other side of things before the mission. 

But enough about that, only missionaries seem to like transfer news so I'll get to the good stuff. Tuesday was a cool day because of an awesome new idea we've been trying. We've been instructed to pray for specific things and I guess it was time to take that a step further. With prayerful consideration we were asked to plan for daily miracles to happen at specific times. We planned for ours to happen at 3 that day but we had no set appointments or people to even visit really. So at 3:12 when we were walking around trying to talk to people this guy shouts out of his Tahoe "Have you eaten yet?" Expecting it to be some dumb joke we walked up the car and told them we hadn't, and to our surprise they said they would take us out to lunch.As we went to get into the car the man and his wife explained they were from the Filipino ward in Arcadia and were on a lunch break from work. They just saw us and decided to include us too, so they took us to a Filipino and we talked and it was awesome. They also gave us a referral for a friend so that was really cool.   

Wednesday we a cool lesson with a part-member family and it far exceeded our expectations. We plan usually a family home evening type idea for this because most of them really already know the church and we're just trying to get them to keep coming so they can be baptized. While we were teaching a friend of their daughter showed up, named Crystal. She's in her 20's and is looking for a church to go to, so we abandoned the lesson and told her about ours. How did it go you ask? Well we spent 4 hours at the visitor's center with her, so you tell me! Oh, and she accepted to be baptized as well. The Lord works miracles if we just work like we're supposed to.

That night we were out bringing in some trash cans for Sis. Pumphry and we saw an old man trying to do the same across the street. I went and asked if we can help and the man asked if I was going to talk to him about The Book of Mormon or not. I was a bit surprised when he invited us in after that and we ended up doing a question and answer session with him and his roommate. Turns out the old man's family are all LDS and they went less-active when he was 5 so he never got baptized. His roommate had a ton of good questions and we left him with some pamphlets and our phone number. If you talk with everyone, God will give you people to talk to.

Thursday we had yet another miracle. We have a goal of everyday speaking to 20 new people everyday, whether it be on the street, a referral or tracting. We got around to 7:00 at night and had a grand total of 0 for the day. But with some faith we went out to get our 20. I'm not sure if you've ever tried to have 20 meaningful conversations in an hour, but it's every hard to do. That being said we actually managed to do it! It was insane, we were finishing one contact and moving straight to the next. And then we had groups start coming up to us, so we talked to all them as well! It was cool to see the hand of the Lord at work.

I'm gonna take a bit of time now to answers some questions I've been getting from home, so if you have any, just let me know because I want to start doing this from now on. 

Can you baptize a girl who used to be a guy or vise versa?

A: Yes, you can but they have to be repentant and go back to whatever they were before. It goes back to the family proclamation to the world where it says "gender is an important part of our identity".

What's up dawg?

A: Not your spelling grade I see

When are you going to Brazil?

A: Ask my mom, she has the tracking number. The real answer I guess is when the Lord wants me to, but that never seems to make you guys happy. 

Those are all the ones from this week. Hit me up with more if you have em'.

So, my spiritual idea this week comes from Luke 9:62, which reads: And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God. That's a bold statement to make but this is Christ talking here. It means that once we get to work, we need to not worry about how much is done or about anything else other than getting the job done. Elder Dube in the last general conference has an awesome talk about this and I suggest you look it up when you get a chance. But for me this kinda took a personal note as I realized how much I "look back". To join the missionary force is to put all other worldly concerns behind you and to become a new person really. I have let thoughts and past habits hold me back I think and I feel like I will be breaking a lot of them these coming weeks. 

But how does this apply to the everyday member and not one of us? I think that we can take this in the sense of our sins as well. If we repent and say we're sorry about something, how can we even look back at it? When we decided to repent it is to change our selves permanently. That doesn't mean to disregard your past completely of course. I think Elder Jeffery R. Holland said it best: "The past is to be learned from, not lived in".

Well that's it for this week. Love you all and hope you are doing well! Have a good week

-um no exercito de Deus

Elder Teela

Week 29

Hey everyone! How's the world outside of missionary work doing? Not like I care, I'm in Cali for heaven's sakes, haha. It's been a slower week out here but that doesn't mean there aren't good things to write home about!

The first fun thing that was cool was a miracle we saw on Tuesday. We were out trying to meet with a referral which went terribly. We were on our way out and in search of a public restroom for Elder Watts when someone said "Hey Elders!" If you want to hide from us, never do that. We talked to the man and turns out he was headed home from some lunch and was a less active member! He wasn't even on the rolls for the ward, which means he hasn't been to church in at least 5 years. He invited us over and we got to know him pretty well for the next hour or so. He's actually really cool and tries to help the homeless get on their feet and recover. He also had a bathroom to Elder Watts' relief, haha.

Just a quick update, we went to the mission office for my visa stuff this week and the new date to be in Brazil is April 5th. We also have the application tracking number so we can check up on it now.

The next cool thing that happened was on Thursday night. We were weekly planning for the next week and had an impression to set a goal for how many people we would invite to be baptized this week. We set it for 15 and were ready to meet that goal. The next day at Zone Training Meeting (ZTM) they asked us to set a goal for the baptismal invitations we would set, how cool is that? We feel like that it was an inspired goal to set.

To continue on the subject of ZTM we had a really cool thing that we did to kinda rally the troops. The zone leaders had us get rid of our chairs and sit on the floor for and asked us our favorite primary songs. It was a bit embarrassing at first but we all got into it and had some fun. Only in the Church do you find 20 year olds doing this... They then asked us to all sing "I hope they call me on a mission". After the song we went around and they asked us to tell why we came out on our missions. This spirit was strong in the room as most of us started crying and sharing those sacred few moments of our lives. It was powerful and it really helped pull us back to the real reason we were there. It made us all realize that everything that we done in the Church, maybe even in our lives, up to this point had been for this moment. It's like the spiritual state finals for your sport. All your blood, sweat and tears come down to this moment and we only have one short shot to get it right. It was a great experience.

On a lighter note we ran into a drunk man on the street that night who called out to us. He said that most his family were members and asked us how we could help him stop drinking. We began to tell him right as he took another shot right in front of us.... seems real determined to me. We talked to him for a bit when he said all of the sudden "How old are you?!" and turning to Elder Watts told him "You are a strong man, you know this?" and then turned to me and yelled "Oh! This one must get all of the gir-els! You must be quite the ladies man! I have a daughter who is 19 you know!?" We laughed it off and then told Elder Watts he is John Ciena in the WWE. It was a real weird night all right.

I forgot to mention that earlier that day we ran into another guy that blew our mind with his strange statements. He called us aside, started his story and then requested we go somewhere "Not on an incline, my body is sensitive and I can't talk like this". He then told us that he was part of the biggest man-hunt since Osama Bin Laden and that the CIA, FBI, police, gangs, 16 aircraft and a trained bird was following him. He then asked us for the bishop's number, which we didn't give him, and asked that we "talk to the authorities". Finally after about half an hour he asked us for some cash because he can't work because he can't stay in one place. We told him we only had cards and he walked off. Seems like a likely story, right? People here are crazy....

Saturday we had two awesome dinners. One was with the district and one with Chino. The one with the district was first and when the 6 of us got there the host asked "Is this everyone? I thought there would be more..." and promptly pulled out 10lbs of BBQ'ed ribs and chicken! It was ssssoooo good. And that wasn't all. there was 7-layer dip, potato salad, cake, cookies and rolls. All in great abundance. Chino's was fun but we didn't eat too much there, haha.

I know this week has been kinda short but like I said, it's been a slow week. Almost all our numbers and appointments went down sadly. But I did have one really cool miracle happen this week. Because I am 19 and don't do so well sometimes I was kinda broke for groceries this week. I planned on this and bought some extra last week but it still seemed like slim pickings for this week. I didn't want to spend any more personal (really mom & dad's) money, so I prayed for a miracle so that I would not need to spend any. As we got out of ZTM this week I got a package from my grandpa stuffed with food! It was great and I had no idea it was coming so I felt super blessed, but that wasn't even near the end.  

We got a call last night from one Jared, a man from Colorado who's uncle is in USC medical center awaiting a liver transplant. He asked us to help and we agreed on a blessing this morning. As he picked us up he turned out to be super cool and a medic in the army. We blessed his uncle and as we were driving home he offered to take us shopping. At first we declined but he insisted and said "refusing me
this service is refusing me the blessings I would receive for it" and was very determined. Not wanting to test the man, we agreed to let him buy our groceries. After we had gotten about $40 worth of groceries he looked at us and said "Is that all Elders? Come on, splurge a little!" He walked around till we put more in the cart and then ended up getting us $100 worth of stuff! He then took us to El Pollo loco for lunch and then home. All from a guy we met last night! We are truly blessed and I firmly believe the Lord used him to answer our prayers. He really is aware of us and will help us if we need Him.

Well, that is all for this week. I love you all and hope you have a good week! My God bless you all!

- Um no exercito de Deus

Elder Teela

Week, what is it?... 28 I think... yep, just checked it

Hello one and all. I feel like the weeks are really speeding up here, really getting into the groove of missionary work. I'm gonna dive right in this week to some of the good stuff.

 

Well Monday was a pretty typical P-day. Shopping, letters, laundry and basketball... all the essential missionary activities. We had an awesome dinner out with The Bishop. His wife was sick so we all ate out at a place called Fire-Pit Pizza. We all got our own one but they were like $12 a pop! I'm pretty sure he's loaded or broke cause he didn't even look at the bill, haha. But it was good and we coordinated the work well that night.

 

Tuesday was pretty unremarkable from what I can remember. We were supposed to do splits that day but the DL wanted his comp to meet some key investigators so we postponed for a day. We were also supposed to get steaks for dinner but the husband got food poisoning so we ended up with Chinese take-out, haha. Oh the life of a missionary. We headed home with dinner and when we got there we decided to try for one more contact to make an even 20 on the day. As we did this we actually found a man that when we asked him about the BoM his response was "Well, I read it once... I know it's true". Talk about miracles!

 

Wednesday, we did the afore mentioned splits that day and we took off with some Elder Parsons-inspired quirks. You see, Elder Parsons is a college wrestler and LOVES working out. The man wears ankle weights all day for heaven's sake. He's ripped too..... Anyway, to get a better workout while riding a bike he took off his and his comp's bike seats. It wasn't too different really but it was a thing only he would do, ha ha. We ran around and checked on some people that we had lost track of. The fun part about this is that people live in these secure apartment complexes so we need to get creative to get in sometimes. Elder Parsons was in the act of jumping a fence and a man came out and yelled at us, ha ha. I was doing so as well and a man came up and applauded me! Weird stuff in LA man....

 

Thursday was pretty cool. We started weekly planning and got a call about an hour in for a blessing, all the way across the area. We took of and gave said blessing and whipped back around to go get dinner on the other end of the area. It's so fun being on bikes sometimes.... We had some Passole that night and then when we got home we made dinner for the DL and his comp because they are out of food. We made some pretty good cinnamon rolls too if I do say so myself.

 

Friday and Saturday were somewhat painful to get through. It actually rained in LA. Yep, it came down for 3 days like crazy and we had a packed schedule, which meant the work must continue. We armored up in our rain gear and rode out and promptly got soaked the bone. Those were probably some of the longest days on my mission but they were good. We got a lot of great blessing and meetings with people out of it.

 

Sunday was pretty fun. We went to church and the whole sha-bang and afterward we finished up our studies till about 4. We took off after breaking our fast with a light lunch to go look for some less-active people in the ward. As we were out doing this we  saw Elder Parsons and Eddy walking down the street with Chino. I'm not sure if I told you who Chino is but he's a super cool recent convert that loves to feed us all. He said we wanted to have us over for dinner at church but didn't know if he could. As soon as he saw us he yelled out "It's a sign! Come over for dinner tonight!" so we did. Who are we to turn down a free meal?

 

Anyway we got there about half an hour later and Chino was making us "Baloo". It's basically an aborted duck still in the egg. After 7 weeks they take the egg and freeze it or something like that and it leaves most the yoke and about a 1/3 formed duckling in there. You hard boil it and chow down. Chino says it's a Philippino thing. He went first to show us how it's done and then made us all one. It was really good actually and he says it's "a natural male enhancer", ha ha. Elder Eddy got cold feet though when he saw the baby bird to which Chino yelled out "Look at that thing! It's an evil alien and you need to eat it to kill it!" He's a really cool guy Chino, but you need to be careful at his house, time tends to get away from you.

 

Well, I'm out of time for email. I love you all and hope you have a good week!

 

-Um no exercito de Deus

Elder Teela