Monday, March 17, 2014

Transfer 16, Week 1, Lakes Zone, Desert Breeze Ward‏

Dear Family,
This week has been great! 
Monday was a little tough. Elder Gonzales had the flu so we spent a few hours at the quick care to see if he could get some medicine. We were able to barely make it home to clean up and get to transfers, but it all worked out in the end. I am excited to work with Elder Campbell!

This past week we have been able to have a lot of success with meeting with people! We were able to see Savannah, Sister Corn's daughter. When we drove by the house the car was not there so we kept of driving. Then we both agreed that we should try just in case. Well we did and she said she would like to meet with us and start the lessons. The mom is out of town for work for a few months and so the Ward has really stepped up and is doing a really good job with letting her feel welcome. She came to church this week! We are having the Laurel class president and a young women s adviser come with us to our lesson tonight. We are called our study session this morning "Operation: Make Restoration fun and exciting", because her mom told us to make it fun for her :)

We received a referral this week for a newly baptized member that moved into our ward. He was baptized in the Las Vegas Mission a few months ago and was recently involved in a moped accident. He is living with his friends mom, currently, and is having a hard time. His name is Cliff and he has a broken wrist and his jaw is wired shut because he broke it in two places. He is needing a lot of fellowship and help because he is just home all day. He was not able to come to church Sunday because he is having trouble with the pain medication.  

This week we taught Bryan. He will not be able to make his baptism date because he is still living with his girlfriend and this time we taught him it was kinda awkward... because the first time we taught him about moving out or getting married he didn't really get it, I guess. So we just had to straight up tell him. We hope he still wants to meet with us, we haven't heard anything from him since Monday. 

We stopped by Steve and Kristi's this past week and planned on making it a short visit, just to invite them to church and see when a good time would be for us to visit. We ended up staying for a while and talked about finding happiness through being selfless. The came to church Sunday and we asked the Reyes family to sit by them. We hope they enjoyed the talks. The youth talk was very well done. It was on agency. The High Council speaker, Brother Manning (he is over missionary housing in the Stake), talked about President Monsons talk this past General Conference. It was a great topic for Steve and Kristi; How we can receive Gods help through trials. We are meeting with them this Wednesday and the Reyes family is coming with us. 

We have some potential investigators that live very close to us. We have not been able to get in touch with them in a while and we noticed that their rock landscape in the front of their house has a bunch of weeds in it. We went over in our 'regular' clothes and started picking weeds. We thought no one was home but after a few hours she opened the door and was so surprised! She said that she called her husband and told him what we were doing and he was very appreciative. She talked to us for a while, more than she has ever talked, and said that she will make us lunch (by this time its about 2:30) so we were like, 'ok'. well we kept picking weeds and then after about an hour and a half she came out and gave us these awesome burritos, home made cookies, and rolls. Obviously not what we were expecting! (by the way, our dinner cancelled in the mean time, so we were provided for!) During this whole experience, us just picking weeds outside, her whole street came out and talked to us. Her next door neighbor came and sat down and talked to us for like 20 minutes! Her neighbor on the other side said, 'can you do mine?' then she drove away. So Saturday we went over and started on hers. We will finish it sometime this week and hopefully we can talk to her more! It was such a great finding tool! We explained to all of her neighbors that we are doing it for free and we explained who we were! 

We had a great lesson with Konrad this week! We met with him earlier in the week and had a good lesson but this past Friday was the best lesson I've had with him! We brought the Gospel Art Book and showed him a picture of the Vision of the Tree of Life. We explained that that is how we receive the greatest happiness. We then invited him to be baptized and he said he would need to talk to his dad. Right then his dad was walking down the stairs and Konrad asked him to sit down. We talked about baptism and Konrad said he would pray about it and take it more seriously. They were not able to come to church because they were talking together until 5:45 in the morning. They might be moving because of some financial issues but we hope to see them again before they leave. 

So a highlight of this past week, my favorite part of it, was when Elder Campbell and I saw these 3 gangster looking guys walking. elder Campbell said, 'Lets talk to them!'. So we parked the car at a gas station a little ways away and started walking towards them. One stopped and talked to us, Reese. He said he would want to meet with us and we set up a time for the next day, Saturday. We came by and he was chillin in his garage with some of his friends. He was very kind but seemed pretty busy. His mom came out and said 'what are you guys doing here?'. Reese said, "I'm going to do a bible study with them". She said, "Oh not with the Mormons, your aren't." So she told us a few misconceptions she has had concerning the LDS faith and went in and grabbed her Book of Mormon. We explained that it is a record of Gods dealings with the ancient inhabitants of the American Continent. Then when I opened up my scriptures and showed he the King James Bible and said ok. We talked with her for a while and she agreed to set up a time to meet. One of Reese's friends was nearby and said, from the background, "You guys mormons? Kim (the moms name), they are good guys". He also agreed to meet with us. Soooo.... fast forward to Sunday! We had 13 lessons by Sunday afternoon and we wanted to exceed our previous week of 14 lessons. It was 8:30 and usually that's 'dead time'. we couldn't think of anyone else to see so we decided to see our Ward Mission Leader and update him. He wasn't home so we decided to drive to our place and plan for the next day. We say a guy sitting on one of the walls of the street and we both decided to park the car a ways off and talk to him. we said, "It worked last time". So we walked up and started talking to him. and guess what! It was Reese! His friend, Mario came out and started talking with us too. Their language needs some help but they are sincere guys. They were both talking about different things so Elder Campbell and I split up and talked to each of them. They committed to meet with us, when we saw Kim, and they said they would come to church. It was kinda sketchy, standing on the side of the road at 9:15pm but it was awesome! 

Well thats about it for this week! Love ya!
Elder John 

"If for a while the harder you try, the harder it gets, take heart. So it has been with the best people who ever lived" - Elder Holland (Matt 27:46)

"Patience is a willingness, in a sense, to watch the unfolding purposes of God with a sense of wonder and awe, rather than pacing up and down within the cell of our circumstance. Put another way, too much anxious opening of the oven door and the cake falls instead of rising. So it is with us. If we are always selfishly taking our temperature to see if we are happy, we will not be." - Elder Neal A. Maxwell


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