Pictures from the Fresno Mission



The Entire Fresno California Mission
TJ is 5 rows back, just left of Center, just to right of the Polynesian Elder shown below

TJ is barely seen--near this Elder's elbow!  TJ's companion is to the right of TJ.

Thank you to this great missionary who made it easy to find Elder Melanson!

A Week of Crazy Things

This week has been a week of crazy things. I moved apartments on a seconds notice on Thursday, so Thursday was shot missionary work wise. I am now in a new apartment and it is super small. It is just a small studio, but we don’t really need any more space, so that is alright.

On Friday and Saturday, I was not in my area, except a bit in the morning to weekly plan. Then my companion went to a neighboring city and I went with the other elders in my same city.

All and all, it has been a hard week for my area, and yet, it is still good. We have found 4 new investigators and had a good amount of lessons, and we even stayed out of the rain somehow.

The ward now trusts us and they are giving us names of people to go visit. It helps so much. The members just always tease us that we are doing work for other wards! Our investigators keep moving to the neighboring ward, Madera 2^nd Ward, and we keep finding great people for the Spanish Ward here in Madera. It is kinda funny, but the work moves forward no matter what. It just helps when we have committed members and missionaries, who are going to do all in their power to find the people that are ready to hear the Gospel.

Funny thing, in an English ward, I am getting super tired of pizza. All the members feed us is pizza. That didn’t happen in the Spanish Branches!  

So that is what I am doing right now. It is nice and warm here, if it is not raining.

The Work Moves Forward No Matter What

This week has been a good week. It started out really good. We have been working with the part member families and one of the families has a kid who is almost 14. He wants to come back to church and get baptized. So it is really good that we have a person who wants to go and make that step of baptism.

It has also been a fun week because we have got some crazy rain over the weekend and missionary work does not stop because of rain, so we went out and biked and walked around in the rain.  In the morning on one day when it rained, we were biking in a total rain storm and huge puddles. We got so soaked that we had to go change later in the day. We did find some good people to go and teach while we were walking around in the rain though.

It has been a week of the Lord bringing us through thick and thin, pushing His work around, because in a week were there seemed to be no success, we had success.  The work moves forward no matter what. 

Sharing My Testimony

We are trying to encourage the ward to help us find people we can teach and it is a really cool way to find people. We go in to member’s homes and share a short message about faith and testimony. Then, we share Moroni 10:4-5 and then encourage them to first pray about someone who the Lord has prepared for them.  When the Lord gives them a name, they figure out how to share their testimony with that person.  Everyone is at a different spot; some people can be invited to a dinner or BBQ, others to play games or maybe go to church or whatever. It is a really cool program.

So this week I had the great experience of listening to Elder L. Tom Perry, an apostle. He came here for a mission conference. He had a great message about how the election is creating talk about the Church and we need to take advantage of the opportunity by finding the people who are searching for the gospel and not wasting our time trying to convince people to believe. Pray that we can find those who are searching.  It was also cool to see all the missionaries that I new in the mission and in the MTC.

It has been a good week with everything. It looks like the work is progressing, so that is good!

Training a Greenie for a Day

So this week has been a lot of finding. I have figured out the layout of the area and can get around to most places so that is good.

On Wednesday, visa waiters came in to our mission and they became the zone leader’s companions. The zone leaders had a meeting, so we got to watch after one of them. It was fun to see how I was when I came out from the MTC and how super funny I would have been. He just tagged along for the day, so I got to train an elder for his first real day and then give him back to his companions.  It was a fun experience.

We went and visited a few members on Sunday and some of the members here are fun to get to know! One family has a huge animal farm and their goats just had babies. They are also a way fun family and it was great to spent time with them. Then, another family we visited has an eagle that he hunts with, so that was super cool.

This week has been a lot of bike riding and it is good because now I am getting back into shape after 3 months in a car.