A Great Week to Be a Missionary

This week has been a really busy week of teaching and getting paperwork done.

I have been serving in a trio companionship. On Wednesday, we went on a triple split that was way cool. We all took a city and set up appointments in that city. That night, we taught 8 lessons between all of us. Most of the time, areas don’t even have enough work for splits with two missionaries, but this area had enough work for a trio split.  It was way cool to get that much work done.

I am staying in Selma again for another transfer. I am so glad that I am staying in one place for longer than one transfer!!

It has been a great week to be a missionary.

A Super Interesting Week

This week has been super interesting. I really have not been in my area at all this week because of meetings, exchanges, and service. But it has been a really cool week. I think I have changed as a missionary more than any other week. I guess that is what happens when I sit in meetings. Ha-ha. My meetings were full of training. It has been amazing to see President Gelwix so much this week and I have been able to learn from him. We learned how to work more effectively with the members and with other missionaries.  We had some training on street contacting, my favorite part, mostly because I love it so much. I get to talk to so many people and see so many points of view.

On Saturday, we had the opportunity to be taught by an Apostle, Elder Russell M. Ballard.  It was great. What strikes me as super cool is the simplicity in how Apostles teach and talk. They don’t say anything that all the missionaries go WOW. It is all stuff we already know inside; we just need to be reminded that we know it. Elder Ballard taught that everything we need to know is in the scriptures and in Preach My Gospel.

I got to go back up to Modesto for our meeting with Elder Ballard.  It was great. It felt like I was going back home. I got to drive through all of my old areas, except Patterson, so that was super cool as well.

For one of the service projects I did this week, I got to throw chicks into the chicken houses. We threw about 10,000 chicks from their trays to the sawdust covered ground. It was so fun. The chicks are so small they don’t get hurt when they fall. We really enjoyed the couple of hours we spent there.  We also got to help someone move.  I love helping people move; I don’t really know why, but I think it is just fun.

Here, There and Everywhere

This week has been a super good week. We have been all over. We cover 4 cities and they all have work that needs to be done, so we are here, there and everywhere. Which is crazy!

Also, we have done some weird stuff as missionaries this week. One day we went over to this investigator’s house. He just moved in, so he was doing a deep cleaning of his house before he moved all the stuff in. The crazy part is he wanted us to bleach everything in the house, the walls, the floor, each of the cabinets in the kitchen, everything. So that took a while. After that, we shared a message with him and now he has a plan to be baptized early next month. So it is really cool how we have found people, especially the people the Lord has prepared. 

Last night, we found a family that had talked to missionaries, but moved. So the missionaries dropped them, but now they are back. We had plans to go visit a less active, but instead, we found this family because the less active member was not home. So that was really cool. 

We also had a member bring a friend to church and we will start teaching him in a couple weeks, with the member. So the work here in Selma is just booming. It is really cool to see. I hope I get to stay here a little longer.  The trend has been that I leave an area after one transfer; that would be sad. But I will see what happens. The Lord knows where I need to be. 

God's Hand in the Missionary Work

I have a new companion from Phoenix, Arizona. He was born in Mexico. He is really cool guy and a super humble missionary. He is always looking to serve and be better. We are in a trio companionship right now and covering the cities of Selma, Kingsburg, Parier, and Fowler. We have a car so we can get to all the places we need to visit.

There have been so many cool things that have happened this week. Early this week we found this guy at his brother’s house, and we talked to him. He told us about a dream he had had where he saw the life of Christ. We set another appointment up with him and we went by yesterday. He lives way outside the city boundaries, so we would have never found him without the Lord guiding us and putting him in our path. It was a super cool experience.

Another cool story from this week was when we went to Parier, we talked to this drunk guy and he had been drinking a bit. But beer had destroyed his family and he wanted to have his family back, so we helped him decide to quit drinking and he poured out the rest of his beer. It was super cool to see. I have definitely seen God’s hand in the missionary work this week.

Some Photos from Madera and Selma

Mark's Baptism in Selma with Elder Miller

Bike problems in Madera with Elder Rodger

Elder Rodriquez and I in the Almond Orchards

Mormon Helping Hands - Painting a Bench

Lunchbox, Israel and myself in Selma

Huge rain and hailstorm that almost flooded our apartment
and created an 8 inch water puddle

Talking to Everyone!

This week has been great. We had a baptism this week! It was so cool to see. We just met him about 3 weeks ago. He is really one of the people who was truly prepared for us to teach. He has great faith and just sucks in everything that we teach him. It is so cool. It is always special to have a baptism, especially in a hard area like this.

 This week has been a week of following the Spirit and finding people in that way. It has been cool to see who the Lord puts in our path when we just talk to everyone. I have met some interesting people that way. There have been people who have just straight up ignored me and when I talked to them they just said nothing back. That is super funny. One time I had to try not to laugh. It is sad thought that some people don’t want to listen to a message about Christ.

My Spanish is getting better while being in this new area. I don’t really have to pause to say anything. Sometimes I have to think about how to start what I want to say, but after that it just flows pretty good. It is so cool to see the way the Lord works to help learn a language and be able to say what you need to say when you need to say it.