So my last few days in Patterson were pretty good. We went around and said bye to a few people and continued the work. It was weird leaving my first area, but kinda nice at the same time. I was going to have the opportunity to speak 100% Spanish. It has already helped my Spanish a lot. I can understand so much more. I still can’t understand everything or say everything I want, but I will get there someday.
One of the houses we stopped at in Patterson was Brother West. He likes to figure out where the Book of Mormon took place and all that stuff. He has some Jade artifacts that should be in museums and all sorts of cool stuff. It was way cool to be able to see all of his artifacts. He had a map of approximately where every city was in the Book of Mormon. It was super cool.
It was great to see Patterson start to grow. It is so ready to explode and so far away from exploding at the same time.
Wednesday was my first day here in Modesto. I am in an all Spanish area of Modesto. I cover the East side of Modesto, so we are all over the place. It is so nice to be able to be in a big city again and actually see people. I did not know how much of a city boy I was. We are on roads that have more than 4 cars on them at a time. Elder Zanudo has a hurt knee, so we are 100% in a car, which means I am going to start gaining more weight. It is also cool to know that Tompa (my grandpa) served his mission in the same city I am in. Because I am always in the older parts of Modesto, we will probably walk the same streets.
Within my first hour in Modesto, we found this lady who has so much faith and she is so ready for baptism. We taught her about the gospel and families, then about prayer. She started to say the closing prayer and could not finish because she felt like her heart was going to explode with joy. It was super cool to see how the Lord guides the paths of his servants.
We are having a baptism on the 10th, so this Saturday. He is super prepared. He comes to church no excuses. He got home at 2 in the morning, before church at 11am, and still came to church. He is solid. Hopefully his family is baptized shortly after him.
My new companion’s name is Elder Zanudo. He is from Mexico. He is super cool and we get along really well. He is a great missionary and it is perfect to be with him because he is teaching me a lot of Spanish as well. Hopefully by the end of these 6 weeks, I will be speaking pretty good Spanish. The Branch here in Modesto is great as well. There are a lot more members than there were in Patterson.
That is pretty much it for this week I am still getting used to Modesto.
