So the rain that pounded Southern California was sort of a bust in Perris. We did have to be in by 3:00 PM on Friday, but it barely was misting at all. Then around 6 or 7 it started raining in earnest, but nothing compared to how hard it has rained on other days. So because we're lucky enough to be in the same complex as some other missionaries, Elder Brown and Elder Cox came over to help us keep our sanity but it was still pretty rough by the end of the night. We had dinner with the Langston family on Saturday though and she said that over near Los Angeles and some other more coastal areas, there was a ton of rain and sinkholes everywhere. We missed pretty much all of that, so that was both a blessing and a disappointment. It was especially a blessing though because there was a funeral for the mother of a member in our Ward on Saturday, and everybody expected it to be really muddy, if not still down-pouring.
Multi-Zone Conferences were good. We were with the Lake Elsinore Zone again, and I really don't know too many missionaries down there. Almost half of their Zone is Sisters, and now literally every Sister in the mission is younger than me, and a lot of them have been out for less than 6 months, so I really don't know any of them. I did see Sister Willis who was in my Zone in Riverside, and also Elder Young was there, and it was good to see him again, oh and Elder Moss too. But for the most part, I just talked to people from the Menifee Zone. It was still a lot of fun. There were also some really good training sessions - one on the Doctrine of Christ, one on how to train members, and another on street contacting. It's kind of funny to see how training topics get recycled after about a year to 18 months. I remember doing one on training members about a year ago. There were also some more mundane training topics like how to keep yourself healthy, how to keep your kitchen sanitary, how to clean your apartment, how to get the lists you need from your Ward Leaders and how to run a baptismal service.
The best teaching experience this week was probably with Wesley. After 4 weeks, we were finally able to meet with him again. He was feeling better and so was his mom, so nobody had any doctor appointments. We were able to teach the Restoration to him, this time using the pamphlet and more scriptures, and he seemed to be accepting everything, and then we invited him to be baptized, and it kind of caught him off guard. He's already been baptized in his church, and I guess we hadn't covered the apostasy and the necessity of priesthood authority thoroughly enough. So we're going to focus on that when we go back, and hopefully he will have read from the Book of Mormon this time, so that we can use that more when we teach. We had almost an identical lesson with a guy named Michael on Saturday. He was a referral from the Spanish Elders, and his concern was that he believes we all have the Holy Spirit and that is good enough so the priesthood isn't necessary. So we'll be studying up a lot on Priesthood before we meet with either of them again. They both were very nice and wanted to meet with us more, so we'll see where things go.
Two other highlights from this week. One was on Thursday when Brother Sperry came out to the Romero's with us to do service. We didn't really end up doing much service; we helped clean out a shed for about 20 minutes, and then we were finished and they didn't have too much else for us to do this week. But she felt like she owed us breakfast from the last time, so we just talked for about an hour while she got breakfast ready for all of us. They really seemed to hit it off with Brother Sperry, talking about his garden first, but then hunting and raising animals and real estate and all sorts of things. So hopefully that's a good point of contact for them with a member, and we'll be able to get more people over there with us. We were going to have a regular teaching appointment with them on Saturday, but then she got sick and we were going to be super late anyway, so it didn't really work out this week.
The other highlight from this week was CrossFit. We hosted it here in Menifee, and it was for the south half of the mission. I thought that a lot of my friends were going to be in the north half, and a lot of them were, but I got to see Elders Andrew, Simpson, Herald, Dall, Moss, and a few others. So that was pretty fun, especially because I convinced Elder Herald to do CrossFit, when he'd had sort of a bad attitude about it before. Afterwards we all went and played some ultimate in the parking lot so it was a good day. I ended up only doing a little over half of the exercises for CrossFit since I started doing half sets part of the way through.
This last week of the transfer should be good. I feel like we have some good things set up, and some investigators that will hopefully keep their appointments now that we've met with them at least once.
From the West Side . . . . .
Elder Cornaby
The best teaching experience this week was probably with Wesley. After 4 weeks, we were finally able to meet with him again. He was feeling better and so was his mom, so nobody had any doctor appointments. We were able to teach the Restoration to him, this time using the pamphlet and more scriptures, and he seemed to be accepting everything, and then we invited him to be baptized, and it kind of caught him off guard. He's already been baptized in his church, and I guess we hadn't covered the apostasy and the necessity of priesthood authority thoroughly enough. So we're going to focus on that when we go back, and hopefully he will have read from the Book of Mormon this time, so that we can use that more when we teach. We had almost an identical lesson with a guy named Michael on Saturday. He was a referral from the Spanish Elders, and his concern was that he believes we all have the Holy Spirit and that is good enough so the priesthood isn't necessary. So we'll be studying up a lot on Priesthood before we meet with either of them again. They both were very nice and wanted to meet with us more, so we'll see where things go.
Two other highlights from this week. One was on Thursday when Brother Sperry came out to the Romero's with us to do service. We didn't really end up doing much service; we helped clean out a shed for about 20 minutes, and then we were finished and they didn't have too much else for us to do this week. But she felt like she owed us breakfast from the last time, so we just talked for about an hour while she got breakfast ready for all of us. They really seemed to hit it off with Brother Sperry, talking about his garden first, but then hunting and raising animals and real estate and all sorts of things. So hopefully that's a good point of contact for them with a member, and we'll be able to get more people over there with us. We were going to have a regular teaching appointment with them on Saturday, but then she got sick and we were going to be super late anyway, so it didn't really work out this week.
The other highlight from this week was CrossFit. We hosted it here in Menifee, and it was for the south half of the mission. I thought that a lot of my friends were going to be in the north half, and a lot of them were, but I got to see Elders Andrew, Simpson, Herald, Dall, Moss, and a few others. So that was pretty fun, especially because I convinced Elder Herald to do CrossFit, when he'd had sort of a bad attitude about it before. Afterwards we all went and played some ultimate in the parking lot so it was a good day. I ended up only doing a little over half of the exercises for CrossFit since I started doing half sets part of the way through.
This last week of the transfer should be good. I feel like we have some good things set up, and some investigators that will hopefully keep their appointments now that we've met with them at least once.
From the West Side . . . . .
Elder Cornaby