This past week we held Multi-Zone Conferences. Our Zone met with Jurupa Zone, which is also one of the smaller areas compared to Moreno Valley and Corona. We received training on having faith to baptize, working with members, and supporting mission leadership. It was a bit stressful though, because we were hosting and had to do all the set-up and conduct the meetings. But the training was super good and I learned a lot! At the end of the conference was a testimony meeting, and all the outgoing missionaries for the next 2 transfers shared their testimonies. Elder Hoyt, Elder Smith, and Elder Dyer are missionaries that I have served around and they are in the group that will be going home in the next 7 weeks. It was really weird for me to think that they have completed their missions, I can only imagine how strange it feels to them.
For transfers next week, I believe there are 25 missionaries going home, and 29 new missionaries arriving. It's a huge shift in the missionary force. In our Zone, there is a Sister who is probably leaving, and Elder Hoyt will be going home. Elder Walker has also been here for almost 6 months, but he is companions with Elder Hoyt and we don't know if they would double them out. I think Elder Young is probably headed out, since he's been here for 6 months, and he's spent all but 6 weeks of his entire mission in Riverside. The AP's told us that a lot of the changes and moves that have been happening will all make sense after this transfer, so I'm interested to see what happens.
For P-Day this week, we played soccer in honor of Elder Hoyt going home. It was pretty fun, but it seems like we always have too many people for too small of a field, so there were times where it was hard to do anything. And of course, anytime we have space to play soccer, there's enough space for me to play Ultimate Frisbee.
For our most promising investigators, it was a decent week for teaching. We met with Harry twice, and we talked more about the baptism and listened to President Monson's conference talk. He texted us Sunday morning that he'd been up since 3 AM sick, so he wasn't able to make it to church. His grandson isn't as involved in the lessons, and we're pretty doubtful that his mom would let him be baptized. But Harry is more committed to reading again, and he does that with his grandson. We met with Vanessa once and talked more about her baptism. She's still working on receiving her answer, and she wasn't able to come to church because her family planned something again. But she really does enjoy coming to church she said, and she came to FHE last week. Anthony made great progress. We taught the Word of Wisdom, and the first time it involved him talking in circles about some of the trials he faces. We were worried that he didn't really understand, so we went back later in the week and taught the lesson again. He said that he would think about some of the things we had taught regarding the Word of Wisdom. Then on Sunday he told us that he'd thrown out all of his stuff and wasn't going to buy anymore, so that was an amazing miracle.
The most interesting teaching experience I had this week was probably with this guy named Gio. We had a blitz in our area on Saturday, and Elder Young and Elder Walker talked to Gio. He told them that if they came back in an hour he'd be able to talk. So Elder Young and I went over there right after the blitz and he opened the door, chatted for a bit, and then asked if we could tell him the Joseph Smith story. So we went in and explained that to him, only covering the first part of the Restoration briefly. After about 5 minutes he said he was out of time for that day, but he was really curious to know more (we left off right after telling the first vision), and that we could come back the next day. So we did, and we were able to talk about the Book of Mormon, and he said he was willing to read it, and he said that if it was true he would want to share it with other people. We didn't get to invite him to baptism, but he is committed to reading the Book of Mormon. He seems to have real intent, and I'm excited to continue working with him.
See you soon,
Elder Cornaby