So San Jacinto Ward and our area, reminds me a lot of Prado View Ward in Corona. Mostly upper middle class people, two story stucco houses with the tile roofs, lots of parks in the neighborhoods, and lots of young families. The area is a mix of rural and suburban. The neighborhoods are typical California neighborhoods, but then there's space between them with fields and dairies. Unfortunately that means that certain parts of our area smell exactly like there are hundreds or thousands of cows less than a miles away. But that's part of the experience I guess.
The Ward isn't huge, but it's big enough and it seems like everything runs pretty smoothly. I really like the bishop, Bishop Rex, he seems to be very positive and loves the Ward and knows all of the members personally. He aksed me to speak in sacrament meeting this next week. It's just a 7 minute talk about whatever missionary-related topic I want to speak about so it should be pretty easy. We actually have a weekly meeting with our ward mission leader and ward missionaries and any auxiliary leaders that show up as well. It sounds like they sometimes make visits on their own and try to meet with people and are pretty involved with missionary work so that's cool. The Ward seems to really love the missionaries here and a lot of the ones that served here in the past, so it's a great Ward to be in!
We are currently working with a 10 year old named Isaiah, his parents are converts, but they have had a hard time staying active because they have 3 special needs children, plus 3 other children. So they have been embarrassed in the past about bringing them to church. During one of the lessons this week one of the kids dumped the rest of his water bottle on Elder Herald, which was kind of funny, but it was bad because then the dad came in and felt really bad which wasn't good. But the amazing thing is that when they come to church, the kids are really good. This was only the second time they've brought the whole family, but they are quieter than half of the other kids in the Ward, so it's awesome to see them make that commitment. Isaiah is going to be baptized on the 30th, we just have to teach him about tithing and have him interviewed this week, so that's pretty cool.
Our other solid teaching opportunity is that every Friday night one of the young women in the Ward brings her friends over and they stay the night at her house, so we go and share a lesson with them around 7. This week there were 7 girls, so it was kind of hard to teach, but it was interesting to see the different levels of participation and interest. Luckily though there seems to be 4 of them that are interested. Two of them are sisters and live just down the street and apparently the mom has already been approached about letting them be taught and she seems to be okay with it. One of them said the prayer for us, which was a huge thing because she was really shy when she first started coming, but she's growing a lot and she asked some good questions. The other one came for the first time, but she seemed to be pretty involved in the lesson, even if she was quiet. It's hard to commit people to baptism in a group like that, so we're hoping that soon enough we'll be able to start teaching them at their parents' house, or on other days throughout the week, but it seems like there is a lot of potential there.
The goal for this transfer is to get to know the area really well, because I'm guessing that Elder Herald is going to leave after this transfer, because if he doesn't he'll be stuck here for 5 or 6 transfers most likely. I really want to find someone and teach them all the way to baptism in this area, though that might take more than one transfer. I also want to try to increase our finding so that we have a more consistent teaching pool, and pretty much just get the area set up for whoever follows after me. I feel like I was able to do that in Perris. I talked to Elder Goodrich a couple times, and he said that he was finally able to teach Ricardo Romero the Restoration, and he accepted baptism for next month. When he told him about the Stake Employment Specialist like we'd been planning on for the past couple weeks, he said "I've been looking for someone to help with stuff like that!". So I really see him, and his family progressing very quickly. They had Easter plans but besides that I think they'll be a pretty golden family. And Derek is doing good as well, he'll be a little bit longer process but I'm excited to see where he goes and I could see a wedding/baptism for them before I leave as well. They also picked up two other people that they put on date, so the area is doing awesome, both with people I taught and people they've found. So if I can leave San Jacinto as good as I feel I left Perris, as well as being able to have some success while I'm here, I'll feel like I did my job.
Things are going great here and I'm loving it. I was able to meet a lot of members over the past week doing home visits, and then again at church and they seem like awesome people. Can't wait to meet the rest of them and continue to meet the people of San Jacinto.
From the West Side . . . . .
Elder Cornaby
We are currently working with a 10 year old named Isaiah, his parents are converts, but they have had a hard time staying active because they have 3 special needs children, plus 3 other children. So they have been embarrassed in the past about bringing them to church. During one of the lessons this week one of the kids dumped the rest of his water bottle on Elder Herald, which was kind of funny, but it was bad because then the dad came in and felt really bad which wasn't good. But the amazing thing is that when they come to church, the kids are really good. This was only the second time they've brought the whole family, but they are quieter than half of the other kids in the Ward, so it's awesome to see them make that commitment. Isaiah is going to be baptized on the 30th, we just have to teach him about tithing and have him interviewed this week, so that's pretty cool.
Our other solid teaching opportunity is that every Friday night one of the young women in the Ward brings her friends over and they stay the night at her house, so we go and share a lesson with them around 7. This week there were 7 girls, so it was kind of hard to teach, but it was interesting to see the different levels of participation and interest. Luckily though there seems to be 4 of them that are interested. Two of them are sisters and live just down the street and apparently the mom has already been approached about letting them be taught and she seems to be okay with it. One of them said the prayer for us, which was a huge thing because she was really shy when she first started coming, but she's growing a lot and she asked some good questions. The other one came for the first time, but she seemed to be pretty involved in the lesson, even if she was quiet. It's hard to commit people to baptism in a group like that, so we're hoping that soon enough we'll be able to start teaching them at their parents' house, or on other days throughout the week, but it seems like there is a lot of potential there.
The goal for this transfer is to get to know the area really well, because I'm guessing that Elder Herald is going to leave after this transfer, because if he doesn't he'll be stuck here for 5 or 6 transfers most likely. I really want to find someone and teach them all the way to baptism in this area, though that might take more than one transfer. I also want to try to increase our finding so that we have a more consistent teaching pool, and pretty much just get the area set up for whoever follows after me. I feel like I was able to do that in Perris. I talked to Elder Goodrich a couple times, and he said that he was finally able to teach Ricardo Romero the Restoration, and he accepted baptism for next month. When he told him about the Stake Employment Specialist like we'd been planning on for the past couple weeks, he said "I've been looking for someone to help with stuff like that!". So I really see him, and his family progressing very quickly. They had Easter plans but besides that I think they'll be a pretty golden family. And Derek is doing good as well, he'll be a little bit longer process but I'm excited to see where he goes and I could see a wedding/baptism for them before I leave as well. They also picked up two other people that they put on date, so the area is doing awesome, both with people I taught and people they've found. So if I can leave San Jacinto as good as I feel I left Perris, as well as being able to have some success while I'm here, I'll feel like I did my job.
Things are going great here and I'm loving it. I was able to meet a lot of members over the past week doing home visits, and then again at church and they seem like awesome people. Can't wait to meet the rest of them and continue to meet the people of San Jacinto.
From the West Side . . . . .
Elder Cornaby