The Auburndale Ward covers everything in the Corona Stake that is north of the 91 freeway. So that is part of Corona, plus part of Norco. Apparently the other half of Norco is in the Jurupa Stake. The history of the boundaries is that apparently about 10 years ago there were 4 Stakes - Corona, Jurupa, Riverside, and Riverside West. But then Riverside West had to be dissolved and it got split up between the other 3 stakes kind of funky and that's why we have all these cities split between wards and stakes. Our building is at the top of what's called Beacon Hill, across from the prison that really is the "Hotel California". I am hopelessly lost most of time because none of the roads around here are straight! But I'm driving now so that should help me get more familiar with the area.
This past week we did find a few solid investigators. One is named Mark and I actually didn't get to teach him because we were on splits. He is a YSA referral from the other Norco Elders, and he has a lot of questions and studies a lot of religions. But Elder Anderson said that as he answered all of his questions, he agreed with our answers and felt like they made sense to him. So we're going over there again on Tuesday and hopefully things will continue to progress with him. Other than that we just talked to a lot of nice people, and a few said we could come back.
A cool teaching experience this past week was when we got to teach Kelley, a recent convert in the Auburndale Ward. She had some questions about the Plan of Salvation from the Gospel Principles lesson the week before. We were mostly just trying to help her understand this diagram she had because it was kind of confusing. So we had a really good discussion about that. As for another interesting learning experience from Kelley, she taught Gospel Principles this week on repentance, and it was a really good lesson. So she was talking about how Paul preached repentance to the Jews, and in the middle of the lesson she explains "Paul says to the Jews 'Y'ALL CRUCIFIED THE MESSIAH', so they needed to do a lot of repenting!" She also went to the temple to do baptisms for the first time last week and it was cool to hear her talk about that experience. She said it felt like walking into heaven when the automatic door opened up and there were 3 nice old men dressed in all white. She just has an interesting way of describing things that makes you laugh.
This week we did not have a planned P-Day activity for the Zone. After doing one every single week for the last 3 transfers, plus basketball afterwards for some of them, it was nice to have a P-Day that was not so busy. We played Monopoly at our apartment this morning and then we did some cleaning. So that was nice. Last week we had a Zone activity for Halloween, and with all the holidays coming up in the next couple of months we will have plenty of extra activities with the other missionaries.
From the West Side . . .
Elder Cornaby
A cool teaching experience this past week was when we got to teach Kelley, a recent convert in the Auburndale Ward. She had some questions about the Plan of Salvation from the Gospel Principles lesson the week before. We were mostly just trying to help her understand this diagram she had because it was kind of confusing. So we had a really good discussion about that. As for another interesting learning experience from Kelley, she taught Gospel Principles this week on repentance, and it was a really good lesson. So she was talking about how Paul preached repentance to the Jews, and in the middle of the lesson she explains "Paul says to the Jews 'Y'ALL CRUCIFIED THE MESSIAH', so they needed to do a lot of repenting!" She also went to the temple to do baptisms for the first time last week and it was cool to hear her talk about that experience. She said it felt like walking into heaven when the automatic door opened up and there were 3 nice old men dressed in all white. She just has an interesting way of describing things that makes you laugh.
This week we did not have a planned P-Day activity for the Zone. After doing one every single week for the last 3 transfers, plus basketball afterwards for some of them, it was nice to have a P-Day that was not so busy. We played Monopoly at our apartment this morning and then we did some cleaning. So that was nice. Last week we had a Zone activity for Halloween, and with all the holidays coming up in the next couple of months we will have plenty of extra activities with the other missionaries.
From the West Side . . .
Elder Cornaby