So Thanksgiving was pretty fun. We started the morning with a Turkey Bowl at a local middle school. We had a couple of members participate but it was mostly missionaries. We had the Corona Zone and the Jurupa Zone. After that we went home and worked on our sacrament meeting talks for a little while and weekly planning until it was time to go to the first of our two Thanksgiving dinners. The first dinner was with our Ward Mission Leader. I had not met him until Thanksgiving Day because he has been out of town for most of the time that I have been in this area. Dinner ended up not being ready until an hour later than we were expecting, but that was alright. He spent a majority of that time telling us about how hard his mission was and that he doesn't feel bad for us at all. He seems like he has a good heart though, just not much sympathy for our current stage of life.
Our second Thanksgiving dinner was with the Wheat family. They are an awesome couple, and they have their daughter and grandson living with them. One of their son's was home from college and brought his roommate as well. So it was small but they are a cool family and they really made us feel welcome. That night we went to the stake center and had various activites for the missionaries. I spent the whole time playing a board game called Civilization. It's actually based off of a video game I have back home and it's pretty cool how similar it was for being a board game. It was a pretty relaxing day over all, but in some ways that makes the rest of the week a little more stressful trying to make up for it.
So this week was pretty rough overall, and Sunday was extra busy. It started when I woke up at 5 AM to shower (it takes a while when there's 3 of us), because we had a meeting with the stake at 7 AM. It was a meeting for all the missionaries and the ward mission leaders and bishops. We received some counsel and training on various topics. I was apparently the only piano player in the room so I was able to assist with the music for the meeting. Then when the meeting got out at 8:20 AM, we rushed back to the Norco building so that we could be prepared to give our talks. All 3 of our talks went pretty well, though there were also 2 musical numbers so Elder Anderson only had about 7 minutes to speak. Later in church we were asked to lead a discussion based off of the Finding Faith in Christ video in Elder's Quorum. We had a short break to run home and eat lunch, before going to the YSA Ward, where it was my week to teach Gospel Principles, but the Gospel Doctrine teacher was gone so I taught both classes combined which actually worked pretty well because there was more participation. Then we had a linger longer before we rushed to dinner at 5 PM, and that ran long so we rushed across our area to our lesson at 7 PM. So it was probably one of the busiest Sundays I've had in a long time, except maybe Sunday's where you have to pack for transfers.
There was a miracle this Sunday though. So we were sitting in sacrament meeting, which started out with about 15 people there 5 minutes before the meeting started, to being full back to the second divider with families and relatives. But someone we saw walk in was a family with triplets, the Espinoza family. I don't know if I ever told you about them because they've kind of been off the radar for a while. So about 3 months ago they were investigators of Elder Anderson and Elder Foy. Her cousin is bishop of the Woodcrest Ward in Riverside, and he helped them get in touch with people to move in over here. But then having recently moved and having triplets really threw a wrench in things and they told the missionaries that they had no time to meet with them at that point. They came to the Halloween Party, but that was really the only contact we have had with them. But they came to church all on their own and they loved it, and the members of the ward loved them and helped with the triplets and then their closest friends in the ward set up a lesson with us at 7 PM that night. The lesson went really well and we are hoping that we can start meeting with them on a regular basis. Their triplets are some of the quietest babies I've ever seen, the only hard part about them is that there are three of them.
One more interesting experience from this week was that it rained so we were able to do some tracting. At first I was kind of reluctant, I figured I might be able to go my whole mission without tracting because we are only supposed to do it when it is raining outside. But anyway, it was actually kind of a fun experience, and it was just funny because the first person we talked to was your typical "not interested" and shut the door before Elder Anderson could even finish talking. So it was definitely a fun one-time experience, and we talked to nearly 30 people in 2 hours which is pretty good. I don't think I would enjoy doing that all day every day for my entire mission, so I'm glad to be in a place where the weather is good enough we don't have to.
So this week we will just try to work our hardest and make the most of our last week in a trio(most likely).
From the West Side . . . .
Elder Cornaby
So this week was pretty rough overall, and Sunday was extra busy. It started when I woke up at 5 AM to shower (it takes a while when there's 3 of us), because we had a meeting with the stake at 7 AM. It was a meeting for all the missionaries and the ward mission leaders and bishops. We received some counsel and training on various topics. I was apparently the only piano player in the room so I was able to assist with the music for the meeting. Then when the meeting got out at 8:20 AM, we rushed back to the Norco building so that we could be prepared to give our talks. All 3 of our talks went pretty well, though there were also 2 musical numbers so Elder Anderson only had about 7 minutes to speak. Later in church we were asked to lead a discussion based off of the Finding Faith in Christ video in Elder's Quorum. We had a short break to run home and eat lunch, before going to the YSA Ward, where it was my week to teach Gospel Principles, but the Gospel Doctrine teacher was gone so I taught both classes combined which actually worked pretty well because there was more participation. Then we had a linger longer before we rushed to dinner at 5 PM, and that ran long so we rushed across our area to our lesson at 7 PM. So it was probably one of the busiest Sundays I've had in a long time, except maybe Sunday's where you have to pack for transfers.
There was a miracle this Sunday though. So we were sitting in sacrament meeting, which started out with about 15 people there 5 minutes before the meeting started, to being full back to the second divider with families and relatives. But someone we saw walk in was a family with triplets, the Espinoza family. I don't know if I ever told you about them because they've kind of been off the radar for a while. So about 3 months ago they were investigators of Elder Anderson and Elder Foy. Her cousin is bishop of the Woodcrest Ward in Riverside, and he helped them get in touch with people to move in over here. But then having recently moved and having triplets really threw a wrench in things and they told the missionaries that they had no time to meet with them at that point. They came to the Halloween Party, but that was really the only contact we have had with them. But they came to church all on their own and they loved it, and the members of the ward loved them and helped with the triplets and then their closest friends in the ward set up a lesson with us at 7 PM that night. The lesson went really well and we are hoping that we can start meeting with them on a regular basis. Their triplets are some of the quietest babies I've ever seen, the only hard part about them is that there are three of them.
One more interesting experience from this week was that it rained so we were able to do some tracting. At first I was kind of reluctant, I figured I might be able to go my whole mission without tracting because we are only supposed to do it when it is raining outside. But anyway, it was actually kind of a fun experience, and it was just funny because the first person we talked to was your typical "not interested" and shut the door before Elder Anderson could even finish talking. So it was definitely a fun one-time experience, and we talked to nearly 30 people in 2 hours which is pretty good. I don't think I would enjoy doing that all day every day for my entire mission, so I'm glad to be in a place where the weather is good enough we don't have to.
So this week we will just try to work our hardest and make the most of our last week in a trio(most likely).
From the West Side . . . .
Elder Cornaby