Elder Wride in California: Week 10

Bonjour

This week was a lot longer than a week. A ton has happened and I don't much know what to narrow it down to. But it has been good nonetheless.

1. A P-Day of Sacrifices

2. College and Companions

3. SIM Card

4. Sick Dog

5. El Cajon Boulevard

6. Google account

1. I am bitter and sad right now. You can read this rant if you want, I just need to type it out. P-Days are overrated. What is the point of a day off if I do not get extra sleep? And why are people as excited as they are for P days? I do look forward to emails and calling but still. All week Elder Hayes and I have talked about and planned for me taking a nap. Because I need it. I haven't taken a nap for 2 months. And I was so excited. It literally felt like Christmas. But it has been another P-day of sadness. Because yesterday the District wanted to do something for one of the Sisters birthday which has replaced the time I had for my nap. So we went to a smoothie place and I got ripped off. 8 dollars for a medium smoothie. They didnt have the prices put up so you didnt know the price until you were paying. Thats 80% of a Cali Burrito that could have filled me up for a day, instead of a sad excuse for a smoothie that had too much banana. But at least we were gonna go bowling. But no! The bowling center was full of college kids and there wouldn't be any lanes open. And I like bowling. So then we went to this little center where I spent time writing this email and others. Now we're about to clean our apartment even though it's pretty clean. But Hayes and Vickery really want to so. Then we are planning our lessons for this evening and cutting off our p day short by an hour for a visit. So p day is ending like an hour and a half early to plan lessons and to have a visit. Which is a good thing, I'm just trying to put off my carnal man that wants to sleep. I don't know. I'm just sad because I have been anticipating this nap all week and when we were planning to do p day activities it was on the condition that I get scheduled time to nap. I have been soo happy and excited to take a nap but it has slipped away. I'm just angry. This has happened every week. Lucifer has interfered with every P day because he's evil. I am going to get a little cactus next week and name it Lucifer. You can probably figure out why. I wrote all the other parts of this email before so they're not as contentious.

2. So, my new area is College Area. We're basically right in San Diego State University except we're in a Family Ward. A lot of old people. It's good here, and we're more in actual San Diego. The area has a ton of work. In Poway we were just scraping the bottom of the area for anything at all. And here, we don't even know where to start. We have like 1000 members on AreaBook and we definetely don't have that many people coming to church. We have like 50 interested people and 50 people we're teaching on record. Except, we actually didn't come in teaching anyone. Like what? There's just old records but the last Elders haven't been reaching out. I'll talk more on that later. So yeah we've been doing a lot of contacting people from AreaBook.

• So I am in another trio. Kind of didn't want to be in another trio but it's ok. My comps are Elder Vickery and Elder Hayes. All I can say about Elder Vickery is that his first name is Mel. I don't know if you've ever met a Mel, but that name just perfectly fits with him. He's 18 months out, from a small town in Idaho and he shaved his head for 20 dollars. You know, just other Mel things. But he's great. Elder Hayes is a sweetheart. He was my zone leader last transfer and he's just so loveable. Hes 22 months in, the same amount that I have left. He's a hard worker, likes to street contact, which is something I'm trying to get better at. So we're doing good.

• But our ward needs help. Apparently the last Elders here didn't really do much work. They didn't really meet with members, investigators and like basic stuff. But that has been pretty apparent because Elder Vickery doesn't really know about basic things like: Who members or investigators are, how certain activities go, just things you should know if you're leading the area. It just doesn't look like much has happened. So someone from the Mission Presidency in our ward basically told us that the ward is struggling and he's glad we're here and ready to work. Really just trying to build that trust with the members and the Bishop and everything here.

3. I have the SIM card. Its because I have the newest phone, and we had been having issues with other phones, so the responsibility has been bestowed upon me. From this past week, basically I have learned that if I don't put something in areabook, I will forget it. And after this week, forgetting something we scheduled with someone is my greatest fear. Especially since we're like in a ward and trying to rebuild that trust with the members here. But earlier this week we got a text from the Elders Quorum president asking us if we could come and say a few words on the plan of salvation at someone's memorial service. We said we would, but forgot to put it in AreaBook. I think you know where this is going. It didn't turn out so great. Everyday I am just checking messages looking to see if we forgot to schedule something because it's now my greatest fear. An extra burden is on my shoulders.

4. Second day into the transfer we had a lesson with this guy named Johnny. He lives alone, 50 years old I would guess, and has special needs. So we visited him and it was nice. Its just that he has 2 dogs who are sick and want to be petted. Fortunately the couch we're sitting on is really low which allows this big sick dog to come face to face with us. I'm in the middle, Elder Vickery is petting the dogs back, so the dogs face is right in front of me. Poor Elder Hayes is scared of dogs so he's holding up his backpack. And this dog won't stop coughing. I have never felt so gross. This big dog is coughing directly on me coming up in my face wanting to be petted, I didn't like it. This happened while we were having a lesson with Johnny. I don't think he picked up on I didn't want his dog to cough on, or get his hairs on me, but it was still a good visit. Johnny has a hard time reading scriptures so he reads the children books and that's what we read with him. He also played the guitar for us which was actually really good. I think we're visiting him again tomorrow, he said he's taking his dog to the vet so hopefully he's better.

5. Our new favorite place is El Cajon Blvd. It's quite an interesting place to go street contacting but we've had pretty good success. It's a pretty run down place, homeless people, some people are intoxicated. Just a good place to share the gospel. And we're trying to build our street credibility. The main people we met were Johnny, Marvin and Tony. It's hard to tell if they're slightly intoxicated or not. They're just like really loud and weird. Marvin was drunk. When we talked to him he said he would love to hear a message, just not right then because he said he was drunk. We called him but we're pretty sure he blocked us. Johnny was probably the most interesting. He works at a car shop, talked about how he believes in God, but gets angry at him a lot. But he still tries to love people. He also got stabbed and hit by a car once. We'll probably see him around because he works on the street. And Tony we gave a Book of Mormon to. He actually came up to us, said he was talking with a Sister Missionary in Hawaii I think. Anyway, the first thing he asked was for a Book of Mormon. He talked about how he read some of it, I don't actually remember why he needed another one. But our whole discussion was him talking about like how the government is corrupt and is making life hard for him, something about Mexicans. Well have a talk about that later. But he talked a lot about how God has always been there so that's good. Last, after we shook hands he said he didn't need the covid vaccine because he has the only vaccine he needs. I'm glad the scriptures have had a healing impact, but I'm not quite sure that's how it works.

6. My Google account has not worked all week. I sent in a report thing, but no one did anything. Later, I logged into my Gmail for ordering a phone Case on Amazon, and it turns out they were emailing me about it. To my Gmail and Missionary account. So I just called and they got it fixed. But I'm upset that they decided to contact me about it through my missionary email instead of just through my portal. It's just stupid because the issue was I couldn't login. I'm just still upset about that.

That's most of it. We have a lot of lessons this week and things to do. Also this week during Facebook finding I found Big Ed from 90 day fiance. Weird show and I thought it would be interestig to reach out to him. He probably won't respond. But if I were to get a meeting with him, that would be interesting. And those would be the weird kind of stories I'm looking for out here. So we'll see. Have a good week and send me an email if you'd like

1. My little set up 2.0