Week 64 - Day of Finding

Not too much for this week. Things are going well.

We had Thanksgiving dinner this week with the Birchalls. They are awesome. Had a lot of family over so it felt like a holiday gathering, except that I didn't really know any of them. But it was still a good visit with good food. Thanksgiving is a great holiday.

The main highlight I would say was our finding day of gratitude. Everyday is a finding day, but this one was a little different. Throughout a regular day here, we'll have studies, meetings, lessons, services, and finding. However, this Saturday we just had finding from 9am-9pm without anything else except for lunch + dinner. I wasn't sure what we were going to do during that time because finding can be a little harder in this area. It was just going to be a longer day, and we wouldn't have personal study which made me sad. But, we prepared and went out to work. In the morning we walked around neighborhoods for a while to catch people out and about. After we met up with some other Elders to do some filming for a video where we would ask strangers questions about one of the questions of the soul. The one we did was is there life after death. So basically we would just film people saying what they thought about what happens after this life. It was pretty cool. It should come up on the facebook page at some point. Then we would also try to talk to them after about the church or whatever. Then we had lunch, went out and did a little bit more filming. I should also mention that we held this big fast on Friday that we would be able to find people on Saturday. I was still hopeful, but it has felt really hard to find people generally over my time as a missionary, and I had some doubts about if we would actually find some people. But we did! We met this lady Sam while Tracting and she is super elect! We invited her to church and a Christmas program we're having and hopefully she'll come to that. She wasn't able to make it to church this past Sunday but said she will the following. She also took a Restoration pamphlet and we hope to go by soon to teach the Restoration lesson. But then we also met a kid named Ian on the very next door so it was a back to back miracle. He took a Book of Mormon, said he knew some members of our ward and we set up a lesson for Monday! Unfortunately he didn't show up and we haven't heard from him since, but we'll drop by at some point. We finished the night with some calls, visits, and facebook work. It was a long and draining day, but also really fulfilling. It felt like our spirit of missionary work amplified and it felt really good.

That's pretty much it for this week. I also want to share a little lyric that I liked from a musical number performed in church this week. This  dad and his little daughter sang "In Christ Alone". It was super good and I really felt the spirit. One of the verses that hit the hardest was when they sang "Till Christ shall come, or calls me home, here in the power of Christ I'll stand". It's ao good song and you should listen to it.

Love you all!

- Elder Wride

Weeks 62+63 - Past Two Weeks

Hey everyone, sorry I missed last week, I just never got around to writing

First up, we had transfers today! Still in Olivenhain with Elder Reinhart which I preferred because we've both only been here for 1 transfer. I was somewhat hoping/expecting for us to get a car for this change, but we didn't. It's kind of surprising just because our area really is big, and a bunch of people including members, our ZLs, and senior missionaries don't think we should be on bikes. I guess I assumed the right people would've gotten us a car, but it's ok. Members are willing and offer to give us rides a lot which is a mercy for me. My endurance is better now, but I still get sweaty. My white shirts have some sweat stains in the back which is unfortunate but you can't see them because they're tucked.

2 Wednesdays ago we had Zone Conference with Elder Sabin from the Seventy. It was really awesome. A spiritual feast. He talked about a lot of stuff. One of my favorite stories he shared was from when he was a Stake President here in Poway and there was a fire that burned down a few homes. One lady in the Stake came in and was talking to him about her troubles and how they lost everything. He said he got out a piece of paper, and put a dot in the middle with his pen. He told her to not be blinded by the dot. Meaning, in the grand scheme of things, our struggles, and our life itself is a very small moment in the span of eternity. We need to keep a focus on the very important things. It was a good conference and I definitely felt the spirit.

Not much has been new. We've found even more people this week, but yet again, have not been able to begin teaching them. It's a little bothersome just because they are so promising. It's just a matter of pinning something down. For the work we've still just been working on meeting with as many members as we can. For finding we've been doing mostly Tracting which has had some success. The best people we've found would obviously be people that members have told us we should knock on their door. We've also been doing some social media work, mostly content creation. It takes time, but I enjoy putting videos and posts together. Currently working on a video about the Holy Ghost. Although, none of the stuff I finish will probably be put on the facebook page for some time.

With it being the end of the transfer, we also had a big zoom meeting this week for missionaries to give their departing testimonies. There were some good ones. A lot of them just spoke about adversity on the mission and how the Savior helped them through it. I've been thinking about adversity in general a lot. It's so easy and natural for me to be upset when hard things happen, or to have a bad attitude about it. But I know I have nothing to be ungrateful for when I think about things with a greater perspective. I have found that it is a lot more difficult to have a negative attitude about things when I'm understanding what Jesus Christ has done. I realized that anyone who has a bad attitude about life, does not fully understand the Savior's Atonement fully, and does not remember it enough. I think that's what President Nelson was referring to when he said that "The joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives". It is totally true. Like, I get to be a missionary? I get to represent the Lord everyday and spend my time inviting others to come unto Him? This is such a unique opportunity. How can I be ungrateful for anything? It's just humbling the more I think about it. It still can be hard when we go about our day to day and I'm feeling tired or like we're not having success. But I am trying to be firm of mind in focusing on the blessings I am receiving. When I think about this it reminds me of 3 Nephi 19:35-36 

"35 And it came to pass that when Jesus had made an end of praying he came again to the disciples, and said unto them: So great faith have I never seen among all the Jews; wherefore I could not show unto them so great miracles, because of their unbelief. 

36 Verily I say unto you, there are none of them that have seen so great things as ye have seen; neither have they heard so great things as ye have heard."

I just find that really interesting. When we are ungrateful, I think we hardly think of or recognize what blessings we receive. We are therefore blinded and cannot see the blessings or miracles we experience. Sure, things can be tough sometimes, but if the plan of salvation and the gospel are true, it is very evident that we are blessed much more than not. It just takes some effort in seeking them out. It's pretty cool, and is still a lesson that I am in the learning of. 

(The red light is from my bike while we were out at night. It was only like 6pm. It just gets dark so early).

Anway, all is well. We have Thanksgiving this week which will be good because it's one of my favorite holidays. We have dinner with a member family which we are excited for.

I love you all and I love being a missionary. As someone once put it, it's "The hardest thing I've ever loved to do". Have a happy Thanksgiving!

- Elder Wride

Week 61 - Contacts in the Trash

Hello Everyone! Time is zoomin

Here's a fun little story for the week: We are now 4/6 weeks into the transfer, and the whole time I have been waiting for something. That is, in my last apartment, I accidentally left some stuff in the bathroom. It was a little sewing and medical kit from my Grandma, some denture cleaners for my retainer, and most importantly, my 6 months supply of contacts. I messaged Elder Johnson the next day and asked him to put it all in a bag, write "Elder Hyrum Wride, Zone 1", and to give it to the ZLs to send it back to me through the mission office. Well, I waited a while but didn't get anything. I assumed it was just taking a while (Zone Leaders forgetting stuff is the biggest hold up in mission mail). But then we got mail last week and my stuff wasn't there. I first asked Elder J and he said he gave it to the ZLs the day after I asked him. I asked the ZLs in the included image below:

He then proceeded to thank me for the new toothbrush too. I thought he might have been kidding for a while because I have no idea how there was that miscommunication. Elder Johnson said he gave very clear directions. Why would they assume I didn't want my contacts? It literally has my name and zone on it. But alas, the contacts are long gone. They threw them away weeks ago. I just ordered another pair today which was a big oof.

We also went outside the mission. We went out for the first time a few weeks ago but it was an accident. Basically in order to get to this far part of our area we have to go outside our area and the mission. We were getting a ride from a member back to our apartment. I took a screenshot of the map. The red line is the mission boundary

But we also have a member that attends this ward even though they live outside the ward boundaries. They have their records here, and the President gave us permission to visit them. It was cool. She has a pet cockatoo but I didn't take a picture of it. Also, on the way back from the appointment we took some cool pictures

We were like maybe 7 miles from the ocean, but you can see it on the horizon. Anyway, things have been going well. We met a lady this week named Norma and gave her a Book of Mormon. She seems really nice and we hope to meet her this week. Other than that, we haven't begun teaching anyone new yet. It's been kinda frustrating because there are so many GOLDEN people in the area. They just haven't been able to meet with us yet. We invited a bunch of them to come to the Christmas concert we have next month which the members say is a really huge event and a lot of non-members come. Hopefully I'm not transferred then. Just working on being patient with everything though. The area has a lot of potential.

Also, here's another picture we took this week

A quick spiritual thought I had this week is just about gratitude. I think I've expressed this before, but sometimes it just feels really hard to get out of bed. In the morning, and during my lunch time nap. I just don't want to do anything or go anywhere sometimes. But, I've been trying to focus more on why I love being a missionary which I would say is summed up in this quote by Elder Rasbands talk "This Day"

There is no greater happiness I have felt than what Elder Rasband explains here. Of course, I will be able to share the gospel after my full-time mission, but it won't be the same. I think of all the times I have shared the Restoration with people, and I am just so hungry to be able to share it with everyone I can. The spirit in those moments is so strong that it is undeniable. So, I hope to be able to have another one of those experiences this week with Norma. Right now it looks like we might be able to meet Friday, but it's not set in stone.

Anyway, I need to wrap this up. Thank you so much for all your love and support! I love you!

- Elder Wride

Week 60 - Elders Locking Themselves Out of Apartments

Hello and happy Tuesday

This week went by stupid fast. Faster than most.

I don't really have much to say. We're just out here grinding. Our focus is still meeting with all the members in the ward. This ward so far has been the most open and excited about finding us people to teach which has been really cool. We haven't begun teaching any of them yet which has taken longer than I thought, but we'll hopefully meet with some of them soon. But this area literally feels like a gold mine of potential! It's so awesome. I hope to be able to tell you more about the people when we actually start teaching them. Here are some pictures of us out and about

One of the people I have the most hopes for is a kid and his mom. They both know the ward and the kid gets invited to YM activities all the time. He has some social anxiety but really likes missionaries and the mom really thinks we would be a good thing for him. They're both so awesome, he's just been busy with college applications. She said we'd meet soon though. That's one of our potentials, and there are many more that are open to meeting with us, we just haven't been able to make it happen yet.

We had a rather tragic Halloween yesterday. We had a dinner lesson for 5:30, but it was a 40 minute bike ride away on pretty fast and narrow roads. Our plan was to bike there a little bit at a time and make visits along the way to members, potentials, and previously taught people along the way. After a while we got a call from the other Elders we share an apartment with. It was about 4:50 and they said they locked themselves out of the apartment. Normally, we would just wait until the day was over, but they locked another set of Elders bikes in our apartment. The reason behind that is another long story that I feel the need to explain really quickly.

Basically the night before the other Elders in our district locked themselves out of their apartment and so they spent the night with us. I don't know what they did for most of the morning, but basically they waited a lot of the day to get another set of keys from the Mission office. 

So, anyway, they needed to get their bikes out of the apartment, but we were about 20 minutes away. We were also another 15 minutes away from our lesson in the opposite direction. They had the car and the car keys so they could come to us (I still don't know why they didn't get the apartment keys but they had the car keys). We waited until about 5:15 and then called again. They said they actually just decided to drop the other Elders off to their area because they also had a lesson at 5:30 and said we were good to go to ours. I was like bro, why didn't you tell us that? They essentially just made us late for our lesson for no reason. So, we hustled and biked to our appointment. It was uphill on the narrow roads and we also went on some of those trails in between neighborhoods. This one was a lot worse though because it was very sandy. Biking in deep sand is not good. It took us longer than we thought to get to the appointment and we were just completely dead after that bike ride. I get more wrecked by the humidity than Elder Reinhart. The mom came in and I was completely drenched in sweat. She asked me if I was okay and Elder Reinhart thought that was really funny. I think most members think that when I show up to their house after a bike ride, but she was the first one to say it. We cooled down over dinner, had a decent lesson and were back on the road. It was dusk and we were not looking forward to the 40 minute bike ride back. Or so we thought.

The first 15 minutes were ok. Since it was downhill we were able to go pretty quick and the cars weren't too bad. After a while we finally had a little room to bike to the side of the road. When it appeared I tried to make the transition, but the curb was a little higher than I thought. I ate it pretty hard. It wasn't too bad and I wasn't hurt. Just a little dirty and with a broken front light. So I now had to bike behind Elder Reinharts light. It was a little hard to see, but I managed. I think I rode over some horse poop piles though. They are all over. A few minutes later we were biking on a little trail and my bike chain fell off. It got stuck on something and it was pretty hard to try and fix it without getting oil on our shirts. Took a while but we eventually fixed it. 

The last leg of the bike ride was through the neighborhoods around the church. This is where a lot of the trick or treaters were. There were a lot of punk teenagers and kids going around making noise. There was also a green laser following us for a while from someone. We eventually made it though. It had been an hour long bike ride from the appointment. We were feeling pretty defeated at that point. Especially in our legs. We were both like "Do you just want to go home?". It was only about 7:30-8 so it was a little early to go home, but I felt justified in doing so. We went home, took a nice cold shower and did some laundry, cleaning, and resting before our temple trip the next morning. 

We went to the temple this morning and it was nice. 

For my spiritual thought I wanted to share my vision for  the rest of my mission. I made a few points this week of what I would like my mission to be like 

- Love the Lord and God's Children. Become a greater witness of Jesus Christ

- Be fully consecrated to the will of God. Put off the Natural man daily

- Be filled with the Holy Ghosts power and influence

- Be full of Charity, Joy and Thanksgiving

I've had some variations of this throughout my mission, but I felt like it was important to really create a vision of what I want my mission to be. It's been pretty cool to do through my interview with my Mission President as well as reading my Patriarchal blessing. I have some weekly goals as well of what I would like to do to accomplish my goals. Having goals is good and makes life more filling. I just invite you to make serious goals and consider this quote from M. Russell Ballard

“I am so thoroughly convinced that if we don’t set goals in our life and learn how to master the techniques of living to reach our goals, we can reach a ripe old age and look back on our life only to see that we reached but a small part of our full potential. When one learns to master the principles of setting a goal, he will then be able to make a great difference in the results he attains in this life.”

Anyway, this email is long so I'll cut it here. I love this work and I love all of you!

- Elder Wride