Week 72 - RIP Olivenhain

Hello Everyone!

Zone Conference + Tom Brady: We had Zone Conference this week with Eric Weddle! For those of you who don't know who that is, that's ok because I didnt either until my mission started. He's a football player, and he won the superbowl this past year. But most importantly, he's a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints! He was in my first area in Poway, so that's where I heard of him (but I never met him there). Anyway, President Merritt invited him to speak at our Zone Conference. It was cool to hear his conversion story and what it was like meeting with the Missionaries when he was in college. My favorite part was when President told us a quick story after Weddle left. When one of the APs heard that Eric Weddle was coming, he wanted to give him an invitation. So, when he came, he went up to talk to him and invited him to give Tom Brady a Book of Mormon. He gave a good pitch, talking about how Tom Brady could use a lot more happiness in his life and Weddle accepted the invitation! We'll see how it goes because the APs will follow up and make sure he keeps his commitment. It was pretty cool. This may not mean much for those of you who don't pay attention to football, but you've probably heard of Tom Brady before. He's a very popular football player. 

Also, the Rancho Carrillo Elders got a minivan at Zone Conference. I wish it was ours, but at least we can put all the Elders in a seat now when we go driving.

Something I find interesting over the months that I've been here is that there are a lot of Bees in this area that are just walking on the ground casually. I've accidentally killed a number of them. This week one flew up and latched onto the front of my pants. I was understandably scared and tried to shake it off by making unpredictable moves. Eventually it flew to the ground and I killed it. Not before I had made myself look like a weirdo to all the cars driving by. Also, due to the rain not completely dry we got mud on ourselves while biking on the dirt trails and roads.

RIP Olivenhain: We had our stake boundaries changed this week. It's been rumored for a long long time but we never heard about it from an authorized source. Well finally on Saturday morning, the Stake Presidency sent out an email saying there would be a special stake meeting regarding boundary changes. Sunday at 7 we went to the Stake Center and they completely dissolved our ward! Our ward is one of the, if not the biggest ward and so we got sliced up, in order to distribute members more evenly. It was sad because I really love this ward. It's super solid, at like 60% activity, and I've just grown to love a lot of the people. They are some really salt of the earth people. 

Here's a picture of our stake before (Olivenhain is pink):

And after:

Hope you see now why I think it was lame that La Costa has had a car this whole time (they're the C shape). Rancho Carillo was unchanged at the top.

That night President Merritt called to basically figure out where Elder Roberts and I were going to go. He asked us what our thoughts were and then said he'd pray about and let us know. We were expecting a call yesterday but it didn't happen even by like 9:30 pm. We didn't know what to do all day, because we literally didn't have a ward, Bishopric, or area. We had District Council that day, did some video editing and a lot of updating and cleaning up areabook. We asked the Zone Leaders if we should be packing, or if we need to go shopping tomorrow because we literally don't know where we'll be going. President is going to have us double-cover the La Costa ward for the next couple of days until they figure out where we'll go. Which is unfortunate because there isn't a ton of work to do especially for 2 companionships. What I think will happen eventually is Elder Roberts will leave and I will be in a trio with the La Costa Elders because our main progressing friends live in their area now, and I have been here longer than Roberts. But who knows.

Friends Update: Our main progressing friends have not been progressing very well. 

- We have Julie, who's a 9 year old of an active family. Just hasn't been baptized before. We haven't been able to schedule a meeting with the family for a couple of weeks now.

- Jonathan's apartment flooded and he hasn't been able to make it to church. 

- Sam had a death in the family and said she wouldn't be available for a while. 

But, we did have a couple good interactions! -We met a nice old lady named Stephanie who came up to us and asked us if we were reading our scriptures. We shared 3 Nephi 11 with her and she liked it! Unfortunately we weren't able to set up a specific time to meet. She just said to talk to us whenever she sees us at the park.

- Mer a guy named Chris a couple weeks ago and had a good talk with him about the church. He has his own right now, so he didn't agree to meet but he said he also tries to be open minded. We went over last week to invite him to the Mormon Battalion event on Saturday, but that interaction didn't go well. He had a kid acting up and he slammed the door on us. We thought that might signify that he's not interested, but we ran into him again while we were out and about. He said sorry for the other night and we had a good talk with him. La Costa is having a Baptism in a couple weeks so we could invite him too as well. I'll probably be in La Costa for that, so you'll probably hear about it.

I've also consumed approximately 20 Fish Tacos in the past 2 weeks. There's a taco shop here that sells good sized Tacos for $1 each. Best deal ever.

I recommend this week that you all listen to a talk that I think is called "When prayers seem unanswered" by Michael Wilcox. It was really good. I'll share one part of what he said. He shared Matt 14:24-27 and talked about how the fourth watch of the night would have actually been the early morning of the following day. That means the disciples had been tossed with the winds and the waves for the whole night. Christ doesn't always save us from the storms of our lives right away. Sometimes he waits a long, long, long time. But rest assured, He does not put you through any more difficulty than He knows is necessary for your good. Just hold on and do your best to be of good cheer. 

But like I said, there are so many other good points that he makes so please please listen to it. I consider it to be Brad Wilcox: "His Grace is Sufficient" level good talk. 

Went to the Temple this morning too. It is always good. Elder Cummings hasn't sent me the district photos from the Temple though. Maybe I will include them next week. But I did take a new profile picture

Thanks for reading, love you all!

- Elder Wride