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

Week 59 - Answers to Prayers

Good day everyone! Happy Tuesday!

There's a Christlike attribute activity in PMG and I took it this week. I marked low on some of the questions and a big takeaway was that I haven't been very good at noticing answers to prayers. Since then I have tried to be more specific in what I pray for and I've also been keeping a prayer journal to help me notice answers. One of the things I prayed for this week was for biking to get better. I wasn't expecting it to get super easy or anything, but I've been hoping to get more used to it. Well, I received something from that prayer. My former comp Elder Hatch is my Zone Leader and we went on exchanges this week. As we were biking to an appointment we found a biking trail that led literally right to our appointment. I looked on google maps under the bicycling feature and found out that in this area there are all sorts of biking paths in between neighborhoods. We rode through it and it was really nice actually. We tried to capture the moment on camera but it didn't quite show. It felt like an answer and something that made it better. We've also been able to get rides to places which I always appreciate. Plus, I feel like there's a kind of special bonding when you are chatting with a member while driving at night. 

I know there are a few more small answers to prayers that I've received that I wrote down. I just can't remember them right now. But in just a few days my testimony of prayers being answered has been growing!

The work in this area is going good actually. We've been meeting a lot with members because a lot of them haven't  had the missionaries over in a long time. So far, we've also had a good amount of members that have given us names of people to reach out to! We haven't begun teaching anyone from it so far, but it's been cool to see. I feel like things are picking up! The biggest thing I would say I have been praying for is to find those who are read[y to accept the gospel, and to have the faith to find them. It feels like that prayer is being answered!

I guess I don't have any pictures with my actual comp for this week. All these pictures are with Elder Hatch. We were on a 24 hour exchange and at the end he and his comp brought out their polaroids for some exchange pictures (Polaroids are basically cameras that you put film into and then it prints right out of the camera). Elder Reinhart started trashing on their polaroids, talking about how digital pictures are so much better. That was until we took our exchange pictures. Ours is the one below where we're on the stairs, but I don't have Elder Reinharts and the other ZL. It was funny to see Elder Hatch and his comp convince Elder Reinhart against his previous opinion and now, after taking some really nice pictures, he is converted. Elder R literally carries his picture with him everywhere he goes now because he really likes the picture. I like this one too, and also really want to get a Polaroid. Let me know if anyone is interested in contributing to that fund. They're around $80 I think. I might get it for Christmas. 

Second Polaroid picture that we took on the biking trail. It just looks a lot darker.

Also, I colored this rock this week at a service activity

So I'm doing good overall. Missions are kinda hard and I feel like I'm at a weird point. I feel tired and don't want to work sometimes. But at the same time, my greatest desire is to teach by the spirit and help people realize the truth of the gospel and the message of the Restoration. I just have to keep that as my focus. 

I love you all! Hope everything is well.

- Elder Wride

Week 58 - Demon Caster + Lunch with Family

Hello Everyone! Hope you're all doing well. This week has been really good!

1. Run-down

2. Highlights

3. Demon Caster

1. The area is doing ok. We came in with 3 friends we were teaching. One of them is actually in the other Elders in our apartments area so we sent that record to them. The second one is going to be sent out to Oceanside because he actually lives there, which leaves us with 1 person. The one non-member we've met with a few times is named Connor. Things have been good. We taught him the Restoration and also read 3 Nephi 11 with him. He also came to church on Sunday! He's not working right now though and is also homeless. We're working on getting him into the LDS Employment services which would be good. But, he's also YSA, so we passed him off to the Missionaries in the YSA ward because we thought it would be better for him. So, right now we don't have any friends that we're teaching. Hopefully we'll meet some new people as we continue to meet with members, go to parks, knock on doors, find on facebook, etc. The bikes have been ok, but it's been kicking my butt. We haven't biked that far from our area yet. To get from one side to the other takes literally an hour and a half, with what google calls "very steep hills". We've only biked around this side of our area with moderate hills and it's been pretty bad. It's a little humid, and after a 12 minute bike ride to a member lesson, I am sweating really badly. Maybe I'm just out of shape. I'm hoping that either a miracle happens and we get a car, or I get used to it soon, or we could just always ask members for rides. I don't know, but I think our area is way too big for a bike. I think I included last week the fact that our area is bigger than some car areas. Anyway, sorry for the rant. My new comp is Elder Rainhart from Boise, ID. He's doing really well so far, and seems to be loving it. It's really good to hear him talking a lot about the things he's enjoying day to day. I also love being in an apartment with another set of Elders. It's so much fun to be around more people and we've had a lot of laughs already.

2. Here are some highlights of the week.

- We had a member lesson on Wednesday, and the youngest daughter was getting baptized on Saturday. We invited them to think of someone they could invite and they did! They invited us to come as well and it was fun. The non-member coming didn't lead anywhere, but hopefully they felt the spirit. 

- We also had the ward chili cook off and trunk or treat this week! It was fun, but after being there for a long time for the set up and the party, I was pretty beat by the end of it. It was still good and we got to meet more of the ward members there. 

- The biggest highlight this week was having lunch with my aunt and uncle! My extended family has been in Newport this week, and my aunt and uncle were coming down to the San Diego temple to perform baptisms. I talked to the MP, and we were able to meet up for lunch! It was really fun to be with family again for a little bit. It was initially kinda weird to see them again, but after a while it felt like I never left.

3. We were visiting some old records of people previously taught this week. At our first visit, it was the wrong address for the lady we were looking for. The guy said he didn't know her, but while we were talking, I noticed inside that he had a picture of that painting by Harry Anderson of the second coming.  It's the one that I'm pretty sure is in every church building. It's the one where Christ is descending from the clouds in a white robe, and there are tons of angels around him. It's a pretty popular one, and I guess I thought it was exclusive to our church or something. I asked him about it and that led to a very long discussion. Basically, this guy is Christian, and is somewhat familiar with the church, but believes the church to have the doctrine of demons. He talked to us about a lot of things like Joseph Smith, Kingdoms of Glory, etc. He said he had done his research and knew what he was talking about, and while some of the things he said were correct, he also had a lot of partial truths, and complete lies. I guess that's what you find on the Internet. He also told us about his church and how they cast out demons, perform healings, and speak in tongues. It seemed like he believed that our church is not true unless we have people screaming as demons are coming out of them because of the power of the holy spirit in our church services. He was probably the most nice and gracious anti I have met, but it was still a little weird. Near the end he asked if he could say a prayer with us. He grabbed our hands and in a circle he gave us a prayer and a blessing. During the prayer he prayed that demons would be cast out of us and that we would realize our false doctrine. It was a nice gesture, but nothing really happened. We said goodbye and put it in the notes to probably not go back.

Love you all! Thanks for all your love and support.

- Elder Wride

Pictures:

- Picking up my Greenie

- Lunch with Family

- Halloween Party (Elder R was trying to do a last minute costume as a vampire)

Week 57 - New area from Ground Zero, on Bikes, and with a Greenie

Time is zoomin by. I hit 13 months this week. 

I got transferred after 4 months in Lakeside. My new area is Olivenhain, near Carlsbad. And, I am training again! I do not yet know who my new companion is, I wont find out until later tonight. They're flying in today and will spend the whole day with President and Sister Merritt, and then later tonight we will meet for dinner, and head to our areas. I am excited to train again because it will be a new experience with a new companion, and it will be cool to just see how things go. I'm a little worried though because we will be in a brand new area (The ward, and the neighboring ward used to be double covered, but this ward was more neglected). President called and said it would basically be from Ground Zero. Plus, since I'm training I need to show the new missionary all the ropes. Also, we are on bikes! Our area is pretty big. Bigger than a lot of the car areas which I think is lame, but oh well. We live in the top corner of our area so it will take a while to get from one end to the other. It'll be a little tough with that and all the hills, but I am trying to go in with a good attitude. I just took a look at the areabook and it's a little concerning. We have 46 unreported events that I know nothing about because I just got here. I guess I thought after training Elder Johnson I would be able to chill for a little bit, but the Lord had something else in mind. I really just wanted to mainly just have a companion where we can both go head in and work hard. I hope my greenie has greenie fire because it's time for the grind. So, all in all, it might be hard, but I am actually really excited to start over in this area and to get to the grind. Also, I'm in a 4 man apartment just like in the Best Two Years which will be so sick!

I also got new shoes this week and they are pretty squeaky. Mostly because of my orthotics I think. Anyway, the Young Men asked me to help pass in Sacrament on Sunday. I was trying not to squeak and it was pretty hard not to laugh. I got a few comments by members after. They were giving me a hard time.

We also had a cockroach attack us. Actually a few weeks ago, but I forgot about it and then was just reminded of it since Elder Johnson sent me the picture. I'll include the story for content purposes. The night before General Conference, I was laying down in bed while Elder J was finishing his prayer. We then got up for comp prayers and I noticed this weird thing on the wall by the closet. I put on my glasses and saw that it was a cockroach! (I think). Luckily we had some cockroach spray. I had to stand on a chair to reach it, and put on a sweater for protection. It did not like the spray and jumped at me. I screamed really loud and probably disturbed the neighbors (It was like 10:40 or something). We battled for like 10 minutes until I covered him white in the foamy spray and the carpet. The foam evaporated or something and he was still crawling around like crazy. I put some books on top and we left him there overnight. He was dead in the morning.

It's really cool for me to see how I've grown as a missionary. Looking back, I had a lot of things I struggled with that I've simply moved past now: Homesickness, laziness (to some extent), and not having an enthusiasm for the work or the people. But as time and work have gone on, right now I'm at a point where I really just want to teach people. My greatest desire right now is to have one of those moments where you teach someone about the Book of Mormon, and the Restoration, and the spirit is so strong. It all just clicks for them and they have a desire to learn. I wish those moments happened more often. But that's honestly what keeps me going. When I make that my focus and my goal, it makes it so much easier to get through the moments where I don't want to work.

It will all be well. I don't have much else to say. I love the joy this gospel brings, and I hope to make the most out of the rest of my mission! Love you all!

- Elder Wride

Pictures:

- Took pictures at this bench again

- Cockroach

- Burritos

Week 56 - Conference + Tracting

Hey Everyone! Hope you had a great conference weekend and that the rest of your week went well. It's already October which is wild.

Our week was pretty good. Pretty fast but here are some highlights:

- General Conference is literally a holiday as a Missionary it feels. We go over to member houses if we can, they'll typically have food there and it's just a good time. We'll still get some work done between sessions so it's not a complete break, but a lot of the day is taken up. Especially on Saturday. But I really enjoyed conference. I need to review all my notes because I haven't done that yet. But I remember how good I felt listening to the talks! It's so awesome. 

- Been doing more Tracting and its been good. I like the approach we use where we'll ask them if they can help us with a survey about God and family. We'll ask a bunch of questions like "Do you believe in Jesus Christ as the son of God?" "Would you like to be happier than you are now? What would make you happier?", and a bunch of other ones. I think.my favorite is "If there was another book of scripture written by ancient prophets that testifies of Christ, would you read it?". The questions almost always spark a good discussion and it's super easy to transition to the Restoration. Good stuff. We haven't found anyone new this week though. 

- Getting used to Contacts. I like them pretty well. It's made me realize how big my eyes become when I wear glasses. 

- The works going ok. We haven't met with a lot of our friends this week for various reasons. Still hard sometimes when you feel like people aren't progressing, but it's on the Lord's timing. We've been able to coordinate a lot of inactive work with the ward and I think that's been really good for building member trust. Our champion is one member, Brother Lochridge. He's coming to church pretty consistently now and is getting in the Spirit of it. He said back when he did construction, he was the super dependable guy who would get up every morning and show up at 5 AM or so, and that there's no reason he can't come to church at 9 am, for 1 hour, once a week. We've been going over the missionary discussions and he remembers a ton! He's super excited to get into the Saints books and learn more about church history. 

Our week has been well. I'm betting this is my last week in Lakeside because we have transfers next Tuesday. I'll keep you posted next week. Have a good one guys! Love each if you :)

- Elder Wride

Pictures:

- Tracting 

- Picture in front of the church