Arrival Picture to Parents Letter

Dear Keith & Keli Moon,

We are so grateful to have Elder Mason Moon join us here in the California Riverside Mission! It was exciting to meet him at the airport. I had the opportunity to interview your missionary, and we were able to hear his testimony after having dinner together. We were impressed with his testimony and desire to serve in our Mission. It has been a privilege to get to know him. 

After our testimony meeting, Elder Moon went immediately to work in his new area, the HEMET Zone with his companion Elder Spencer Royce. They were excited to leave the Mission Office so they could go to work!  Preparation day is Monday; most missionaries choose to email their family on that day. We encourage you to write or email weekly as well. Thank you for keeping your letters positive and uplifting. Please encourage Elder Moon to work hard, be obedient, and take advantage of the time spent here in doing the great work of the Lord. 

As we visited with him this is what he said about his family. " My family is really close and we go on fun vacations"!

We look forward to a wonderful experience together with your missionary. Thank you for preparing one worthy to serve. May God continue to bless you and your family.

Sincerely,

President Darrel and Sister Joanne Hammon

Final Countdown

Only a few more days until Riverside!  When I look back, I’ve had a very fortunate MTC experience: grew my testimony a LOT, learned a lot of Spanish from some great teachers, feel a lot more comfortable teaching, adjusted more to missionary life, made some great friends, had the opportunity to go to the temple 6 times, witnessed an Apostle of the Lord speak on Thanksgiving, etc. 

This last week has been a little different. A lot less class time with our teachers because we have been doing In Field orientation. It’s for all the missionaries who are departing the following week, so we were just paired up with random districts and all the presentations were in English. We had lessons on goals, planning, doctrine of Christ, working with members, and finding.

An exciting part of the week was when we hosted newly arrived missionaries! The MTC has a really efficient way of receiving missionaries on the first day and getting them started quick. The new missionaries say goodbye to their families in the parking garage beneath the MTC, and then we take them up onto campus and get them all of their keys, name tags, badges, etc. Then, help them find their residence, drop their stuff off in their room, and then take them to find their class, so they can start learning. After this, we as hosts, just go back to the parking garage to help the next missionary. We didn’t have that many missionaries this week, so it was a really quick process. I just made sure to get my missionaries excited and hyped for the MTC! I’ve seen both of them again and they said they loved their first day and the MTC so far, which is sweet!

I have also continued the tradition of injuries among Moons playing MTC basketball. Just a finger jam that had my finger swollen for a few days, so not bad. That experience kind of made me miss all the random injuries I would get in lacrosse haha.

A scripture that our teacher shared with us this week that I really loved is 1 Nephi 21:16. The Lord has literally engraved us on the palms of his hands and is right beside us willing to help us when we have challenges. To be free from sorrow is to recognize the sacrifice that Jesus Christ made for all of us and to have faith that you can be healed through His Atonement. 

I hope everyone is able to spend some quality time with loved ones for the Holidays! Next Monday when I write, it will be a warm and sunny California Christmas day.

Feliz Navidad!

Elder Moon



Pictures
#1 district pic celebrating a week with some cookies (S/O to Aubrey Turner for the cookies)

#2 Christmas package (S/O to Aubrey again)

#3 Shake and Bake with our Hot Cocoa

#4 two of my teachers- Hermano Cowley (left) and Hermano Bate (right)

#5 Queso party with the district again

It's getting cold

Familia y amigos,

Another great week in the MTC has passed by. I’m enjoying almost everything, but the freezing cold weather here in Provo! I’m starting to really get anxious for the mission field!! Not only will the weather in Riverside be significantly warmer, but I’m just ready to serve the people there. Our teachers have been getting us pumped up

for the field and getting us ready to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. One of our teachers, Hermano Bate, had us all read Alma 5 together as a district, and it just inspired me to prepare more and more every day to prepare to meet God. If you haven’t read Alma 5 in a while, read it, and just take a few minutes to reflect.

Unfortunately, my companion, Elder Larsen, has been really sick this week. We went to the doctor earlier this week, but he still was having a really hard time because his voice was pretty much gone. Right before our lesson on Wednesday morning, I gave him a Priesthood blessing as it looked like his health wasn’t getting any better. It was a tender moment for both of us and I could feel the love Heavenly Father has for Elder Larsen and how much he wants him to serve Him. Right after that, we taught our TRC, Niky, more about the Restoration of the Gospel and the Priesthood. What a blessing it is that we have the Priesthood on this earth today! The power to act in the name of God can be such a blessing for alI.  It seemed as if Elder Larsen could only talk during lessons because right after we would finish each lesson, his voice would just go away hahah. My testimony of the power of the Priesthood definitely increased and it just goes to show that God is looking after all of his children and loves us all.  In our last lesson with Niky, she said that she would prepare to be baptized after our lesson on the Doctrine of Christ and the Celestial Kingdom. She could very well already be a member in real life, but it still made us really happy to hear that.

In our Friday night class, one of our teachers, Hermano Cowley, asked me to pick one of my favorite chapters in the Book of Mormon, so that our class could read it together and have a discussion. I chose 2 Nephi 4. I wanted our district to start reading at verse 16 and to read to the end of the chapter. This is one of my favorite bits of scripture because of the feelings I felt the first time I ever read this on my own. Nephi’s words gave me the inspiration and faith to use the Atonement in my own life. I think everyone in the district learned at least something from this, and this might be a chapter that a share quite a bit on my mission.

Some other cool things that happened this week: We got to watch the First Presidency Christmas devotional.  We got Chick-Fil-A chicken sandwiches for dinner Monday night Elder Martinez from the Quorum of the 70 came for our Tuesday Devotional.  We got another district in our zone.  We had a lesson over Skype with a member of the Church from Peru and we shared the #IllumnaElMundo (Light the World) program with him.

I received my travel itinerary for my departure to the mission field - leave MTC at noon on 12/19 and catch the 455pm flight to Ontario, CA.

Espero que todos tendrán una buena semana, Hasta la proxima semana!

Elder Moon

With Elder Taula and others from my district on a Sunday Temple Walk

With Elder Roskelley, the only other lacrosse player in my zone.

Shake and Bake

This week marked my halfway point at the MTC! I have mixed emotions about leaving the MTC in less than 3 weeks. On one hand, I would love a change of scenery (outside of Provo) and to be able to start helping others in the mission field. On the other hand, the Spirit here in the MTC is everywhere, it’s undeniable and I still have a lot to learn before I arrive in Riverside.

By far the best day of the week was Wednesday! Probably because it was the busiest and we taught 2 lessons/helped teach two more! I’ll give some background context...

All the new missionaries do an activity on their first night in the MTC called People and Your Purpose. There are about 60 new missionaries to a room, one moderator that helps lead the activity, one investigator, and 2 missionaries (who have had a few weeks in the MTC) who will begin the lesson. 

My district was chosen to be those missionaries who help begin the lesson!! So our objective was to get to know our investigator and ask thought provoking questions about their relationship with God and their interest in the Church. We asked questions for about 5 minutes, but we were explicitly told to not teach any doctrine.

We were only to gather information about our investigator, so that the new missionaries could have some info, and they could be the teachers! So after our 5 minutes was up, the moderator stopped us and gave the mics to the missionaries in the crowd, so that they could ask more questions, teach, and bear testimony. 

It was an awesome event, and a great opportunity for everyone there!

One of the greatest miracles since I’ve been here in the MTC happened that night though. We have a new investigator named Hishám who is from Honduras. Elder Larsen and I were teaching him and getting to know him and he expressed his concern and his doubt on how Jesus Christ can help him with all the problems in his life. He told us that since Jesus Christ died over 2000 years ago, he didn’t believe he could receive any sort of divine help. He had a hard time understanding the concept of the Atonement essentially, but through the Power of the Holy Ghost, we were both able to boldly testify of the Savior in a way that we have never before been able to do. After the lesson, I really felt that we needed to find a quiet place to pray together and give thanks for the Spiritual gifts in our lives. So now we started to do that after all of our lessons. Like last week with Elder Bednar’s Devotional, it was one of those spiritual moments and testimony builders that I won’t forget.

Thursday morning, we taught Niky for the 4th time, but this time we had a member with us to help! Hermana Gutman was the member that taught with us, and she had a great testimony of the importance of reading the Book of Mormon and keeping the Sabbath day holy. Her testimony helped us and helped Niky even more. Niky is really diligent and is always eager to share her favorite parts of the Book of Mormon with us. She is definitely progressing, and hopefully she can attend church this weekend! 

I also finished the Book of Mormon again on Thursday, so now I plan on reading the Book of Mormon in both English and Spanish everyday, hand in hand. Being able to read the words of the prophets Mormon, Ether and Moroni these last few days have given me a lot of strength. Moroni 10:32 is my verse of the week

To recap the rest of the week, we had Sister Joy D. Jones, Primary President, and her husband for our Tuesday Devotional. Brother Jones had an incredible conversion story. When he was 17, he was in Chemistry class and his lab partner would always be sleeping. One day he asked the guy, “why are you always so tired?” He said he goes to early morning seminary. That sparked an interest with Brother Jones, so he started attending seminary. From there, he went to church regularly, was baptized, and served a mission when he turned 19. God definitely works in mysterious ways sometimes, and it’s really cool to hear about conversion stories like that.

Sister Jones talked a lot about Thomas S. Monson and some of his prophetic promises to us. My favorite quote from her part was, “We can always be a little more obedient, courageous, and dependent on the Lord’s power.”

On a more light hearted note, some interesting things happened this week. We had a lot of missionaries from our zone leave for the mission field. We shared a lot of great memories with those elders, but we have 8 new elders in our zone that arrived this week. They are all really cool and have great desires to be here and hopefully we can  all help each other out.

Exercise Time now is pretty much limited to the indoor gym now, and me and Elder Snow (Elder from my district) are the deadliest duo on the volleyball court haha we are pretty much the only ones who try to set each other up for spikes while everyone else just pretty much throws the ball over the net. We are Shake and Bake. I’m definitely going to miss balling out everyday at exercise time once my MTC transfer is over with.

We also have a lot of “traditions” in our zone among the elders. One of which is on P-day, and at 6:30 am we get everyone up and we sing our P day song. It’s to the tune of “battle hymn of the republic” and it gets everyone excited for the day and more importantly, awake hahah. Well I got passed down the responsibility of leading this, and this morning was really hype since we got most of the newer missionaries to join in!

Lastly,

Tengo una preuganta para ustedes... Cómo ha cambiado para ser más como Cristo esta semana?

En ingles: how have you changed to be more like Christ this week?

I know I have tried to be more patient with everyone around me, and as I’ve done that, I’ve felt a Christlike love for them.

Hope everyone had a great week!!

Elder Moon

Pictures: 

#1 The view after the temple is the best

#2 the good thing about serving stateside, is that your flag is always flying at the MTC

#3 Elder Larsen is the man. Love being his companion