Gone to Perris!

Hey everyone, so we had transfer calls this last weekend, and I'll be leaving Hemet and heading out to the Menifee Zone. I'll be serving in the Tres Lagos ward with Elder Dew and Elder Lawlor. We will be in a trio and Elder Dew will be finishing the last 6 weeks of Elder Lawlor's training. I'm really excited to be joining up with them, and we will be on bike! I've only heard good things coming from out there, so it will be awesome to jump right into the work. 

It will be sad to leave behind the great people in Hemet and San Jacinto. The members here really do have our back out here and there a lot of great things coming up in this area. I'm looking forward to hearing more about the success in this ward and I should be able to come back pretty soon for a few baptisms!! Carlos is still progressing for his baptism on May 6th and we just started working with a lot of promising, new investigators this week. One of our best successes this week was bringing back 2 less active families to church! They were both families that the bishopric had a focus on, so we just gave them that little extra push to get back on track! 

We had an Area Seventy, Elder Miskin, give a great talk about apathy and how there is no room for us to have apathy, but rather, we need to develop those attributes of Christ and have them written in our hearts. It was just what we all needed to hear. 

I'm out in Perris now, really not far from Hemet at all, and I'll have a better update for next week on what is going on over here. 

Some of you may have seen my post on Facebook, but I shared a verse from one of my favorite chapters in the Book of Mormon. 

Alma 26:16

Therefore, let us glory, yea, we will glory in the Lord; yea, we will rejoice, for our joy is full; yea, we will praise our God forever. Behold, who can glory too much in the Lord? Yea, who can say too much of his great power, and of his mercy, and of his long-suffering towards the children of men? Behold, I say unto you, I cannot say the smallest part which I feel.

The best times in our life are going to be when we feel like this.

We can learn a lot from those good examples in our lives. We have our friends, family, those we work with...we have our leaders, we have Prophets and Apostles of the Lord who live on this earth today, we have all the many Prophets from the Scriptures, and we have our Lord, Jesus Christ. As we follow these amazing examples, we find joy. 

Hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Moon

 

 Red Robin on a Saturday night when members give us dinner money

 Hermano Cuevas (the ultimate member missionary)

 Hermano Rivera and Cuevas (part of the new EQ presidency in Hemet)

 My first ZLs

The Spanish 4 man 

Sound off Mormons!

This week was honestly pretty good.

Exchanges on Wednesday with Elder Dundon. Multi-zone conference on Friday. 

My favorite day from this week was Sunday because we were able to get Carlos and Rosa to church! Elder Bailey and I were also able to teach the Gospel Principles class. The topic was the Atonement of Jesus Christ, which is just an awesome topic to be able to testify on, so it was very enjoyable to be able to teach in that setting. We actually received a few compliments from a few members and investigators who really liked the lesson. Definitely a confidence booster and I hope to have more opportunities like that in the future!

We were able to get back in with Rosa again, and we had a powerful lesson with her about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. She wants to continue learning and growing in this gospel, but it will be poco a poco. She will be out of town a lot for the next 2 months, so we are planning on doing some Skype lessons! 

We had a lesson with Carlos during the week. We taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ and committed him to live the Word of Wisdom. He is progressing super well for his baptism on May 6th. Like I mentioned, he came to church and he made some good friends and from what he told us, he enjoyed it! 

We are teaching another man named Carlos Maldonado, and he actually is strikingly similar to our other Carlos. He accepted a baptismal date for May 13th after we taught him The Restoration. Unfortunately, he didn't make it to church. We also got by Eduardo Saturday night and invited him to church, he said he would come, but didn't make it again. Our solution for these people... Get more members in lessons so they can make friends.

Whenever Elder Dundon and I were on exchanges, we had just ate dinner and we were going to contact a referral that we had. We got out of the car and elder Dundon and I both felt like we should talk to this one women who was sitting on a porch with her son. She immediately let us sit down and talk with her and her son outside. We learned after a little bit that her 16 year old son didn't believe in God and didn't like church at all. We addressed that pretty easily with him, and the mom was really nice to us, but was opposed to accepting a Book of Mormon to read at that time. She kind of just wanted us to help her talk to her son, but she and her family still have potential to grow. The funniest thing actually happened during this lesson. This guy comes out of nowhere and is walking by where we are sitting. He starts yelling and screaming at some other neighbors, and then he sees us sitting down and starts yelling at us saying something like "oh y'all are some men of God over there? Are you all Jehovah witnesses??" I shake my head no as the conversation with this potential investigator starts to die down as we are wondering what is going on. The crazy guy then yells, "Mormons?" 

I shake my head yes and then he gives us the all time one-liner, "SOUND OFF, MORMONS!" 

At this point, I reply back to him "Christ is our Savior!"  He was just spazzing out the whole time and I think the last question he asked us was how can he be better and I just told him "Follow Christ and you'll be blessed." 

At one point, it looked like he was going to try to come closer to us and actually walk in the woman's yard, so the woman had her son try to call the cops, but all ended up being okay! Just have to stay cool and also just so happen to pray for safety in the opening prayer! A funny experience, but more importantly, hopefully we can teach this woman and her family some more.

Multi zones were pretty good too. The only thing is that we had to trade cars with the sister missionaries out in Anza, so they have the Toyota Tacoma now and we have a older Nissan Fronteir truck. We did win the cleanest car award though and came close to having the cleanest apartment too (partly because we got rid of our old couch hahah). 

I've been reading in the middle of Alma this week during my personal study, and just feasting on the words of the GOATs of missionary work: Alma and the Sons of Mosiah. I liked Alma 29:14. It shows how we have a more complete joy when we can be happy and support others as they work hard and have success. From all the scriptures about missionary work, we learn how much happiness we have and how great our reward will be as we work diligently to bring others to Christ.

Take care

Elder Moon 

Pics: 

Taking away the couch that we had in our apt, that we had previously found on the street

Multi zones

Hemet and San Jacinto zones from the hike

¡andale pues!

The wheels are still rolling on the Hemet bus...digo Toyota Tacoma! We have been teaching, preaching, working and just doing what missionaries do. Obviously some ups and downs as missionaries, but seeing our investigators making the decision to be baptized and press forward is giving us strength! 

One of the investigators that we are super pumped up on is Carlos. Carlos was a member referral who is living with a part-member family, and after we taught him the first time, he didn't accept a baptismal date. He did however, watch conference that weekend, read, and pray. Fast forward to this last Thursday, and I'm in a lesson with him with just a member by my side. We were teaching him the Plan of Salvation and almost out of no where, he asks to be baptized and wants to work to the date of May 6th. It was an awesome lesson, guided by the Spirit and he has some of the most sincere desire that I have seen. The Lord has definitely been preparing him to receive this message and everything has started to fall into place for him to make these steps.

We also went back and taught Eduardo Sixtos who we hadn't taught in a while. It was another Plan of Salvation lesson that was centered on doing God's will. Eduardo was able to recognize how important making changes to align our lives to God's will, will bless us. He accepted a baptismal date for May 20th. 

Both of these investigators couldn't make it to church. We had a member set up to pick up Carlos, but he had to go into work last minute. Eduardo didn't make it, but no way we are giving up!

Raquel has been making it to church every Sunday and being able to help her progress to where she is now has been one of the highlights of my mission. Just seeing how much love she has for this Gospel has given me motivation for my time here in Hemet. We feel like we have found people like Raquel who have been divinely prepared to receive us. We know that there are more people who are just waiting for us to talk to them, and that will never stop giving me hope on my mission. 

We went on a hike up in of my favorite places in the mission, Idyllwild!! Some free hair cuts too, so a pretty successful p day so far today!

Just want to leave one of my favorite scriptures from this week. I just finished the Book of Mormon in English, and I'm planning on puro español for the rest of the mission, but something I read this week in Moroni stuck out...
Moroni 9:25
Don't dwell on the negative things around you, but just let Christ rest in your mind forever.

Time to keep on trucking! 

Elder Moon

Pic: from dinner with bishop with the missionaries from the Ramona Ward

Rush of Revelation

This weekend was bien loco!! The Lord's will was made known unto us through His prophets and apostles this General Conference weekend. More than anything, I know without a doubt that President Russell M. Nelson has been called by God as the Prophet to lead and guide us in this time that we live in.

Now to more of the weekly update...

We had two different exchanges this week:

On Wednesday, we had DL exchanges, so I had Elder Castro in my area. 

On Friday, we had ZL exchanges, so I worked with Elder Heward that day. We just split time in his English area and our Spanish area.

Tuesday though.... We taught this family that we had only taught 1 time before. The Familia Gallegos were a family that the english sister missionaries found and then passed them off to us because Spanish was better. Well on Tuesday, we taught the dad and his 2 kids. I said the opening prayer and out of nowhere, I feel their dog slobbering all over me for a solid 10 seconds, but I just had to endure to the end haha. Once the lesson started, it was super powerful. The dad was crying and really emotional for most of it and they accepted and the 3 of them accepted a baptismal date for May 6th!

After that lesson, we went over and taught a member referral. His name was Carlos and he just moved into a family friend's house who is a member. We went over and taught him the Restoration and he had sincere interest. His only question was "if I'm not here next week, can we find another day, so that I can still learn more?" He really wants to find the truth, so we will keep on working to help him find it. He also watched multiple sessions of General Conference from home, so we are excited to follow up!

Unfortunately, Rosa has been out of town this week, but we did help Raquel to be able to watch most of General Conference! She only missed the Saturday morning session because we couldn't find her a ride to the church, but after that first session, we went over to her house and helped her watch it from home. Her neighbor is actually a bishop in the English ward in that area, so that family helped us a lot. She really loved the inspired messages this weekend as well as the Motab!! She really made it a point to let everyone know how great the music was haha. 

We also had service Wednesday through Friday! We went to the community pantry, valley restart center, and helped a few families move. Finding opportunities to serve and show the pure love of Christ to others will only bring us joy.

Just to go back to General Conference, I felt a continual pouring out of the Spirit. It could not be restrained. Elder Bailey and I watched the first session in Spanish with some of our members and an investigator and it was a moment I won't forget when we were sustaining the First Presidency. 

Another one of those moments was when President Nelson had all the Priesthood holders rise up as one during the Priesthood session. I know that the power to act in God's name has been restored to the earth. As we all stood together and sang Rise up, O Men of God, my heart was so full of love for all of God's children. 

The revelation that President Nelson has received came from God himself. We are going to be more unified as we prepare the world for the second coming of Jesus Christ. 

Overall, a week that I won't forget on my mission and I'm already looking forward to next conference! The Lord is hastening His work and I'm so grateful to be a part of it. Never doubt His love for you!!

Elder Moon

Pics: 

Golf

Conferencia General

Servicio