Escapando el frío

The Lord always blesses us when California even gets somewhat cold and rainy weather. A lot of people and families were letting us in, so we were able to help a lot of people we are teaching come to church and progress towards baptism. The Martinez/Mendoza family came to church again and it's just incredible to see how much they love their kids. We are still trying to help Fernando (the dad) to come to church, but his wife and their 4 kids came to church and were able to meet the bishop for the first time. We also had our little friend Nathan come to church with his grandma. His grandma and mom want him to take the lessons before he gets baptized. He is going to turn 9 in a few weeks, so he is pretty much just going to get baptized the very beginning of March!

We also felt inspired to do some home visits with a lot more of the YSAs. We taught a few non members and then we were able to help some of the members stay consistent with coming to church.

Rams fans were not happy yesterday and we just so happened to be street contacting when they all came out to their cars after all the watch parties. I never would have thought that Tom Brady and the Patriots would have a negative impact on our missionary work haha. 

We had a multi zone conference on Wednesday in Riverside. Elder Davis and I trained on the importance of our Prime finding time from 5-8 PM. All the other trainings were helpful and it's always fun to see missionary friends and meet some of the new missionaries that came in! Also, our mission will be picking up 3 more stakes (Temecula, Murrieta and Chino). That will end up being a little over 60 new missionaries and all this will take place July 1, 2019.

On Thursday, I did an exchange with Elder Lawlor and this was the first day it started pouring and it continued the whole weekend. We taught a few new people in their area and escaped the cold for a bit at the Olive garden by our apartment for dinner. Always the best deal for unlimited soup and celestial breadsticks.

Friday we had MLC, so we were back in Riverside again. We dropped off our car to get the oil changed before the meeting started. Our mission  got a brand new Toyota Tundra for the office elders that same day, so they took us back to our car in the new tundra which was sweet.

The weekend ended strong with church and setting up some more appointments for this week! 

Having time built in the day to study the scriptures is one of the greatest blessings of a mission. I'm loving my Book of Mormon and New Testamant study. Along with that, Gospel Library is loaded up with conference talks and Institute manuals that are really useful. Anyways, here is a quote from a general conference talk by Elder Sabin that I enjoyed listening to:

"We might need to study more intently, pray more earnestly, or just let some things go so we can hang on to those things that really matter. We may need to let go of the world so we can hang on to eternity."

Elder Moon