Summer in Riverside 2.0

This'll be our last week of the transfer and honestly it has been going pretty well. This last week was definitely one of the harder weeks of my time here because a lot of the people we are trying to help get baptized are difficult to work with and are somewhat stuck in their progression. A lot of great things are happening in the zone though as we had a few baptisms this last weekend.

Something crazy that happened last night was that there was a "Possible Kidnapping" outside of our apartment complex. There were tons of police cars there last night when we came back and a lot of CBS news vans this morning. We are safe though and enjoying this fine pday!

So we had exchanges with the APs on Tuesday, so Elder Moloney came to my area and we had a pretty successful day. One of our first street contacts of the day ended up with us both getting free Toronto Raptors throwback jerseys because the guy we were talking to had some extras that he was looking to give away! We taught a lady named Antonia in that area as well and set up a few more appointments.

On Wednesday, we had multi zone conferences and everything went pretty well! We gave a training on how to work with the leaders in our wards and we learned a lot about the area plan as well. The goal is that we 5× the number of Spanish convert baptisms in this part of the country, so we have a lot of work to do with the members!

On Friday we did exchanges with the Chinese elders and I went to China land with Elder Stewart! Elder Stewart is a really funny guy and a great missionary from Provo and he has been out for only about 4 transfers, but killed it in his own area. We went up to Ontario, which is out of our mission boundaries, but their Chinese work allows them to teach people out there, so that was pretty fun! Usually they have an English class that they teach fron 6:30-8, but nobody showed up, so we left at 7 to go teach some more people since the Lord provided us with some more time. We went and taught a less active family that has some foster children who aren't members of the church, so we taught one of them and she is down to get baptized!

We did a service project on Saturday as a zone and planted a bunch of trees and this discovery center up in the Jurupa mountains. 
We taught a few more people before Sunday, including Marisela and Rogelio, and they came to church! After church we found a couple right before the night ended, which was a miracle that we had been looking for that day.

One of the scriptures I read really caught my attention this week in D&C 35:21

"For [the elect] will hear my voice, and shall see me, and shall not be asleep, and shall abide the day of my coming; for they shall be purified, even as I am pure."

After I read this scripture, I realized even more how little time we have left to work in the Lord's vineyard. Those that are "asleep" or not willing to make the time and sacrifice to keep the commandments of God in this life are not the elect. With the little time we have left to work, I'd much rather spend it finding the elect and working with them, so we are starting pretty much from scratch in this area to find some people who are ready to make and keep covenants with God.

Elder Moon

 Service Project

Exchanges with Elder moloney

Exchanges with Elder Stewart