Operation Sabbath Jackhammer

This week was pretty good! We went on 3 exchanges again this week! this is the good stuff:

Wednesday - I went with Elder Pululasi into Berkeley. He's from Australia and is suuuper relaxed and cool. Everyone likes talking to him in the streets because he's got such a sweet accent. I was on bike again... humph... and we had did service with this pot smoking guy and we went into his bedroom and it was basically like a "hot topic" store. a little bit scary and overwhelming, but he's got so many collectors items and video game memorabilia, it was just sorta cool looking around! Then the guy bought us some pizza! So... good day! :)

Thursday - I went into the Chinese program with Elder Zhang. I swear, every time I go into the Chinese program, all I do is walk around and talk to people. the thing is... most of Chinese culture is Buddhist, and slightly rude to strangers. They have such a hard time finding people to teach... I was grateful to go back to my lovable Spanish area afterwards. But the Elder Zhang is just the most charitable person in the worlds. He was found, taught, baptized confirmed and retained in 48 hours while on vacation in Washington. Apparently there was a district of missionaries that tag-team-taught him all of the lessons in one single day and he got special permission to be baptized that night! Then he went back to China with his non member family and he remained active and then served a mission a year later, and he's good at it! He's the best.

Saturday - Elder Allison came to my area. He doesn't speak spanish, so I did most of the heavy lifting by myself... But we had a fairly successful day! Elder Allison is relentlessly positive..... toooo positive.... But I love the guy. He's got great taste in music, so we tight.

Operation Sabbath Jackhammer is a covert operation that we initiated this week to get our investigators to church. It has four phases. It's not meant for the public eye, and meant to be top secret... But I trust you.

Phase One: contact and invite each investigator to church on Sunday.

Phase Two: resolve any concern or problem they may have about coming. (find a ride, give the address, reminder text in the morning, etc.)

Phase Three: help investigators have a spiritual experience at church.

Phase Four: follow up with those that didn't come, even though they were invited, (consider dropping the investigator if necessary) and re-invite them to the next week.

IT. IS. FOOL-PROOF.

We unfortunately ended up dropping a few of our investigators as a result, but it's all in an effort to weed out those that are not interested or prepared to make a change in their lives. So we thought it was productive whether or not people came.

This next week will be Elder Castleberry's last week in the mission field. Pretty crazy. He had his last "Prque Yo Creo" yesterday (monthly spanish testimony meeting at the temple) and he ended up conducting it, and I translated it. It went well. I should be getting a new companion next week. Weiiiird.

Thanks for all the emails and the love!

Webster Street!

Chinese exchanges

Golf on pday

Oops