OAKLANDISH

Oakland is growing on me! It has potential to be my favorite area so far, even if I've only been here a couple weeks.

So one interesting "Mission Culture" thing that I've learned from my experience in the last year is that NOTHING EVER GOES ACCORDING TO PLAN. In fact, there has not been ONE SINGLE day where EVERYTHING goes EXACTLY according to the plans that we make for ourselves each day. There is always something that goes wrong, and there always will be something... whether it's people not being home when they said they'd be home, or ending up teaching a different gospel theme because you realize the one you planned isn't applicable. or not finding the house you were looking for, or showing up late, or dinner falling through, or whatever it may be. Generally, we plan on having about 6 lessons a day, but by the end of the day, regardless of what we do to help our case, we might only teach 2 or 3 lessons. sometimes none! and that's just how life is! :) It's best not to get upset or discouraged because that's how life is in the real world as well. So now, it doesn't even phase me.

BUT! This last Tuesday, July 21st, 2015. Will forever go down in the history books as the FIRST (possible only) GOLDEN DAY OF MY MISSION! For the first time in my entire mission, we had a whole entire day filled with appointments and errands to do, and not a single one of them fell through. It.... felt.... nice. :) What a blessing.

At the end of the day, it's less important to have "OUR" plans go through than it is to have "God's plan" go though. It's definitely more important to follow the spirit and help God finish the things in his daily planner... but for the first time, we both seemed to write the same things in our planners! So that was exciting!

In other news, Elder Castleberry and I led our first Zone Training this week and we were asked to teach "The Basics" of teaching. SO! We ended up preparing a training of how to teach the Restoration while explaining each key point in EXTREME clarity. And it went very well! :) Our zone covers the Assistants to the President, and they told us it was a pretty solid training, so that was good to hear. :)

Also, we led Porque Yo Creo yesterday, and I was in charge of translating, and there was this one guy that spoke for like 20 minutes straight about the most complicated story of all time involving bone marrow transplants and becoming inspired by amputees on city busses, and basically, was a VERY hard talk to translate at full speed. I was just sitting in the corner with my little headset and gunna be honest, I sort of had to make up a big chunk of it... haha but other than that, it was pretty good. :)

We're going to start doing some pretty "unheard of things" within the zone in the hopes of helping people be more diligent and enthused. So this week, we are planning on visiting some of the zone members and joining them in their companionship studies. Just to observe how everything is going and see where the strengths and weaknesses are. And we plan on going to a few more district meetings this week. We're excited. There is a lot to be done. We're gonna turn this zone around, yo.

That's pretty much it for this week!

Shout out to Devon for leaving on his mission this week!!

Shout out to Jace for getting his adult life started this week.

Shout out to Preston because he's a total homie, but now it's going to take longer to get letters from him!

And shout out to Gharrett for dominating the sport of soccer.

Love you all!!!

That's me in back.

This is Pioneer Day with Elder Castleberry

This is a zone activity. We hiked up behind the temple. BEAUTIFUL!