Satan Sucks

I got lotsa stuff for you this week. Oh my goodness.

We were going to have 4 baptisms yesterday. That has always been the plan.

But this week was the perfect example of how Satan works. So check this out:

The Gramajo family: Recent move-ins from Guatemala, hilarious, cool, great desire, they are so redy for baptism.... They were going to get baptized yesterday, but this past week, they had their water shut off and they are at risk of being evicted from their apartment illegally, so they've called the cops on their racist land-lord like 2 or 3 times this week. it was rough. Their lives are just super stressed and unpredictable right now, so they decided to move their baptism back by a few weeks. February 7th.

The Carrada family: We've been teaching them since October, and they have been progressing well since the dawn of time. The 2 parents were supposed to be baptized yesterday, and everything was set.. BUT, they didn't come to church. (Which wasn't necessarily going to prevent them from being baptized, it was just confusing) So we gave them a call, and they said they hadn't left for church yet because their daughter ran away from home, and they couldn't find her.... They were obviously very worried, and were going to search for her instead of coming to their baptism... We gathered our whole district together to say a big prayer for their family, and then ditched our 2nd our of church to go visit them at home. By the time we got there, the daughter had already returned, but the family was super contentious. I guess the reason she ran away was because of a big fight she had with her mom, and they were all obviously very flustered and contentious... They were in no mood to get baptized. Never before in my mission have I ever seen the clear influence of Satan in somebody's life. They were so close to doing something that could change their life for the better, but the spirit of contention (sent from the devil) was the thing preventing them. Smart move Satan.

We had a super emotional lesson.... I may or may not have cried a little bit... And we offered to give them each a blessing to give them peace and comfort. First the daughter, then the mom, then the grandma, (Each one crying the whole time)... finally we gave the father a blessing. The head of the household. And we said we wanted everybody to think of what they really want while we gave the blessing, and then we did it. At the end, we re-committed them to be baptized that day at 1:00.

They happily agreed. :)

That was one of the coolest stories I've had on my mission. It just so happened to happen on my birthday, but seriously, yesterday, I felt like... every single emotion there is. what a day.

Love you all!

Thanks everyone for the birthday wishes!

Shout out to Jaxon for the cool calandar 😂 2nd year in a row. Classic. :) :)

Love you all!

Elder Webster

Here is the Carrada family! My latest converts. They're the coolest.

Here is a message my district leader sent to us. It basically sums up my week :)

East Bay

ALRIGHT!

^^that's a one-word description of my week! haha We had some ups and downs as always. :)

There were like 3 days straight when we didn't teach any lessons..

It was a little bit frustrating because we've been trying to be super close to our investigators because they're getting baptized next week, but we just couldn't find time to meet with them as much as we would have liked. But hey, let me tell you a couple miracles! :)

You might remember in last weeks email, I talked about doing a "Blitz" into one of the struggling areas in our zone. (that never happens) Just a little bit of background, basically, this area hasn't found a single investigator in like 2 months. I don't even remember the last time they taught a non-member lesson. So we started the exchange and focused a lot on faith. We started off by setting the expectation of ENTHUSIASM and EXPECTING miracles to happen. We were all committed to find a new investigator before the end of the day. That was the deal.

Elder Wallace and I split up. I went with Elder Weaver from Las Vegas, and he went with Elder Aiono from Samoa. We asked them to plan twice as much as they normally do, and told them we'd like to focus the day on finding people to teach. So, we showed up before studies, they gave us a run down of the day, we studied together, and then went on our separate ways.

Well, WE FOUND A NEW INVESTIGATOR FOR THEM!! WHOO

His name is Ramsey, and he's the son of the Relief society president. Elder Wallace and Elder Aiono were the ones that found him, but their story is so cool. It was one of those "walking in the dark, in the rain, after using all of our back-up-plans, but then feeling prompted to knock on one last door" kind of miracles.

My day was really good as well. We found a couple of potentials in the streets by a college, but the real success story was Ramsey. :)

Everything should be set for our baptisms next week. We're really excited. :)

Thanks for all the birthday wishes. I can't think of too much that I really need, but thanks for asking! I always like home-made stuff! wink wink

Love you all!

THE Year

This is the year everybody. Our area is BLOWING UP! Literally exploding! Shrapnel and debris flying every which way. former investigators dripping off the walls and sacrament cups all over the ground.

I don't know how this week could've gone any better. Everything just worked out. Just to give you a rough vision of how things are going... We had 8 investigators at church yesterday. EIGHT. OCHO 🕗. You may recall that that is something we have always struggled in in this area. People just haven't come to church here. BUT THIS WEEK WAS AWESOME! We got to see our investigators like every day and recommit them all to their baptisms and had some great member support at our lessons, and as a result, this was probably the most successful I've felt on my mission. We're just doing work here! :')

On top of all of that, we had to deal with a couple troublesome companionships... It's probably not best to spill all the details.. But it basically includes missionaries who hate each other and one elder who we found out has been lying about his area for 2 months and has now gone home to let other missionaries clean up his mess... We decided to go have lunch with one of our district leaders so that we could talk about how to improve his district in a non-threatening environment, and all in all.... Oakland is the place to be.

Thanks for all the emails and support! Love you all a ton. :)

Things are going super well with Elder Wallace and I.

Oh PS, I passed my 18 month mark this week. Sooo... I guess I'll see you in  6 months!

BYE!

Don't Get Excited

Hey! Don't get your hopes up, this will be a quick email! My Pday is going to be on Friday this week. (CHRISTMAS DAY!) So I'm only aloud a couple minutes to check in and say that everything is going fine and that I'm excited to skype home this Friday! :) To those of you who have sent me packages lately, THANKS! I've had so much candy, I'm rolling around. And Mom and Dad, the 12 days of Christmas idea was AWESOME! I've been filming our reactions to each gift, so I'll have another card to send home soon enough. :) Love you all!

See you soon! I may get some time to email on Friday. :) Merry Christmas!

Oakland graffiti!

Me and Wallace. Merry Christmas!

Elder Larry R Lawrence and Sister Lara Lawrence

We had a visit from a member of the quorum of them 70 this week!!

If you watched conference, you may remember an awesome talk about "What Lack I Yet". That was Elder Lawrence. He is doing a mission tour across the whole West coast and was in our mission for about a week.

On Thursday we got together for MLC and he blew our minds with this incredible motivational and inspiration talk. He talked about faith and how it requires a sacrifice. He helped us analyze our potential as a mission and set a numerical goal for number of baptisms we're going to get in 2016. This was after about an hour long debate over what number would be attainable, but would still make us stretch to our maximum. Based on our previous years statistics, we're going to shoot for 400 baptisms before the end of 2016.

In line with his talk on sacrifices vs faith, he taught us that if we want to reach this goal, each missionary is going to have to make a sacrifice. Hopefully something big enough to keep this goal fresh on our minds for the rest of the year. I'm still debating what I want my big sacrifice to be... I want it to be good. But my companion and I have committed to include this goal in every single prayer we do. That should give us a boost.

With this goal heavy on our mind, we left that meeting totally pumped up and had two lessons later that day with our investigators. We (motivated by our desire to hit the 400) set 3 baptismal dates for January 24th.

We're taking this goal very seriously, so if any of you would like to join us in prayers to meet the mission goal, we're all on the same team, so we'd appreciate the support.

  

Also, Sister Lara Lawrence (his wife) is the most doctrinally literate person I've ever met. She blew our minds about the 12 tribes. Which led me to a question.... What tribe are you from??? when you read this email, could you reply right away with your tribe? That way you don't forget... If you don't know yet, it's ok. I'm from Ephraim.

Love you all!

Thanks for the love and support! Merry Christmas time!

This is my district. Elder Falcon (Mexico), Elder Broman (Utah), Elder Wallace (England), Sister Resendiz (Mexico) and Sister Nistler (Colorado)

This is Elder Wallace, my English comp. He's the best.

This Last Weekend....

I had a p-day mid-week, So you've heard about a few of the week's updates already. SO! Starting from Friday:

I had an exchange with Elder Johnson, from Jamaica. He's SO HUMBLE. I love him. He's fairly soft spoken and quiet, but he is just the greatest person with a huge desire to improve. We actually had a really cool experience together:

We gave a zone training last week about how to stay accountable to the goals you set, and we had a goal to find 5 new investigators before the end of our exchange because we had a lesson planned with a potential family. Unfortunately, that lesson fell through.. So there was no way we'd hit our goal of 5 new investigators without taking some action...

I was trying to demonstrate how to stay accountable to goals and that you have to work hard if you want to achieve them... SO, we stepped aside and said a prayer for help, and then started knocking doors! In our area, that's unheard of. We NEVER go tracting... But we had a goal to find 5 new investigators, and we knew that we had to show our faith that the Lord would help us if we put in our effort.

I'm happy to report that we now have a handful of interested people we plan to recontact this next week as a result of our desperate door knocking. :) Blessings? Yup.

Second big update is that we had another ward baptism yesterday. Not mine, but some of the other missionaries in our ward. It went well!

Here's a question:

In the vision of the tree of life... why is the great and spacious building FLOATING? I studied this the other day in response to an investigator question. If your looking for things to study this week, That's your new assignment. I found the answer this morning. But I'd love to hear your thoughts. Good luck!

Love you all! It's getting kinda cold here. :)

Elder Wallace and Grasshoppers

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Sorry I didn't get a chance to email you on Monday, but our p-day got changed to today! (Thursday)

This was my first week with Elder Wallace! It's been like 9 days total, but he is AWESOME! We get along great, and we've been doing work together!

Here are some highlights from this last week:

This last Saturday, we had a GENERAL AUTHORITY visit our mission!! We held a bonus MLC with the Zone Leaders and Sister Trainer Leaders and Elder Hamula came to "Light the Fire" in our mission. He gave us to most motivational speech ever about not being Grasshoppers, but GIANTS! (That's a bible reference. Check Numbers 13 if you're curious). Bottom line: If you see yourself as someone that people can walk all over, then you are! Rather, we ought to see ourselves as GIANTS.

Here are some pictures of Elder Wallace, he's the best.

I'm really thankful for all your love and support. Please know that I'm doing well, and I am well fed. Especially today being thanksgiving. Today is technically my pday, but we still have member meals all day long. I actually gotta get going to get to our next dinner on time. But I love you all!

Shout out to the family in Utah! Looks like a blast! Hope you're all doing great! Thanks for the picture! I may not have replied to many of them today cause I gotta go, but I really appreciate all the love! :)