Week 19: Morro Bay

February 15, 2021

Today we had P-day, and we went to a cool place called Spooners Cove in the Montana de Oro State Park. Really cool place, I'm definitely going to come back after the mission. We had a good rest of our day, I made biscuits and gravy, and Elder Strauss made some really good curry that his mom sent him. 

Our lesson with Dan and Daniel fell through, and we are concerned that they might not be as warm to us as the last Elders. That's ok if it takes them a little bit to get friendly with us, but they've cancelled/rescheduled for almost a week and a half now. They still need their baptismal interviews, and their baptism is in less than a week. We've really been trying, but the way the last elders had a relationship with the Boyette's honestly seems like it might be a hindrance. I pray that I'm wrong, because the conversion needs to be to the Lord, and not the missionaries. 

Every time that I do something wrong or forget to do something important, I just try to remember that even Joseph Smith had some growing pains and he was restoring the original church, something far more important than this. I'm learning that one of the ways God gives us revelation is through making mistakes and learning from it. I'm just keeping that in mind as we keep on trucking. 

February 16, 2021

Today was wild. I was hesitant to even start writing in my journal today, because I know already that it's going to be long. So we called Dan this morning, and he suddenly said that he was feeling pressured and that he felt like there were too many rules and regulations to be baptized, and he wanted to call it all off. So we did, and we made about five very difficult calls to several people. Dan didn't really want to be in contact with us, and so we tried reaching out to him through the members, especially Bro. Pace. And so apparently dan was kind of rushed with all of this stuff and work, but he still has an intact testimony and wants to get baptized. So we're going to move his date to next month, and get him back on track, and smooth out the wrinkles. We definitely could have done some things differently, and we're learning a lot, but there hasn't been very much that we could do. We kind of started on bad footing from our first lesson, because he didn't even know about the three week coffee rule, which we are still scratching our heads wondering why the last missionaries didn't make that very clear. And we've only been able to do that one lesson with them and another kind of weak spiritual thought given by yours truly. We're just going to take this very slowly and make this baptism as special as possible for Dan and Daniel. It was just a little touch and go for a second. This has been a wake up reminder for how I have been viewing this baptism. I thought it would be just perfect if I could swoop in here, a third transfer trainer, and show everybody how good of a missionary I am by getting these two golden investigators to their baptismal date. It would be an impressive story to tell, and I would have other people impressed at how we could do it. That was the first thing I thought of when Dan said he wanted to call it off, and I have been feeling so guilty of it ever since. I've been so worried about what people would think if we failed that I actually forgot about Dan and Daniel. I've been thinking about this the wrong way, and I'm done with it now. I'm going to repent of this now and not do it again. I'm so grateful we haven't blown their chances somehow, and it's only through 'God's' lens that I'm going to look at the Boyette's now, not 'an inadequate missionary who is trying to prove himself' lens. They are far too precious to our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ for me to do any less. 

Oh, and we think one of the ladies that we have been talking with might have started hitting on me, so that happened today as well. It's always sunny here in Morro Bay.

February 17, 2021

Today was a less crazy day, I felt so under the weather and pretty terrible for the majority of the day. We had some service fall through, and a lesson fall through, but at least we were able to have some good studies. We also got to meet with Brother Cleveland, who's actually a recently returned mission president who was serving in Detroit. He's super great, and he is going to help all of us missionaries in the area really improve working with the members. We kind of got in contact with Dan today, we're going to call him this weekend and see where he's at. I hope we didn't lose any member trust over this, because we didn't actually plan for it to be this chaotic. It really wasn't until we got cancelled four different times that it all fell on the last week and things got crazy. Anyway, we met someone in the park today named Emmerys, and he is very faithful and loves talking about Jesus Christ. He does live in Lompac, so we'll have to pass him off. Other than that, we've just been figuring out this baptism thing, and trying to get all this service done haha.

February 18, 2021

Today was awesome, we did service for a really nice family, the Keith family, and they aren't LDS, but they have such strong faith in God. They said that Chris Keith, the father, is pretty much a Christian rock star, so that's cool haha. It's those kind of families that you really, really want to bring even closer to the truth. After that, we had a pretty regular day, and at the end of our park contacting, we got into a fairly heated Bible bash. I don't like Bible bashes, because they're a waste of time and nothing comes from it, but when somebody makes fun of Joseph Smith and asks how many wives he can have if he joins our church, then it's very hard to resist the temptation to show them why they're wrong. Ecclesiastes 12:14 and Matthew 16:27 alone completely disproves the idea of "saved by grace". Not to mention several other passages and verses not only disproving that, but the Trinity as well. But when the contention of a Bible bash takes away the Spirit, then there's not much that can happen. So when Bible bashes happen, they happen, but I always try to avoid them. And sadly, Alissa dropped us. We think her die-hard Catholic husband got to her. Maybe she'll be prepared in the future. 

February 19, 2021

We had district council which was good, it was very Spirit-filled. I gave a 10 minute discussion on perspective, and the perspective we need to have as missionaries. There are some good talks on this, including the talk "Spiritual Eclipse" by Elder Gary E. Stevenson. After district council, we got some Taco Bell and then did studies and park contacted until dinner. For dinner Elder Strauss made this chicken, egg, onion, and rice stuff with some really good Japanese seasoning called Oyako-don. After that, we grinned some Areabook and Facebook until our member visits cancelled and we did some more. I'm excited to finish the New Testament, I'm in 1 John and it's the farthest I've gotten before. 

February 20, 2021

Today was fun, we did a purity conference with all the elders in the mission. After that, we did some studies, and then we did an exchange with Elder Haroldsen and Elder Overson. I went with Elder Haroldsen, and he is awesome. He's from Spokane, he's a really hard worker, and he's out here for all the right reasons. We went contacting, and Elder Haroldsen took the lead, because their area is a Spanish area, and I obviously don't know Spanish. I did get in some "Hola's" and some "Mucho Gusto's" so I'm pretty proud of myself. We had a lesson with a recent convert, Guerrero, who is really solid and in the Army. We also had some visits with some less-active members in their group. My job was to say "No hablo espanol" and then sit pretty for 20 minutes. Pretty interesting, they all told Elder Haroldsen how big they thought I was, so I'm going to take it as a compliment. 

February 21, 2021

Today was awesome, we finally got to go to church in person! We met a bunch of members in person, and get to know the ward better. We weren't able to bring Tony with us, but Dan and Daniel did watch church over Zoom, so that's great! We had. really good lesson with Tony, and we talked about some temple ordinances and church history. We're trying to help connect him to the Book of Mormon though, because while the D&C is great and has a lot of meat, it's the Book of Mormon that will help him come close to Jesus Christ. We did some good contacting, and had some people all but sprint the opposite direction of us, haha but that's how it goes. Other than that, we had a pretty uneventful night, other than setting up a visit with Dan and Daniel to get them back on track.