Week 51: Goleta

September 27, 2021

We had a fun day, we went to IHOP for lunch with the Santa Barbara District. It was good, just way more expensive than in Utah haha. And we also played some spike ball in the Goleta district. We had a good evening, got some really solid potentials, but that was it for the day.

September 28, 2021

Our day was interesting. We had a "bible study" with a less-active member today named Victor, where we read the Book of Mormon and talked about Christ. We're trying to help him get back to church, he's an awesome guy. 

We also had a much worse member visit with someone, turns out he's left the church and become an agnostic/atheist. So that was really fun, he joined the ranks of the cascades of people who like to say the old reliables: "I just don't see evidence of God," or "If God exists, why do bad things happen?" and "The Church has made mistakes, so that means it isn't true." That was kind of a damper on the day, but we got everything back up to speed. 

We had some great finding, and found some people to refer and people to reach out to later. Then we had some member visits to finish off the day.

September 29, 2021

We had a really good day, we went finding in the morning. We didn't get much to go on, but we did talk to a guy named Kurt who had some very interesting stories about experiences and NDE's. The angels in his dream had alien heads, so we gave up trying to tie it into the gospel haha. 

After some more studies we made some Facebook posts about General Conference, and finished off the night with a couple member visits. We had an awesome lesson with Diego, someone we started teaching a few days ago. He was blown away by the idea that we can know where we came from before the first man was on the earth. He opened up to us and told us he wants to be better for his kids. So he became one of our top progressing people. He just has a few hurdles to jump, but he's doing great.

September 30, 2021

We got to start the day off with a great lesson with someone named Tom. He loves to learn, and just soaks in everything we teach him. He loves to read as well, so that always helps. 

Afterwards, we went to Nikka Ramen for lunch, and it was incredible. One of the best foods I have ever eaten. After that we had some studies and whatnot, until finding in the evening, where we got to talk to Richard. He was feeling very nervous and hopeless, and he's very nervous about the state of the world and politics and stuff. But we were able to help him feel some peace and know that God is mindful of us, and will help us through hard times. So we were blessed to start teaching him. We get to teach seminary tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes, it should be fun. 

October 1, 2021

Seminary was super fun, we had a bunch of them role-play with us, and we talked about the nature of the Godhead.

We had a pretty regular day, had a good district council for our last week of the transfer. We had some Panda Express for lunch, like you do, and then we had some normal activities until dinner, when we had sloppy joes. I've found that I've talked a lot more about food and taken a lot of pictures of food this transfer.

Our finding was pretty slow today, but we ended off with a pretty awesome experience. We were about 50 feet away from our car walking back, and we passed this guy who was about to walk right past us, and then Elder Marks said, "Hey, nice hat!", complementing his green fedora. We struck up a conversation, and he eventually told us that he started believing in Jesus Christ about 15 years ago after an experience he had. He said his life was going down in a fiery wreck, and he was doing the wrong things, and he said he felt a small voice, a whisper, telling him he needed to stop. And he said nobody really thinks it's any big deal, or that it's just in his head, but it was huge for his conversion. So we read Helaman 5:30 and told him that's exactly how God gives us revelation. That was crazy for him because he had never heard anything like that in the scriptures. So we were able to get his number and invite him to Conference tomorrow. And what's more, he said that a few months before his experience, missionaries gave him a Book of Mormon, but he never read it. So we are very excited for him. 

We spent a ton of time just trying to get people to General Conference, so hopefully that pays off tomorrow. 

October 2, 2021

General Conference was super awesome today, such great insights. I really liked when Elder Giufrra said something like, "Everything that has eternal worth requires faith." And also how Elder Wilcox said, "God loves us too much to leave us where we are." So much good stuff to share with our friends. 

We had a lesson with John today, and it went well, he wants to stop smoking. We should be able to help him, he cut down a ton without us even asking him to in the past week. We helped him understand some scriptures that didn't make sense to him, and he's progressing well. After the evening session, we had an emergency lesson with a member referral in Santa Barbara named Mark. It was interesting, to say the least. We went with a member with the nickname 'Shell Shawn'. Took a photo in his bedroom, I know it sounds weird, but he insisted. There are tons of shells in that apartment. But we were able to start teaching Mark for the Santa Barbara sisters. Then we had a member visit with Sister Damitz, such a sweet lady.

October 3, 2021

Last day of the transfer, and as usual it was a blink of an eye. Had an awesome rest of Conference, and have a lot of things to share with our friends. I liked the talk about increasing 1% at a time, very insightful for missionary work. We did our best to get our friends to Conference, but we don't know how many have actually been able to watch. So we're hoping for the best. 

We had some solid finding time, a dinner with the Rigby's and with Brother Adams. Brother Adams gave us a good idea for what we can do to help John with his smoking. We set up another visit with the Esparza's, and it might actually go through this time haha. 

But it was a good day, I learned my new companion will be Elder Tree and we will still serve as Zone Leaders in this area. He was in my MTC district, so I already know it'll be a fun transfer haha. But there is a lot of young leadership and a lot of young training going on. It'll be an even crazier transfer than the one we just had.