Week 62: Goleta

December 13, 2021

A solid Preparation Day, it started raining as soon as missionary work started. We made some gingerbread houses, some pretty wholesome activities like that. Later on in the day we spend some good time running around, we did some Facebook work and dot work. Pretty standard day, but it was thankfully still productive. 

December 14, 2021

We had some off and on rain today, and it was cold, like 55 degrees. And yeah, that's cold to me now. We had a good ZLC, and coordinated on how to best help our Zone. We got to meet an awesome guy named Joseph. We also had a lesson after dinner with Mariah and Andy, some awesome people. We got to talk about just the first two points of the Plan of Salvation, and we got to answer and address a ton of questions, and things made sense to them. That is the best, a missionary dream. It was a good day, and we are going strong, just focusing on Church again this week. 

December 15, 2021

Today we had exchanges, and we headed up to Lompoc for exercise. I went with Elder Murdoch, and Elder Tree went with Elder Barnes. Elder Murdoch is awesome. We had a good day, full of finding and we were able to find one new person named Anna, who is really cool and has a lot of potential. 

We made a ton of calls tonight as well. What happens sometimes is you build up a bunch of interested people and then forget to contact them, and then you have a time to call where you just go through them all. That time was tonight. We also had a lesson with Keanna, and she is getting ready to go to the temple on January 29th with the Young Women! That'll be super exciting for her, and it'll help her keep building her testimony and hopefully keep her progressing. 

December 16, 2021

Today was very interesting, but it was still good. We did all of our studies and everything the best we could. We then spent our afternoon preparing for a Digital Disciple presentation we were going to give tonight. We have such an awesome Ward Missionary, Brother Pearce helped us out a bunch and let us use his laptop as well. We had a good thing going, but the only problem was, when it came time to have the presentation, only our Ward Mission Leader, our Relief Society President, and another member showed up. So it didn't end up happening, but it was a good shot. 

We had to cancel our lesson with Mariah and Andy, because they might have been exposed to Covid. We did get to have a lesson with Steven though, and commit him to church. We had a couple member visits, but didn't forget to get some Blender's before bed. 

December 17, 2021

Today was good, we initiated a new idea that President Carter gave to us, after he received it from the Area Presidency. It involves learning the Gospel sequences of the PMG lessons. We had a good District Council today as well, and we planned for our Zone Conference discussions. 

After District Council we got some Panda Express as a district and got back to our day. We weren't able to find anyone today, but we really put in the work. It seems like there are always ebbs and flows to missionary work. We called a lot more contacts in our phone, and so we are working through those. And we also got a Munchy Meal tonight because we are stupid people. 

December 18, 2021

Today we had an exchange with Elder Parker and Elder Johnson. I went with Elder Parker in our area. He's a great elder, good at contacting and being genuine with people. We also had service for someone named Cindy who is going through a rough spot recently. She is a super nice lady who gave us pizza afterwards. We had some good finding, and then we had dinner with the Ball family, good to see them again. We had the super good Filipino rice noodles with meat stuff that hit the spot. And we even got to hear some of their daughter's Elmo playing in the background. 

We then had a quick sit down lesson with Anna, and she is just so prepared. She is very humble and trying to find God. We will be passing her off to the hermanas though, because she is better at learning Spanish than English. We had another Bible study with Noah, and we studied chapter 5 of Matthew, he is already such a Christlike person. 

We also went by and saw Peggy, what a sweetheart. She gave us a tour of her little home and showed us her Christmas village and whatnot. She really loved Grandma Christensen's paintings that she emailed to me, and loves art. It was a really solid day, learned a lot of things about how to be a better missionary from Elder Parker.

December 19, 2021

We had a really good day, we found someone before church even started, and then we were able to get three people to church! That's the first time in a while that we have been able to get someone to church. We had a good rest of our day, we were able to get a lot of stuff planned out, and also had dinner with the Mann's. We planned out a missionary bingo for our Zone to do, thanks to Elder Tree's creative genius. We then had a Zoom lesson with Keanna, really trying to get her prepared to go to the temple. Other than that, we had a couple of member visits to finish off the night.