Week 84: Simi Valley

May 16, 2022

It was a good Preparation Day, we visited the Ronald Reagan Museum. Ran into the Agoura District there, completely unplanned. We also got to skate with Elder White and his companion for just a little bit, and I enjoyed that. Pretty standard day, except that Elder Strauss was feeling really sick today, so we stayed in for the night, but had a member visit with the Merrill's. Hopefully he doesn't have anything too bad. Last week was tough at times, but God always pulls me through. On to another week, should be good. 

May 17, 2022

Today was a bit slower. Elder Strauss needed to just sleep some more to recover from his sickness, and so that meant a lot of free time for me. I did studies, laundry, cleaning, reading, pondering and prayer. Was able to feel the Spirit a good few times today. 

We did some Facebook finding after Elder Strauss woke up, and then used our Jersey Mike's gift cards to break up the day. After dinner, we did some calls and were able to talk to a few people. But we had one call that went super long. The guy just had a lot of problems with certain tenets of Christianity that we don't believe in ourselves. I'm just working on patience, that's all. After a testimony Zone Zoom we are turning for the night. 

May 18, 2022

A good day, we got some good stuff going, and Elder Strauss was a lot better. I put some really good studies in, and studied Moroni 7 deeper than I usually do, really good stuff in there. We had a great lesson with Jackson, used the little wooden Plan of Salvation that I have, it kept him interested in the lesson. We also had a lesson with George and taught a little bit of the Restoration. Finished off the night with the usual. We have our mission tour tomorrow, we'll see how it goes. 

May 19, 2022

Today we had a mission tour with President Bragg of the North America West Area. The top half of the mission met at the Goleta building in person, and we watched over Zoom, and we'll be switching tomorrow so we can listen to him in person. 

Afterwards, we had a few lessons, one with Jorge, and another with Tami. We followed the direction we received today in our lessons and it worked great, like praying for your companion while they are speaking. President Bragg is really good at teaching from Preach My Gospel. We had a Spirit filled lesson with Jorge and answered some of his questions, he is progressing really well. He reminds me of T, they look similar and act similar. Tami is still doing awesome, she just has a lot of opposition going on. But she is so eager to read the Book of Mormon and get closer to God. She has already changed so much since we started teaching her two weeks ago. 

We also had a coordination meeting. We haven't done much finding lately, but I need to keep telling myself that it's ok because we are teaching lessons instead, which is the whole point of finding. A good day, should be good tomorrow too. 

May 20, 2022

The rest of our Mission Tour was today. We got to hear about how to improve our member work, and some keys to missionary excellence. So the task now is to internalize everything, or at least the important parts, of what we learned. Today later on, we finally figured out how to do a new PMG Chapter 8 weekly planning. We had a couple of member visits with some members, like Sister Jordan and Sisters Brasher and Lighthouse. Now, we're just trying to think of a fun challenge to do for our Zone tomorrow morning. My struggling creativity is really working on this one. 

May 21, 2022

Today was a really good day, we went on exchanges, Elder Strauss went with Elder Murdoch and I went with Elder Merrill. We had an entire day open with no appointments, not even a dinner appointment. It was just us, the bikes, and the wind beneath our wings. A straight dream. 

We must've contacted at least 40 people today. We were just cruising from area to area, stopping our bikes and talking to everyone we saw. We started teaching two new people and found a bunch of other interested people. We went to a place called Burger Express for lunch, and then instead of a member dinner, they gave us a gift card, and so we ate out again at a place called Beep's. We found Jesus, a super cool guy who drives sweet cars, and Tony, someone who rescues a lot of dogs. So many good people to talk to, and it was a great day with Elder Merrill. He used to live in Elk Ridge and go to Liberty Academy, and turns out we both had Mrs. Phillips as our Kindergarten teacher. You can always make the funniest connections with people. 

May 22, 2022

Had three people come to church today: Jorge, Jackson, and Tami. I'm excited for Jorge, he seems like he's been getting into it more. Jackson's coming along, and we gave Tami a blessing right after church to help her with her health concerns right now. 

After lunch we taught Mission Prep, because it was their last class, and we were asked to teach. We received some more unfortunate Covid news today, and we now have to distance from each other as missionaries. But not as bad as the last. 

We did a bunch of dot knocking, but lately no one has been home very much, hopefully that will change. Had dinner with the Fortuna's, and a member visit with the LeVines. Going to be a good week.