Good-bye to Centinela!

Well, as of this morning I am no longer in the Hermosa Liahona Ward, or in Centinela, or with Elder H. or in South Bay zone. I have been emergency transferred to take the place of an Elder who went home with appendicitis. I am in the Century Area in a car, and am back in the Inglewood 2nd ward!?!?! SO weird. Elder Ri. [Zach's companion in the MTC] and Elder K. [whose sister was Julia's companion for several months in Ohio] are now my zone leaders. I am their district leader and the new Fox Hills sisters are in my district, too. President called last night to let us know about the change. Elder H. and I were not expecting it at all, so it sort of shook us up a bit. I had the feeling that I should bear my testimony at church, so I did; I’m really glad now!  It was kind of a farewell. My new companion is  Elder Ro., who was in my zone in the MTC and came out at the same time I did.

 Here is an update on Centinela before the Spirit “called me away”:

I had exchanges with Elder B. and had a blast! I enjoyed studying Spanish even more than usual this week, and hope to continue now with my native companion. I learned a TON about the Atonement that I never knew before.  I also found out this week that we could skype for mothers day, which made me excited. I did not realize that Julia comes home so soon....santa mapache!

A. and R. are so awesome. I love them. They are going to get baptized – I can feel it. I will try to send a picture. 

After President called last night we made a few good-bye visits before planning, then got the area info all ready for Elder R. (Elder H.’s new companion), and then I packed. This morning the zone leaders moved me to the mission home and we got our car. Now I am here! I love you all! Hope your week is awesome!  God’s work is unstoppable and I love it!

But I ordered Shrimp Scampi!

Well, this last week was a busy one here. We found seven new investigators and gave out eight Books of Mormon (in three languages) and we are scrambling to follow up with all of them and teach them. That second lesson (Plan of Salvation) is always a crucial one that makes or breaks their progress. We have taught one man named V. twice already. He is very intelligent and let us come in even when he was ocupado (busy). We only had 20 minutes with him, but we'll take it!:D  I will let you know how that goes next week.

J.'s dad is not allowing him to be baptized, so we had to drop his date. We will still go over once or twice a week and see if we can involve his family more. I hope he can come to church this next week so he can receive more good feelings about the gospel being restored. :)

D. had a light bulb moment when we were re-teaching the Restoration. He all of a sudden said, " O! Por esto la iglesia necesitaba ser restaurado o re-establacido otra vez!" Basically "wow, that is why the church needed to be restored again". It was awesome. These are the moments that missions are made of. :D

Elder H. finished his 12-week training last week, so he is ready to be the next assistant ;). It is very odd to be done with that, and moving forward in other areas.

We met a Vietnamese family named the T. family. They had never heard of Jesus, which seemed odd to me. We tried to get another appointment, but the older family members are Buddhist and would rather we don't come back. We did get the chance to leave them a Vietnamese Book of Mormon, though. I think one of the daughters will read it, and another might, too. The mom loved us, even though she couldn't speak English. It had to have been the Spirit; he definitely speaks Vietnamese. :)

We had an amazing finding experience this week. We tried a potential we had never met before, but came to the wrong complex. As we walked up to the complex, so did a young woman named B. She asked if we wanted to get in, but we told her we had the wrong address (or did we?) We changed course, found the address and no one answered. The whole time I was thinking we needed to get into that first complex. We walked back out into the street, and a boy was walking that way on his way home from school. I knew he had to be going to that complex, so we followed him. He went inside, but the door closed and we were too far behind him to catch it. That was when the mail woman came up from behind us and let us in. That being the third miracle in a row, we went inside. I had no idea where we were supposed to go, but asked a family if we could help them carry their water jugs when they filled them up. They said they already had help. We stood there for probably 20 seconds and looked around. Then a thought hit me that maybe the family we asked to help was pointing us where we needed to go, so we tried their next door neighbor. We knocked, no response. This was when the same young woman (B.) came around the corner walking her dog. She lived in the apartment we had just knocked! We had an awesome lesson and she asked a lot of questions. We gave her a Book of Mormon and are going back tomorrow with a member, hopefully. She speaks English so we will have to give her to the zone leaders, but it was an amazing experience! It was all by the Spirit and we both pondered it for the rest of the day. It was a good day.

We had an earthquake the other day while we were on our bikes, which I actually did not feel. We were riding along when a couple of little kids yelled to us that an earthquake was coming, and to go home and be safe. It was pretty cute. We rode on, unaware that they knew what they were talking about and that an earthquake had actually already happened. Yeah, we had no idea. :)

We had the Mormon Helping Hands activity on Saturday and we cleaned out the storm drain by the Goodyear Blimp. It was pretty cool. We also taught R. again. We found him two weeks ago, but he did not show to his return appointment. We found him at home on Saturday and discovered that he is in 1 Nefi 11!!! Wow!! We will now try harder to nurture his reading desire.

We have made contact several times with a man named F. who is very generous, and we will be trying to do service for him this week, possible today. I will let you know. He gave me some basketball shoes and he is always trying to feed us. More to come in the future.:D 

I love you all! I think about you and pray for you, too. Keep working hard in everything and keep a good attitude. It makes all the difference in the world!

Morning at la playa

Howdie do everyone! We had a very good morning at the beach today and I got to see a lot of friendly faces :) I finally got to say high to Elder J. from Orem High. He is in the Korean Program! There are four Orem High guys here in LA right now. I also found out that Rachel F. from my freshman ward at BYU is here now in Spanish. Craziness!

This last week was awesome! We found several new investigators. One man has a crazy dog that is chained into the ground and jumps at us when we go by. I will try to take a video the next time we go.:) A’s wife was hit very hard by the Spirit when we gave her a blessing last week. She was talking about it for days.

We have literally been finding up a storm. We hit our BOM goal of six and had six new investigators. I love talking to people on the street or in their yard. We met one man named R. who was so intrigued that he wanted a Book of Mormon to read right away. One woman named P. had a BOM, but never read it because she assumed it was the same as the Bible. We taught her a bit and then gave her another BOM; she said she wanted to read a page a day! ALL of these people seem prepared, but we will see if they are ready now, or need a bit more time with the Spirit. We gave a Vietnamese Book of Mormon out the other day, too, to the lady whose door we helped fix a week or so ago. We wish- listed one and when it came, we took it to her! We also got to help S. paint his house on Saturday!

So, I was really enlightened in our Gospel Principles class on Sunday. I realized that I should have a lot more confidence in the things I do. I have the Priesthood of God and that gives me power to do hard things. With God on my side, I can do anything!:D  Elder H. also helps me see things differently; he analyzes things in ways I have never thought of before.

It was truly an awesome week. To cap it off, I was able to play a lot of sand volleyball today at the beach! We had too much fun. The time flew by and no one wanted to leave. It is weird to me that I am beginning to be the old fogie of the bunch. I don't recognize or know most of the missionaries anymore, and there are a TON of sisters here now. A lot of people asked me about my release date. Well, I figured the day would come. Now I need to find joy in my current position :). I love missionary work and want to live it for the rest of my life! I hope you are all safe and having a good week. Keep up your hard work and don't forget to smile!!! I love you!D

Remaining sentinel in Centinela

We are staying in Centinela! This means that Elder H. broke the pattern of my companions. I had never had a companion for longer than two transfers until now.

With our new zone goal, we have been finding lots of people these past two weeks. We are really excited and feel that there is some reason why we are both still here. Someone needs US. Now we just need to find them :D I feel like we are close to finding someone who really needs and wants what the gospel has to offer. We tract as often as we can and look for potentials. I have come to realize that we have no time to waste. We need to keep looking, even when we find people who have potential. Those who are ready will begin to progress and we will work with what we are blessed with.  We have begun to teach A.'s wife now, which is super cool. I hope someday soon to have the whole family for lessons.

We learned how to say hello in Vietnamese last week and I was able to use it once. The two woman looked surprised and began to speak excitedly to me. Sadly, I just smiled and nodded and they told me I was tall. Still, it was a funny experience. We also were able to get a Vietnamese BOM to give to a woman we did service for a while back. We got new phones last week, too! It is so weird to have a touch phone and better texting. I cannot imagine missionary work without cell phones and texting. That is a technology that Heavenly Father gave to us for a reason!

Between conference sessions last weekend, we helped set up a birthday party for C. and M.'s daughter A.  I also saw Kristen B. in the choir at conference!

A few girls from my freshman ward have received their calls to L.A., so that could be fun. We get nine more Spanish-speaking sisters tomorrow. Craziness! 

I wanted to ask all of you, what are you doing to catch the wave of missionary work? Keep moving forward, keep smiling, love those around you, bear testimony, look up often and express your feelings to those you love. Don't worry about the things you cannot control and take the challenges when they come. I am astonished at the difference I have seen in my attitude these last few weeks. Be optimistic and always see the positive. Those of you who are sharing the plan of happiness with friends, smile or they won't believe you! I love you much!

Conference heaven!

I LOVED conference this week! Santa Mapache! It was a bit scary that I wanted to take so many notes. I hope you all received a ton of inspiration and ACT on what you learned! :D

It was a crazy week! I am sorry it is such a short e-mail. I love you! Take care! Next week I will get all the things we missed.