Canes

This week has been awesome! We have found 4 new part-member families, two are Polys with huge families! :) I love the mission its great! 

A member in church shared this analogy that I really liked. He talked about a rail from a railroad that had a big rut or dent in it. The rut was made by an intense amount of heat, pressure and weight by the train on the track. This specific rut was caused when the right set of wheels on the locomotive were spinning wildly while the left side was stuck. He then compared each set of wheels to our spiritual wheels and our worldly wheels. If our spiritual wheels are stuck and we let the worldly wheels spin out, we are caught in a rut. Similarly, we have to be aware of the dangers of the world and roll with it, not shut out things around us to keep the worldly wheels rolling with the spiritual wheels causing us to move swiftly through life. This way, there is no extra friction and we are able to avoid ruts in life. 

The gospel brings happiness. Its so cool to be how the Lord works with us step by step. Sometimes the changes are so small we dont realize it day to day, but looking back we see what a vast change or difference has happened. Keeping doing the little things! They bring spiritual power! :)

Members View of the Pacific.

Dinner with the Ward Mission Leader, Bro Rose.

Zone Leader Summit with President.

Selfie with the Trio.

Raising Canes opened a location in the mission. We had to do it. 

Have a great week!

Trio

Another week in San Pedro! We picked up a new companion for the rest of this transfer, next 3 weeks. Elder Solano from Chicago, and he goes home in 3 weeks! He is a stud and its been fun working in a trio. There are definitely pros and cons to 3, but its been a good change of the norm. 

Elder Ekberg, Elder Solano, Elder Griffin

We are continuing to work with the part member and less active families in the ward. Its been really cool to see and experience the gospel in their lives. The mission is moving towards an attitude/culture of convert hungry rather than baptism hungry and its been cool. Rather than looking out on the number of baptisms, dates, or progressing investigators, focusing on the number of people we are helping come to Christ is more significant. In these short few weeks, we have seen our efforts in less active and part member families attending sacrament more frequently and a greater desire to learn and share with others. Its a cool and very different side of missionary work. 

This week is the big 20. Momma Ekberg gifted the companionship with some plastic frogs that you can shoot into a cup, and that has become our favorite lunch activity. 

I love the mission! :) Enjoy your week! Book is blue, church is true and God is a mormon!

HMMVs and PolyPower

Another week here in San Pedro! Its starting to get cold when the sun goes down (ocean breeze + no sun + from Arizona = brrrrr). It was a good week though! 

Friday we had Zone Conference/Mission Tour with Elder Cook & Elder Cordón of the seventy. It was awesome, although 12 hours of meetings is a long time.. I learned a lot from the spirit about perspective in the gospel. There is so much more to everything around us than the face-value. Everyone we meet could be the stake president in x amount of years and bless generations of latter-day saints. 

Saturday was full of cool little miracles. Our good friend Alexa, who is preparing to be baptized works at the local burger joint right down the street, so we pop in everyday to see her. The night manager the second half of the week is not very fond of us (religion in general but we always get the end of the stick on that one here :)) and she was working Sat. However, after Zone Conference and learning about looking through Gods eyes, we talked to her and just loved her to death. And her heart was softened! She was laughing and opened up to us and let us come in and say hi real quick to the staff! 

We had had a couple of appointments with some less-active and part-member families but they fell through and we were wondering why and decided that there must be someone Heavenly Father wants us to visit. E Griffin thought of a man, Russell whom I had briefly met and he had taught once, although he didnt seem quite interested. We stopped by and he was home! He came out to the fence and we talked for a solid 15 minutes about his new desire to come closer to God, how he has been attending a local Christian church and that he has been studying the bible! Within a month or so, his whole desire to strengthen his faith had increased 10 fold, complete 180° flip from what we had remembered. Awesome!

In addition, due to our "visiting Russell" trip, we overlooked trying to find a recent convert who hadnt been seen or heard of in about a year. While we were walking home for the night we started talking with this man walking the same direction. After introducing ourselves and asking for his name, we realize it was him! It was the recent convert we were going to try and find hours earlier and here he was! God loves His children and looks out for them, you and me! He always provides a way for His plan to have full swing in our lives! 

Some of our favorite Polys the Tuiaanas got sealed this Saturday! :) ahh it was awesome! 

Last week was Fleet week, here is a helicopter.

Our YM President in the ward had us accompany him to pick up some less-active young men for mutual in his 1988 HMMV.

Here is Sis Mayorga. One of my favorite members from the Westwood Ward, mission nurse and was E Griffin's comp for 45 minutes when he was in the hospital. #sistercompanions

Love you! Have a great week! :)

Labor Day - Fleet Week

Happy Labor Day! This week was Fleet Week here in San Pedro. The Navy is chilling in the Los Angeles harbor and its been cool to see all the peeps in white walking around. They have free tours of an aircraft carrier and destroyer ship so we are going to go cut the line and see if we can shoot some big water guns. :) 

This week has been a good one! We have been trying to work a lot more with less actives and part member families. Its not uncommon here in LA to have more than 60-70% of the ward less active. There is 900+ members in our ward here in Pedro, but only 200 or so come on Sundays. :) So theres the "low-hanging fruit", in the words of President Haynie. Its been awesome! On Thursday we stopped by this family's home and we had dinner (freshly caught fish from the port!) and a lesson with their non member friends who were over and the fam! We talked about the temple and the blessings that come from it and set up a time to go to the VC with them. Then on Sunday, the family came! :) It was awesome!!

Alexa has been doing well tambien! She came to church for the second time and really enjoyed the testimony meeting. We also had a lesson this week with her during her dinner break at work. We talked about the things we teach as missionaries and asked if there was anything specific she would like us to teach her. It was super cool to see the Spirit working within her as she thought about what she wants and needs. She is awesome! 

 We saw a Ferrari parked in the ghetto this week. 

We had dinner with a member in their house. They live on their boat. ️

We had Zone Training Meeting this week. Our zone is awesome! We have 4 greenies, which is been cool to reflect back on last year and my first couple months of the misíon. I don't there is any other place that I could have grown as much as I have than here on the mish. The best part, Ive got a long time left! :) The experiences I have had on the mission are most times too hard to explain or share over email, but I know that Heavenly Father is specifically aware of each of us. He has a plan for each of us and wants us to be happy. As we desire to know Him, to follow Him, He will bless us. As we align our will with His, He will strengthen us, give us power to keep our covenants and His commandments. We will be gifted with the peace and joy of the gospel. I love the mission! 

Have a great week! :)