August 19, 2013

Dear folks,

I'm glad the weather there is nice. The heat picked up a little here this week. There has also been a pretty big forest fire nearby in California so our whole valley has been filled with smoke this last week and we have been coming back home smelling like a campfire almost every day. 

 We still haven't heard anything about the changes from our mission president so I don't know what's going to happen. I will let you know though.

It's always tough dealing with families involved with drugs. It really clouds their minds and causes them to make really poor decisions. It's especially tough dealing with kids because there is not much we can do if the parents aren't on board. We were teaching the 11, 9, and 7 year old of a less active woman but she is was also involved with drugs and abusive relationships and had super bad depression that often lands her in the hospital because she freaks out. She has since stopped having us come over because her life is so messed up and it's hard because the kids were doing really well. Just keep working with him and being an example. Even if he can't be baptized right now, there can be a seed planted that will sprout later. Meth is a huge problem out here as well, most of our investigators have been involved with it, it's really nasty stuff. You can always tell who is on it too or who's done it because most of their teeth are rotted or missing and they have pieces of skin missing from their arms because they pick it off. 

This week has been pretty good and pretty bad. We have Ts who is doing really well and is progressing very fast. He is also doing more missionary work the half the ward combined, he wants everyone he knows to talk to us and hear about the gospel. Cs on the other hand, who was supposed to be baptized back in April before I got here, has given in to his sister and decided to stop meeting with us and go back to Judaism for a time, even though he has told us before that he has received the answer that this was the true church. The only problem is he lives with his sister and talks to her every day but hasn't been meeting with us for various reasons.

Elder Js, another missionary in our ward who also lives with us, was made district leader after our former DL was emergency transferred to Eli to replace a sick missionary. Now every time he enters a room he says,"Your District Lord!" and sings Darth Vader's theme song from Star Wars. He is a pretty funny guy, very easy to get along with. 

We also started teaching this guy named Js who is an alcoholic we met on the street. He always passes by and yells out God bless you or something like that, sometimes it's hard to understand him because he really slurs his words. He's a pretty interesting guy and really wants to stop drinking. We will see where he goes, him and his wife are planning on moving pretty quick here. 

We had a pretty interesting experience on Saturday. We were supposed to help Cty paint her doors but she wasn't feeling well and asked us to stop by later. We then decided to go to a different less active members house but he wasn't home either but as we turn to leave we see Sm running across the street. We decided to go say hi because she's a hard person to catch. When we walked up she saw that we were in our service clothes and asked what we were doing. We said we were doing service and she said, "Oh, you remembered the block party I was setting up." And we were like, yeah, even though we had completely forgotten. We ended up helping her set it up because she was was running very behind and then we also got to meet the whole neighborhood and show them that LDS missionaries aren't that weird. 

We also ran into a woman named Csy at the party who is a "Pagan Christian" or she practices witchcraft and Wicca but believes in Jesus Christ so it's ok. We have ran into a lot of Wiccans before and they all say the same thing, "Everyone always says Wiccans are bad but I'm a good witch, I only use magic for good not for bad like some others do." It's really hard to talk to them especially because they are not use to the Spirit. It often makes them feel bad inside so they interpret that as "evil" instead of realizing if you surround yourself with a bad spirit, you're going to feel bad around the Holy Ghost because that's what happens. Casey had been to an LDS church before and thought it was "evil" because she felt sick inside, but Elder Bm and I looked at each other and were like no kidding. That was an interesting conversation, we spent like half an hour talking to her. 

Other than that, not much else has happened. We are still walking everywhere and there is no sign of a car in the near future. They might be cutting our ward down from 2 sets to 1 set again but we will see. I love you guys and hope you all have a great week.