9-4-11 Keep reading, keep praying, keep the faith!

8-30-11 tuesday

Today we woke up and drove to the artesia building for the fundamentals. Elder Maddox and I trained on how to help investigators get to church... for 3 hours... to a grip of new missionaries. It was sort of intimidating and we didnt have alot of time to prepare but the Lord helped us out for sure. It went pretty well. I went on splits with Elder Hsieh (she-ya) - he's one of the missionaries in the chinese program that just started. He came here from Taiwan - he doesnt know much english but he's a really great guy and trying to learn the language as hard as he can. It's been great to go on splits with these missionaries this transfer - I always work my hardest. Thats really the point of exchanges - to show the other missionaries how the work SHOULD be in their area's and to give them support and encouragement in the work. We had a good lesson with Kyle - a fiance of a girl in the singles ward. He's not interested in the church at all but is learning for his girlfriend... it was pretty simple. We pray that he felt the spirit. We talked to alot of people on the street today. - A guy even showed us some pictures he took of aliens. Nice. August 30th... this will always be a memorable day.

8-31-11

Elder Hsieh and I had our interview and discussed things he can work on to improve his area and bring more souls unto Christ - he's doing great. We went to 'Fireside' - the old folks home - to do our weekly service. It's probably my favorite hour of the week. We get to help these great people in a great way. We walked down to the farmers market on 3rd street - right by the beach - and let them buy whatever they'd like. It's great to get to know some of them. Elder Maddox and I sort of planned a zone goal for Sept. - we have to present it to president next tuesday so we gotta get it ready. We have so so much to do in the next few days... companionship interviews, stake reports, mileage allotments, zone goal, exchange reports, get allison confirmed, ... i'm going crazy.

9-1-11

We had a meeting with the 'head sisters' today in the VC to discuss how we can have better communication and accountability with the sisters in our zone - that was fun. They're really great ladies. We planned some more and then picked up reports from the DL's, had dinner with the barahonas and organized our stack of papers.. busy day.

9-2-11

District meeting day - we trained in one of the districts on finding with faith - that went really well I think. It's so so important to talk with everyone regardless of their outward appearance. We had an interview with Elder Riska - a DL, and then went to the next district meeting - Elder Son - the DL was real late so I conducted the meeting and helped it along - he was stuck in traffic in Malibu. The Elders and Sisters in our zone are so great and so on top of things - they're all really great examples to me. We took some time to fill out stake reports and get everything ready for that big meeting.

9-3-11

We had a meeting with all of our district leaders today about the upcoming zone goal. We are working on having faith in the standards of excellence that have been given to us and every companionship baptizing monthly. We feel like it's a stretch, but we know that we can do it. The DL's gave us some positive feedback - so we went to the apartment to finish planning it. It's called "Faith-- It's what you do" Clever huh? I keep having these nightmares where a little girl is hunting me down. I think it's the stress catching up to me.

9-4-11

Church day. Allison got confirmed - awesome! we had a great meeting with SM3 as well as La Cienega. William - the chinese guy that knows NOTHING about God, came to church again today and stayed the whole time. It's SO tough teaching someone that doesnt have a christian background. I can't imagine how tough it is to work where jonson is at. He's doing great though - he said he didn't like sacrament meeting but that he'll be back again next week. Bonus!. I didn't feel very good today - I tried to fast but it made me kind of sick - hopefully I can get over that.

That was it! I love you all! Keep reading, keep praying, keep the faith!

Love, Elder Cottrell