2:37 PM (22 minutes ago)  | | |
On Mon, Feb 13, 2012 at 12:41 PM, Samuel Cottrell <samuel.cottrell@myldsmail.net
2-7-12 Tuesday
Today I went on splits with Elder Hoyt, in my area. We taught Hector first, he's doing well but still wants to wait for his wife to come to church before he makes his decision on being baptized this month or not. He works at Domino's and gave us some pizza dough to make our own pizza's at the apartment. Rad. We went to the Guarnero's and ate 'chiliquila's' - one of my favorite mexican plates - we read about Alma's conversion and talked about that for a while. Sister Guarneros wants her husband to get baptized so that she can be sealed in the temple. It's heartbreaking to see her - you can tell that she is just aching for it. I hope that we can do something to help Brother Guarneros get there.
2-8-12
I got a call from my companion this morning - he and the elder he was on splits with were locked out of their apartment. They went outside in the morning to work out and ended up locking themselves out. No one had a spare key, so Elder Hoyt and I drove to the mission office to get the spare up there - they ended up sitting on the porch of the apartment for 3 hours. I laughed really hard. Poor guys. We did service - Erna was too tired to go, so I took Gwyn - she's pretty cool, but no one is like my Erna. I tried this thing afterwards called a Boba - some smoothing drink with tapioca balls at the bottom. I'm pretty sure I gagged. Mom might like something like that though. Ha. I got back with Elder Matheson and we taught a new investigator - Kristina - she loved the message of The Restoration and said she had felt the spirit. We are excited for her. We bought some things from the dollar store to make our pizza's with the dough Hector gave us. We made a pepperoni pizza, a bbq chicken, and a dessert pizza - they turned out pretty good. We took some to Hector to thank him. We ate "mole de hoya" at the Barrios' home - it was super good. We watched a video with them on mormon.org explaining why we should be grateful for the freedom that God has given us. We made cookies for a lesson we have tonight - we taught Victor, Danny, their mom and their grandma (the mom and grandma are members - victor is 11 and danny is 6) - we taught about the restoration - we built a church with Book of Mormon's and explained the apostacy- they really liked it. Victor wants to be baptized on the 26th of this month - bonuuuusssss.
2-9-12
Today we went to a combined district meeting with the westwood zone leaders. It went pretty well, we talked about goal setting. We met with a recently returned sister missionary for dinner - she went to peru and talked to us about some of the experiences she had. She is so eager to help the work move forward in her own town. I thought that was pretty cool. We did weekly planning today at the Drake Stadium - the track stadium at UCLA - That was fun. We had a lesson with Andres - he said that he has a hard time staying awake sometimes in school - I told him to pray for help and he'll be more awake. Prayer works for that too, right?
2-10-12
This morning we woke up at 6 to go run up the culver city mountain. We went and looked at it the other day - it's this HUGE hill that's been transformed into basically a work-out park. It's a 1/2 mile to the top - you can take stairs, a dirt trail or a paved trail. I bet my companion (a kid that runs track for BYU) that we could run up it in 4 minutes. He said there was no way - that it would take us probably 8. We argued for a minute about it and decided the only way to find out, was to try it. So we went this morning. We started at the same time - we forgot how steep this hill was (we took the paved route) - it was super super hard. He quit running about 2 minutes into it and passed me the timer to keep going. I gave it my all to get to the top... I made it in 5 minutes and 15 seconds.. more than 4, less than 8. I almost died though - my legs were on fire, my head was pounding and my throat felt like I swallowed a knife every time I inhaled. We chilled at the top for a few minutes - we watched the sun rise over L.A. - you can see everything up there - our whole mission - downtown, santa monica, the ocean - down to the docks. It was cool - we ran the dirt trail back down - it was easier, but still hard. We had a district meeting today and used this experience to help teach how to use the Spirit as we set goals - it went really well. This old man talked to us for an hour about the army- only the 2nd lesson in my whole mission in which I dozed off for just a second. I felt bad... but seriously man... Anyway, we visited a lady in a convalescent hospital and gave her a blessing - she was grateful to have us there. We went to Brother Calderon's (an inactive member) and started to help him cut a new door for his bedroom - we were in our missionary clothes and he didnt want us to get dirty, but we insisted. It was so much fun - I really miss that kind of work. We sanded it, cut it to size and painted it. We left for an appointment, but they canceled. So we changed into some clothes that we could get dirty and went back to surprise brother calderon. We helped him build some shelves and install them - he was very grateful. So was I.
2-11-12
Brother Calderon was looking for a board a little bigger than he had - his family doesn't have anything at all - they are really really poor, so buying anything was out of the question. Today we found an entertainment center sitting on the side of the road, with what looked to be the exact size of board that he needed. We checked it out and decided that it was worth a shot. We got a screw driver from the apartment and went back to where it was. We took it apart and threw the big board in our car, along with all of the screws that we took out. We took it to Brother Calderon - he was so so grateful that we remembered and cared enough to bring him this simple, used piece of wood. It was a great experience. We taught a new investigator - Jonathon. He is the step-son of a member. He is really really smart. We taught him about the Book of Mormon and he thinks that it is true... he just hates church. He's 13 years old and gets bored really easily. We are really excited to work with him. Plus his mother makes us really good food everytime we are there. Bonus. I hit my head on a branch overhaning the sidewalk - that was graceful.
2-12-12
I guess I talked in my sleep last night... It went something like "tall? sister thompson is tall... psh, no.. he's just big boned" - I don't remember my dream and sister thompson is about 4 foot 9. Church went well, we had our early meeting and then the regular block. Victor and his family came - we will teach them later tonight. We made some stuff called 'naan' - it's like an indian bread - we gave some to a member that told us about it. There is a new elder in the zone - well temporarily - he is waiting for his Visa to go to Mexico. We get alot of those. We ate with the Lopez family and I preached repentance. We had a lesson with Victor and his family - we explained the Plan of Salvation and told everyone to draw what they think it looks like - then we gave awards for the best one's at the end. That was pretty fun, they seemed to like it alot. It was a good day.
I love you all and will talk to you soon!
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