June 30th, 2009 (Email)

Hello there!
Sorry I took so long to get this out to you today. Elder Rada and I went on an adventure to Long Beach and Whittier. We went to Long Beach to get some medicine that Elder Rada needed and we went to Whittier to visit the Buddhist Temple. That was fun. I've got a bunch of neat pictures I'll send you someday. My memory card will be full any day now so maybe you'll be getting that in a couple weeks or so. The Buddhist Temple was so amazingly weird. I loved it. It's on top of a big hill in the middle of a huge memorial cemetary. There were a bunch of funny statues of tiny Buddha people doing a bunch of random things everywhere. You'll see.
Yesterday we met Sister Chun's family. We met her son and daughter and their families. They came over for this service Cerritos was doing for Sister Chun's late husband. They planted a tree in his name. He was very active in the community. He wasn't a member of the Church but from what I hear he was more active than a lot of the members. Not sure why he never converted but it sounds like he was a really neat man. He died of a heart attack just a couple years ago.
Well, Jessie Rodriguez decided to drop us a couple days ago. Not sure why. He just stopped being interested all of a sudden I guess. So that was too bad. None of our investigators have been coming to church. We've been trying really hard to get those people coming to church but they just don't know how to keep a commitment. Our only solid baptismal date at the moment is with Shinelle Bosse. She's progressing just fine. She's reading and praying and understanding the doctrine just fine. She said she's going to get married with Daniel so she'll be able to be baptized by August 1st. We think she'll be able to be baptized even before then but we'll see. We also found a part-member family named the Piceno family. They're less-active and the 10-year-old daughter Raquel isn't baptized yet. The kids (Anabel (15), Raquel and Jose(12)) all say they want to come to church but we're not sure how interested the mom is yet. They're a fun family to visit. Anabel came to church this Sunday. The other two kids didn't come because they were with their dad.
I wanted to share something with you from one of my recent personal studies. 2Nephi chapter 26 verses 23-33 says a lot about the nature of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. 2Nephi 30:1 also says something interesting. Both these scriptures highlight a truth President Sexton shared with us from our last zone conference. He said that "in the eyes of God we're all about the same," or in other words, in comparison with perfection we're all about at the same level. I believe that.
Thanks for the pictures!!!!!!!!!! That made my day. Hannah has grown so tall! It looks like you all had a lot of fun in Southern Utah. Yeah I heard about Michael Jackson. We were knocking an apartment complex in Hawaiian Gardens and everybody was watching the news and talking about it. See, we don't need to watch TV. We know what's going on. Except I had no idea Wilco was releasing a new album! Sweet. More good tunes that will be there when I come home. And I'm glad to hear Hannah doesn't have any problems. :)
I love you!
LoveElder Tyler Lewis