December 15th, 2009 (Email)

hello again!

It sounds like the Lewis Christmas Party was good this year. I think I missed the one the year before I left. I had to work or something. I'll go to the next one though!
A few days ago I went on exchanges with the Compton elders. Elder Ball worked with me in our area and Elder Twiss went with Elder Challis and worked in Compton. While they were over there someone broke into their Mazda! And since missionaries pretty much have absolutely nothing that a thief would want all they stole was their garage clicker. Pretty lame. So now they have to go get their passenger side window replaced. Elders Ball and Challis moved out of our apartment today because a new apartment here in Long Beach was opened for them. It's pretty obvious that my area's getting split next transfer-- the new elders will move into our apartment. President Sexton was planning on re-splitting the area before he even sent me here. He told me in our interview that the only reason he hasn't yet is because we don't have enough elders.
Last Thursday President Sexton had our zone go over to the mission home for our District Meetings. Usually we have District Meetings at the stake center but the Sextons wanted to feed us lunch and give us our mission pictures as a Christmas present. They don't even have to let us into their home let alone feed us. In fact one of the general authorities specifically told Pres and Sis Sexton that it wasn't their responsibility to feed us. But they did anyways. So I gave our district their training for the week (about putting commitments at the center of our lessons) and then Sis Sexton fed our zone and the Huntington Beach zone some taco salad. I saw Elder Bliss there! He goes home in February. He told me about David and Dixie's baptism. He baptized Dixie and the other elder baptized David. After lunch President Sexton gave each elder a copy of a parable about the Restored Gospel that came to his head while he was running on the treadmill one morning. It's pretty good. I put it in my mission binder so I'll show you someday.
This week Elder Twiss and I saw a lot of miracles that have to do with prayer. We've been praying more for direction to know where to go to find people to teach. We were led to a street where a lady answered the door on her phone. She looked shocked to see us and she told us that she was just on the phone with her member boyfriend who made her promise that if we were to knock on her door she wouldn't reject us. A day or two later we were led to another lady with a member boyfriend who said she'd be willing to listen to us. And yesterday while we were knocking an apartment complex we found a couple less-active members that'd recently moved to Long Beach from Downey. The younger lady said that a couple days ago she was praying that someone from the Church would come and give her a blessing. She immediately recognized that her prayer had been answered. We called the Elders Quorum President to come (so we could enter the home) and then we gave her a blessing of comfort.
That's pretty much all that's happened this week. A little bit of rainfall but nothing legitimately winter-ish happening here. Hope your having a jolly December and I'll e-mail you again next week and then I'll talk with you on the phone the following Friday! :) Hasta luego!
Love,
Elder Tyler Lewis