Hello again!
Last week a few miracles happened. Remember the Gonzalez family? They're a partially less-active family and last transfer Samantha, the eight-year old daughter, was baptized and she had me confirm her. Sister Gonzalez's mom, Beatrice, isn't a member. We started reading the Book of Mormon with her and Sister Gonzalez a few weeks ago. Beatrice says the same thing about the doctrine whenever we read from the scriptures or teach her- "I know that" or "I believe that," she replies. So last week Elder Rada, Sister Gonzalez and I decided to ask her why she hasn't decided to be baptized if she already believes the doctrine. She said, "Well, back when I first started visiting with missionaries a while ago I decided I didn't want to be a Mormon." Then Sister Gonzalez said, "But mom, if you believe in the Book of Mormon then why won't you be baptized with someone with the priesthood?!" Beatrice answered, "Well, back then I didn't want to." We started catching on, so Sister Gonzalez then asked her- "So are you saying that you weren't ready then but you're willing to be baptized now?" Beatrice said she thinks she's ready to be a Mormon now. She committed to be baptized July 18th! That was the first miracle.
The second miracle has to do with Beatrice as well. You see, Beatrice has been a smoker for about 52 years. She had Elder Rada and I take her cigarettes away from her about 5 days ago and she hasn't smoked ever since. She took the rest of her packs of cigarettes to the store and got her money back and she's just gone cold turkey! It's amazing! She's definitely prepared.
The third miracle is that Beatrice and Shinelle Bosse both came to church yesterday. We haven't seen an investigator at church all transfer so we were really really happy to see some success. Beatrice was awesome in Sunday School. She had something to say about everything. It was kind of funny.
Elder Rada and I are curious about what will happen next week. The next transfer starts a week from today. 17 new missionaries are coming into the field- that means 17 missionaries are going to be training- and that means that a LOT of crazy changes could happen. We think that this area's going to be split in half like it was a while back. We'll see. I hope I don't get transferred because we should be having some baptisms here this month.
Wow Tyson's already coming home next week?! That went by fast. I remember him opening his call like it was last month.
Hey remember that Joshua Creek CD you sent me a while ago? That's pretty good. I have another album of church songs by them called "Sunday afternoons" or something like that. Don't worry I'm not spending too much money still. I'm actually figuring out how to save a little bit. Of course, it's easier to save money when you live with a member... but also I'm saving all of my change. It really adds up.
My 4th of July was completely different from all of my other 4th of Julys in that it was just about the same as every other day out here. I went to sleep to the sound of tons of fireworks mingled with police sirens.
Well, have a good week and have fun with the extended family! Nos vemos y les amo mucho!
Love,Elder Tyler Lewis
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
June 30th, 2009 (BONUS)
by the way- David and Dixie are married now and they should be getting baptized any day now! YAY!
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
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
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
June 23rd, 2009 (Email)
Hey everybody!
Things are starting to get busier now that our teaching pool has sky-rocketed. We found 13 new investigators last week and three people said they'd prepare themselves to be baptized. We received a referral to go visit a guy named Jessie Rodriguez. He called the MTC Referral Center to receive the Finding Faith In Christ DVD so we delivered that to him. He was really excited to meet with us and he absorbed the Restoration lesson pretty well. He said he'd prepare himself to be baptized July 11th. That happened on Thursday.
On Friday we taught a new investigator named Shinelle Bosse. We brought a member with us to that appointment and we taught her about the Restoration too. Her "husband" is a member who was a gangbanger not too long ago. Shinelle said she'd prepare herself to be baptized August 1st. The reason we pushed that date back that long is because she and her "husband" need to get married first. There's also some Word of Wisdom stuff to work out. But we had another lesson with the Bosses yesterday and we brought Bishop Jensen, our Ward Mission Leader with us and they committed to live the Law of Chastity and the Word of Wisdom so who knows? Maybe Shinelle will be prepared earlier than August.
On Saturday we were knocking and we found a new spanish-speaking investigator named Jesus (Spanish name- pronounced "Hey-Seuss") while we were knocking in Hawaiian Gardens and he let us into his house immediately and we tuaght him the Restoration lesson. We invited him to be baptized July 18th and he said he'd prepare himself for that date!
So as you can see Elder Rada and I are seeing a LOT of success here. Yesterday we had 8 appointments scheduled and only 2 of them didn't happen! So a good portion of these investigators we're finding are turning out to be pretty solid. But there's one thing we need to see improvement with- and that has to do with our investigators' chuch attendance. None of them are keeping the Sabbath Day holy! If this keeps up we're going to have to push back their baptismal dates and possibly even drop some of them. You can't be baptized if you don't come to church needless to say.
Since we've been knocking a lot in the One-Ways and Hawwaiian Gardens we've had to face a lot of dogs lately. If they're mean we obviously don't open the gate and waltz onto the property. We're not that dumb. But if they sniff our hands and seem harmless we go on ahead. One dog in particular was surprisingly harmless. He was a big Rotweiller(?) named Tiny. At first I didn't want to take any chances because there was a sign on the garage that warned that he was a gaurd dog but he sniffed our hands and didn't do anything and lazily went back to his corner in the shade. So we went through the gate and knocked on the door. Then Tiny decided he wanted to come see us. He just walked slowly over to us and sniffed us and licked our hands a little. The owner answered the door and was shocked. She asked us "Didn't you see the sign? Didn't you see THE DOG? I'm afraid for you!" She was actually pretty amused that we knocked her door but she wasn't interested in our message so we left at that.
I wrote Elder Jordan Call a letter last P-Day and he wrote me back pretty fast. Sounds like he's having a good time in the MTC. He says there are highs and lows. As is the truth. He's serving spanish speaking in New York. Elder Rada told me that the temple in New York is in a building and there's a coffee shop right below it. The people that go to that temple in the mornings say that it smells like coffee.
That's cool Hannah gets to be on a WCF commercial! And I'm glad you liked my Darth Vader picture. I'm really enjoying the work over here now that we have a lot of people to visit. Hope you have a great week!
Love,
Elder Tyler Lewis
Things are starting to get busier now that our teaching pool has sky-rocketed. We found 13 new investigators last week and three people said they'd prepare themselves to be baptized. We received a referral to go visit a guy named Jessie Rodriguez. He called the MTC Referral Center to receive the Finding Faith In Christ DVD so we delivered that to him. He was really excited to meet with us and he absorbed the Restoration lesson pretty well. He said he'd prepare himself to be baptized July 11th. That happened on Thursday.
On Friday we taught a new investigator named Shinelle Bosse. We brought a member with us to that appointment and we taught her about the Restoration too. Her "husband" is a member who was a gangbanger not too long ago. Shinelle said she'd prepare herself to be baptized August 1st. The reason we pushed that date back that long is because she and her "husband" need to get married first. There's also some Word of Wisdom stuff to work out. But we had another lesson with the Bosses yesterday and we brought Bishop Jensen, our Ward Mission Leader with us and they committed to live the Law of Chastity and the Word of Wisdom so who knows? Maybe Shinelle will be prepared earlier than August.
On Saturday we were knocking and we found a new spanish-speaking investigator named Jesus (Spanish name- pronounced "Hey-Seuss") while we were knocking in Hawaiian Gardens and he let us into his house immediately and we tuaght him the Restoration lesson. We invited him to be baptized July 18th and he said he'd prepare himself for that date!
So as you can see Elder Rada and I are seeing a LOT of success here. Yesterday we had 8 appointments scheduled and only 2 of them didn't happen! So a good portion of these investigators we're finding are turning out to be pretty solid. But there's one thing we need to see improvement with- and that has to do with our investigators' chuch attendance. None of them are keeping the Sabbath Day holy! If this keeps up we're going to have to push back their baptismal dates and possibly even drop some of them. You can't be baptized if you don't come to church needless to say.
Since we've been knocking a lot in the One-Ways and Hawwaiian Gardens we've had to face a lot of dogs lately. If they're mean we obviously don't open the gate and waltz onto the property. We're not that dumb. But if they sniff our hands and seem harmless we go on ahead. One dog in particular was surprisingly harmless. He was a big Rotweiller(?) named Tiny. At first I didn't want to take any chances because there was a sign on the garage that warned that he was a gaurd dog but he sniffed our hands and didn't do anything and lazily went back to his corner in the shade. So we went through the gate and knocked on the door. Then Tiny decided he wanted to come see us. He just walked slowly over to us and sniffed us and licked our hands a little. The owner answered the door and was shocked. She asked us "Didn't you see the sign? Didn't you see THE DOG? I'm afraid for you!" She was actually pretty amused that we knocked her door but she wasn't interested in our message so we left at that.
I wrote Elder Jordan Call a letter last P-Day and he wrote me back pretty fast. Sounds like he's having a good time in the MTC. He says there are highs and lows. As is the truth. He's serving spanish speaking in New York. Elder Rada told me that the temple in New York is in a building and there's a coffee shop right below it. The people that go to that temple in the mornings say that it smells like coffee.
That's cool Hannah gets to be on a WCF commercial! And I'm glad you liked my Darth Vader picture. I'm really enjoying the work over here now that we have a lot of people to visit. Hope you have a great week!
Love,
Elder Tyler Lewis
Monday, June 22, 2009
June 16th, 2009 (Email)
Hello everybody!
Darn I wish I could see those pictures you e-mailed me. Myldsmail seems to be censoring me from everything that isn't words. So please please make me some prints! Por favor!
This week was a little bit slower than last week and we had some days of trial. It all started when Carlos, our spanish speaking investigitaor with a baptismal date, decided to drop us. We called him to confirm an appointment and he told us he didn't want to meet with us anymore. We went to visit him to see what the problem was and it sounds like he got into an argument with his wife about the Church and he lost. We let him know that we were disappointed and that he was making a bad move. He loved church, he loved what he read and what we taught him-- but when the first wave of opposition came his way he gave up. Pretty sad.
After that disaster we had a few slow days where a bunch of appointments fell through and we spent a lot of time tracting. We did find ten more new investigators last week. Remember though, a "new investigator" is different than a "progressing investigator." A new investigator is a person that we teach, set up with a return appointment, and leave a commitment to. A lot of new investigators tend to not be there for their return appointments, but some of them are.
Things are looking up though. Yesterday alone we found 6 new investigators, and most of them seemed pretty solid. We've been sifting through our "dropped-files," which are the teaching records of old investigators, and we found one in particular that caught our attention. It was a man named Vicor Munez who was going to be baptized 3 years ago and even had his baptismal interview. He had to be interviewed by the mission president at the time and it turned out that he was on probation and needed to wait 3 years until his probation was lifted. Obviously 3 years has passed, so we visited him briefly yesterday and he said he's interested in talking to us again.
Siser Chun took out her old guitar a few days ago and she lets us play it now whenever we find time. I can play at least 2 hymns on the guitar now- "I Believe In Christ" and "If You Could Hie To Kolob." I turned "If You Could Hie To Kolob" into a country-folk song. Elder Rada likes it.
Elder Rada sure can cook. He's teaching me how to cook a bunch of amazing things. He's made egg sandwiches, lintels (?), and this morning he made an AMAZING potato-egg-onion soup. My diet is healthier than ever now. I have tons of fruits and vegetables every day. I drink very little soda and I seem to only drink caffeine either by accident or whenever a member just hands me a coke- which happens very very rarely. It happened yesterday though, and I gulped it down happily.
Sounds like you had fun on your trip! I'm still having fun down here. I love the work and I'm working hard. Happy Father's Day on Sunday Dad!
Love you!
Love,Elder Tyler Lewis
Darn I wish I could see those pictures you e-mailed me. Myldsmail seems to be censoring me from everything that isn't words. So please please make me some prints! Por favor!
This week was a little bit slower than last week and we had some days of trial. It all started when Carlos, our spanish speaking investigitaor with a baptismal date, decided to drop us. We called him to confirm an appointment and he told us he didn't want to meet with us anymore. We went to visit him to see what the problem was and it sounds like he got into an argument with his wife about the Church and he lost. We let him know that we were disappointed and that he was making a bad move. He loved church, he loved what he read and what we taught him-- but when the first wave of opposition came his way he gave up. Pretty sad.
After that disaster we had a few slow days where a bunch of appointments fell through and we spent a lot of time tracting. We did find ten more new investigators last week. Remember though, a "new investigator" is different than a "progressing investigator." A new investigator is a person that we teach, set up with a return appointment, and leave a commitment to. A lot of new investigators tend to not be there for their return appointments, but some of them are.
Things are looking up though. Yesterday alone we found 6 new investigators, and most of them seemed pretty solid. We've been sifting through our "dropped-files," which are the teaching records of old investigators, and we found one in particular that caught our attention. It was a man named Vicor Munez who was going to be baptized 3 years ago and even had his baptismal interview. He had to be interviewed by the mission president at the time and it turned out that he was on probation and needed to wait 3 years until his probation was lifted. Obviously 3 years has passed, so we visited him briefly yesterday and he said he's interested in talking to us again.
Siser Chun took out her old guitar a few days ago and she lets us play it now whenever we find time. I can play at least 2 hymns on the guitar now- "I Believe In Christ" and "If You Could Hie To Kolob." I turned "If You Could Hie To Kolob" into a country-folk song. Elder Rada likes it.
Elder Rada sure can cook. He's teaching me how to cook a bunch of amazing things. He's made egg sandwiches, lintels (?), and this morning he made an AMAZING potato-egg-onion soup. My diet is healthier than ever now. I have tons of fruits and vegetables every day. I drink very little soda and I seem to only drink caffeine either by accident or whenever a member just hands me a coke- which happens very very rarely. It happened yesterday though, and I gulped it down happily.
Sounds like you had fun on your trip! I'm still having fun down here. I love the work and I'm working hard. Happy Father's Day on Sunday Dad!
Love you!
Love,Elder Tyler Lewis
