Grateful for Promptings!

Missionary work is like riding a turtle.  Slow but Steady!

What’s up familia!! Hey thanks again for the email! Sounds like everyone is doing well and I’m glad that all the winter sickness is starting to end. We have been battling it as well even here in sunny CA.  Elder A** is sick again and actually lost his voice for like two days so I had to do ALL the talking.  It wasn't too bad, but really quiet when at home. Ha-ha.

Okay well this week where do I begin...  I will start with the bad news.  None of our investigators came to church this week after all confirmed 'yes' they would come.  We had some awesome lessons on Friday and Saturday, too.  So sad to say, but we may have to drop them.  It’s not final, but it needs to happen. We need to find people who actually want to take the steps necessary to change their lives. So we really aren’t having much success with our investigators.  To make up for it, we have put our focus on our dying little branch and the existing members here. There were only 61 members at church yesterday.  So we are in overtime mode trying to reactivate members and get people coming back to church!

Also this week we had a really good training given by President Tew and some of the Zone Leaders throughout the mission. It was really inspiring and really helped me personally to get my head back on the straight path and focus on my priorities here.

On Friday I went on exchanges with DL Elder C** and it was great! I love Elder C**.   He is awesome and we had a bomb day.  An experience I really want to share was when we were walking to dinner. (We were working in my area.)  As we were walking, I told Elder C** that I felt that we needed to go visit J**.  I felt a strong prompting to talk to him. So that’s what we did. (J** is an investigator we are planning on passing off to the English missionaries next week).   When we got to the gate, it was unlocked which is rare!   Also, he was home and he was a mess. He told us how his life has come crashing down on him and how he doesn’t know what to do to help his problems. We then had an awesome lesson on prayer and having faith during the trials that come into our lives.   We can know we are on the right path when hard times come because the devil wants to knock us off the path.  The lesson was great and we taught him the simple steps of prayer and how he can be strengthened by it.  We followed up the next day and he said he felt so much more at peace!  Wow, pretty cool how God helped us help him just by a quick thought.

Elder A and Ja.  Go UTES!

Also while on exchanges on Saturday night, Elder C** and I were walking down this street to an investigators home when a guy on a bullet bike (which had the Texas state flag decals all over it) stopped and waved us over to talk to him. We were thinking what the heck??  Do we go?? Ha-ha   So we did, and it turned out to be the best decision ever!   He was visiting from Texas and said he wanted to take us to dinner right then.... we were shocked because we hadn’t had dinner that night and now a random dude wants to take us out! We are just so used to people yelling at us or having people scream "SATAN!!" every time they drive by.  Ha-ha  He was the coolest dude ever! I grabbed a photo of him which I will send next week!

The rest of the week was pretty hard with no real solid success.  I am worried that we won’t be able to contribute to meeting our goal of one baptism per companionship before the end of the year. Could you please pray for our investigators?  Thanks!

 I’m doing good and the Spanish is always improving.  Hope ya’ll have a bomb week!! Love you all!

Hasta Luego,
Elder Woffinden

A Service Surprise!

Elder A and Jason at the temple

Hola familia!! Que tal??

Wow crazy that another week has come and gone.  It seems like whenever I turn the corner p-day is here again.  This past week was great! To answer your question about our service project on Saturday… yes we saw Elder A**’s brother.  We were in line getting our t-shirts and volunteer badges when his brother came up from behind and surprised him. Ha-ha. He was shocked and didn’t really know what to do… it was hilarious. He was "trunkie" for the rest of the time there because of it.  The service was good, it was for some band performances and we were in charge of checking people’s stamps to allow them into the event.  We sat in the sun for 5 hours checking stamps and my face got fried which I don't mind because it was some much needed sun! ha ha It was fun and we got to see some of the performances which were pretty good.  It just made me super “trunkie” for college football.  Also, that night nurse Adams took us five missionaries to Buffalo Wild Wings!! My favorite!  I ate WAY too many wings.  It was fantastic! Not to mention the tender mercies of the college football games playing on the TV while we ate. Ha ha   So... Saturday was awesome.

Ja and Elder C

As for the rest of the week we had some good success with some of the investigators we have. D** and M** are doing awesome! They are reading in the B of M and M** even came to church yesterday without us having to tell her! Okay maybe it was because of the "Sabbath Day" throw-down lesson we did on Thursday that made her come.  We were just happy she did!  It’s pretty hard teaching D** and S** who are both 16 years old. We have to work around their high school routine which is hard especially since they both have bap dates for the beginning of December. We were able to teach them a couple of times this week and they have made some great progress.

On Thursday, Elder A** and I gave a 30 min training on accountability during our zone meeting.  I was pretty nervous to do it!   I felt they chose the most unaccountable missionary to do it. (jk) But after many days of working on our lesson and practicing it turned out really well and we gave a bomb training!  I think I taught myself more on how to be more accountable for myself and my investigators from the training than teaching others which I’m pretty happy about.

This week we didn’t really have a whole lot of success finding any new people to teach sadly. However, we did find one named Y** and she truly was a miracle find! On Friday, we had been walking around Long Beach all morning and we had zero success. My back was killing me and we were both not too happy about what was going on so we just stopped and sat on a curb to rest. After about 10 minutes, we just decided to pray to see if maybe God had someone in mind for us. After praying honestly I still had no idea what to do, but we just stood up and decided to walk a mile or so up the road. Once we got there we had an impression to go by P** (who is a potential investigator). She has shown no signs of wanting to talk to us so it didn’t really make sense to knock on her door, but we did anyways. Lo and behold we found her daughter Y**!  She is super cool and was really grateful for the message we shared. She loves to talk about God and said we could come by some more to talk next week!  Pretty cool.  We had all our less active families except for one come to church and one investigator so it was a good Sunday!

Fun at the Halloween branch party!

As for me this week, it was a tough language week.  I feel like everybody stepped up there Spanish and kicked it up a few notches. Everybody was speaking faster and with words I had never heard of before and it was just dominating me during lessons, etc.  It took a huge toll on my confidence and abilities to communicate which I have been battling with. I’m hoping that I can improve and catch up. I just need to have more faith I guess and just trust in God. Even when things get rough the best thing to do is never give up!

Well that’s it for me. I hope you all have a great week!

Love you and miss you thanks again!!

Mucho cariño! Elder Woffinden

Elder A and Ja buying food at Target

This picture was taken by a sister in the Long Beach 10th ward.  She also gave them $50 to help pay for groceries. Both boys were out of money in their missionary debit card so it was truly a blessing.  We are thankful to the CA members for taking care of our missionary sons.

Preachin' in the Ghetto

Preachin' in the Ghetto

Hey!! What’s up!! I hope all is going well for everybody, and again thanks for the emails.  Well, for me, this week was great! We have been getting baptismal dates set with more of our potential investigators. We are having problems with them not coming to church however.  Every week they don’t come, we have to push their baptismal date back which is frustrating beyond belief, but I guess we just need to be patient and rely on the Lord and in his timing of things.

P-day this week was super fun!  We combined as two zones for a giant "nerf" gun war in the stake center gym. It was way fun! We had set up all the tables and chair racks as bases and objects to hide behind while we just went all out on each other with the guns we had.  It was awesome!

This is what "Macho Missionary Models" look like.

This week we also did something called a "blitz" here in our zone. We all met at the church then went to each other's areas in search of new investigators. It was great and very successful. We found new investigators in every area we went into because there was about nine of us in the area at one time.  Elder A** and I found a way solid lady named G** from Honduras in Elder T** and P**’s area.  I spotted her from down a street in her garage moving boxes so we decided to walk all the way down to contact her.  At first she was not having it at all.  She was sort of ignoring us and packing, but something switched and made her sit down and actually talk to us. After talking for a while, we found out that she is and has been mad at God for many years because she feels that he only answers others prayers and not her own.  Wow, just like that her doubt smacked us in the face and we knew exactly what to do!  We then had a great short lesson and passed her off to Elders T** and P** to teach!

Thanks mom for the Halloween treats!

Always a Utes fan!

Angry Birds Costume for the Branch Party.

HALLOWEEN NIGHT!!!! was super lame. Haha We just stayed inside and cleaned. However, thanks to everyone who sent me Halloween packages!! They were awesome and I have sooo much candy.  It’s unreal.  I was praying for trick or treaters to come by my house, but no.. so I will just get fat off of it.

We picked up some new investigators this week including an old former investigator.  We set a BAP date with her on Dec 7th!  We are so excited to work with these awesome people and hopefully help them reach the goal of baptism! Also, other good news is that all the less actives we have been teaching the family V**, and H** are now fully active!! They have come to church for well over a month now and Hno H** even blessed the sacrament yesterday which was sweet!

This week I read a book called, “The Peace Giver”. It was awesome! I read it in less than a day which is unheard of for me!  It really teaches some good lessons about the Atonement of Jesus Christ and about forgiveness and becoming free from the chains of the adversary. I highly recommend reading it! It’s about 200 pages, but super good.  I received a ton of great insight and revelation from it!

Well, I can’t really think of a whole lot more to talk about. Elder A** and I are killin' it here (at least we think so) haha and our investigators are great! My Spanish has improved a ton! People in the branch have said I sound Mexicano, so I guess that’s a good thing! We had a huge rain storm here also and I really loved finally being able to work in the rain and get out of the hot weather of S. CA. I hope everyone has a great week!! Thanks for all you do.  Love you guys!

Hasta Luego,
Elder Woffinden

A Long Beach Halloween!

Elder A and Jason

Hey!! What’s up everyone! Thanks for the email and for all you guys do!! I'm doing awesome here in LB.  This past week was great and we had some good success and a couple of branch Halloween parties which were off the wall! I was shocked how good they were.  I was not expecting it.  Ha-ha.

Elder P's last day! - Nos Vemos Amigo

To start with our teaching… we have been doing great with our investigators.   D** and L** and their mom M**.  We set a baptismal date for the 16th!  So pray for them please!   They are awesome and always keep their commitments of reading in the B of M and seem to understand the lessons pretty well.. So I'm super stoked about that.  Yesterday at church we realized that nobody had showed up to church! Since we have class first then Sacrament meeting, last Elder A** and I left church and literally went to their house and dragged them to church. Ha-ha it worked! They really liked it too even though all the speakers were English speakers with a missionary translator at the stand.  It made it very hard to feel the spirit, etc.  (Please pray that I never get called to translate..super hard stuff.) V** our other solid investigator has been struggling with his drinking lately and disappeared for like a weekend so we have no idea what happened to him.

Long day out on the streets of LB - still sick!

This week I have still been fighting my cold and it’s gotten worse.  I think I have bronchitis so that's been annoying to deal with coughing every 10 seconds.  Besides those investigators, we aren't really teaching too many another solid people just a lot of potentials and a couple miracle finds.

Okay so this Halloween party that we went to was at our Ximeno branch and the 10th ward (white) and it was huge!  A big success!!  I will try to send pics next week! There was a costume contest and food contests and everybody was dressed up.   About 3 hours before the party we were out working and we came across a yard sale, which are famous here, and I saw an "angry birds" costume for 2 bucks.  I bought it and that was my costume.  Ha-ha   It was super stupid but it worked! All the other missionaries were lame and didn't do anything so I was proud to represent.  There was trick or treating and tons of games for the kids and even a bounce house which soon became a missionary war zone! We went nuts in that thing.  Ha-ha

Trying out the new camera - Fish eye effect.

Well the rest of my week was pretty slow but really good!   I went on exchanges with Elders T** and S** on Friday and was glad to be out of my area for a little while.  My Spanish has gotten tons better!  Honestly, I just decided to not care and when I did that, it got better.  So the key to life is just don’t care about anything and good things come from it! Ha ha (jk)

This week is going to be good and I am excited for Halloween even though we aren’t allowed to do anything past 6pm due to missionary imposters! Ha-ha yeah pretty dumb but things are going good here missionary wise.  It’s still super hard and stressful and there are days when my "ganas" are just close to zero and I don't want to do anything (especially being sick), but by going out and working that's when the blessings come.  If we do our best, that’s all the Lord asks of us.  Well that’s all I can remember for this week.  Love ya’ll! Have a great week and thanks for everything!!

Love, Elder Woffinden

Typical Missionary Week

What is up everyone!! Hey thanks for the emails.  It is great to hear from you all again!  Hmm, where to begin with this week... it was a long one that’s for sure.  The days felt like years! ha-ha   It was also a hard week, too.  We had to drop a lot of investigators because they just aren’t progressing!   No reading, praying, church… nada so we had to say see ya… which is sad.  They will probably be picked up in the future when they are more prepared.

Monday was a bomb p-day!!  We went to a driving range to golf because an investigator works there and got us unlimited balls to hit!! ha-ha  It was sweet!  It’s all electrical and you don’t need to do anything but hit the ball and then another one pops up to take its place which was pretty sweet! We hit probably 500 or more and wow I am sore!! ha-ha   My body was wrecked from all the twisting and swinging since I am so out of shape now.  It was a blast!  It was also Elder Ps last p-day here.  He went home on Tuesday which was hard because he was one of my best amigos here and now he is home watching sports center etc. ha-ha   That is what he said would be the first thing he did when he got home.   Too funny!!

Okay, like I said, we dropped a ton of people, but we did find two super good finds!!  We found them out of desperation, honestly!  A** looks like she will be a super good find. I really hope everything goes well with them both because I feel pretty down about how none of our investigators really progress beyond a certain point. The whole coming to church part is their weakness and they never come!  But on a positive note, we have been working with some less active families.  The V** and H** families were both super inactive when I got here and now they have attended church three weeks in a row! So that’s always a bonus.

Police Helicopter spotlighting our house.

This week we had a crazy thing happen… like always! ha-ha  On Saturday night, we were in bed at like midnight when we heard a helicopter approach and start hovering over our house.  All of a sudden, a giant spotlight hits in our window and the entire room is filled with light.   We were like what the crap!?  It turns out that our neighbor was having a gun scare and was threatening someone.  I guess the cops were called and stormed his yard while the helicopter circled our little apartment providing light.  It was awesome!   Honestly, that really made my week. Ha ha

Well other than that I’m doing good! Long Beach is great and I am having a good time. The mission is super tough!! Very mentally challenging for sure with a whole lot of stress.  However, there are days when all the stress and tough times are worth it in the end.   There’s always room for improvement and believe me I need to be better! But I’m glad to have you all supporting me back home and it means a lot.  Well that’s about it for this week!  Have a good one!!

Love,
Elder Woffinden

Staying in Long Beach East

Hey!! What’s up everyone!! How was everyone's week?? Mine was awesome!! So many good things I can’t even remember them all sadly... I always forget to write them down so I will do better from now on. But to start, this past week was the last of the transfer and.... I’m staying with Elder A** for one more.   I will honestly probably kill him since he goes home in 2.5 months! So I’m stoked for that!

This week we had some success.  I was on exchanges with Elder C** on Wednesday night and we had some great lessons during the day and everything was looking good for "prime time" (6-9 pm).   But, we didn’t teach anybody and we're having some doubts on if we would teach that night. At like 8:45 we made it to the street where we live and we knew we had to do an "obedience walk" since it wasn't 9 yet.   Honestly, I was tired and just ready to go inside. We started walking and were talking and having some great convo together when it finally was 9! Sweet! Time to go inside.  On our way inside, I saw a guy sitting by his fence smoking a cigarette.  My first response was its all good, let’s go inside, the day is over.  Something told me to talk to him so we decided to just bite the bullet and do it, and it was awesome!! This guy saw us and immediately threw out his cig and was ready to talk to us. We had a good short convo about life, etc.  He brought up the question, why are there so many churches in the world?  And boom we were ready to respond! So cool we now have a return apt. tomorrow and are super excited to meet with him.   Also this week we set a baptismal date with V** for the 2nd of Nov!  He is really doing awesome and his reading and prayers have improved tremendously since I first met him.

On Tuesday, we went to the temple with all the departing missionaries and it was great!  All 8 of us Spanish Elders loaded up into the big van at like 7am and headed to the temple, but what we failed to remember is that from 6-9 in LA is pure doom of traffic!!  Ahh.. the worst. We didn’t get to the temple till like 9:30 and it was just an incredibly long drive for such a short distance. haha  There are way too many people here!!   The temple was great.  I really loved it and we even got to go out to Denny’s after which I haven’t had in forever and it was bomb!  If you get an opportunity try the pumpkin cinnamon pancakes! Ha

This week has also been a week of really hard times too. This week probably sets a new record for me having people really trying to push our buttons and ridicule us. We had a guy throw his full sprite can at us while parking our bikes and it exploded everywhere.  We also got into a convo with these 3 super stoned dudes and they were criticizing us for where and how we get our authority, etc.  I noticed during the convo he was filming us on camera and it was just annoying.  We came across this guy who was walking around like he was so gangsta when he noticed us, he just comes up and shows us his arms that are tatted up and it says "anti Christ".  We were all, okay?? and pretty much just walked past him and ignored him. haha.

The branch here is doing great! We had a new Elder’s Quorum called and they are having a sports night every Friday night.   We can play volleyball, basketball, and ping pong. It has been awesome! haha   Now, I have no idea how to talk in "sports mode" in Spanish because back home I can talk trash or laugh and make jokes with people during games etc, but here I just sound like an idiot and have no clue what is being said at times. haha   Plus all our investigators were dropping some curse words every now and then which I have learned to catch now, and it’s pretty funny.  haha.

Well Elder A** and I are doing great! We have been doing some good work and he hasn’t been sick anymore.  I had a pretty knarly cold and was sick all week until yesterday.  My voice was pretty much gone which was terrible and I gave myself a headache from talking it was so bad, but I’m good now.  Since this next transfer is 7 weeks we are going to have Halloween and Thanksgiving together which should be cool.  I’m excited for this transfer and hope all goes well and that we hopefully get some baptisms! But that’s about it for me.  I hope you all have a great week! Thanks again for your emails, I really appreciate them!! Until next week!!

Elder Woffinden

Conference was Awesome!

This bird wanted to know more about Mormons!

What’s up!! Hey how’s everybody doing?? Wow this week was fantastic! Hope yours was as well? Well, to start off it was a busy one full of meetings and of course conference! Pretty sweet! But this week we had the Long Beach zone conference with President Tew. It was great! The missionaries that spoke and gave trainings are studs, and I really respect them and their desire to serve. Oh also we were able to watch “Meet the Mormons” movie!! Sneak peak haha It comes out this Friday and it was fabulous! It made me super trunkie though!  haha   All the college football and other things in the film… especially the Salt lake part, but anyways it was great.  I would highly recommend seeing it because the funds raised go to a good cause so that’s boss.

After zone conference, the Combods (Cambodian zone leaders) and us went to Cafe Rio!!  First time in forever! It was amazing, even though I eat that food all the time.  It’s super different from homemade Latina food. haha.  Also this week Elder A** has been super sick.  I don’t know what’s wrong with him.  He has a doctor apt today at 3 and has been having severe stomach and abdominal pain plus yesterday was throwing up all during conference.  Hopefully he gets better soon!  This week we didn’t have a whole lot of time for "normal" missionary work, but when we did we had some pretty good success. We haven’t found many new people lately and our ‘member present’ lessons have nose-dived this week.  We have been progressing well with V**   He came to the Sunday morning conference session which was perfect for him! On Saturday night he told us that he wouldn’t really want to progress until he got an answer about living prophets and apostles and low and behold on the Sunday morning session it was full of that!! BOSS!  I was pumped!   God truly knows what is best for his children, and I know that V** learned a lot yesterday.  We also have set a baptismal date for R** for the 2nd of November!  We all know how the adversary works on investigators progressing towards baptism so we will just pray and help her along as best we can.

Well, conference was awesome! It honestly was probably the best one I have ever seen... it was amazing.  It amazes me how much I used to hate watching conference as a kid and especially in college.  Wow, it turns out it is more than old guys rambling on. haha. I really loved Elder Bednar's and Elder Christofferson’s talks… they were amazing!  What about y’all?   What stood out to you?  I loved how they really focused on living prophets and revelation in these days because "Dios es el mismo ayer, hoy, y para siempre! "   It was awesome!

So this week I am hoping that Elder A** gets better so we can work because the past two days we haven’t really been able to.  We need to find new investigators! This is the last week of the transfer so we need to go out with a bang.   That’s honestly about it for me this week.   LB is the bomb and the branch is sick so things are good.  I bought a new Spanish help book today at Barnes and Noble so I am hoping that will help me with the sentence structure, etc in Espanol. But love y’all!!   Have a great week!

Hasta Luego!!

Love, Elder Woffinden

My view... BOSS!