Merry Christmas!

Christmas Box Arrived!

FELIZ NAVIDAD!

Hey, what’s up family and friends? How’s everything going? What are everyone’s plans for Christmas? Thanks for the email today, I really enjoyed hearing from all of you. This month has been flying by for me! It’s already the December 22^nd, wow! A lot has happened here.

Nothing like Christmas Pringles and deodorant.

Ooops. Sorry mom, I forgot the Santa hat!

To start, Elder A and I had a pretty good and eventful week here in LB. I already told you about the visiting General Authority on Monday and Tuesday which was great!  As a district we have really found ways to have fun together! Half of my district goes home on January 13^th, so they are all pretty trunky and are really excited and nervous about going home, so we have been doing all sorts of fun things together for their "lasts" of everything. On P-day this past week we decided to invent a new game, haha. So we were at the church playing sports and decided to do something different for a change. A couple of missionaries had Nerf guns and a random flashlight for some reason, so we decided to play Zombie tag. haha! It was the funniest and most fun thing I have ever done! It was so crazy and was actually scary, haha. There were times when Elder C and I were the only humans left alive, everyone else was a zombie and we were hiding. It was a blast! Don’t worry, the chapel was off limits so we weren't too crazy, and we cleaned up so it was all good! But, we were trying to have some fun and blow off some steam because we’re all really stressed about our areas and investigators right now, so it was a good break for us. 

I love getting stuff from home.

This week we had a lot of good lessons and success! We actually also had a miracle story that happened on Saturday night. There is a family in our area that is super inactive, and honestly, the whole 4 months I have been here, I haven’t even seen them one time, except their son! They have ALWAYS ignored us. It wasn’t until we didn’t have anything to do Saturday night while we were walking that we received a call from the hermana saying, “I need you to come to my house right now!” We were stunned, but we visited the family and it turns out she wants to come back to church. She has really been having a hard time in life. Her husband decided to chase after his ex-girlfriend and just grabbed his things and left her and her kids, so sadly she is in a mess. But, we talked to her and helped the best we could and she even came to church! Whoo!!

Loving the 12 Days of Christmas!

Also this week we had a really crazy lesson with a girl named C on Friday. We were in the middle of a lesson on the Plan of Salvation when we heard a load thumping on the door. She got up to answer the door when all of a sudden; these cops came into the house looking for her roommate for some reason! I don't know why they were there, but the police stayed for like 40 minutes and so did we. haha. We just looked like fools sitting on the couch, not knowing whether we should leave or stay. Personally, I wanted to stay to see what happened, haha. Long story short, the lesson was a disaster, but hopefully we will get a second chance to teach her! 

Presents from the "Sisterhood." Scriptures are required to guess what it is.

As for investigators, Elder A and I have been doing a lot of thinking about the area and our investigators and we decided if nobody came to church last Sunday after doing all we could to get them there, we would just drop everyone and start fresh. AND.... that's exactly what happened. We went by everyone’s house Sunday morning, and even missed the second hour of church waiting at the bus stop for an investigator who never showed up, so sadly, we dropped them all and now we don't really have anything set to do anymore. However, this is good because we can now focus on finding! Since we don't have anyone, I'm positive God will see we are in need of people to teach and will provide us with success. 

This last Sunday at church all the missionaries sang "Noche de Luz" during Sacrament Meeting, and it was amazing! We have been working on it for like two months to make it "barbershop quartet" quality, haha. The members loved it! 

Elder C's going home. I'm going to miss this guy.

Well, that pretty much sums up my week. But, as for Christmas, I am so excited to see you all! I am going to Skype home sometime between 1:00-3:00 pm. I will call first to let you know to be ready. I hope it works and goes well. I can’t wait to hear and see you all!! Love you!! Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Woffinden 

Christmas is Around the Corner!

Merry Christmas from the Mission

What’s up family!!! Hey wow I received the packages this past week they were awesome!! Thanks so much for all the hard work and time put into them! I love them. It was funny because some Elders were all like "man you get mail every week! Ha-ha so thank you!  But I’m glad you received my Christmas card! I still need to send out a lot because I don’t have addresses so I might send them home and then have you mail them. I made that at Walgreens! Super easy took like 5 min since that’s all the time I had, but I’m glad you liked it.  Tell Janell and the Berry family that they are in my prayers and the prayers of the LB missionaries.  Our love and prayers go out to them.

Also to Elder Pecht or "Bubba" now! Ha-ha I am sorry I couldn’t make it to your departure fireside on Sunday!  I did all that I could to get an investigator to come but it just didn’t happen. But I love ya and I am going to miss you here in LB!! It was amazing to serve with you here in the same zone! Until next year!!

Rain, rain go away!

Okay well another week down.  It is crazy how Christmas is next week I can’t believe it!  Ha-ha I will admit it is nice not having to worry about gifts or wrapping anything. It’s a good break. But receiving the package from y’all was awesome it has made every morning or night really fun and exciting looking through scriptures and guessing what it is.  Ha-ha.  This past week has been a really good one!! We had a lot of great things happen this week. I just pray I can remember them all or at least explain it well.  To start, it has been really cold here! I know not like back home, but I have turned into the biggest wuss out here being used to 80s all the time so the slightest cold wind or rain just rocks me and we have been getting pounded with rain this week. A couple nights ago we had what I thought was a hurricane outside at like 3 am it was coming down harder than I have ever experienced.  The palm trees were snapping and things were flying all over the place so we both decided to just stay up and study from 3 am -6:30 since we both couldn’t fall back asleep.

Here I am, in the rain pulling the sympathy card.

Working in the rain has turned into something I love to do!  It’s a ton of fun and I just like trying to pull the sympathy card on people to try to get new investigators! Sadly... doesn’t work!

As for our investigators, this week was a hard one. We had to drop V** on Friday night. We hadn’t seen him all week and so we decided that we needed to go see if he was home.  We walked to his house and sure enough his gate was locked like always, but two minutes later we see these two hammered drunk guys walking down the street towards us.  I was all "ugh that’s V**, I know it" and sure enough it was him.  There was beer all over him and three more beers in his hoodie so we stopped him and asked him what was going on. Long story short, and a small feud between his JW friend and we told him we couldn’t come by anymore and he agreed sadly. It was really hard for me because I really love his family! They are all so awesome!  Temptations and friends sometimes can change people to where they won’t take the steps necessary to change.  Hopefully, he will in the future.

Feeling the holiday spirit decorating a member's tree. 

Our own Charlie Brown Christmas tree.

D** is doing awesome! Of course she didn’t wake up for church last Sunday even when we were begging her mom to wake her up at the door.  So her baptism isn’t going to happen for Elder A** and I before the end of the year.  I am very disappointed, and we were really set on reaching this goal!  I guess it wasn’t my "lot" to get one this year. I know that numbers shouldn’t count, but it’s hard when we get attached to people and to the goals you set and pray for, and when you don’t achieve them it’s very hard to cope with. But we’re alright now just need to move on and keep working towards their progression! We have had some small little blessings this week with finding people to teach when we didn’t have a lot going on so I have a lot to be grateful for!

Our halls are decked!

Yesterday we had the privilege to have a member from the 70 come and speak to us along with President Tew! It was Elder David Baxter from SCOTLAND!!!! (I said that in my accent and I have gotten real good at) ha-ha. It was so good! First off he is hilarious! He was cracking jokes left and right and was just a really good speaker. We had the meeting go from 10-4 so it was really long but wow the spirit was indescribable! I have no doubt in my mind that President Ryan M. Tew will be either a 70 or an Apostle someday! Just watch and see! His testimony and knowledge of the Gospel and love for the Savior is out of this world! I love that man. But anyways it was awesome!

Well that sums up my week! Christmas is next week and I am so excited to see and talk to you all!! I hope you have a great holiday season and may God bless all of you and know that I am grateful for your love and support in my life!

Hasta Luego!!

Mucho Carino,

Elder Woffinden

Merry Christmas from, the Great Pumpkin (?)

A Tough Week, But a Good Ending

Singing a hymn after our Thanksgiving feast.

Hey family!! How’s it going!? Wow, your email was great. It sounds like you had a great time in Ireland! (I said it with an accent as I wrote it, haha.) I’m super jealous because I have always wanted to go there! When I have my millions of dollars down the road I will, haha.

This week was a tough one. For starters, on Monday and Tuesday it absolutely poured rain here! Man Long Beach cannot handle rainstorms—everything was flooded! The streets were filled with water and everybody's yards were miniature lakes, haha. Of course, me being the nice guy that I am, haha, gave my umbrella to Elder T because he didn't have one. I figured it was just going to sprinkle, but once 11:00 am hit, it pounded and I was soaked all day! I thought people would be nice and let us in, especially since I looked like I just took a dip in the Pacific, but nope, they just slammed their doors or ignored us completely, haha.  Oh well, I’ll send pics next week.

It was kind of a tough week.

So Elder A and I have three people who are supposed to be baptized if they come to church this week! If they don’t there is no chance that they will make it by the end of the year. So last Saturday Elder A and I were walking down a street and we both had the impression to go visit an investigator that we had dropped a month before because she wasn't interested. So we did and had a great lesson with her! Then 3 more bomb ones with her this past week, and on Saturday we went by and asked if she was going to come to church and she said yes! So sweet, we were pumped because she has a date for December 30^th. We told her we would have a member pick her up for church. Then Sunday comes around and ALL the members cancelled on her—nobody could take her which was soooo annoying! So at 9:30 am Elder A and I decided to walk to her house (which is like a 2.5 mile walk one way) and take her personally to church. We arrived at her house and knocked on the door for what seemed like days and even tried calling her many times and nothing. We could hear people inside and Elder A thought he heard D’s voice which was sad because we were clearly being ignored. So, to make a long story short, none of our investigators came to church and man it had a bad effect on me.  Later, we found that the reason A, our other investigator, didn't come was because he had a seizure late Saturday night and was now in the hospital. It’s crazy how all this happened within 12 hours! I personally am very passionate on meeting our baptismal goal and on helping these people change their lives, so this just set me into a rage. I didn't want to talk to anybody; I kept thinking to myself, how could this have happened to us? Why?? I have been praying for a baptism and for our investigators to come to church and they just won’t do it, or something always happens to them. I was DONE. But, after a very long day of church, I finally cooled off and sorted out my mind with Elder C (our District Leader), He is awesome! He really helped me out a lot. So, after venting to y’all, haha, this is a new week and hopefully we will receive success from all the trials we have been having. I haven’t given up; it’s just another step in the path I need to take, so it’s all good.

Anyway, Christmas is coming, wooohoooo!! I’m so excited, haha. We, along with Elder T and Elder C bought a Christmas tree. Our apartments are now all decorated with lights and a 5-foot tree! We tied it to the Toyota Camry we have and drove it home last Thursday, haha. It’s awesome, and I’m looking forward to talking to you all on Christmas. It should be sweet!

My District before being split up.

Oh I almost forgot!! The Ximeno Branch here is AWESOME!!! It may be super small, but I love everybody here. Yesterday at church we had a really powerful testimony meeting and I was surprised by how much love the members have for the missionaries! It was pretty humbling for me personally. All but two of us missionaries bore our testimony on how we can spend Christmas together as families and how reading and praying will bring a better spirit in their homes. Wow, the spirit was super strong yesterday! After church we received a bag of red paisley and striped ties from a member and also cookies from another, haha. Sweet! I just wanted to mention that because it was pretty cool, especially with me having a not so good day.

I hope you all have a great week! Things are good here and I hope they are back home as well!

Love y’all!!

Elder Woffinden

Happy Thanksgiving!

Cool biker guy who bought us dinner

Hola!! Que tal!? How is everyone doing this week?? Thanks for the email!  I have seen the weather that is always playing in the Spanish Laundromat every Monday morning and man it is cold back home!! ha-ha  It is in the 80s here!  Yes I got the package and it was awesome!! ha-ha I loved the turkey it was so funny!

"Turkey" package from home!

Well this week was pretty good. Yes, Elder A** is better now and we have been back to work. I got sick again.  I was sick from Monday till Saturday with a deathly cough that would keep me up all night! I’m better now so no worries. Man I can’t believe Thanksgiving is this week! So crazy! We have dinner planned to eat at a member’s house. Elder A** said last year he had to eat four dinners ha-ha so I am not excited for that if that’s the case!! I will die!! ha-ha. On Friday night we had our branch Thanksgiving dinner at the Ximeno church building. It was awesome! I was shocked at how much fun it was! We may have a really small branch here, but all the members are super close and really know how to have a great time. The missionaries served all the food which was turkey and ham, etc.  I was giving out the gravy and Jalapenos. ha-ha so it was still a Latino meal for sure. There was dancing afterwards and all the members were going crazy! Not to mention the music they were playing was making me beyond trunkie!! All the teenage girls connected their phones to the speakers so I was dying.  We weren’t aware that all the members were watching every move we made.  When all 9 of us missionaries were chilling in one spot, a couple of us started to dance amongst ourselves since we can’t dance with the members.  We then heard this super high pitched shrieking sound coming from behind us.   All the women ages 12-90 were begging us to come dance with them. ha-ha It was super funny!  Sadly we had to decline and they were not happy at all.... oops.  We had our investigator M** and her nine year old son come to the dinner! It was great and the branch was bomb at making her feel welcome. M** is the golden investigator we have right now and our most solid investigator! So please pray for her to have a desire to be baptized because she is so close!

Great family - fed us dinner.

Besides the party, this week was interesting. We did drop a lot of investigators this week.  We just decided it was the best thing to do.  V** keeps slipping with drinking and doesn’t have a testimony of Joseph Smith so we now have to go back and start at square one with him which is really hard.  On Saturday evening, I went to the office to get yet again another bike... the ones I keep getting are pure trash.  ha-ha   We got back at 4:45 and dinner was at 5.  We didn’t want to sit and wait for our ride so we went into an alley and said a prayer that hopefully we could find someone to talk to.   We found two!  They are super cool, and a true miracle given by God. T** is a really old Hispanic woman who was out sweeping leaves with a broom in the street. We have return appointments with both this week.

On Saturday morning, I had an interview with President Tew.  It was an interview to see how missionaries are progressing and to check on the goals we have made for our mission. Mine is to be more "spiritually" minded and less "carnally" minded. (2 Ne 9: 39)  President had some great advice for me and for some of the trials I have. Sadly, missionaries are going home due to stress or other reasons and it’s hard to be positive at all times.

Well this is the last week of the transfer! It’s either I stay with A** or I train.... please pray for stay!! ha-ha. There are like 30 Spanish greenies coming in because 35 missionaries go home next transfer! The majority are Spanish.  I am ready for whatever.  If I do train I’m just going to pretend I don’t know Spanish and have my greenie begin to teach a lesson (Plan of Salvation).  I’ll just look at him and be like...all you man!!  ha-ha (jk)

But that’s it for me!! Hope ya’ll have a great week!! Love you and thanks for all the support and love!!

Mucho Carino!!

Elder Woffinden

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