Monday, March 21, 2016

Love From L.A.!

Hey my peoples,
I had a pretty fun week this week, we've been having a lot of success, but also a lot of obedient fun. (I think I need to emphasize on that we were not breaking any rules) So I guess for this letter I am just going to talk about the big highlights of the week with their own title because I thought it would be fun for you all to read. 
Zone Conference
I have a few highlights from zone conference, I just wanted to make sure you all know that they are in relation with zone conference. We had a great zone conference, but there were a lot of changes made, for example the Church has now started a system that when someone requests an item from Mormon.org or whatever then sisters in the temple visitor centers call these referrals to make sure that they requested that item, that the information is correct, and if the person is willing to hear a message with that item. That way it kind of eliminates all the Bible requesters that just want a free bible and try to take advantage of the Church and just want it delivered by like UPS or something. That was really cool.
We Are Being Watched
So at zone conference they have this initiative going around missions where they are implanting these sort of "Black Boxes" in missionary vehicles. They are called "Tiwi" and what they are is a monitoring device that pretty much makes sure that missionaries are being safe drivers. It was funny seeing everyone's reactions to that, I think it's a good idea because I don't want to die. It was funny also because one of my old companions was there and he was telling everyone that he heard that the boxes have speakers so that they could hear everything we say, but President told him otherwise. It also tracks where we go which is scary too because if you leave the boundary on accident President sees it, but he told us just tell him the situation and he will let it pass, he said it's a bit hard in such a small amount of space to stay in the mission boundaries. Yeah with that luckily we are on bike since they took away our car. I feel like I might not of explained this before, but when the actual transfer happened the APs took away our car and also the Tongan ward that we were supposed to be in charge of. So me and my companion are not too worried about the Tiwis.
No Longer Can Get Buffed
So at zone conference they told us we can't use weights any more. My companion was a bit down because of that; he really likes working out with weights and the mission President is giving us a transfer to throw away the weights, luckily I didn't buy any or else that would have been a big waste of money. I do feel bad for the Elders that did buy weights, I say Elders because none of the sisters in our mission have weights, it's good to know that the Elders I know, including my companion, are going to be obedient anyway and either donate or throw away their weights. For me I just kind of mooched off of everyone else's weights so it wasn't too hard on me.
Our Hilarious Ward Team
So we have a funny group of missionaries in our ward, so two companionship's cover the ward we are in and it's probably the funniest group of missionaries I have been with. The other companionship is Elder Zabriskie and Elder Lupeni. Elder Zabriskie is from Idaho Falls, Idaho and Elder Lupeni is from Tonga. Elder Zabriskie and my companion always have fun messing with each other or talking about how big they are getting. Elder Lupeni came out with my companion and he is really funny, but has a hard time understanding English so we were at correlation and our Ward Mission Leader made a joke about trucks and pickups and we all laughed, but Elder Lupeni just had the most serious face on when he made that joke, he obviously had no idea what we said, but he is really funny. Elder Lupeni actually is a really good Rugby player that before his mission he was getting offers to go play in Japan or something for Tonga which was really cool.
Mini Missionary!!
So in the California Los Angeles Mission we have mini missions where kids ages 16 and up until 18 go on what is called a mini mission which is just a weekend with the missionaries. We were able to receive a mini missionary this last weekend and it was really fun. Obviously we need to make sure they have a great experience so they have a desire to serve a mission which is really fun. We had a great spiritual experience where we had a lesson with this guy named C. It was crazy because he was a normal potential investigator that we had no information about from the past missionaries in the area and we went by his place and this lady was leaving the house and she said that he was in and went and got him. He was really cool, he had a lot of questions about Gid and what he needs to do in this life. We had an awesome lesson and E, our mini missionary, had a lot of great input. The Spirit was really strong in that lesson and he was really open to accept to be baptized. I think it was a great experience for E and he had a great experience, he is definitely going to serve a mission. :) 
The Lord Reaches in Great Ways
We had a cool experience this week where we found this 19 year old girl who was an inactive member. She had a lot of hardships in her life and she wanted to change and it was a really cool experience. She said that she had just made her decision and was released from the kid prison, whatever it's called, since the judge had compassion on her before and she ran into us which was a huge miracle in her eyes, all we were doing was looking for a referral. The Lord does reach in marvelous ways and it was a really cool experience for me. She came to Church this last Sunday and is getting her tattoos removed sometime this month all by her own decision. 
Well I was so happy to hear from you this week. I love hearing all the great things happening back home. I really am grateful for the Lord and I think this is going to be a fun transfer for me. Our investigators are progressing and a lot of new ones are coming up. We haven't had the Gladys Knight presentation yet, but it is on April 23rd and hopefully I will get to meet Gladys Knight that would be pretty cool, since we probably are going to help set up for the event.
I hope you all have a great week, hopefully more than just Mom and Dad will read this. Haha just kidding read at your own peril. You are all awesome Spiritually and Temporally. Have a great week and I will make sure to pray for all of your achievements and whatever. 


Love,
Palm treeElder Jacklin
P.S: So the whole gmail thing was me trying to figure out my password again, we are able to use Google Maps here and if you have a google account you can download specific areas so I was downloading our mission so I can find things without having to be connected to wifi. That was it though.
I don't think I need anything else, but I will let you know if I do need anything. 
Okay Love you,
Elder Jacklin 

No comments:

Post a Comment