Week 63 Letter

Well... I typed out a letter last week, and thought I sent it,,,

All:
Apparently Last week's letter not only didn't go through, but  for some inexplicable reason vanished into cyberspace completely (yay for technology).

I got transferred to be a zone leader over the Jarupa Zone. I'm now serving in a town called Mira Loma.
Mira Loma is VERY diffirent from my corner of Corona. The houses are much older, the lots much larger. People on horseback are everywhere. In fact, there are no Sidewalks, only horse trails and those are only in the nicer areas, usually the street is right up against people's chain link fences. There are lots of Hispanics, and lots of older people.

Missionary work wise, this area is awesome! We have a good pool of investigators and had a baptism yesterday, which was awesome. We also share the ward with another set of Elders.

My new companion, Elder Coleman is an amazing missionary. We get along really well. He's from Colorado and is pretty easy going personality wise, and knows the scriptures like the back of his hand. He is also a phenominal guitar player. He plays Classical guitar, along with blues and rock. I love to sit and listen to him play during lunch and in the evenings. We work well together.

We also live in the most expensive apartment in the mission (literally), with a trio of Chinese speaking missionaries, who are really cool. It's a blast and really nice. We even have a garage.

This last week has been insanly busy.

 My first night we had dinner with the Stake President (who's in our ward) and over the course of our conversation he asked me to give a training in stake Missionary Coordination Meeting on utilizing ward missionaries. Which is all well and good, except that the meeting was the next day (it went pretty well, although our ward mission leader wasn't there so we'll have to re-train him).
The Jarupa stake put on the play "The Fiddler on the Roof" with showings Thursday, Friday and Saturday. We went to opening night to usher and we got to see the play. It was really amazing, the quality of everything was exceptionally high and there were a lot of none-members there as well. During the intermission a teen-age girl (she reminded me a lot of my sister Lyndee, except black) came up and asked us a ton of really good questions. I've had a few of the songs intermittantly stuck in my head since then.
On Friday I went on exchange with one of the Assistants to the President. AP Moser. I went over to his area. He's a Spanish speaking missionary so for several of the lessons I was reduced to smiling and nodding. But it went well and I learned a lot. Especially the importance of being bold when extending invitations.
Sunday we had church (we had four investigators there. one of them, Brian, who elder Coleman met on Friday really liked it. He was nodding and really engrossed during the classes.) and a bunch of meetings.
Throughout the week we've been having lessons, having great gospel conversations with people we come in contact with, leaving blessings in people's homes. I've had about 4 people walk up and ask us questions, something that hasn't happened to me in months.

The bar has certainly been raised for me. We're responsible for 9 missionary companionships, 5 of which are sister companionships. I'm expected to be an the example and leader in pretty much every aspect of missionary life. But hey, the Lord qualifies whom he calls and I've certainly seen that. I've become a much better missionary in just a week, and have seen many tender mercies of the Lord.

"Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen." Matthew 28: 19-20

Thank you for your prayers. Please Write. I'm working on responding.

Elder Bryce Johns