Week 71 Letter

Jurupa transfer 2 week 4

All

It's been an eventful week.

I went on exchange with the Chinese speaking elders last Wednesday, which was fun. I did a lot of smiling and nodding. They have an investigator out in Hemet (about an hour's drive away), which we went and taught a lesson with. Chinese work is rather different from English culturally. Of this particular investigator one of the Chinese missionaries said "He said he's down to be baptized, if he comes to believe in Jesus" and that's typical.

On the way back from that lesson, we passed by the Scientology world headquarters. It's in the most random place ever, just outside Hemet (which is not the nicest town ever...) against the mountain. They have a random fairytale style castle made with stucco, what looked like a pirate ship, a ton of blue roofed/trimmed cottages and a couple massive mansions. The land they bought had a bunch of houses on it already, which have been abandoned. The whole set up is really weird. But hey, whatever floats your boat.

I also helped with their English Class. I may have mentioned helping out with the UCR English class before, this time I went to the one in Eastvale. Which has a very different dynamic. While UCR is all young exchange students, the Eastvale one is all retired Chinese people, and is run differently. It was still fun though.

We had several lessons with Adan Maribel and Junior. Which went great. Junior really wants to be baptized, (we set a goal for the 23rd) but first he needs to get permission from his parents. So some prayers for their hearts to be softened would be appreciated.

Another cool thing, Maribel got called to be in Young Womens on Sunday! She's pretty excited. Adan and Maribel are so awesome! They have a super strong testimony of the Atonement, I can't believe how prepared they were to receive the gospel. They're about as "Golden" as they come. 

We got a really cool referral from the Spanish Sister missionaries as well. Her name is Jessica. They were walking by, talked to her, said a prayer for some things she was going through, and gave her a restoration pamphlet. They went back a few days later and taught the restoration. Jessica had read the pamphlet and believed what she read, and was even looking up the scriptures in the "additional questions" section in the back. However, she's more comfortable in English, so they handed her over to us. We had a great lesson on the Plan of Salvation. She's been reading the book of Mormon, and said (relatively out of the blue in the context of our conversation) "I believe that Joseph Smith saw God. She wants to get baptized when she receives her answer that it's true. Her sister walked by and it turned out that we had talked to the sister the day before in the Gas Station.

We also said a prayer over a really sick horse (which flopped over on the ground a couple times while we were talking with the family.) That was interesting. They had never even heard of Mormons before.

I recently discovered a jewel of Mexican food. We cover a predominantly Hispanic town (full of dogs, dirt, and dusty horses) so there are a lot of Mexican fruit salesman, ice-cream men, and "corn men". I love corn on the cob, Mexican corn on the cob is epic. They stab a big stick into the corn and then smother it in: Mayo, butter, Parmesan cheese (which I ask them to leave off), and chili powder. It is as amazing as it is messy. My companion really loves it. We'll be driving around and he's looking "where's the corn guy?"

We also met a less-active family in the ward who are pretty cool. They have a 7 year old son who wants to be baptized, but they need to come to church. Anyway, the mom is a hardcore couponer, and she loaded us up with stuff. She got 28 of the big powerades for $5, a nice pair of men's jeans for $0.10 some of the examples of the deals she's found recently.

Cool Scripture from this week
"... let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us" Hebrews 12:1
Also, "The Lord Chasteneth those he loveth" ~Somewhere in the Pauline Epistles, that's true too.
And one for you to look up Alma 26:22

Thank you all, letters are greatly appreciated.

Love,
Elder Bryce Johns     

Week 70 Letter

Jurupa transfer 2 week 3

(Nov 4, 2013 email)

All:

This week has been pretty interesting.

Sister Smith Our homeshare, is the sweetest old lady. Super kind, almost to a fault. We got our shower fixed, and we made spaghetti for her (and us) the other day. It went pretty well. (the fire alarm going off actually wasn't our fault, something had spilled in the oven and was burning when we put in the garlic bread). I do miss the apartment, but I'm happy about our living situation. 

We find the coolest random stuff as missionaries. Like this whiteboard.
We were going through the ward list visiting less-active members when we stopped by the house to the left in the picture. Out front were two dressers and the whiteboard (pictured). E. Gordon's said "dude, I want that whiteboard" and I agreed it would be pretty sweet. So we knocked on the door.... aaand no one answered. Dejected, we walked back to the car and began to write a sticky note saying "hey, we want your whiteboard, call us" when a van drove by and dropped off a kid in front of the house we had just left.
Elder Gordon jumped out, and yelled "hey! Are you selling that whiteboard?" and the kid said, "let me go ask my mom."
He walked inside, and came back. "two dollars". We only had a 5. He went back in to get change, and we saw his mom walking around to get her purse. We said hi. I hope she felt akward for not answering the door (So rude!)
Moral of the story, We scored a sweet whiteboard for only $2.

 Halloween was pretty good. We spent most of the day planning and preparing our zone meeting the next day. But we went out and talked to people in the afternoon.
Our beloved eterni-gator Anne took us out to dinner. She's 70 years old, and has been coming to church for 5 years. She believes everything, and wants to get baptized, but flatly refuses to set a date. We tease her relentlessly about it (and she reciprocates).
After dinner we went to the stake center and set up for our zone activity. We got permission to watch the movie "Ephraim's Rescue" (we got a projector, and hooked it up to the sound system in the gym, so technically it was about as close as we could get to a movie theater.) It was a great movie (granted, I haven't seen any for a long time, but still), I certainly recommend it. It's about the Martin Handcart company and one of the rescuers, a true story, and a tear-jerker. 

We had a little miracle that day as well. We were pulling out of the church before the activity started (we needed to run home and grab something) when we ran into Bryan and Jeffery walking the other way. We haven't been able to meet with them for weeks. We flagged them down, and set up an appointment. Bryan really wants the gospel in his life, he's been reading the Book of Mormon even though we haven't met in awhile. Unfortunately, his parents are... frankly, they're jerks. They've slammed the door in our face a couple times. But they didn't let Bryan come to church yesterday because they were cleaning. It's rather annoying.

I had the privilege yesterday of Conferring Adan to the Aaronic Priesthood. It was an awesome experience (although I messed up the wording and had to start over). They are progressing well in the Gospel. They also gave us a whole flat of Strawberries (Adan's family runs a farm out behind their house)!

I also got an email today from the Solis' (my recent convert family in Murrieta) They are doing great and are going to be sealed on the 25 of January at the San Diego temple. I've got permission to go from my mission president, and I am super excited (I'm looking forward to that even more than Christmas). It's crazy that it's almost been a year since Oscar's baptism.  It is amazing to know that I had the privilege of helping to bring that family together forever.

The Gospel is so true, I know it and see it day after day, time after time. Although we experience trials and hardships. The Lord will strengthen us, lighten our burdens, and give us the words to speak. And the Only way we can know is if we follow the invitation of the Savior "Come and see".

Thank you all for your prayers and letters.
Love,
Elder Bryce Johns

Maribel, Aden and I in their greenhouse.