Tyler's Missionary Adventure: August 4, 2014

Hola....Hi....Yeah!

Well another week has flown by, another month has flown by, and all is well in the great California Long Beach Mission. It actually surprised me how fast this week flew by to be completely honest. Usually when
you start a new transfer that first week just seems to drag. But this week we definitely work super hard.

We definitely started out this week with some super hard service. Our mission is trying to start implementing service for each companionship. They are encouraging us to do 10 hours of service a week. Well this week we definitely did an equivalent of 10 hours of service for a member in our ward. Elder Packer, myself and two other missionaries helped him dig up and "sacar" (Sorry my mind can't translate this word into english :P) some roots. Man that was some hard work I won't lie. It was a lot of digging, cutting, and pulling for about 4 hours. As you can see in the pictures we worked extremely hard in the burning California sun. It reminded me a lot of Crossfit and the death workouts I use to do. In the end we got them all out and we had a fun time doing it. And the next 2 days I was super sore :P

Thank you for sending me the two packages, especially the Journal. Especialmente gracias papi por escribirme! With the ankle brace I can return to playing basketball this week ;) JK JK JK I won't play for
another 2 weeks probably. My ankle is doing alot better. This week I got back into running with Elder Packer and another companionship every day. It is cool because in the other companionship there is an
Elder who ran cross country and track during high school as well. So we have been running together and he has kicked my butt. That is okay though, maybe I can loose a few pounds running with him.

Well after 2 weeks of not finding any new investigators, we found one on Saturday and he is bomb. His name Royler, from Cuba, and he is super prepared to receive the Gospel. We applied a couple trainings
from our last Zone Conference in this lesson and it helped us out a ton. We were able to know Royler better, he established his expectations, we established our expectations, and we taught super simply and he understood everything. It was cool to see the blessings that came from applying the trainings from our leaders. Definitely strengthened my testimony that our leaders do receive revelation to help us have success in this great work.

So a quick update with our investigators that you all know. Manuel just got noticed by his insurance that they won't pay for most of the surgeries he needs to fix his knees and back. So pretty much he is going to continue with the therapy and see if he can get more financial help. Because of this the doctors sent a notice to his manager informing him about Manuel's condition and recommending that he keep his apartment until he gets the necessary surgeries. This is definitely a blessing for sure. We were super happy to hear that he will be able to stay in his apartment longer and we are going to work super hard to help him get baptized.

Geraldo is progressing super well. We realized that we don't have that many lessons to teach him and he is ready to be baptized. The only thing stopping him is his marriage situation. So we decided to try and set some plans with him to get baptized. Well in short he told us that he is going to work on that situation as long as we keep coming by and visit him. So hopefully as we keep coming by he will start taking those steps of faith to come closer to our Heavenly Father.

Well that is pretty much the week in review. It definitely helped me realize that Christ is working with us in this work and is guiding us to his prepared children. It definitely helped me realize that as I step out of my comfort zone and really get lost in this work, He will give us the guidance and strength to have success and joy in this work.

Thank you for all you do!