Week 53

Man I was really hoping to have an email off Sam but maybe he hasnt had his p-day yet!? Im sure he is doing great in the MTC. Its a cool place- 9 weeks is probably going to be pretty different than my 3 week experience but hopefully he has a cool companion. Excited to hear the details!

So this week was awesome. Wednesday was Alejandras bday and we made her the BOMB cake of oreos, pudding and cool whip- it was delicccccious. They then invited us to go with them to Hometown Buffet where we ate our weight in food, then felt sick for the rest of the night. We have been biking for a large portion of the week and are nice and tanned and feeling extremely soar! Like... sooooo soar. We are also running to a park to play soccer and I have never had such a deep burn in my shins than I do right now from kicking the ball... Sister Cruz kicks it so hard so I try to keep up... unfortunately I am suffering the consequences. We have so much fun together though, we are very alike and think the same things are funny and the same stuff is cool... it makes life so enjoyable. Sunday Juanita was confirmed which was great, she came all dressed up (she is very casual so it was really exciting to see her all fancy!) and it was a great day! Yesterday we had pday but we couldnt email cuz everything was closed for memorial day. We went to swap meet and bought some fun jewelry, we were looking for a clay pot to make beans but we didnt find one- better luck next time! We then almost DIED! Long story short, this tool in front of me while merging onto the freeway came to a complete stop while I was checking my blind spot and basically I did the craziest fast and furious stunt and somehow slipped perfectly between the tool and this huge semi... I cant really explain it but we were superrrr protected because we probably should have died. We said a sincere gratitude prayer when we made it to Arcadia, yikes. I have an interview that I requested with president. I have had different things that I have wanted to talk to him about and we ended up talking for about an hour and a half, he is the BOMB. He is such a spiritual giant, like a vault of knowledge, it was really cool to have that time to ask different things. He also gave me a health blessing which was really nice. One of the things we talked about was my release date because I have the option of coming home Oct.11th or Nov. 22nd... we talked about it and I told him that I wasnt sure what to do and he told me to go home in October... kind of crazy. He told me to think about it and let him know, I told him I would. I am leaning towards October after the convo I had with him.

This coming week we are celebrating Karlas birthday with her on Friday... she is my favorite person of all time. I just feel like Ive seen her faith grow and it has been such a blessing to have met her and gone through a lot of ups and downs with her. I have loved being left in this area so long, I feel so blessed. Transfer calls are this Saturday and I have no idea what will happen... I will be happy with whatever- ahhhhh!

Week 52

Hello again! So we just raced back from downtown LA where we went to Plazita Olvera, the sisters we went with insisted we stop for food and bleeeehhhh it took so long so I have like no time to write cuz the family history center is about to close. But! This week was goooooooooooood! Juanita got baptized yesterday and it turned out great! We found a new family that we are excited about, the mom is a less active ad has 5 kids that arent members... we will see what develops, thinking we might have to pass them off to english elders though... gaaa the down side of state side work! haha. Weird to think there are only 2 weeks left of the transfer- it has just flown by. I think me and Kunz are gunna switch spots and I will head to Azusa and greenie break... but we will see, Ill keep ou posted! Sorry its so short!!!!

Week 51

So heres the news with the doctor... so I tested positive for a second time for lupus antibodies, if you dont know what lupus is you can look it up haha. Its still not 100% that I have it but he kind of explained that my body hasnt decided what course its going to take yet so I am still undiagnosed. There is something pretty wrong though because he went on to explain that in my blood results that my ANA (which is a count of my antibodies, which is basically my immune system)- that it is supposed to be under 40 and mine was 1280 , yikes! So my body is like preparing itself for something, didnt really understand everything, maybe you could ask Russ Hales to explain it better for me because my doctor is too smart for his own good and cant explain things simply. So yeah, thats that! No worries though, time will tell as always!

This week we had zone conference and it was fun, they over air condition it cuz all the elders have to wear their jackets so I was freezing. This was a great week! I sent you my presidents letter so hopefully you enjoy that. We have zone activity playing soccer at the park today- should be fun!

Heres some random photossss!!!!! We randomly found a sidewalk that just ended and for some reason we thought it was pretty funny, then we did our version of the first vision, then I decided to dye a bunch of stuff pink haha... yikes.

Presidents Letter:
President Pike,
This was a great week! This highlight of the week was yesterday when checking formers we ended up finding an awesome new family, the wife is a less active and the husband is not a member, we taught them 1st lesson right there as they said they wouldnt be free until the following weekend to take tour. The spirit was strong and she bore testimony of the Book of Mormon and in her closing prayer she said, "se que es el tiempo a cercarnos a ti Padre." It was powerful and the husband was nodding throughout the whole lesson- just awesome! We have done a lottttt of knocking this week and have some promising potentials that we are excited about for this coming week. Also we reviewed the baptismal questions with Juanita and she is very excited to be baptized this coming Sunday! Hooray! Also yesterday I was able to teach Relief society and the topic was 'la obra misonal'... President it went so well! We talked about how they as members can be missionaries and at the end I handed out little colored papers where everyone wrote their name and the name of someone they are currently working with or should start to work with, we got about 20 names and we are excited to follow up with those members to help them share the gospel!
In my studies I have been focusing on chapter 9 and reading the first lesson from chapter three. I am trying to be more creative as we are doing a lot of knocking so we want to keep it fresh and exciting by keeping it a little more varied. I was very grateful for my notes from Zone conference and the different things that I thought of that we can apply.
My companion is doing great. Sister Cruz is very well adjusted and slowly talking more. Although her Spanish speaking is a struggle she is pretty ahead of the game with her comprehension. She is always asking how she can help more, what else she can do, I like the help and appreciate her desire to serve.
Thanks for everything! Hermana Christian.

Week 50

Blog for 5-9-11haha

How are you!? Long time no talk! Hope you like the random fotossss. Sooo not too much has happened since 20 hours ago haha. It was so nice to be able to talk to you guys, got a little teary eyed but luckily I was able to hold myself together! Glad that you are all doing so awesome, thats so cool that I got to say hi to gran and grandad! Hope you guys have a great few weeks with them around!
I'll let you know how the doctors goes today- lupus or no lupus... dun dun dunnn. Either way its whatevers. I gotta go. love you guys.

Testimony:
The church is true, the book is blue. The end.
just kidding, here it is for real...
I am so grateful to have a loving Heavenly Father that is so aware of each of his children. I am grateful that our Savior Jesus Christ atoned for our sins so that we can repent to be worthy to go back to our Father's presence. Through obedience and faith we are able to better ourselves and become more and more like the Savior and live happier lives. Service and a consecrated life are what bring true happiness, and as we overcome distractions we can feel that much closer to our Father in heaven. I know that the gospel of Jesus Christ was restored through Joseph Smith after so many years of spiritual darkness. The Book of Mormon is the convincing evidence of that restoration. I know that it is another testament of Jesus Christ, and have seen how it has increased my faith and touched the lives of the many different people I have been privileged to meet. The church is true and God's plan is perfect and we are so privileged to be members of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints.

Week 49

So this week has been LOCOOOO. So much going on. So Sunday till Tuesday I spent with Hermana Kunz who I now love and respect so much, seriously an angel. We had a good time together in her area, Azusa. Tuesday my companion arrived in the afternoon, and she is.........Hermana Cruz. She is from Salt Lake City, UT and is Latina but doesn't really speak Spanish. She has like a cool retro style, is super laid back and sooo nice and I love her!!!!!!!! Wednesday we spent the whole day in new missionary orientation which was cool because we got subway for lunch.. haha ok thats not the only reason, it was cool because President expressed how much trust he had in the trainers and it made me feel good. Friday we got to go to the LA mission and we heard from Elder L. Tom Perry and Elder Clayton- it was really cool, it was held in this really cool old church that had stained glass windows- it was one of our first church buildings apparently. That night we went to the ward sports night where we played some volleyball. Saturday was Mormon helping hands and we cleaned up a park- it didnt really seem to look too much different afterwards to me, but everyone else said it looked "sooo much better" haha, I raked like a mad woman and my abs and back are suffering because of it. The elders were like going around picking up weeds and I was attacking the ground with the rake haha, wussies. Yesterday we had zero investigators to church and I am excited to finddddd like crazy this week to have new investigators. Melanies house burnt down this week so we cant teach her till they find a house back in our area- vandalism apparently, realllly tragic, they lost literally everything, good thing for insurance! The elders are joking that we are a bad omen as the people we teach get their stuff stolen and their houses burnt down, and it became even more real when yesterday Juanita mentioned that she might get deported. I am feeling awesome about this new transfer, so happy with my new comp and happy to really go to work this last transfer here in Covina (but you never know, the members are saying that maybe I will just end up serving here!?).!!


Presidents Letter:
President Pike,
This week was awesome! I am so very happy about this transfer and the chance I have to be with Hermana Cruz! We spent the majority of the time this week outside of our area with new missionary things, L. Tom Perry devotional, and our stake's Mormon helping hands activity. I have never had a week fly by so quickly, it was so awesome and I am exhausted! haha, I love it. We were not able to teach many lessons and we decided to drop various people that we were holding onto that werent progressing, therefore this week's focus, more than ever, will be on finding new investigators. This past week we were able to teach some really awesome less active and recent convert lessons, Karla has committed to paying her tithing and is really happy and solid in her decision to come back to church. We were assigned a specific less active family (Rios) that we are going to begin to teach that were a referral from the ward and they seem ready to come back. That is very exciting as they have little kids that are almost baptism age. This week we had two awesome lessons with our progressing investigator Juanita who is really getting the vision of the Book of Mormon. How cool was it that we were able to have that visit from Elder L. Tom Perry and Elder Clayton- it was so great, if we could make that a more regular thing that would be awesome! In my studies I have really been focusing on finding and how to find new investigators. In church this Sunday our stake made an announcement that the members are to let us in their homes to discuss their progress in sharing the gospel, when they made an announcement a light went off in my head that said, "we need to take advantage of this" so I made a list of all the active members that I thought would be good to visit and we have made a goal to really visit members and focus more efforts that way. I will tell you how it goes. We havent had a ward mission leader for about 3 months now and that is really starting to get a little old. Its not that we were working so well with one prior, but we deff feel an element of disconnectedness from the ward. Hopefully they call someone soon.
Companion's Progress:
Sister Cruz is the best! She is very attentive in lessons and really trying to share her feelings, the language barrier gets in the way, but she is really a fantastic missionary and I was so impressed with her attention to names and stories regarding all the different people in our area. She is a hard worker and is very excited about being a missionary. She understands the language relatively well and we are going to work hard to get her talking more in lessons and taking the lead more in contacting and feeling more confident in general regarding Spanish.
Thanks for everything