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