June 24, 2024 - 44th Email - It's getting hot here too

Hey

Yeah it's getting in the 100s here again I only got like a week break (after being down in Indio) but yet I still have my jacket on all day somehow I need to stop wearing it lol

This week was pretty uneventful I guess one interesting thing that happened was when we were visiting a referral we knocked on the door to no answer and then we saw a door open on the top floor door and it was this old lady hunched forward (probably from drugs) smoking a cigarette honestly I was kind of scared at first lol but we ended up helping her take bags to her car it was a nice service but also really sad to see how bad addiction is in people's lives because she was actually really sweet and I'm glad I don't have to worry bout any o dat in my life

There wasnt any parking for us in that apartment complex so we parked next to it in a gas station and the parking lot was just covered in trash lol there was random stuff like big gulp cups and even an empty fairlife chocolate milk carton (that stuff is gas) to broken glass and cigarette packets so people just be throwin random junk everywhere

Had some super good (informative for us, too) lessons too this week, our friends kept asking us super hard questions which was tough but I think we answered them pretty well and then we got the goat of answering hard questions to come with us (presidente luna from the mission presidency) but then both lessons fell through which is sad but we aint givin up just yet

So I was actually on an exchange that day but we had this family of 6 that elder mullins visited on saturday with presidente luna and they told him they were busy and couldnt meet and couldnt go to church either but then at church they just randomly walked in and we didnt even visit them sunday morning it was pretty cool that they just came on their own

Went on a couple exchanges to english areas that were pretty fun, it's cool to cover the whole stake as my area again, but also like back in Indio I never did exchanges in english areas because we had an only spanish district so that was really good for my spanish but
again it's good to have a break

On one of the exchanges we literally tractes (knocked doors) for like 4 hours cumulatively and we didnt find anybody to teach until like the very end I felt bad they didnt have a whole lot of people to teach and then we just get so much work in the spanish area (perks of spanish)

They also changed it so now we have the same weekly goals as the english missionaries we used to have to get twice the numbers as them but they just met in the middle so our work was lightened a little bit which is really nice

Also this dude we were teaching has this dog that just doesnt have front legs (just little stubs) so it just hops around it literally looks like a tiny kangaroo it's the weirdest thing of all time

Had a progressing friend move to florida so that was sad we gotta figure out where he lives (he might have gone to orlando which is funny)

Just kinda ramblin at this point but something else cool is that our zone got 3 baptisms yesterday and we went to one of the english ones because his mom spoke spanish and now we're teaching her so that's epic, got plans to baptized a lot in our ward next week (might be upwards of 4) so prayers would be epic

First we got a crazy story from our zone activity today

So we had plans to hang out at a park and play soccer so we go over to the park and then elder watson is like "maybe itd be better to get a football" and we get to the park and nobody is there (and we're 15 minutes late) so we say "we got enough time to get a football" so we go back home and the english missionaries get in their car (we had carpooled to the park) and go to walmart while we go back to the park to wait on other missionaries

A bunch of elders show up and we're playing soccer when some sisters pull up with a football so we call the english missionaries to come back because we already had a football when they were already at walmart lol and then they get back and we start playing football

Pretty quickly we realize theres a bad ant problem at this park when one of the sisters gets an allergic reaction on her foot to a bite so she cant play and they leave to treat that and then it's insanely hot so we all get pooped pretty fast and then the other elders drop some new information that they have to go put down a dog for a member in their ward (she's old so they just took the dog to the vet for her) because it broke its leg and they had to dip and then other elders dropped some other information on us that they had to leave to go do "brazilian jujitsu" because their friend told them if they did it with him he'd get baptized and so they dipped then the sisters came back because one of them still wanted to play soccer and then we start kicking a soccer ball around when we witness a crazy argument (probably between a boyfriend and a girlfriend) it was really bad and loud screaming where we could understand pretty well what they were saying when we were pretty far away so it just kinda killed the mood and we just dipped too and went to taco bell

Ok bye, next week pday is on thursday for independence day (week and a half of working lol but it'll be worth it for all day pday)

Pictures!

-Rocket launch (there were 2 but I didnt get a good picture of the second one)

-sunday stop bys before church

-exchange with elder parrish

-mountain

Last Mission Conference for me with the President and Sister Schmeil

Talk to the Zone Conference on June 20th, 2024. My last conference with President and Sister Schmeil as they are done with their mission.

Good morning. 

I am happy to be here with you. President Nelson said that “Gathering Israel is the most important work taking place on the earth today. Nothing else compares in magnitude, nothing else compares in importance, nothing else compares in majesty.” You are that army of God that is helping gather Israel. 

Our son Conner has been serving a mission for 10 months now and I have been thinking about the blessings of missionary work. We often think about how missions bless you, the missionaries, and those you teach, but it also blesses your families and friends back home. I have felt those blessings as our children have served missions.

I had an experience in 2014 when our son Parker was serving in his first area in Argentina. He had been in the mission field for less than two weeks, when Heavenly Father taught me that He was taking care of him. I was in my room on a Thursday folding laundry, when all of a sudden, I had a strong feeling that I needed to pray for Parker’s safety. I felt so much anxiety, my heart started pounding and I even had goosebumps all over my body. It is hard to explain but I just had this urgent need to pray for him.  I quickly got on my knees by my bed and started to pray that he would be protected and he would not be hurt in any way. Once I felt calmed, I finished my prayer. I was going crazy not knowing what was going on with him. I had to wait until Monday for his email. On Sunday, I wrote him an email and told him about my experience. I asked him if anything had happened. In his email he said, that on Thursday, as he was riding his bike, the handlebar broke. It was an old bike that had been handed down to him. He said, it just literally broke, and that it was dangerous to ride his bike like that,  but that it took him a while to notice it was broken. Once he noticed it was broken, he was able to safely take it and have it fixed. I am certain that I was praying as he was riding his bike with a broken handlebar and that Heavenly Father kept him safe. I am grateful that Heavenly Father listened and answered my prayer even though I had no idea what was going on. I am so grateful for a loving Heavenly Father who taught me that he was taking care of my son during his mission and that I needed to learn to trust Him.

My mom’s cousin is not a member of the church but is very proud of our son Conner for serving a mission. I recently sent him a picture of Conner on his mission and his response to me was that “missionaries are a blessing to their families and all humanity.”  Think about that, “You are a blessing to all humanity”, because you are teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I am so grateful for you, for your willingness to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. I know that this is His true church. I know God lives. I know Jesus Christ lives and is our Savior.

In the name of Jesus Christ

Amen

With Elder Santiago and his companion.

With the Schmeils at Zone Conference.

We had dinner with the Schmeils at the mission home on Friday the 14th of June. The Fowlers are in the picture, he is the second counselor in the Florida Orlando missiona and Brent is the first couselor.

Barcelona Trip - Antequera, Mollina and Alameda - Part 3

I love going to Antequera. This was my first time going to Mollina and Alameda. There is so much family history in this area for me. Many ancestors were born here. I felt at home.

June 17th, 2024 - 43rd Email - Everything is on fire

Hey

San bernardino is still fun

So basically to explain the title on saturday and sunday we saw a couple random clouds of smoke so fires are starting to pop up which is super cool (not really)

Highlight of the week was me getting a massive sinus infection

So basically i lost all sense of smell and taste and was pretty much hiding the fact that I was dying in pretty much every lesson

I was able to breathe mostly by saturday but I still couldnt really smell

It was nice because (funny quick story)

So on mondays after pday a member takes us out to eat to a mexican restaurant and I was a little silly and forgot to ask for no beans in my burrito (i do not like beans) but it was okay because I couldnt taste it anyway

I need to make sure to ask for no beans today

Also my mom was super nice and awesome and sent me a giant jar of peanut butter m&ms so I just sat there depressingly on my bed munching on m&ms that I couldnt enjoy because I was too impatient to wait until I could taste again

Plus i took some of the best naps of my life

It was really hard though because we ran out of toilet paper so I ended up using paper towels to blow my nose until elder watson (another missionary I live with) snagged a toilet paper roll from the local church building (good grab, those things are massive)

Uhhh some cool friends out here

We get hecka numbers there's so much work we get probably 3 or 4 referrals a day, we found like 16 new people last week (personal high) so we kinda popping off

We had some friends that need to get married to get baptized, they were supposed to get baptized sunday but we've never tried to get people married in riverside before and there were some more credentials they needed to fill in that we didnt know about because we never have people go to riverside (like we needed to have a marriage date and proof that our bishop could marry them) so we hopefully be finna do allat tomorrow theyre super cool so pray for them pls

Had another friend try to get baptized but he still needs more time to get some stuff figured out so he got his date pushed back but its ok we chillin

Also fun fact about our apartment we live on the second floor above the model apartment so we dont have downstairs neighbors which is great because I accidentally dropped some weights on the floor last night and nobody got mad at me

Uhhh what else

This week was our mission tour which means a general authority checked out our mission, it was Elder Ojidiron and this guy is from Nigeria and he was sick he gave a really cool training at zone conference (which included half the mission instead of a third, we got the whole low desert and us and redlands while the other half was rialto and fontana and the high desert)

I ended up getting to go on an exchange with my boy elder stewart because of mlc on friday (where all the leaders in the mission chill out and talk about bettering the mission and stuff) and the district leaders were invited so I was on bike with my district leader's companion and that was actually a really difficult bike area it's super hilly so we're cruising down the hill when we get out then at like 5 pm we have to bike all the way back up lol so props to them for doing that every day fr plus its hot outside not like indio hot but it's still pretty hot

Also we got new devices in our cars so basically we have this thing we call tiwi that checks our driving and stuff but we got a new one that has a camera and an annoying voice but now we have to use a qr code on our phone to log in instead of a card reader which is slightly annoying because the camera is really bad at reading our phones we need our brightness all the way up and do it a specific way its slightly goofy but it's not all bad otherwise it's basically the same thing the camera doesnt actually change a whole lot since they cant actually access the video footage unless an accident happens and they go through a "very thorough and rigorous process"

I hit 10 months out on friday so double digits that's weird

It's super cool being a missionary around here tho some of these roads are sketch fr we totally drove by an underground black market swap meet the other day, it was daytime but we saw a ton of cars driving down a random dirt road and elder mullins was like "i think I know what that is"

Its never a dull moment here and I love it

Ok bye

Pictures!

-cool views

-smog

-snails

-spider webs

Barcelona Trip - Malaga - Part 2

We had an amazing time in Malaga. We went to dinner with my cousins Lucia, Belen and Luis. They took us around Malaga and went to a beautiful town called Benalmádena. We ate the best paella, pizza and ice cream!!!