Dear home,
So I am going to start off talking about this fantastic stake conference we had this past sunday. Elder Dallin H. Oaks, and Elder Craig C. Christensen were in town. But Oaks went to the Pasadena English stake, and Christensen went to the East LA Spanish. He knows Spanish really well due to serving a mission in chile and then being mission president in the Mexico City mission. He was actually the Boyle Heights' bishop's mission president! But anyways, it was awesome. President Becerra came as well and gave a talk.
A big theme President Becerra and Elder Christensen hit that impressed me the most was the family. President Becerra shared a story of his rebellious younger brother. He had a younger brother, that at the time, didn't want to go on a mission, didn't want to go to church, and was being a bit disobedient in the commandments. President Becerra's father had no idea what to do with him and how he was going to help him get back on track. So he decided to ask God in prayer what he should do. After some pondering and thinking, he came up with the idea of reading the Book of Mormon with his rebellious son everyday at 6:30 in the morning. As you can imagine, his brother did not want to do that at all. But his dad dragged him out of bed, and would read out loud to him. Most of the times, his brother would just take his pillow and blanket with him and sleep as his father read. But it didn't matter, his father kept this going and going. But something great happened one of these mornings as he was reading to his son. They had gotten all the way to 3 Nephi 11, when Christ comes to the Americas. As his son lay down listening to his dad, he started crying because of the spirit he felt. He realized he had to change and live more according to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Long story short, he made the changes necessary, went on a mission, and currently has a wonderful family.
Another story that I want to share was one that Elder Christiansen shared about a valuable lesson he learned from his 6 year old daughter. So he is from Utah, but has a lot of family in California, so they decided to drive over to visit the family. As they were driving, their car just started to break down and eventually wouldn't run. So at 2 in the morning (they had left at midnight) they were stuck in the middle of the road with their car broken down. Elder Christensen said that he had no idea what to do or really how to work cars for that matter. When all of a sudden, his daughter said "Why don't we ask God to help us?" But Elder Christensen, didn't want to break her faith and tell her that God helps in a lot of things, but mechanics is not one of them. So to top it off, he said: "well, why don't you say the prayer then?" He said that his six year old daughter simply closed her eyes and bowed her head and asked God to "bless their car." Elder Christensen was afraid that after the prayer, the car wouldn't work, and her faith would have been broken. But to his surprise, the car started! It wasn't in full 100%, but it was just enough to get them to a place where it could be fixed.
I share these two stories, because there are times where we don't appreciate a lot of what are families do for us and the impact we can have on each of our family members. I thought those were pretty cool.
This past week we have been doing pretty well. Vilma is awesome, and we started teaching her daughter who is just as awesome. They want to get baptized together. We haven't set a date with them yet, but they will totally be ready this April, they are fantastic. We also found a pretty cool guy named Jose S. Jose is neighbors with one of our current investigators. On exchanges, Elder Fellows and the ap, went by the Garcias but they weren't there. But, Jose, the manager of the apartment complex came out and asked about what we do. He said he was pretty interested in what we had to say so they set up a time for the next day. We went by and he was a super cool guy. He is an ex-gang member with a bunch of tattoos and he may have done some pretty bad stuff, but his desire to be better is awesome. We set up a baptismal date on the first lesson for May.
Something that stuck out to me in our lesson is how he said that a lot of people only look to God when they are in times of trouble. Which is true. He went on to say that he doesn't feel like he is in one of those times, in fact, he said he has already passed all those times through all his jail time and juvinelle hall time. Which made me realize, he really just wants to know what is right and do so. He now works for schools as a dean discipline, so he works a lot with kids who were in his similar situations. It's pretty cool to see how prepared he has been without even knowing it. On top of all this, his girlfriend is a big believer in God and has been trying to get him to make God more of a priority in his life. Very cool guy.
Unfortunately, Jesus is pretty much done. On top of being really sick, his neighbor anti-ed him pretty hard and now he doesn't want to meet with us. Which that really stinks, but at the same time I am excited to work with all these new people we have been meeting!
Love you all!!
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