so cal fiesta

New transfer. My new comp is Elder Pedersen from Yucaipa, that's near Riverside down in sweet southern California. but you guys know that because you all were there for youth conference. so it's nice to be serving with someone who appreciates an In-N-Out burger and hanging out at the beach. don't worry it's not so nice that it makes us homesick or makes us lose our focus. he actually only has two transfers left so he'll probably stay here until he heads home, which means i'll probably take off after this transfer or be here for a few more months because they usually don't white wash an area like that. it's weird to think in short chunks of time like this.

we've had a great first week of the transfer. some awesome miracles have happened with people we're working with. we're having a baptism this sunday actually, so i'll tell you more about that when we talk on the phone. i'm excited to talk to you guys too! makenzie and delaney look grown up too so who knows if they're even the same people anymore. i'll find out on sunday when i ask them. i don't have a ton to say today, but life is good. i love the gospel and i love the Lord. i'm still figuring things out myself and will be forever, but without a doubt i have learned some valuable things out here. the Lord pours blessings down when we serve Him and others. But my favorite part about all this is that so many of God's children get to find more happiness and peace in their lives. it's not my doing, it's the Lord's, but it is a humbling experience to be able to go out and represent Him. i love the gospel, the Church is true! have a great week.

much love,
elder lamb 

April 30, 2012

all straightened out

Baptisms! Here's a pic of Kristena's baptism a few weeks back, I never sent that to you. The other pic is from Saturday night. A lot of people dressed in white. I don't know if I've said much about the family we've been working with, but the whole experience with them so far has been incredible. My first day in the area, 6 weeks ago tomorrow, a member pointed out a kid walking by as we were driving back from transfer meetings. She said the kid is a member but his family hasn't been active, so we decided we'd start working with them as soon as we figured out more about them. Then later that same night, our ward mission leader called us and said he just stopped by a family he had just been assigned to do home teaching for and that the mom wanted a couple of her children baptized. So we've been working with this family the whole time, meeting with everyone, not just the two girls working towards baptism. There's 8 children total and the mom is single and under a lot of pressure working to provide for the family. A great lady. The mom is working on Sundays but some of the members of the ward have just been incredible in getting the children to church and mutual and other activities. And the baptism ended up happening this weekend. Something else that's pretty neat in the whole orchestration of things is that another set of missionaries in the zone felt inspired to stop by a less active man and they were able to start working with him, and as it turned out he had two sons he wanted to be baptized. And then somewhere in the teaching process of these two families, we found out this man and this lady were divorced a while back, and one of the girls we had been preparing for baptism goes to his house on the weekends. The dynamics are pretty complicated. But we team-taught this girl with the other set of elders. And yesterday her, her younger sister, and the two sons of the dad were all baptized! So the girl standing in front of me in the picture is the older sister, the one who switched between the two other elders and us, Elder Davis baptized her. The younger girl standing in the very front is her sister and I baptized her. The two little boys are obviously the brothers. And then the guy in front with the facial hair is another cool guy who was baptized by another set of Elders in that ward, a cool guy. But it was a great baptism. Just an awesome family who has come a long way in the past 6 weeks. More good things to come for them too.

So other big news, the transfer's over. Elder Davis is peacing out. He's going back to the Spanish branch down in Detroit, he's a Spanish Elder so he's pretty pumped to go back "home". It was a power transfer, a pretty dynamic duo we had going. But good things are in store for the next 6 weeks for sure. We're working with a lot of great people right now.

I think that's about it for the week. Today we're running a few errands and Elder Davis is packing up. We got haircuts from a lady in the ward this morning and helped some other members pack up a trailer to move out. It's raining today. Oh this week we stopped by a member family for a dinner appointment and we found out that the wife is a chiropractor. She offered to do a quick adjustment afterwards for either of us and I couldn't resist. My hip had actually been bothering me for a few days after tweaking it in basketball one morning. I ended up getting an adjustment on my back from the wife, apparently my lower back was pretty tight and I had a rib that was out of place. One of my legs was longer than the other too? I didn't even know that could happen, she showed her husband and Elder Davis and they said it was a good inch or two of a difference. She's done chiropracting for Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Anniston, and a couple other stars when she worked in Hollywood. Now I feel like a star.

That's about it around here. Have a great week.

Much love, Elder Lamb