For those interested in following Joseph's mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He is serving in the California Modesto mission, serving the spanish speaking people.
This week was pretty great. I got transferred to Lodi but the area is super cool and the branch is awesome. One of the departing missionaries gave me his guitar which was pretty awesome (he tried to sell it to me for like forty bucks a month ago but I wouldn't do it because I knew he would eventually give me a better price). Our apartment is super nice and this is by far the nicest area I have served in. There are bunch of wineries and vineyards here.
While we were eating dinner with a family the other day (we were eating tamales, just so you know), and the 8 year old kid in the family wanted to show us how strong he was so he got our attention and did 40 pushups! Pretty impressive, and then started doing jumping jacks and then to top it off, rips his shirt off and flexes. Haha it was pretty entertaining.
This week was pretty busy. We went on exchanges with our district leader and the other companionship had to go fill the baptismal font for a baptism that was taking place that night. The missionaries were assured that someone was going to be there soon after they had to leave but later on, during dinner, they got a phone call from someone saying that the font was flooding! Luckily, that person turned the water off, but we raced to the church to clean all the water up before people started to show up. Only a few people realized that the floor was wet so that was good.
Before all that, we were eating dinner together. The lady was making us fried tacos when we got the call. We apologized for having to leave early but that it was an emergency. I noticed that someone left a couple tacos on the table so I picked them up, the other Elder who was watching me said "do it" so I put them in my pocket so the hermana wouldn't get offended.
Last night, we were driving back to our apartment to receive transfer calls and we saw someone get hit by a car! We are fairly certain he is still alive, but that was crazy.
Oh and we got transfer calls last night, I am going up to Lodi after only six weeks in Modesto.
So this week I went on exchanges with my district leader, He's a pretty cool guy we went to his area in Airport, supposedly the most dangerous area in the mission. We knocked on a lot of doors and met a lot of people. One lady that answered proudly affirmed that she joined with the Jehovah's Witnesses about 3 years ago. We started to explain what the Book of Mormon is and she seemed really interested. When we finished talking about the Restoration, she asked for a copy of the Book of Mormon!
Later in the week we finally met with Ronnie, our investigator. He was sad he couldn't come to church yesterday but told us about the miracles he was able to see. We talked about baptism and he said he would pray to know if he needed to be baptized the first weekend in February.
On Saturday, we were riding around on our bikes after a lesson and just happened, by chance, to run into some members that own a taco shop. We hadn't eaten yet so we talked to them about food and they offered to feed us. We asked if that was ok because we didn't want to impose and they replied that they were happy to do it. So they blessed us with their tacos, which was awesome, and then we went on our way.
My companion was sick so we just spent a lot of time resting.
This week was pretty great, we got invited to a New Year's dinner last night where the member (who caters tacos for a living) had us over and made us a bunch of tacos.
Our investigator came to church yesterday. Before he went the first time, he told us he missed his old church because it started at 12 and ours was too early because we start at 9. When the bishop announced that church would be starting at 12 next year, our investigator sighed and told us he was starting to like the church already. The important thing is that he is going to church.
Last night they asked us to be inside our apartments early because it was New Year's eve and it was unsafe to be outside late at night. We were in our apartment when the fireworks started going off. We heard some yelling come from outside. As we were trying to figure out what the yelling was all about, we heard a massive explosion come from where the yelling was. Car alarms were triggered and when that massive firework had served its purpose, a second was launched. Immediately afterward, we heard some sirens blaring, coming toward our street where what we assumed the illegal fireworks were being launched.
So late one night last week we were trying to contact a family we had met before. We opened the gate, walked to the house, knocked on the door, and a giant husky got up from where it had been sleeping. We thought we were dead but then the dog started wagging it's tail and we started playing with it. The lady we were trying to contact opened the door and flinched because she thought the dog was attacking us for a second. We stood in the porch with her for a few minutes, playing with the dog, and then set a return appointment for when her husband would be home so we could go inside the house next time.
Our investigator who we have been teaching for the past month finally came to church on Sunday and he loved it! He had a bad experience with a different ward about a year ago but he told us he would like to start going weekly to our church. It was a pretty cool experience.
Christmas was pretty good. My companion and I are trying to eat healthier, which is pretty hard because we have gotten so much junk food the past couple days. I decided to wait until the new year to start eating healthier.
Hope you all had a great Christmas! Love you all!!
Modesto is great! There is a lot of service projects to do here. We spent all day Tuesday biking around and trying to find a house for a prospective elder. We were riding through rows and rows of suburban houses until we got close to the address... When we finally arrived to where the house should have been, it was just an empty lot! Just a field of dirt between two beautiful houses. We double checked and triple checked and that was definitely the address. So just out of spite we walked around on the empty lot, looking for some trace of a home but there was absolutely nothing. It probably freaked the neighbors out to see two missionaries just walking around on an empty lot.
Later that day we found a lady who was organizing Mary Kay stuff in her garage. We started talking to her for a little bit and ended up teaching her the Restoration. It turns out she was taught by missionaries a long time ago but they stopped coming by. She was really cool and invited us to come by again when her whole family would be home.
Not too much else happened this week. We went to the hospital three times to give blessings to sick members. The ward is doing pretty good. I have to translate every week during sacrament meeting by speaking into a microphone while some of the members that don't speak Spanish listen to the translation, it’s helping my language.
Early in the week, I made some spaghetti for my companion and myself, but after I started boiling the noodles, I realized that we didn't have any spaghetti sauce. The only sort of red sauce that we had was chorizo, which is a highly seasoned Mexican sausage. So we put the chorizo in a frying pan with a bunch of oil and some water and let that cook until the noodles were ready. One of us offered a pretty sincere prayer, asking that we would receive nutrition from our food, looked at each other, and took a hesitant, small bite. The Mexican spaghetti was amazing! I'm not sure what I did but it turned out very well.
Hope everyone has a great Christmas! ¡Les quiero todos!
So this week we went knocking doors in a small town called Salida. Most of the doors we knocked on opened and almost everyone had a laughable excuse as to why they would not like to hear a message about how we can be happy, have the Lord in our lives and how He loves us.
I don't want to sound like I am making fun of any of these good people, but sometimes we as missionaries are just a little smarter than our outward appearance may imply. We knocked on one lady's door, talked to her for a little bit about the Christmas decorations that flooded her front yard, and asked her if she would be willing to pull up a video called “Light the World” on her phone. She hesitated for a bit, and then as if the life size Santa Claus balloon in her front yard gave her the inspiration for a good excuse, asserted that she was a Jehovah's Witness, and that she respects all religions and just wanted hers to be respected as well. She didn't give us a chance to speak back as she closed the door.
Later in the week, we were able to find a new investigator who the english elders gave us. He's a really cool guy and has a lot of really sincere questions. We are excited to be working with him for the next little bit.
The new area's great! The ward is awesome and the Bishop is fantastic. I already really miss Stockton but Modesto is pretty cool. Not as much work here but that means I just have to work a little harder. I know it's the Lord's will so I'm happy to do it.
So this week we had a lot of exchanges to go on because it was the end of the transfer. We were able to have a couple lessons but not too many. We had dinner with a recent convert, which was really awesome, because the father, who is not a member and usually avoids us, wanted to eat dinner with us. The dinner went very well, until we tried to share a spiritual message. We asked him what a prophet is and he went off about how all religions are confusing and how he doesn't want to stop drinking alcohol. It was somewhat evident that he may have had a bad experience with religion in the past. I'm pretty sure we were the first missionaries he had a whole meal with in at least a year so we counted it as a success.
Not much else happened this week. We got transfer calls last night and I am going to Modesto with a new companion. I'm still a zone leader, and I'll be with a companion that was in Modesto for a long time but got moved to Tracy (so he's going back to his old area). This will be my fourth transfer as a zone leader (so about 6 months). I'm pretty excited!
My companion and I felt prompted to visit a potential investigator we had met the week before. It was Friday night and the streets were empty (never a good sign), the fence had a very visible "beware of dog" sign, and the gate had a lock on it. We couldn't see into the back yard, and didn't know if that's where the dog was sleeping, but the lock was unlocked so we removed it and went for the door. When we knocked, a lady answered and reminded us that she was Catholic, so we talked about soccer for a few minutes (the team representing her home city was winning) and then just talked about Jesus Christ. We explained that we wanted to respect her beliefs, and that our message was one about love. We taught the Restoration of the gospel, read a little from the Book of Mormon, and promised that if she read it, pondered it's message, and prayed about it, she could also know that Jesus's original church was once again here on earth. She opened up and told us she hadn't been to Mass in a long time, and didn't even have a Bible. We told her that the next time we stopped by, we could give one to her for free. She responded that the Book of Mormon seemed more interesting than the Bible, and that she would just start with that. She then explained that the lock and "Beware of dog" sign was just to keep missionaries away (she didn't even have a dog, haha). She told us we could come back anytime, and on our way out she asked us to put the lock back, because missionaries from another religion would be coming by the next day, and they were not invited. It was a pretty cool experience.
Thanksgiving was pretty fun, we had a giant feast with a Chilean family with lots of food.
We had an appointment with a new investigator we met the week before, but she wasn't there for her appointment so we thought that she was offended or something and was trying to avoid us. We felt impressed to try her again that Saturday and she answered, apologized for missing our appointment, and told us about the parts of the Book of Mormon that she had read. We were able to answer some of her questions about the restoration that she had and then told us that starting next week she wants to come to our church! She was going to convince her husband to come with her also! It was pretty sweet.
While we were riding our bikes we ran into a man that I had been trying to find for the past three months. He is a really kind man from Mexico that has something of a drinking problem. He told us he was really sad because his girlfriend just left him, and then ten minutes later he started telling us about his other girlfriend in Mexico, who he is going to visit for Christmas. It was pretty interesting but we gave him two Books of Mormon, one for him and one for his girlfriend in Mexico and then wished him luck as we took off.
We got invited by a family in the ward to have Thanksgiving with them... the same family I had Thanksgiving with last year haha. I remember the food being great so I am really excited!
So this week we saw a pretty cool miracle, we were knocking doors in an area that should have had a lot of potential. We knocked on doors for almost two hours, with pretty much no success. We talked to one lady for a few minutes and when she asked us who we were and we told her we were missionaries, she told us that she had to go. It was a little discouraging but right before we took off, we saw a house that was blasting this kind of hispanic music so we knocked on the door. Nobody answered the door so we knocked on it harder until the lady turned the music off and opened the door. We explained who we were and shared the message of the restoration and the Book of Mormon. She told us she wasn't very religious but that she was thinking about going to a church soon. It was pretty cool to see that she was prepared. She promised to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it.
The rest of the week was just a lot of meetings and some good food. Have a great week!
