An interesting week

This week sure has been an interesting one! Last Wednesday we did exchanges. Again. And I went to the other Elders' area. Again. Except this time I was with Elder N. We started it off well, and we were able to get some very good contacting done. As we were walking down this particular street, we spotted a sign that said "FREE" sitting on a perfectly good sound system, with a sub-woofer and everything. So, we grabbed it. We kept walking around, and contacted this little old man who was shoveling yard waste into his trash can, and we asked if we could do it for him. He said that even though he was old, that he was tough. So we started talking to him about his life, his family, where he's originally from, etc., and right at the end, when we tried to initiate the gospel conversation, he said,"HA! GOTCHA! I'm a member." Gosh. Members here. They just play pranks on you. We then went and met a member that lives in a care center, and gave her some rice crispy treats, since those are her favorite dessert. After that, we tried some more contacting, and didn't find many people outside, so we went and had dinner with K. We had a pretty cool spiritual moment with him and the other members of the church that were there visiting, one of which is our less-active member. We then went and taught a young woman the Restoration, and every time I tried to talk, the chihuahua's went nuts. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Gah. It was so frustrating. We were then able to invite the Spirit really strongly again, and finished it off with a bang. She accepted the invitation to be baptized.

Thursday, I was once again reunited with Elder Y., and we started the day off with some weekly planning, and went off into the day. We went about trying to find people at home that we could teach, but unfortunately, almost nobody was at home. We finally had dinner with a member who wants his son to start the scouting program. So, I had picked up a copy of the most recent Boy Scout Handbook, and gave it to him to show to his son. We talked about scouting, and I was able to share a lot of things that I did that I felt had prepared me for real life. We then went to teach L., but she cancelled, so we had nothing set up for the rest of the night. We tried to find less-actives at home, but none were available. So we walked around trying to find people to talk to, and ended the night.

For Friday, we had district lunch, provided by the Sisters since they had a Domino's gift card from a member. We ate with gusto, and then had district meeting. Elder Y. and I were assigned to prepare a bit to share on finding new investigators, so we did an activity where two missionaries had to contact a certain situation. We had written up 15 situations, all of which were normal, except for one. The weird one was a contact that I had done once back in Chula Vista, where a guy was sitting at a bus stop, talking to himself and twitching. Just our luck, Sister H. grabbed that situation, so I got to be the twitchy guy, and they had to contact me and share something about the Restoration. Went well, I thought. We then went to do some service for a less-active in our area that was throwing a birthday party for her daughter. We had to rake up the weeds in her yard so that they could inflate the jumper-house. We finished, and went to visit the C's. We showed up, and they were quite happy to see us. They had just been in court on Wednesday with their daughter, and everything had worked out much better than they had expected, so they were pleased with the things that were happening. We shared a message with them on the heart-wrenching trials that we have to experience amidst the everyday-drawl-trials, and how we have strength in Christ. We then had dinner with Hna. G., and went to visit some less-actives after that. We tried to find V., but he was on the phone with his dad, so we couldn't meet with him.

On Saturday, we did a lot of street contacting. We had planned on going out to the far west edge of our area to see who we could find to talk to. We didn't have much initial success, but were able to talk to several people. Then, all of a sudden, the R. family invited us into their house to have carne asada tacos. Turns out they were members of the English ward whose area we cover. We then went to the party at the less-active's house that we'd helped the day before to see if there were any non-members that we could speak with. We had some weird salad, ate some more food, talked to the members a bit, visited with some non-members, and went on our way to visit another less-active. We rode our bikes pretty much the whole day, and I must say, I feel like my thighs should be massive from how much biking we're doing, but alas, I remain thin as always. We then had coordination, and went to visit A., but he had gone to LA for a concert gig, so we tried finding other people to visit. Didn't have much success, and turned in for the night.

Sunday, we went to branch council, and I got to sit outside with Elder C. and talk to him while we set up chairs for Priesthood. We had a pretty good chat, me mostly listening, and him just letting everything off his shoulders. It was good. I like being someone that others can turn to when they need a listening ear. We then had our church meetings, and a high councilman and his wife visited to speak in our sacrament meeting. They are from Chile, and had a very distinct accent that kinda made me cringe a bit. They kept swallowing the "s" on a lot of words, and it just sounded weird. After church, we went and did our studies, and we did sally forth to find somebody to teach. Nothin'. So we went and had dinner with the O. family, and they live quite a ways away. So we traveled with the other Elders, and when we got there, I smelled something very recognizeable: menudo. I've had some interesting experiences with menudo, so I was a little apprehensive at first. They let us taste it, and it tasted fine, so I agreed to eat it. After I finished my bowl, they gave us carne asada. We then got to share some moments from our missions as the spiritual thought, (since all their kids are grown up and we were on the topic of mission experiences). We then came back, amidst great tempests and tumults because of a storm that had rolled in. We got to our area and started walking around to find people to teach, and it started downpouring on us. We ran for cover, and stood in an apartment complex until it let up a bit.

Yesterday, we had lunch with a bunch of elderly members that had fixed us some food, and we ate it with pleasure, and visited with them a bit. We got a ride home from some other Elders, and went to contact in some very good locations, (or so we've heard). We were able to contact this young guy that was smoking. At first, we both thought that he was Arabic or English, but it so turned out that he spoke Spanish. So we started talking to him, and got into a really good conversation. We mentioned a bit of what we do, and were able to get onto a good note with him. He said that he didn't particularly pertain to any religion, but that he believed that we should all treat each other with respect. He even said that he believed that the purpose of life was to become more divine, and more like God. We jumped at that bit, and shared a bit about the Plan of Salvation, and about how we lived with God before this life, and that this life is the time to prepare to return, better than we once were. He got really excited about that little tidbit, and we were able to get him to loosen up a ton with us. It was a cool contact. We then went and had dinner with Hna. G. again, and she had just gotten some disappointing news, so we talked about how sometimes, we have to suffer a lot, so that further down the road, we might be able to withstand the horrible agony of watching our spirit children suffer in their own mortal probation, and not being able to help them as much as you'd like because of their agency. The Spirit was super strong, and I think that it was exactly what she needed. We didn't find anyone at home after that.

Well, I guess that's about it for this week! We had a pretty epic Nerf war, Elder Y. and I. He got me pretty good a couple of times, and I got a jumpshot that was amazing. I ran and jumped, and I was almost horizontal, (yeah right, that's just what I think), and I shot him from across the apartment. I felt pretty awesome.

Talk to you next week!

-Love, Elder Crook

P.S. Just for fun....

MTE's, Temple, and less-actives

Sorry that I got on to write so late today! We went to the temple, and got there in time for the 11:00 session. We got there with plenty of time to spare, and when we got into the session, people just kept pouring in. It was mostly because one woman in particular was going through for the first time. There were SO MANY WOMEN. They overflowed into the men's section. They almost didn't have enough workers to handle the surge in numbers. Then, in the middle of the session, the woman receiving her endowment had a huge coughing fit, and they put the session on pause for a bit, until she could get a drink of water. Then we continued. Once we were in the celestial room, there were TONS of missionaries. Sometimes, I like it better when there aren't many missionaries, because the Spirit stays stronger. Since there were a lot of them, I felt that the moment was ruined a little bit. But that's just me.

Wednesday, we had MTE's, and I got moved to another area for the day. I was put in a trio in La Mesa with some Elders that are pretty new to the mission. We went and started the day off with a less-active visit, and we read from and talked about some chapters from the Book of Mormon. We then went and tried to find some new investigators, and were able to add one and invite her to be baptized. She accepted after a bit of explanation on why we invite people to be baptized. We then went to visit a member family and have dinner with them. We watched a talk by Thomas S. Monson, and talked about the importance of member-missionary work. We then went to a part-member family home, and they had dinner set out for us, so we got to eat twice. The boyfriend isn't a member, and the girlfriend is. They've been having a rough time, and I think it's because the guy is stuck in what he believes. He tried to defend what he believed by attacking what we believed. Now as for me and myself, I don't tolerate that. So I asked some questions about why he felt the way he did, and clarified his understanding on the what and why of our beliefs. He brought up polygamy and I answered his questions using the recent essays that have been released by the church. He sat pretty stubbornly in what he thought, and kept saying,"Well, as a CHRISTIAN, I believe in this or that." and when I asked,"Well, what's a Christian?", he wouldn't answer the question. I got a little heated if you couldn't tell, BUT, we kept it cool as we all shared our thoughts.

Thursday, I got back with Elder Y., and the Elder that he had been with for the MTE's was a strange one. He said that he was really glad that I was back. I'll admit, I was glad to be back, too. We had lunch and got our weekly planning done after that, and went on to visit some less-actives that neither of us had met yet. We found some at home, and were able to get some return appointments set. We then went to dinner with some members, and afterwards, went to teach L. We had decided to teach about the importance of the Apostasy vs. the Restoration to help her grasp the concept of how the authority to administer gospel ordinances was lost, and was then restored through Joseph Smith. Halfway through the lesson, however, she had to leave because her baby started making a really big fuss because he was sick. So, we'll just have to work with her more this week. We then went and tried to find a referral, and actually found him home! His name's V., and he's 16 years old. We started talking about the things that he likes, and were able to transition into the Gospel. We taught simply, and tried our best to help him understand the need for the Savior and His Gospel, and when we finished teaching about baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost, he said that he'd like to be baptized. Elder Y. and I both spaced completely on getting him a specific baptismal date, so I'm guessing that the Spirit just made us forget, because you'd think that we would do that right off the bat when the person says they want to get baptized. But no. Neither one of us thought to ask, so we said that we'd come back and teach the Restoration. It was a pretty awesome lesson!

On Friday, we had breakfast with some members who were going to feed us dinner that day, but had to reschedule because of a time conflict. So we went and had California burritos for breakfast, and went from there to district meeting. After district meeting, we went and did some contacting, and found some less-actives at home. We were then about to go eat with a less-active, but he cancelled, so we went and had dinner with R. He sent us over to Domino's on our bikes, and we brought some pizza back. We then went and met with another man whom we thought was a member, but he turned out to be a non-member. So we unknowingly had an investigator lesson, even though he didn't really want us to come back and teach him again.

Saturday, we got some things done early on, got chastised by a guy on the street for not helping the homeless people more, (that was fun), had lunch, and went to meet some people. We visited a less-active whose husband came out and told us that she didn't want to be a member anymore, so we shouldn't come back anymore. That surprised us. We went and visited a less-active in the same complex and talked about what he could do to be ready to baptize his daughter in a few weeks' time. We then went and had coordination, and it went...alright, I guess. We then went to give a blessing to a member in our area. Her oldest daughter is going through severe cancer treatments and surgery, and the other has been sentenced to several years in jail, so she was pretty distraught. We gave her a blessing, and gave her some words of comfort, and went home.

Sunday, we fasted for that sister to whom we gave the blessing, and the other Elders had lunch with a member right after church. Right before we left to go do that, the sisters asked us to go take the sacrament to an elderly sister who can't leave her home. We ran over and did that, and went to leave the Elders at their lunch appointment. They're short on mileage, so we didn't go anywhere, and just sat in the car and did our studies. They took for-stinking-ever, and we went to our dinner appointment afterwards. DINNER appointment. That's how long it took. We then went and visited some other members in the same complex as the dinner appointment, went to visit another less-active in a different complex, had a lesson with him, and went home after a bit of not finding anyone at home after that.

Yesterday, we had some pretty great success since it was President's day and tons of people were home from work and school. We tried to have a lot of lessons with investigators, but surprisingly, none of them were home. SO, instead, we went and visited tons of less-actives. We were able to have tons of good lessons, and were out in the cool, ocean breeze the whole day. I was surprised at how cool and humid it was! El Cajon is always hot and dry. As we walked around, I contacted a guy in Arabic, and didn't go very far before I couldn't say anymore. Luckily his friend came over and started translating for us, and the guy said that he wasn't interested. Oh well. Then our dinner cancelled on us again, so we ate at home this time. We then went out and started biking, and as we were going, there was this couple of girls and an older gentleman that were trying to push a couch across the street. We parked our bikes, picked the couch up, and took it to their apartment. They were Arabic, so they didn't get much of what we were saying, and we didn't get much of what they were saying, but we were able to help them out in the moment that they most needed it. I thought it was pretty cool. We then ran into the Arabic Elders and suggested that they could probably stop by and visit them to see if they'd like to learn about the gospel. A few of our set appointments fell through, so we visited a less-active guy that's 22 years old, and we were able to break the ice with him. He's pretty "meh" about the church, but we were able to get him to express a few of his concerns. Elder Y. and I both thought that it went really well.

Eh-yup! That's just about it for this week! Oh, and don't worry about the bike, Mom. Another Elder is letting me use his until I finish the mission so that I don't have to buy one. As for the missionaries in the branch, we have two Sister training leaders and four Elders. We're mostly working with less-actives right now because of the huge number that we have. We're hoping to be able to find some new investigators soon.

Have a great week, everyone! I love you!

-Elder Crook

Teaching, teaching and more teaching

We started this week off really well last Wednesday with 6 lessons throughout the day. I feel like that was quite the feat since three of them were with investigators, and we didn't have set appointments to visit them. We started off by visiting some less-active members, and were able to get more familiar with them and were able to talk about a lot of good things, including our favorite foods. :3 I just love talking about food. We then went to try and find some investigators. We then went and visited some members in the same complex, and went to try and find some less-active members that live in our area that we didn't know about. We didn't really find any of them at home. We then went and tried an investigator couple that has a problem with gambling, and when we showed up, they asked why we hadn't come around in awhile, because they had hoped that we would have come sooner in the week or the week before. We explained that we'd tried to find them at home a few times, but that they plum just weren't there. They said that it was probably because of work, and we sat down to teach them. I started out just connecting the need for a Savior to the reason for the which we missionaries walk around all day talking to people. We talked about the Book of Mormon, and the importance of it in the entire scheme of things. By the end of the lesson, they basically committed themselves to read and pray. We then went to visit R., and showed the Restoration video. He really liked it. We then went to try some less-actives, and went to see L. with the S. family. They weren't able to meet with us, so we set another appointment, and went to visit K., an active member nearby. We walked in, and he asked us a question about how to avoid procrastination. We started talking, and then M., U., and B., three other members, walked in. Then the whole visit just got hilarious. They got into a little tussle about "My horse is bigger than your horse." with regards to soccer or videogames. The whole time, Elder Y. and I are busting up laughing.

Thursday, we went and did some mormon.org time to start things off. I sat in the wrong seat, because the people that sat next to me were pretty...strange. First it was a black guy that was drunk out of his mind, and he was watching music videos from the 80's, and really getting into it. He'd be sitting there going, "Eh-yeah yeah yeah YAYAH yeah.", and I'd be sitting there smelling the alcohol on his breath. EUGH. Then, he left and this girl came and sat down at that computer. And her boyfriend was standing REALLY close to her right behind her chair, practically smelling her hair.. (Heh. That rhymed.) He was breathing REALLY LOUDLY, and that weirded me out. So I finished up and got off the computer, and went to wait for Elder Y. to finish, since he started his time after I did. Then this guy walks up to me and asks, "Hey. Are you a J-dub?" "No." "Oh. GOOD.", and then he walks away. O_o Wasn't quite sure what happened. We then went and had lunch, did some weekly planning, and went to visit some less-actives who ended up not being home. We then went and had dinner with some members, and went to visit a less-active guy who doesn't come to church because of dialysis treatments every Sunday. He has a new puppy that's only about a month old, and he was very attentive to that little thing. He commented that his wife accused him of taking better care of the puppy than he had for his own kids. We shared a message about hope, and went home.

On Friday, we had zone meeting. We showed up, we got down to business, set some goals, (and actually set them well!), and moved on to some training. A couple of English Elders posed as a couple of hillbilly investigators, and the zone leaders tried to teach them the Restoration. It went everywhere, from "Man. I feel good inside right naow, Gunther." "You gettin' them butterflies, Phil?" "Yup. I got them butterflies in mah belleh." "Well...what kind is they? Are they monarchs?" "What?" "Is they big butterflahs, or little ones?" "They's little ones." "Oh. Them's is moths."   And so forth. And it ended with talking about Father in Heaven, and the last question was, "Well, what's his address then?" Oh man. It was so funny. I had such a hoot. We then had lunch with the district, (even though I wanted to have lunch with some of the English Elders). Oh well. We then went and had dinner with the R., and had a good lesson with them and their two daughters. We then went and taught L. about the temple, and temple marriage. We then invited her to be baptized again, and she said that she'd already been baptized. Thankfully, Hno. S. was there to help out. He talked about the necessity of having proper authority to baptize, and we testified that she could know for herself if God's authority really was restored. She said that she would pray about it.

Saturday, we went riding around town trying to find less-active members, and didn't have much success in finding them. We then went to visit a part-member family, and helped them to get their tablet all organized. Gosh. I'm really far behind when it comes to new technology. Seriously. This tablet was super tricky to figure out. I had no idea what I was doing, and Elder Y. pretty much fixed the problem all by himself. We then visited the J. family, and talked with him for a bit, and he told us that he wanted to baptize his daughter soon, since she just turned 8. We shared a message, and went to visit some other less-actives. (We have a lot of less-actives, so that's pretty much the back-up plan if something falls through.) We then went to coordination, and there were a lot of branch missionaries there. We got the help needed, and went to visit a less-active that we'd met the other day. His name's A., and he's a huge music buff. He's a photographer for bands, so he gets a lot of cool stuff, and gave us autographed pictures of Young the Giant, a pretty popular band. One of the missionaries in the zone is really into music, so I gave him my autographed picture.

For Sunday, we went to branch council, set up some chairs, had sacrament meeting, went to the classes, had lunch, did our studies at the church to save miles, and went to our area to do some work before dinner with some members near the church. The members had to cancel last minute, so we went to our area and tried to find people at home. The members then swung by and left us some carne asada with tortillas, cilantro, onions, and tomatoes, and said sorry for cancelling. We ate, and went to find some referrals. We got to the complex of one, and this little old lady comes over and starts talking to us. She tells us about all of the people in the complex, and said that we could try knocking on any of the doors that we wanted to. She's the apartment manager, and we offered that if at any time she needed help cleaning up the place, that we'd sure be happy to help. She thanked us and said that if we ever wanted to say hi to just knock on her door. The referral then buffed us, (we could see them inside, and they could see us. I made awkward eye contact with a guy on the couch.), so we left and contacted another referral that actually wasn't the person that lived in the apartment number that they gave us. We turned in for the night, and started exchanges with the other Elders.

Yesterday went really well, as I was put with Elder C., a newer missionary, and we had a pretty great day. We started out with a few investigators early in the morning, taught some lessons, and went back for lunch. We were napping during lunch, when we got a call from the Sisters saying that a member needed some emergency service moving some couches. So we did some superhero clothes changing action, and sped over to help them with their couches. They didn't need us right then, so we went and helped the English Elders with some service helping a lady that hoards tons of stuff. We then went back to help with the couches, and were able to get them sent over to another member's house. We moved a bunch of couches around, and they had around 4 couches in their living room by the end of it, set up in a theater-type organization. We then went to dinner with those members that we'd moved the couches for, and ate some delicious lasagna with salad, a rotisserie chicken, and some Italian bread. We then went and exchanged back.

Now for today, the plan was to go to the temple, but the other Elders had "something come up", so we'll have to wait until next week. :'( But anywho, that's just about all that's happened this week. We haven't really had anything crazy happen to us, (like it usually does).

Have a great week! And happy Valentines Day! (More like "Happy Make-Everything-Awkward-for-the-Missionaries Day".)

-Love, Elder Crook

Ins and outs

This week started out pretty great, but we ended up hitting a couple of road blocks, and finished it off pretty darn well.

On Wednesday last, we went about meeting people. We started off biking around, going to some less-active's house, finding they weren't there, etc., etc., until we went back to the apartment for a break. We spent a good amount of time organizing our area books, finding all of the members that live in our area, ordering all of the former investigator records, and finding that there were some from back in 2002, and discarding several that had moved out a long time ago. We then visited R., and talked to him a bit about Joseph Smith again, and this time, he asked us the question of what the chariot of fire may have been that took Elijah to heaven. I said that it probably was something that looked like a chariot of fire. "No," he says. "It sounds like aliens, right? I mean, they could have swooped down and picked 'im up just like that." I wasn't really quite sure how to respond, and then he said that Noah's ark was alien technology, and that it probably had a nuclear reactor. After that we just tried to get him off of the topic of aliens. We then went to dinner with the other Elders and a member at a Chinese buffet that is a little bit like Beijing Buffet back in Brigham City. I ate something from pretty much every item there was. I had fresh crab, (I had to break the shell with my teeth), crawfish, salmon, shrimp, tilapia, beef, pork, chicken, you name it. And it was, most of it, pretty tasty. We then went and visited a less-active family that has been influenced a bit by another less-active, and we got to know them and shared a message.

Thursday, both Elder Y. and I woke up with some pretty bad indigestion/food poisoning. Elder Y. got hit pretty hard, and we were inside for pretty much the whole day, except for a little bit later in the evening when we had an appointment with L. Elder N. got hit pretty hard, too, so he and Elder Y. stayed in our apartment while Elder C. and I went to our appointments. We split with some members, and I took a Priest and a Teacher with me. I pretty much had to influence the lesson as well as I could, and tried to include the two guys who were with me. The lesson went pretty swimmingly, and we went back home.

Friday, Elder Y. was still under the weather, but he was feeling a bit better. We went to district meeting, and beforehand, the other elders decided to go to this sandwich store. So we all got sandwiches, which wasn't a good idea. We ate, had district meeting, took district pictures, and headed home. Then Elder Y. went back down on his sick bed, and we were in for most of that day as well. We managed to visit a less active member and have some carne asada with them, and afterwards, went to a birthday party for one of the members. For some reason, the tradition here is to punch each other until the number of the age. The member was turning 22, so all of his siblings got to punch him up to a total of 22 times. (Not 22 times per person.) Then, they do what's called the mordida, where they put the cake in front of the person, and as they go to take a bite of the cake, the family members smash their face into the cake. This one got pretty brutal, and they were smearing the cake all over his head, hair, and shoulders. Not sure why they would waste a perfectly good cake like that. Oh well.

On Saturday, Elder Y. was feeling much better, so we were able to get out and work. We started out with trying to find some members in the farther edge of our area, and biked our way over. We got there, didn't really find anyone, so I contacted a lady walking by and asked if she'd ever talked with missionaries. She responded that she was a member, and walked away. I was pretty surprised, as was Elder Y. So we asked if there was anything we could do to help her as she was walking away. She responded that she was setting up for a birthday party for her daughter, and said that she would love some help. We started carrying big containers of food and desserts from her apartment down to the party area. At one point, I had some things in both hands, and was waiting for Elder Y. to grab some things, when out of nowhere, this girl comes around the corner in nothing but a towel. AAAAH!!! *eyes instantly averted towards the ceiling* We then made a quick escape with our items, and as we walked towards the party area, we both started snickering about what had just happened. It's the funniest thing after it happens, but in the moment, it's horrifying. We then stayed and ate a bit of the party food, which was quite well-made and tasty. After a bit, we decided to go see some other members. We met the Hno. C., who is less-active because of his night-shift security job. We used the bathroom at the El Cajon library, (where I am now), and some things happened in there that were quite a bit more horrifying than the earlier incident. So I walked out and stood by the door and left Elder Y. to his own powers. We then returned to the party and ate some cake and helped clean up. We then went to coordination, and afterward, shared a scripture with R. after helping him get his TV and VCR set up. (He has a VCR!)

For Sunday, we went to consejo, and we talked about a lot of good things, and we got some good information from the members of the council about what we could do with certain members of the branch. We then went to sacrament meeting, which was fast and testimony meeting, went to the classes, and went home. Elder Y. decided not to fast, and instead ate some food and drank water to try and settle his stomach from the incident earlier in the week. We then went and tried to find a less-active member that hasn't been seen in awhile, and weren't able to find her. We then went and ate with the G. family. The husband is blind from diabetes, and they had the Superbowl on pretty much the whole time. We had to avert our eyes pretty well, but we could still hear it in the background. We shared a message with them about the law of the fast, and they had some misconceptions about some things, such as how long we are supposed to fast, so we cleared them up. We then went and taught R. about the law of the fast as well, and he liked it pretty well. He even started asking us questions about the word of wisdom.

Yesterday, we had a mandatory 3 hours of cleaning the apartment, and got it all done relatively well. We then went looking for some potential investigators, and showed up at the complex where one said she lived. She didn't give us her apartment number, so we went door knocking to find her. We ended up running into this older gentleman who needed some help moving his furniture, so we gladly helped him out. We then spotted which apartment was hers, and resolved to come back another day. We went to the complex called "mormontown" and asked one of the active members about all of the less-active members, to get a feel for who we could visit and teach. We then went back to our apartment to get our suits for a baptism later that night. We went to dinner, and talked about the Superbowl and the Quorum of the Twelve. It was a weird conversation transition, but it worked. We then went to the baptism, because it was someone that Elder Y. had taught before I got here. His companion went home 3 weeks early for school, and so Elder Y. got put with an English Elder for 3 weeks. The guy that got baptized was one of their investigators, so we got to attend. The reason that the baptism was yesterday was because the man's granddaughter was turning 8 yesterday, so they got permission to be baptized and confirmed yesterday, together.

Today, it sounds like we're headed back to my old area in Mira Mesa for some bowling! I'm pretty stoked for that. Not much else to report!

Have a great week!

-Love, Elder Crook