¿Cuánto Cuesta?

Que pasa a todos,

This week has been pretty crazy, we had to move out of the temporary apartment we were living in because the exterminators were done killing the roaches in the usual apartment for this area. On one day, we spent 7 hours moving and cleaning the two apartments with Elder and Sister Lainhart (the senior missionaries who took us to the zoo a few weeks ago). The day after that, we had another food distribution service down at Las America's (right on the border by Tijuana) from 7 am to 12 pm, followed by 2 more hours of cleaning and moving apartments. So, lots of manual labor this week. Our new apartment is super nice, I hope I don't get transferred next week haha. 

Transfers are coming soon! This transfer was a long one, 7 weeks instead of 6. The mission is going well, I'm 8 months in as of today. The work is picking up here. Poco a poco! 

A couple of days ago, we got a call from another elder in the mission who told us he found someone for us to teach. Then he said the lesson they had scheduled that we needed to go to was in 5 minutes! So we booked it to this guy Francisco's place. He lived in a trailer park, in a tiny little "house", which really only had room for his bed and the beds of others with whom he shared the place. So we taught him outside, which is where the kitchen and living area was, with a roof of pcp pipes and tarps. 

Very humble living conditions. We taught the lesson and at the end, we invited him to read El Libro de Mormon. He said OK, how much does it cost? He was so happy when we said it was free. We asked if he wanted a copy of the Santa Biblia too, and he basically said Nah, I'm fine with this one (pointing to the Book of Mormon). Sadly this guy Francisco isn't actually in our teaching area, so we passed him off to the other elders. It was cool to see someone who appreciated the doctrine of Christ found in the Book of Mormon so much that he wanted to pay for it. The gospel is free, it's for everyone. Even if you think it doesn't apply to you or you don't fit the mold, it does. You can, if you will!! And when there's a will, there's a way.

Elder Pettit

Zone Conference W/ Brad Wilcox

What's up everyone!

We had "Zone Conference" this week, but it was over zoom, so it didn't really feel like zone conference. But it did allow for something cool to happen! Brad Wilcox joined our zoom meeting and spoke to our mission for about 45 minutes. It was pretty cool, he spoke a lot about studies and journaling. He seems super happy most of the time, but as I've noticed with most personal interactions with church authorities, he roasted all of us lol.

That same day, we were at Kimball Park sending messages to people. We were in our suits, and so a black lady named Chenese came up to us and asked if we were the Elders for the Mormon church! She had been taught by the missionaries about 8 years ago, but lost contact with them. She is homeless right now, but I can tell that she won't be for long. She's very with it. We shared a quick message about prayer with her and are meeting with her again soon. These "coincidental" interactions are always some of the coolest.

A lot of missionaries are leaving this week to their original assignments in other countries, including Elder Torman (an Elder in my district) and Elder Poulson, the Zone leader I served with in the valley. He's a stud, I'm gonna miss him haha. I included a pic of us back in the Valley when we went to the border. There's also some pics from the zoo trip last week.

The mission is going to get a lot smaller in like the next week, and the mission is super young. In a transfer or two, I'll be considered one of the "older" missionaries. Crazy! Elder Mason was supposed to leave for Guatemala, his original assignment, on February 1st, but some of his paper work got lost a while back. So we've been working on "deporting" him, as we like to say lol. Transfers are coming up in a few weeks, so we will see what happens to my companions, I think I'll stay here though.

I've been trying to help my companions get more confident with speaking Spanish. They are afraid of messing up to the point where they won't speak much. I've forced them to lead lessons and street contacts so they can improve haha. Many times it goes horribly and there's a lot of awkward silence, bad grammar and slow sentences, but that's how you learn! It was the same for me when I was still figuring things out. They're both doing well though.

Well I hope everyone has a good week! Super bowl must be coming up soon right? I miss football haha

Nos vemos!

Elder Pettit

Sacrament On The Porch

A lot of stuff happened this week!

A bunch of people here are getting covid, so we are having some restrictions coming back, like no member meals, and now we have to do more stuff online. So that's not fun. But it did open the way for a pretty awesome thing to happen.

We have been trying to get the little 11 year old girl we are teaching, Daphne, and her inactive mom, to come to church so she can be baptized. Because church was online this week, we showed up to her house and watched sacrament meeting with Daphne and her mom on their front porch. During one of the talks, Veronica (the mom) started crying. Afterwards, my companions and I administered the sacrament to them. We didn't have any bread, so we used tortillas.  

Daphne had never been to church before. Before that day, she didn't know what the sacrament was. But if she continues on the bath to baptism and beyond, she will always remember that day! The day she took the sacrament for the first time on the front porch of her house, on a beautiful Sunday morning, with her mother and three missionaries. Veronica asked us if we wanted to come back next week to do the same thing! It was an awesome experience.

We woke up early to do laundry today before going to the zoo, and something cool happened there too. We walked in the laundry room to take our clothes out of the dryer, and there was a young black man in there. He asked us if we were military, and I told him no, we are missionaries. We got talking a little bit, and I eventually got his phone number and set up a lesson with with. He was rolling a blunt during the conversation but we could tell he knew it wasn't right. There's certain people you can just tell are ready to hear the gospel, and he seemed like one of them.

 Just moments before this all happened, Elder Mason joked about how we don't need to wear our name tags on P-Day "because it's our day off". I told Elder Mason afterwards how that was a perfect example of how we are missionaries even on P-Day!

The zoo was really fun today. Overall, it was a good week. We got word of who our new mission president will be in May. It will be Elder and Sister Merritt taking the spot of President and Sister Giménez. It'll be sad when they leave, they're awesome!

Elder Pettit

2022 + Sea World!

Buenas noches a todos,

This was another good week. We got invited to a members house for New Year's, and Elder Mason ate 10 of the Cow tongue + carne asada tacos. They were really good but I only had 5 and i felt bloated. I took a picture of him with his tenth, he looks so proud haha.

One night this week, I woke up at 1:40 AM and checked my phone. I thought it said PM, and I thought we completely slept in and missed like half the day. I started yelling to wake my companions and then Elder Mortensen had to tell me multiple times it was 1:40 AM, not PM,  before I calmed down haha. So my companions haven't let me forget that one.

There's a really cool young man here in the ward named Jared. He wants to serve a mission after high school. As all of the missionaries stood at the doors to welcome people into church on Sunday, he joined us in shaking everyone's hand. Somebody said he looked like a missionary, and I thought so too! So I gave him one of my missionary name tags (I had two on me) to wear as we were doing that! He wore that thing so proudly haha, it's always so cool to see the youth that are excited and enthusiastic to serve a mission.

Jared also works at Sea World and got free tickets for 14(!) missionaries! The names on the tickets were all "Joseph Smith 1(2..3..11)". So that's what we did for P-Day today. We saw some really cool sea lions, dolphins, orcas, manta rays, sharks, and other aquatic animals there. We also rode the two currently-open rollercoasters a lot. We got absolutely drenched 4 times by the orcas, we sat in one of the first few rows. Those orcas were so big!!

Well, the work is going well here. We have been working with the members a lot and have been having some good success with that. 

I hope everyone had a Happy New Year!

¡Feliz Año Nuevo!

Elder Pettit