Hola todos!
It was a great week number wise, but it was a tough week spiritually and physically. We hit almost all of our goals and set the standard in lessons taught and new investigators added, but unfortunately, we didn't see the work we had done on Sunday. Sunday is also known as SHOWTIME. Investigators must come to church 3 times in this mission to be baptized, so sunday is really the day that we find out the intent of people and how much they really want this church and how much they really want to change. Unfortunately no one came from our area. 2 weeks in a row up here. It's always so sad for me. I don't feel bad for us or anything just those great people we're teaching. I didn't understand why they didn't come. Last night I had a big night of pity party for Elder Walker. Then somethingit me. We hadn't taught any of them about the importance in church. My two amazing MTC teachers, Hna Tartaglia and Hno Patterson stressed teaching this because if they don't come, we can't do much. I felt really bad abouthow I had treated my faith and after using the wonderful power of the atonement, revelation started flowing, gushing into my mind. It's amazing how a small prayer with sincere intent can cause all kinds of feelings to be lifted! Oh the power of the Atonement of our Savior Jesus Christ.
Elder Thiessen is great. The Lord has really blessed our companionship these last few weeks. We had 8/9 investigators accept a baptismal invite. Now, once they come to church next week, they'll be what we call a firm, someone who's progressing and has a date set for their baptism. Ana, our firm, didn't come last week. So we have to re-firm her up this week and get her with a new date. Satan is REALLY working hard on her and he's succeeding. She's super strong and KNOWS that the church is true. She was going to come at 11:30 but in just one hour, the opposition took over!
Spiritually that was hard to keep up hopes but our Heavenly Father won't ever take away from us. He'll let us be humbled pretty great, but then he'll help us rise again through inspiration! He's really been here for me this week and prayer has become extra sacred to me. Something that I'm learning to do every second of the day.
Physically it was hard. I woke up last tuesday and couldn't open my jaw. haha that was pretty funny.... But it kinda hurt really bad as well! So I called sister Adams (medical coordinator) and apparently being able to play twinkle twinkle little star by the popping sounds from your jaw is NOT good.... Who knew? So apparently I have a severe case of TMJ. I can't really close the left side of my jaw but luckily I'm on the Lord's errand! He's blessed us with soft dinners everynight and has eased my pain to where it's not noticable at all during the day. It really helped my testimony of trials and errors. We're always going to have trials, it's one of our purposes here! We're always going to make errors during these trials. But the impotant thing is what happens after that. It's when we learn that we grow. We can't learn without these things. I love that docterine! Yay for church and stuff!
Life rocks out here, For real! Couldn't be happier out in the mission field :D Just pray we get some people to church! It would be great to see these people we love so much be able to feel more of the love their Savior has for them in His house!!!
Happy 4th of July! YAY INDEPENDANCE!!!!
Oh PS if you haven't made a mormon.org account, I ask you why..? And plead that you will take the few minutes it takes to write down the gift of testimony we've been given to help someone else out in the world. I know you'll be blessed and those people will as well. Also, for those married, if you would like to know how you can help out with missionary work, read Elder Ballards Gospel Families talk... Amazing!! One of my favorites that has been given. LOVE IT!!!
and LOVIN' YALL!!!
Elder Walker :D :D :D
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Oh LODI!
Hi everyone!
Well... This week was... AMAZING!!!! Holy cow it has FLOWN by. But it was great! So I went and said goodbye to the good ole Stockton. I've never said a proper hello to the great Lodi. What a blessing it is to be able to say that I have been called by a Prophet and assigned by a mission president that KNOWS where we need to be. In 3 days we added 4 people. Usually we add 3-4 people a week over here! It's CRAAZY how Heavenly Father knows when you are needed in a different way.
These people are just amazing. The ward is fantastic! They're super helpful. Only problem? They feed us every night. My stomach is NOT used to that haha first night? Mexican fiesta. My first taste of true Carne Asada straight off the grill onto my plate. 2nd and 3rd nights? Cerviche.... Greatest. Invention. Since watches. I love cerviche. It's basically a salsa fresca (fresh salsa) with shrimp. So it's got shrimp (fresh shrimp) avacado, tomatoes, onions, lime and taptio of course! Then you put it on a tostada... Sweet mercy. I ate like half the bowl! It was SOO good! The members feed us EVERY NIGHT!!! Who knew? Not I!
Our investigators are solid. We've already seen sweet miracles through obedience to our plans. I would like to share a couple super quick before my time runs out! (I feel like Elder Day,... Counting down the time till the end of the emailing arrives.... 6:34.....33....32.....31)
So we were just out tracting and ran into this lady. She was SUPER cool but not interested at all. But she said her nephew had a Book of Mormon and had been trying to find a church to go to because he had just moved from Pittsburge, Cali. We thought immediately baptism. Even better! We found him and turns out he's a recent convert looking for the chruch to go to! What a miracle we found a lamb that had been found and was starting to leave the path! But we found him again and now he's coming to church. Miracle, no?
We have a lady named Anna and on our 2nd lesson together, we firmed her up (got her with a baptismal date, ready for baptism). She will be getting baptized on the first Saturday in July. We're very pleased that she's FINALLY following through after 3 transfers of investigating. One of our investigators, Eric, had been wondering about the apostasy and which church was true. He basically stole our biggest question, "Have you ever wondered why there are so many churches around and if there's one true church?". He is super solid we're teaching him for the second time tomorrow. We have a few others but I haven't met them yet.
Elder Thiesson from Canada is my new companion. He's the man. Another District Leader haha 3 in a row so I'm really excited to help him as much as I can. My Spanish has been blessed. I'm now understanding and having random conversations in Spanish. It's been great. I can now understand all of church! YAY!!! Life is great in California!
Also, I'm becoming my father. I told one of the members who had brought us Chinese food that.... She was an excellent cook.... I'm also starting to have some of his little things as well (the hands at the pulpit, the hands while talking to people, removing my glasses for dramatic effect...) Who knew I would love it! I'm so very grateful for a great example of a father I have in my life. It's a great privilege I have to call him my dad :D Thanks dad! I love you!!!
That's all folks!!!!!
Love,
Elder Walker
P.S. Please make a mormon.org account. It really helps to show investigators people I know and use your testimonies in their progression.... :D Loves and stuff!!!
Well... This week was... AMAZING!!!! Holy cow it has FLOWN by. But it was great! So I went and said goodbye to the good ole Stockton. I've never said a proper hello to the great Lodi. What a blessing it is to be able to say that I have been called by a Prophet and assigned by a mission president that KNOWS where we need to be. In 3 days we added 4 people. Usually we add 3-4 people a week over here! It's CRAAZY how Heavenly Father knows when you are needed in a different way.
These people are just amazing. The ward is fantastic! They're super helpful. Only problem? They feed us every night. My stomach is NOT used to that haha first night? Mexican fiesta. My first taste of true Carne Asada straight off the grill onto my plate. 2nd and 3rd nights? Cerviche.... Greatest. Invention. Since watches. I love cerviche. It's basically a salsa fresca (fresh salsa) with shrimp. So it's got shrimp (fresh shrimp) avacado, tomatoes, onions, lime and taptio of course! Then you put it on a tostada... Sweet mercy. I ate like half the bowl! It was SOO good! The members feed us EVERY NIGHT!!! Who knew? Not I!
Our investigators are solid. We've already seen sweet miracles through obedience to our plans. I would like to share a couple super quick before my time runs out! (I feel like Elder Day,... Counting down the time till the end of the emailing arrives.... 6:34.....33....32.....31)
So we were just out tracting and ran into this lady. She was SUPER cool but not interested at all. But she said her nephew had a Book of Mormon and had been trying to find a church to go to because he had just moved from Pittsburge, Cali. We thought immediately baptism. Even better! We found him and turns out he's a recent convert looking for the chruch to go to! What a miracle we found a lamb that had been found and was starting to leave the path! But we found him again and now he's coming to church. Miracle, no?
We have a lady named Anna and on our 2nd lesson together, we firmed her up (got her with a baptismal date, ready for baptism). She will be getting baptized on the first Saturday in July. We're very pleased that she's FINALLY following through after 3 transfers of investigating. One of our investigators, Eric, had been wondering about the apostasy and which church was true. He basically stole our biggest question, "Have you ever wondered why there are so many churches around and if there's one true church?". He is super solid we're teaching him for the second time tomorrow. We have a few others but I haven't met them yet.
Elder Thiesson from Canada is my new companion. He's the man. Another District Leader haha 3 in a row so I'm really excited to help him as much as I can. My Spanish has been blessed. I'm now understanding and having random conversations in Spanish. It's been great. I can now understand all of church! YAY!!! Life is great in California!
Also, I'm becoming my father. I told one of the members who had brought us Chinese food that.... She was an excellent cook.... I'm also starting to have some of his little things as well (the hands at the pulpit, the hands while talking to people, removing my glasses for dramatic effect...) Who knew I would love it! I'm so very grateful for a great example of a father I have in my life. It's a great privilege I have to call him my dad :D Thanks dad! I love you!!!
That's all folks!!!!!
Love,
Elder Walker
P.S. Please make a mormon.org account. It really helps to show investigators people I know and use your testimonies in their progression.... :D Loves and stuff!!!
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Transfer Time
Hey everyone!
Well this week was NUTS!!!! Holy moses it was crazy. So first off.... Our investigator had her baby this week! YAY!!! Prayers were answered because she needed to have it before she could get married and baptized. She's super cool! They're moving but were helping them. Guess what the babies name is? JONATHAN! They named their little baby Jonathan haha I was super shocked when we get a message that says, "Elder Walker, I was wondering how you spell your first name, we want to name our son Jonathan.". It was super cool! Elder Rodriguez and I told them our first names and they loved Jonathan so that's his name now. Cute little Jonathan Castro. He's going to grow up in the gospel. How happy is that?!?!
Next, we had a GIANT dance festival. 600 youth all dancing at the same time. Pretty sure the dance company girls just passed out from over stressing. Well arise and get this. They did about 18-20 dances with small groups and 4 with ALL 600 KIDS!!! Holy moses it was huge and they rented out the Stockton arena to do it. A ton of investigators were there and that was great! I loved it! We got one of our investigators, Elizabeth, there and her son Roberto. They're english speaking so we are going to pass them off to the others tomorrow.
That brings me to my next big thing. I'm getting transferred. Though I'm excited to try new things, I'm not excited to leave the stockton area. I LOVE these people and I'm leaving right before we firm up our investigators. We should have 4 with a baptismal date by the end of this week, Elizabeth and Cesar and his family. Elizabeth is going to an english ward and Cesar is a miracle that we had that literally showed up on the door while we were eating dinner at a members house. He's super cool and wants to do anything he needs to to be baptized. He's been to church a lot so we hope to see him there soon!
I'm going up to Lodi. Just a city up and we actually touch the top this area with the bottom of our area so I'll be staring longingly into the stockton area ;) JK! I'm leaving my beloved companion Elder Perkes for a new companion Elder Theson. I'm excited! I've heard that he's great and it'll be super fun to go up and explore again.
I had my first bad stomach day. I'm sure it's the first of many. So story time. I had to go to the bathroom SUPER bad! And we were walking up and down streets. So we stop at this house to talk to people and my stomach is just telling me (at least I think it was my stomach, maybe it was the spirit. I know it wasn't a still small voice but a loud rumble) that we needed to use their bathroom. So we talk in spanish for a little bit and I ask if I can use their bathroom. While I'm in there Elder Perkes is talking to them and everything and we got a great return! She has a son in Utah and wants to live with her family forever. So for once, my bad stomach has come in handy! She's super great and has a lot of questions which is always a good sign!!
We went and did service down at the famous St. Mary's food shelter and it gave me a great appreciation for those people who NEED this gospel. They all look so broken down and it reminded me of the people in the scriptures who were talking about being kicked out of their synogogues and couldn't do anything anymore and then Alma telling them to have faith. Faith brings everything spiritual and physical. With faith we can easily find what we NEED and what we WANT. Without we're just looking at wants. Wants won't get us needs unless we want our needs. We learn to want them through faith of knowing the needs. I don't know if this makes sense to you but it's connecting like legos in my mind.
Anyway, I learned about examples this week. I was craving some Pokemon so we went out and got some cards and battled with eachother. This was about 3 weeks ago. At this day, our entire zone is into pokemon. I never thought about the effect that one little thing could do. All the sudden there are pokebattles breaking out left and right on P Days. I started getting worried when people were getting upset over losing at them. I've decided to put my cards away and spend my PDay doing better things. It got me thinking though. A mission is really just a glorified pokemon game with people (promise this isn't sacreligious) but we start out with trying to "CAPTURE" the investigators by using the right "POKEMON", like the book of mormon or families or things like that. If you use the wrong one you can kill them but if you use the right one you can get them in the pokeball and work with them. Then we advance them in stages by having them read and pray and be baptized. When they're baptized they become like Charizards. Spiritually on fire. Ready to fight the pokemon satan will through at them because they have new powers, new strengths. They still have those things that they are weak to, but now they can fight it more! I know that sounds pretty nerdy but, come on, Pokemon is TOTALLY based on the gospel!
The work is going crazy out here in Sacramento. Our ward tried to come up with a way so we'll baptize less. The Lord is blessing is like crazy. It's all through faith that the message we teach is true. NO ONE CAN TALK THE WORK FROM PROGRESSING!!! It's so nuts out here I'm so excited to help out in another area. This area of Morada Stockton is being left in good hands. It's time to find those that are in need of me up north. I'm so excited to continue this work. The Lord loves his children more than we can ever imagine.
I love you sooo much! Keep up the good work back home MAKE MORMON.ORG ACCOUNTS!!!!!
Love,
Elder Walker
PS Spanish? Rocks! I love this language! Gift of tongues? SUPER cool! Never had a better feeling than the gift of tongues when it's working for ya..... LOVE ESPANOL!!!
Well this week was NUTS!!!! Holy moses it was crazy. So first off.... Our investigator had her baby this week! YAY!!! Prayers were answered because she needed to have it before she could get married and baptized. She's super cool! They're moving but were helping them. Guess what the babies name is? JONATHAN! They named their little baby Jonathan haha I was super shocked when we get a message that says, "Elder Walker, I was wondering how you spell your first name, we want to name our son Jonathan.". It was super cool! Elder Rodriguez and I told them our first names and they loved Jonathan so that's his name now. Cute little Jonathan Castro. He's going to grow up in the gospel. How happy is that?!?!
Next, we had a GIANT dance festival. 600 youth all dancing at the same time. Pretty sure the dance company girls just passed out from over stressing. Well arise and get this. They did about 18-20 dances with small groups and 4 with ALL 600 KIDS!!! Holy moses it was huge and they rented out the Stockton arena to do it. A ton of investigators were there and that was great! I loved it! We got one of our investigators, Elizabeth, there and her son Roberto. They're english speaking so we are going to pass them off to the others tomorrow.
That brings me to my next big thing. I'm getting transferred. Though I'm excited to try new things, I'm not excited to leave the stockton area. I LOVE these people and I'm leaving right before we firm up our investigators. We should have 4 with a baptismal date by the end of this week, Elizabeth and Cesar and his family. Elizabeth is going to an english ward and Cesar is a miracle that we had that literally showed up on the door while we were eating dinner at a members house. He's super cool and wants to do anything he needs to to be baptized. He's been to church a lot so we hope to see him there soon!
I'm going up to Lodi. Just a city up and we actually touch the top this area with the bottom of our area so I'll be staring longingly into the stockton area ;) JK! I'm leaving my beloved companion Elder Perkes for a new companion Elder Theson. I'm excited! I've heard that he's great and it'll be super fun to go up and explore again.
I had my first bad stomach day. I'm sure it's the first of many. So story time. I had to go to the bathroom SUPER bad! And we were walking up and down streets. So we stop at this house to talk to people and my stomach is just telling me (at least I think it was my stomach, maybe it was the spirit. I know it wasn't a still small voice but a loud rumble) that we needed to use their bathroom. So we talk in spanish for a little bit and I ask if I can use their bathroom. While I'm in there Elder Perkes is talking to them and everything and we got a great return! She has a son in Utah and wants to live with her family forever. So for once, my bad stomach has come in handy! She's super great and has a lot of questions which is always a good sign!!
We went and did service down at the famous St. Mary's food shelter and it gave me a great appreciation for those people who NEED this gospel. They all look so broken down and it reminded me of the people in the scriptures who were talking about being kicked out of their synogogues and couldn't do anything anymore and then Alma telling them to have faith. Faith brings everything spiritual and physical. With faith we can easily find what we NEED and what we WANT. Without we're just looking at wants. Wants won't get us needs unless we want our needs. We learn to want them through faith of knowing the needs. I don't know if this makes sense to you but it's connecting like legos in my mind.
Anyway, I learned about examples this week. I was craving some Pokemon so we went out and got some cards and battled with eachother. This was about 3 weeks ago. At this day, our entire zone is into pokemon. I never thought about the effect that one little thing could do. All the sudden there are pokebattles breaking out left and right on P Days. I started getting worried when people were getting upset over losing at them. I've decided to put my cards away and spend my PDay doing better things. It got me thinking though. A mission is really just a glorified pokemon game with people (promise this isn't sacreligious) but we start out with trying to "CAPTURE" the investigators by using the right "POKEMON", like the book of mormon or families or things like that. If you use the wrong one you can kill them but if you use the right one you can get them in the pokeball and work with them. Then we advance them in stages by having them read and pray and be baptized. When they're baptized they become like Charizards. Spiritually on fire. Ready to fight the pokemon satan will through at them because they have new powers, new strengths. They still have those things that they are weak to, but now they can fight it more! I know that sounds pretty nerdy but, come on, Pokemon is TOTALLY based on the gospel!
The work is going crazy out here in Sacramento. Our ward tried to come up with a way so we'll baptize less. The Lord is blessing is like crazy. It's all through faith that the message we teach is true. NO ONE CAN TALK THE WORK FROM PROGRESSING!!! It's so nuts out here I'm so excited to help out in another area. This area of Morada Stockton is being left in good hands. It's time to find those that are in need of me up north. I'm so excited to continue this work. The Lord loves his children more than we can ever imagine.
I love you sooo much! Keep up the good work back home MAKE MORMON.ORG ACCOUNTS!!!!!
Love,
Elder Walker
PS Spanish? Rocks! I love this language! Gift of tongues? SUPER cool! Never had a better feeling than the gift of tongues when it's working for ya..... LOVE ESPANOL!!!
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Find a Penny, Pick it up....
Hey family!!!
Some of this week was cool. I went on splits twice!
We had the biggest miracle with one of the Elders named Elder Williams. He's super cool but it was the biggest miracle I've seen. We prayed for revelation of where to go the next day in the rain and he recieved to go see this old preacher. So we went over there to see him and were talking with him and this random spanish guy out of no where comes up. Now, this is downtown Stockton and this guy is speaking 50 miles an hour. "I understood you're the mormon missionaries right? Well I've got something for you." So of course I look at Elder Williams freaking out as he reaches into his pocket and comes through the gate. Scared yet? Good! Well he comes up to us and it turns out he's a member, bashes with the preacher (not going back there again, burried that hatchet) and tells us he has a referral. Turns out he came down from Sacramento to pick up supplies and felt like he should come down this out of the way street, saw us and stopped. Here's the other thing, he had given this referral to them before but they couldn't find it. So he took us to this house to these people that accepted a Book of Mormon and baptismal invite. Miracle? Sure as heck! I also found a quarter, heads up of course, on the road outside their house. Miracles happen!
The rest of the week was as normal with little miracles all around. I learned I can't cut hair as I butchered one of those in my house. His hair is now down to a 1. Refer to the pictures sent home. haha
We got our transfer reports. I'm thinking I might be sent somewhere else in the mission next transfer :(...... They put on there that I should be a senior. I sure hope not :D I still have SOO much left to learn. Senior companion would be hard. I'm feeling I'll be a junior for a couple more transfers. I sure hope so!)
I love the mission. It finally hit me (I'm terrible, I know) what we're doing out here and it's made it SOO much better!
The gospel is true! God is our Heavenly Father. He loves us. We are saved through faith AND working towards getting a knowledge.
Love,
Elder Walker
Some of this week was cool. I went on splits twice!
We had the biggest miracle with one of the Elders named Elder Williams. He's super cool but it was the biggest miracle I've seen. We prayed for revelation of where to go the next day in the rain and he recieved to go see this old preacher. So we went over there to see him and were talking with him and this random spanish guy out of no where comes up. Now, this is downtown Stockton and this guy is speaking 50 miles an hour. "I understood you're the mormon missionaries right? Well I've got something for you." So of course I look at Elder Williams freaking out as he reaches into his pocket and comes through the gate. Scared yet? Good! Well he comes up to us and it turns out he's a member, bashes with the preacher (not going back there again, burried that hatchet) and tells us he has a referral. Turns out he came down from Sacramento to pick up supplies and felt like he should come down this out of the way street, saw us and stopped. Here's the other thing, he had given this referral to them before but they couldn't find it. So he took us to this house to these people that accepted a Book of Mormon and baptismal invite. Miracle? Sure as heck! I also found a quarter, heads up of course, on the road outside their house. Miracles happen!
The rest of the week was as normal with little miracles all around. I learned I can't cut hair as I butchered one of those in my house. His hair is now down to a 1. Refer to the pictures sent home. haha
We got our transfer reports. I'm thinking I might be sent somewhere else in the mission next transfer :(...... They put on there that I should be a senior. I sure hope not :D I still have SOO much left to learn. Senior companion would be hard. I'm feeling I'll be a junior for a couple more transfers. I sure hope so!)
I love the mission. It finally hit me (I'm terrible, I know) what we're doing out here and it's made it SOO much better!
The gospel is true! God is our Heavenly Father. He loves us. We are saved through faith AND working towards getting a knowledge.
Love,
Elder Walker
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