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!!!