Week 91!!!

Hello!

This week was crazy fast again!! I don't like it! It really was a blur, and after it, I don't really know what to say to you all. We had two exchanges this week. Exchanges are fun, but it's always nice to get back to normal. One exchange was with Elder Lund, a past companion from Pico Rivera a year ago. That was cool to serve with him again. I enjoyed it a lot! We have both come a long way in that year, and have learned so much! My other exchange was with our roommate back in Pico Rivera. It was a pretty cool chance to serve with both of them for a day.

This week Ignacio and Trinidad did not make it to church which was lame. They had to take an emergency trip to Tijuana for I'm not sure why. we had a lesson with him Monday last week and reviewed the baptismal questions. It was good. He is super ready. Then, they had another lesson with him to review a few things. Tonight we have the bishop coming with us to get him pumped up, and tomorrow is his actual interview. If all goes well, he will be baptized the next Sunday. I am very excited!

The mission is in a very good spot right now. I mentioned the cool goal setting meeting to get our goal set at 75 baptisms by the end of the mission. We have had a few really good meetings this week to solidify our personal goals and zone goals. I have really enjoyed it a lot. I am super pumped and really, I feel I am going to have the next two months as the best of my mission.

I apologize, I really am having a hard time thinking of what to say. Two exchanges in one week kind of messes it up as things to report on! I do like this scripture though! It is Ether 12:4 "Wherefore, whoso believeth in God might with surety hope for a better world. Yea, even a place at the right hand of God, which hope cometh of faith, maketh an anchor to the souls of men, which would make them sure and steadfast, always abounding in good works, being led to glorify God." I encourage you all to allow your faith to grow inside of you until it becomes an anchor in your soul. I really do know that through faith that you can stay rooted into the gospel, and that as you are anchored in Christ, you can overcome anything.

Remember this sweet pillow I bought a year ago?

Well, after a ear of searching, I found this sweet blanket to go with it!

Have a good week!

Love,
Elder Lloyd

Week 90!!!

Hello!!

I hope all of you had a good Halloween! Ours was decent, I guess! Actually, I liked it a lot! So, this week was pretty interesting for a lot of reasons. It started out great. We taught a few good lessons, we went on exchanges which is always interesting. Kati is doing good, so is Ignacio. But, he put off his baptismal date for two weeks. He said he is giving Trinidad a last chance to get baptized; he really wants to do it with her. But, if she wont then he will do it alone. Pray for them both!! I am still confident that after he does she will, but we'd all like to see them do it together.

So, Friday night we were supposed to be in our apartment passed 5:00, or 6:00 if we had a dinner appointment, which we didn't, for our safety and the safety of the rep of the church. We had planned to have a little party with the other Elders who live in our complex. Elder Nanto's mom gave him $100 for pizza and junk food. But, last minute, up top cancelled our party and made everyone clean their apartments. Super lame. So, we had our own party after cleaning. (It just doesn't take like 5 hours to clean a small apartment) But, after that, an emergency zone meeting was called from 8:00 to 9:00 at night on Halloween. So, we put on our suits and go to the church and met with our zone. It was a really really cool meeting. I guess our mission hasn't reached a baptismal goal since December last year. So, in MLC they threw out their agenda and all duked it out to figure out why. That happened in the day of Friday, then at night, the zone leaders brought it to us and we had a big discussion and set our goals as well. The mission has a goal of 75 baptisms by the end of the year, which is a lot more then we have previously accomplished. But, definitely within reach, especially as we work together on a common goal, and we strive to accomplish it with God's help. It was very good meeting. This transfer and next really are special because there are 16 people in my zone, and of them six go home in the next two transfers, and two more in the next four giving us all lots of experience to pool into and coordinate our plan. I know I definitely came out of this meeting very pumped up to go out with a bang and to prove what we as missionaries can do, especially with God's help. We followed this up with a very powerful meeting again on Saturday where we all came together and set specific goals to accomplish what we need to do so that the mission can accomplish their goals. We were all super pumped up and ready to go fight to the finish.

It was a little odd however because right after we had this, all of our members we had set up to go to lessons fell through, and all of our lessons we had to take members to fell through. Friday, during the day through Saturday we have not taught a lesson, or found any new investigators while the rest of the zone seemed to be doing so. I was starting to get discouraged after a few very hard days. I was really trying to figure out why and found this scripture in Jacob 4:7 which reads "Nevertheless, the Lord God showeth us our weakness that we may know that it is by his grace, and his great condescension's unto the children of men, that we have power to do these things" and I was really humbled. I was very confident that I (in caps for emphasis but you can't tell cuz it's supposed to be in caps anyways :) ) could do the things I needed to in order to meet the goals. Then, all progress towards them halts. I know that with God, anything according to His will is possible, and as we include God in our lives, He will use us for very magnificent things. That is why this was one of my favorite weeks. It was a pretty hard few days, but I learned a priceless lesson.

I hope you all have a good week!

Love,
Elder Lloyd

Week 89!!!

Hello Everybody!

This week was good, but it went by way to fast!! I am just not sure what I am going to do if time keeps speeding up like this! I don't like it!

Trinidad and Ignacio are alright. It has been hard to keep them on the right track! Ignacio really wants to be baptized, but he doesn't want to cause problems with his family. Trinidad always swings back and forth. We found out this week that they have kids who are causing the problems because they always say things like they are catholic and their family has been Catholic for years so it would be betraying their roots to go back on that and switch religions. They will do it one day though for sure. We will keep working with them.

We found a lady this week named Kati. She is super nice. She is a Christian, but her member friend told her about the Book of Mormon because she asked why there is so many churches and how they all say they are right. So, the member friend sent us by. We have only taught her once, she missed our next appointment because she went to her church, but we had a quick chat with her yesterday and she was excited that we still came back, even though she stiffed us. She has a lot of sincere desire to learn. We are very excited to work with her. I am grateful for the church, and I do know it is true. I also know that member missionary work is very important and that hen we invite our friends to know what we know to be true, we will feel joy and although our friends still have their agency, they are a lot more likely to accept our message if we invite them and are there to help them understand it.

1 Nephi 10:19 reads "For he that diligently seeketh shall find; and the mysteries of God shall be unfolded unto them, by the power of the Holy Ghost". I like that scripture. Scripture study is very important. Man cannot be saved in ignorance and as we get a question and we study it out and prayerfully search the scriptures, the Holy Ghost will teach us what we need to know.

Have a good week!

Love,
Elder Lloyd

Week 88... TRANSFERS!!!

Hello Everybody!  

 

This week was pretty good but sooo fast!   I am not really sure why, but me and Elder Nanto were both talking, and we both feel like half of the week just kinda blurred together, and we can't really remember...  but hey, it happens.

 

Ignacio was at church again!   However, this time, Trinidad did not come with him.  Not sure why, come tomorrow, we have a lesson to figure it out.   She is still kind of shakey, but Ignacio is progressing super well.   Once he gets baptized, I am confident his family will follow.  Trinidad for sure, and I am confident that  Trinidad will get baptized and they have a lot of family that lives there that currently wont listen to us.  Their 40ish year old son did thank us the other day for what we do because he has noticed a good change in Ignacio.   So the roots are definitely planted, but now isn't the harvest.  Once Ignacio gets the Gift of the Holy Ghost, things will start moving a lot in that house for sure.

 

We also had Hermana Torrez at church.   That made me very very happy.  When I first got to this area, she came with her daughters once, then hasn't come since.  Her daughters came one other time with out her.   Well, I watched their family pass through very very hard times, and I really don't like that to happen, well they stopped talking to us, then they finally started again like a month ago, and now she is at church. It feels sooo good to know that I was privileged enough to help them become active again.   I love my mission soo much! I am very grateful for my service.

 

Alma 37:37 reads "Counsel‍ with the Lord in all thy doings, and he will direct thee for good; yea, when thou liest down at night lie down unto the Lord, that he may watch over you in your sleep; and when thou risest in the morning‍ let thy heart be full of thanks unto God; and if ye do these things, ye shall be lifted up at the last day."  I like this a lot.  Daily prayer is a very strong tool that we have. Through prayer we can come closer to Christ and know God's will for us so that we may live according to His will.  I challenge you all to take the advice of Alma and to really counsel with the Lord at all times and for everything, and you will have His spirit with you more abundantly.

 

Have a good week!

Love,

Elder Lloyd

Week 87!!!

Hello Everyone!

So its Columbus day again.   I'm not really sure why we like to shut down all the libraries on p-day, but ya know.  Whatever.

This week was good!   Highlight from this week: we went to Ignacio's house on Monday, I think, to talk a bit, review Conference and stuff.  We walk in and Trinidad, his wife, was being really friendly and stuff.  She has been not very willing to talk to us lately.   Back in the day they went to Oregon to see Ignacio's dying brother and he bore testimony of the Virgin Mary and Trinidad got re converted to the Catholics.  Well, on Monday we went in there and she is all hey, I have good news!  Then went away for awhile.  We talk to Ignacio for a bit, she walks by and I'm all hey, whats this good news??  Then she tells this story about how she was trying to get a passport and stuff all figured out, but accidentally left it in a shopping cart on the road.  It's really important cuz it costs like $700 to replace and someone could steal her identity.  She prayed really really hard for like a few hours, finally was able to retrieve her passport and stuff and it was kept safe.  Now she knows for fact that God lives and although she was being stubborn, and wouldn't talk to us or anything, now she realizes that this is God's will for her, then she apologized for being so rude to us and ignoring us.  Then, she said a closing prayer and in that prayer, pleaded for forgiveness and to be pardoned and promised she will take the church seriously again.  She was the only thing holding back Ignacio.  They both came to church as a couple yesterday, and the ward was very happy to see them.   Ignacio had no idea of her experience till she told us all that.  He was very happy.    We didn't get another lesson with them because they had family stuff, but we did get some homemade fish tacos which were super super good.  I love fish tacos :)   We look forward to finally getting them to accept baptism.  I really do know that God loves each of his children and He cares about what we care about.  The Supreme Governor of the Universe probably really wouldn't care too much about a passport.  In the eternal scheme of things, it really doesn't matter too much.  But being our Father, He really does care for us so he helped her out and now she is interested again.

Doctrine and Covenants 58:26-27 states "For behold, it is not meet that I should command in all things; for he that is compelled in all things, the same is a slothful and not a wise servant; wherefore he receiveth no reward. Verily I say, men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness;"  I like this a lot.  a lot of times we wait so long to act, really needing to be guided for everything and worrying to much about if its something we should do.   But as this scripture states, we should be always doing good things by our own accord, even if its not from the Spirit necessarily.  In doing so we will be very effective servants of the Lord.

I hope you have a good week!

Love,
Elder Lloyd

Week 86!!!

Hello!

This week was pretty good!     Turns out I have a new nephew now so that's pretty cool!

We actually spent a lot of time this week trying to work some stuff out.   Like a lot of house keeping stuff trying to keep every ones head on straight!   Like, for example, an Elder down in Hunting Beach went home.  Not really sure why.  Usually we aren't really affected by that but this time, they pulled an Elder from up here to go down and fill his spot because there is no Spanish ward down there so the Spanish Elders cover 4 white wards and translate, meanwhile there was 10 Spanish Elders in one ward up here!   So that was fun.  trying to get that all organized and stuff. It is always sad when your friends leave, but its all good!

This week at church we had a less active family there!  It was pretty cool.  She works a lot on Sunday's so it is pretty hard for her to come.   We really hope she can start coming regularly though!   She really is pretty converted to the gospel!  She reads and prays and doesn't hesitate to come to church if she isn't working, It's just she works a lot!!

Ignacio is doing well; we didn't have too in depth conversations this week.  One of our lessons was interrupted by his granddaughter that lives in river side who has a lot of very sincere desire to learn about God cuz you can tell the church she belongs too just isn't sitting right.  We had a good lesson with her and invited her to get the missionaries to her house.  She wouldn't give us her address, but I really do hope she invites them.  She will get baptized for sure.

I am super excited for conference this weekend!   Ezekiel  3:17 reads "Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel: therefore hear the word at my mouth, and give them warning from me."  This talks about the calling of a prophet and why we have them.   This weekend, we have the opportunity to hear from the watchmen on the towers and to hear exactly what God wants us to hear.  I invite all of you to watch as much as conference as you can.  Go in with a question and pray and fast about it, and I promise you will receive and answer.

Have a good week!

Love,

Elder Lloyd

Week 85!!!

Hello World!

 

This week was way to fast!  I really like Elder Nanto a lot!  We get along great!!  We really laugh all day.  It's funny.   

 

Do you remember Ignacio and Trinidad?   They are back from Mexico now.   We talked to Ignacio the other night.  He is doing good!   He didn't read in Mexico which is lame.  He didn't remember much of the BOM so we started from the top and read the introduction.  It was good.  At the end, we did a recap on how the book is true.  He said that he believes the book is true, and that he needs to read it more fully.  We didn't discuss how it went with Trinidad in Mexico very much.   We didn't have time.  All of his family was coming over for his sons birthday.  Then, yesterday he went with his family somewhere so he wasn't at church.   We do have a lesson with him tonight though to talk about baptism.  Pray for him to accept!!   :)    He has had a lot of family move into his house lately,  so it'll be super good if he gets  baptized and they all can see the difference in his life! 

 

Sorry, i wasted a lot of time this email session and now this is short...   

 

Moroni 10:32  reads   "Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God."       This scripture is one of my favorites.  It really is super cool!    Through Christ all our imperfections can be made whole if we do the best we can and always stay faithful.   

 

Thanks a lot for all your prayers and support!

 

Love you all!

Elder Lloyd