Elder Evan's Epistles

This week was transfers, as well as general conference! We had a really crazy week, my new companions bike was broken, so we had to spend a good chunk of Thursday going to the shop in Redlands, then a family we are working with was out in Redlands and asked us for a blessing, so we headed back over with the Elders Quorom president. Brother Padilla is a champ, he also took us to Dairy Queen, so all around the best.   We also were able to watch general conference in lots of member homes. So that was super fun to get to spend that time with them. We also were able to watch it with a friend we are teaching. Probably my favorite talk from general conference was from Elder Stevenson, where he talked about how we constantly have temptation thrown at us, so we need to have a game plan so we can go in prepared, what we want to do to overcome and not succumb.  -Elder Bearman We biked hard this week Redlands was a sweet throwback Short emails are sweet!...

We got transfers and I am staying, but Elder B is my new companion! He sat next to me on the plane ride out, and I have served around him for over 6 months. He is from Spanish fork and was in the same ward as the Dixons back in Utah. He is a baseball player, and a hunter.  So my draft deleted itself, so very little motivation to write I am getting a new companion Wednesday, I have served around him for 6 months, and he is from Spanish fork We had a really good week, Alan came to church   We were able to meet some new members At a meeting we had a fat tie day, and my previous companions both took fat ties from me and they wore them to the meeting

This week I went on exchanges with Elder B, who is served around for 5 months last winter. And we had a good time catching up on how things have been going. We came out at the same time, and we have served around alot of the same people so it was fun to check back in with him. We did service bagging food for the elderly, and had a couple of really good visits. We also walked for 45 minutes in the rain, and it was a lot of fun.  This week we also had a miracle where we start talking to someone who had been taught alot over the past couple of years but she didn't go to church no matter what. Then we met her and it turns out she recently learned that her friend who we are also good friends with is a member. He invited her to church and she loved it. So that was cool to make all of those connections. Also we had a member give us 6 packages of oreos, of various types, as well as graham crackers and all sorts of goodies. He used to work at Nabisco and his friend who still wor...

We had some thing happening all week. We helped two different families with moving, we did service at a bike race, and we had exchanges. We moved this family, they had 2 fridges and a big old gun safe. It was so exhausting. We got back from it and were exhausted We also met a member who's conversion story starts off with him slipping on a banana peel, and continues with a bird pooping on a missionary. We met a man by the name of Kenny. We did some service for him, and he asked us what we believe so that was a really big miracle.  We ate 50 nugs each, I wasn't hungry for the next 24 hours.  For the bike race, Redlands every year had a big one, so we got pulled in to help be race marshalʻs. It was wild, we had a team car blow through the barricade we were in charge of, and go flying right past the both of us. They were taking a shortcut or something to try to get further ahead and closer to their biker. Also the weather has been super nice ...

This week we had a really instructive zone conference, where they talked about as, ing questions then genuinely listening to what people have to say (they also said it was good marriage advice), so there you go! But is really neat to see how important it is in any situation to listen to what people are saying and not be thinking about how you can make a witty comeback or solve the problem. You learn all sorts of life skills on a mission. Also last pday we played a game of wiffle ball, it was a good time, and so we got some pictures of the team! We also had a really good stake conference where Elder  Hallstrom shared a lot about conversion to Jesus Christ being our foundation, as well as how reverence is more than just being quiet, but how we live our life. The weather thankfully did not go as forecasted, it was supposed to rain off and on all week, and it only really rained once. It also got up to 60 and sunny which was nice. I still haven't been able to take my j...

I broke a shoelace on my basketball shoes, so I had to go shopping for some new ones. Thing about Yucaipa is that it doesn't have many chain stores. So we went into the local sho repair place, he had just a couple of pairs of shoe laces. And the packages all were covered in dust, and yellow. They had been there a really long time. So I grab the ones I thought were the right size (they are about a foot too long) and took them to the counter. The guy who was there just said to take them, since they are super old. Turns out they are thin but an inch wide. They are super awesome.  A miracle we saw this week was that we had a couple people show up to worship with us this week! We stopped by Alan at 8:15 to wake him up for church, so he was there, as was a part member couple. Anthony is way cool, he wore a cowboy hat to church!  We also were finally able to take our bikes into the shop, so now they work properly again. Elder L's bike made a super weird growling noise ...