1-12-15

It’s been rainy over here for the past few days as well, which is unusual. It never rains over here. Man! The sisters have it made over there, drinking hot chocolate in a warm house, on the computer. That’s the life! So I got the package thank you for the shirt Lizzie! I wear it to run in the mornings, its sweet. I can represent my homeland now! I heard that Ohio beat Bama!!!!!!! Whooooooo!!! You gotta let me know how the game goes!

So lots of stuff to tell you that happened this last week. So a little bit about the Oceanside 2nd ward I’m serving in. There are a ton of Polynesian people! We ate at the Pukahi's house last week and they make a ton of food! haha. Our elders quorum president brother Malaulu wears a lava lava to church every Sunday, (the skirt looking things they wear on the islands.), and it’s pretty sweet. I’m thinking about rocking one. And a little bit about the Carlsbad zone that I am now in. Cool places and stuff that are in our zone – Lego Land, the Flower Fields, the Oceanside Pier, Carlsbad Village, Carlsbad High school, (the legendary Carlsbad Gap used to be there), and tons of surf and skate shops. It’s pretty sweet, I’m living the dream!

Some people we taught this week. Our first investigator we taught is named Gabriel. We taught him about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and had a great lesson. Our ward mission leader was there and Gabriel's who is a recent convert was there too. The spirit was super strong the entire lesson and I’m thinking, " this guy is getting baptized for sure, like there’s no doubt", and when we go to invite him to follow the example of the Savior and be baptized he straight up tells us no and that he doesn’t want religion in his life... Seriously man?! I was feeling the spirit, you were feeling the spirit, and we were all feeling the spirit! You know it’s true! Why not?! We will continue to work with him.

We taught our only other investigator on Saturday named August. He has been taught for a while, he is pretty set in his ways and goes to another Christian church, but he really enjoys meeting with us and "reading the good word and meditating." So we just need to do something different to crack his shell and come to church. Because we won’t progress anywhere with him if we just keep having little scripture

We taught a recent convert named Chahn, he is from Vietnam and a convert of about a year and a pizza delivery guy. We read the Book of Mormon with him once a week. Super humble prepared guy.

We have been teaching one of our recent converts Kevin almost every day. At first glance you would think he is someone you don’t want to cross paths with. He has had a very rough past growing up in Oceanside and San Diego. Big guy, shaved head, tattoos all up and down his body, scars. But he is probably one of the nicest guys you would ever meet, very warm and inviting. He is always cracking jokes and just wants to do the right thing. We go over and read the scriptures with him every other day. It is cool to see his knowledge and faith grow. He eats it up and wants more and more every time we go over.

I conducted my first district meeting last Thursday. It went super well, way better than I had anticipated!!! One of the elders in my district told me it seemed like I had been a district leader for a while already, like that wasn’t my first rodeo. So that made me feel awesome! It’s really helping me stretch. I’m being forced to use talents and abilities that I didn’t know I had as well as helping me understand how to be as effective as I can be. Most importantly though, I’ve been learning to focus completely on others rather than myself.

I went on exchanges with Elder Adams last week. I freaking love that kid, I’ve served around him in Murrieta and San Marcos. He is one of the most funny, real, relaxed guys you will ever meet. We had a lot of adventures on our exchange! We met an old lady name Mary who is 91 but you would think she is in her 70s or something. She is a short, old, catholic, Italian lady who is very sassy, haha. We were able to share a scripture about faith with her and just had a great conversation about life. She gave us lots of advice. We went to Chipotle and we ran into some members who bought our burritos for us. We found out that her and her daughters had just moved over form Hong Kong because of her husband’s job. And we found out that one of her daughter’s works for "Stance" They’re a skateboarding sock company co-owned by guy who is LDS. She also works closely for Ryan Sheckler's dad, which is pretty cool. Then we went back out and contacted for a bit. We ran into a marine walking his dog. His dog was taking a leek on some bushes and Elder Adams being the consecrated missionary that he is went up to talk to him. The first thing he said was “hey man that’s a cute dog you got there.” then there was just a long awkward silence and I couldn’t help but laugh. Then that laugh caused Elder Adams to laugh and we both couldn’t stop, luckily Elder Adams was able to finish the contact, but I lost it I couldn’t even talk, it was bad. hahaha. Then we ran into this guy who calls himself Wild Bill. He had some crazy stories. He looks like the typical old SoCal guy, Hawaiian shirt with shorts and flip flops. He told us he bought his house when he was 25, he was a trip. He was shocked by a huge generator, blown back 15 feet, all the skin burned of his toes, and the electricity shot out of the side of his torso leaving a fairly large hole, it was an okay size, he showed us. haha. We talked to him for a good while and then we gave him a Book of Mormon. The next day we were able to do some contacting near the beach since part of his area in Oceanside 4th has beach in it. It was pretty surreal doing missionary work looking out into the Pacific Ocean.

I was debating telling you this last little story, but I will tell it anyway. Don’t freak out mom. SO Elder Waechtler and I were walking in a pretty hood part of our area and this rough looking, Hispanic kid who looks to be about 17 or 18 comes walking up behind us. So we get to the street corner and we start to talk to him. We end up giving him a card with the Salt Lake Temple on it and he asks us," so is your church just for white people?" and we told him no it’s for everyone.  He kind of just stood there for a second and then he started swearing at us. He put his hand into his jacket like he was reaching for something then he told us “look, I have a gun on me right now, do you guys know where you are at? You need to get the heck out of here right now unless you want to get shot." You ever have that feeling where your heart starts racing and you think in your head "holy crap, I could seriously die right now." That’s what I was thinking in my head. So we told him we don’t want any trouble and started to back away. “Then he shouted out that he was kidding, but I did not trust that kid whether he was joking or not, we got the heck out of there.

So there are all the adventures I had this week, I hope I didn’t leave anything out.

I gotta go. I love this work and I love you all more than anything!

-Elder Daniel

-Rad exchange with Elder Adams

-Skate park :(
-Pretty regular site in SoCal, VW Safari Vans
-Another regular site, stray Chihuahuas
-Sick graffiti
-dont worry, we havent used the surf board.. yet. (JK)
-found a Buckeys fan near the coast!!!