Samuel's Mission e-mail June 9, 2008

Everyone:
Well, this week has been a fairly sort-of standard week. Let's see... On Tuesday we helped Lir Torres, one of the less-active sisters in Downey 1st, clean up her apartment, had our correlation meeting with Bell Gardens, and did some street contacting.
On Wednesday, we had our temple day, so we went to the temple, cleaned a bit, and so forth until we had our appointment with Jose Cabrera. In the evening we visited Maira Perez and the Aguilars.
On Thursday we had weekly planning and interviews with President, so it was fairly late when we finally got out. We visited the Taylors, a family with a recent convert in it in the Bell Ward, had our Downey 1st correlation, and street contacted.
On Friday, we had district meeting (In which Elder Chadwick talked about adapting our teaching to people's needs. He talked about the way Cookie Monster on Seasame Street 'eats' cookies by smashing them all over his mouth and compared that to teaching the wrong thing to people, and thereby coined the phrase "Casting your cookies before muppets"), we taught Erica, and we helped Brother Langham in the Downey 1st ward disassemble a bed and put a new one together. In the evening we visited the Aguilars. Anna Gonzalez, the "wife" of Hermano Aguilar, was very distraught because her father was dying (probably has died over the weekend), so we talked about the Plan of Salvation and the comfort of the Holy Ghost.
On Saturday, we taught Gustavo (Gus), and we went up to the mission home to the Information Center (a room in the mission home set aside as a temporary visitor's center until the visitor's center is remodeled) with Rosie and watched the Joseph Smith movie.
On Sunday, Rosie was confirmed, we did some tracting, and we had dinner with the Cordovas. The only reason I mention that is that Elder Cordova is an area authority seventy who lives in Bell Gardens. Unfortunately, he had to be in Utah, so we only had dinner with his family.
Well, I believe that's it for this week. Just remember, hard-heartedness leads to heart disease!
Elder Samuel Stephens