Samuel's Mission E-mail September 10, 2008

Everyone:
Well, Elder Bird flew out on Wednesday last week, so now I'm with Elder Monita, my district leader, and his companion, Elder Brixius. So, as for what we've done this week:
On Wednesday, we dropped off Elder Bird and I moved into Elder Monita and Elder Brixius's apartment. Then we went and did service at the care home, as usual, and then in the afternoon we tracted a bit. This means that we're the only missionaries in both the Downey 1st and 3rd wards.
On Thursday, I turned 21!!!!! Amazing, that. I like to say that every year I look back at myself a year ago and say, "Man, I was immature back then!", but out here on the mission it's more like every three or four months that I look back and say, "Man, I was a bad missionary back then!". I guess it means I'm always improving, right? So anyways, we had our weekly planning, and then in the evening we visited some of Elders Monita and Brixius's investigators.
On Friday, we had our normal district meeting, had Downey 3rd correlation, and tracted for a while. On Saturday, we had a "zone blitz", in which the whole zone came to the Downey 1st area and tracted in it for a little while to make up a bit for Elder Bird's not being able to get out. In the afternoon, we visited a couple more Downey 3rd (They actually refer to the Downey wards as D1, D2, D3, D4, and D5, which I, of course, find quite amusing) people.
On Sunday, we had Downey Stake Conference, and that was pretty good, and then afterwards we worked on the fireside for this Sunday (I worked on hooking up a laptop to the projector and playing some video segments timed to coincide with the songs, Elder Monita worked with the translation equipment, and Elder Brixius worked on figuring out the chair setup). Later on, we visited the Francos, a less-active family in D1 that's been starting to come back, and tried without sucess to visit a couple other people to invite them to the fireside.
On Monday, we tracted for a good while, and we actually had someone who slammed the door twice! Apparently they weren't satisfied with the first slam or something. In the evening, we tried to visit a couple D3 people but just ended up setting return appointments with them.
On Tuesday, we did some service for a sister in D3 (who just happens to know a Verlin Stephens... we're investigating that), worked on programs for the fireside, and then in the evening Elder Brixius went with a brother from D3 while Elder Monita and I went to an appointment (he wasn't there) and then to D1 correlation. On the way there, Elder Monita noticed a couple who had pulled over to the side of the road that had another couple helping them change a tire. We got out to help them, too, and it turned out that the one couple went to put air in the tire (their spare was flat, too), so we waited with them for a bit and ended up talking some about the Gospel and inviting them to the fireside. As we did, I felt the Spirit and knew that the Lord had arranged things this way for a reason. Eventually they just used our cell phone to call a tow truck (their cell phone didn't work, for some reason, and it turned out the tire's valve was broken). Hopefully they'll come to the fireside and recognize the Spirit there. We never made it to our correlation meeting, but they had it without us and discussed pretty much everything that needed to be brought up. The Lord truly works in mysterious ways.
Today, we went to the temple. Traffic was horrendous for some reason this morning, so we got there late, but we just went to a later session.
Well, transfers are next Wednesday, so I've already only got a week with Elders Monita and Brixius. Who knows what next transfer will bring?
Elder Samuel Stephens