Samuel's Mission E-mail December 15, 2008

Everyone:
It's strange to think that this is my final transfer. It doesn't seem real to me yet. Of course, that's what all missionaries say. Except the truly trunky ones who wish they were already home. I'll try to not fall into that category.
As for the week, on Monday Elder Mijares got all of his stuff packed and ready to go, and he mailed off a lot of boxes of stuff that didn't fit in his luggage. He went with one of our zone leaders who also finished his mission on Tuesday morning, so I spent Tuesday with Elder Gonzalez, our other zone leader. It was a pretty good day-- we worked hard, it just wasn't in my area.
On Wednesday, I met up with my last companion, Elder Spencer. He's from Mesa, Arizona, and has been out for a little over a year. Oddly enough, no one knows which one of us is supposed to be the senior companion. Fortunately, I don't really care--I prefer to think of a missionary companionship as being made of equal partners anyways. He is the district leader, though, just as Elder Mijares was. On Wednesday, he got settled in, and then we tracted for a while.
On Thursday, Elder Spencer had one of his fun leadership meetings, so I took Elder Jenne (pronounced like Jenny), a new missionary who is being trained by one of the other district leaders, out tracting for a little while. We before and after the meeting, Elder Spencer and I did the normal weekly planning, and tried to think of some new things we could try in the area.
On Friday we had our normal zone meeting in the morning, and then we helped a family move their stuff into a storage unit. They're living for a while with one of their relatives in the ward. Afterwards we tracted for a bit.
On Saturday morning Elder Spencer had another of the beginning-of-transfer leadership meetings, so I went with Elder Jenne and helped a family move out of his ward. In the afternoon we tracted for a bit, and then Elder Spencer did a baptismal interview for one of the zone leaders' investigators. After that we kept tracting, but then I got the feeling we should go street contact. Elder Spencer suggested we go down by the beach, so we went down there. We didn't have much luck--it was really windy and pretty chilly, so there weren't a lot of people around--so we headed back to our car. Just before we got to it, we bumped into an older lady who explained to us that she couldn't find her car, so we let her get in ours and we went looking for it. We did find it eventually. The Lord uses us in a lot of ways, I think. In the evening we went to the Ward Christmas Party.
On Sunday, we had our typical church meetings, and then we street contacted and tracted. There wasn't really anything else big that happened that day.
Today we helped Elder Haws and Elder Holmes in our district help one of their members move (we've had a lot of moving this week), and we went to a meal at a member's home who invites the whole zone over every transfer. All the missionaries brought "white elephant" gifts, and we had a lot of fun trading them around. I found some floppy diskettes in our apartment, so I just had to bring them.
I can't remember if I mentioned this earlier, but Elder Mijares stumbled over this Ensign article a few weeks before he left that I really liked. It's in the February 2005 Ensign, and it's called "Seven Lessons on Sharing the Gospel". I highly recommend it. The last couple of lessons he shares are particularly powerful.
Elder Samuel Stephens