Week 16, November 28, 2016

Hello Everyone

This was my first week in my new area.  The new ward I'm serving is the Creekside ward, it covers Walnut, a little bit of La Puente, and West Covina. It's a lot nicer than my last one, but I loved it there. We have twice as many members that come to sacrament meeting than in El Monte. There's a lot more hills so we take the bus. I thought taking the bus was gonna be worse but the buses take us mostly everywhere we need to get to and we can talk to people on the bus so I think I'm a fan of busing now.

It's been bad weather for California the last couple of days. It's only been like I light drizzle and sweater weather. It was really hard to contact anyone because everyone thinks it's too cold to be outside in 60 degree weather. Haha, it's unreal.

This week I met our investigators. We have Patrick who is  17 years old and is close to kids in the ward. He has a baptismal date for December 10. He's really excited about the steps he's taking in life. You can tell he's really happy when he comes to church and when we talk about Jesus Christ. All I can say about him is that he's a really good kid that understands life, and he realizes what he has to do.

My thanksgiving on my mission was really cool! We went over to some members for lunch. We helped them make the pie and it was all very cool. They live next to us and they were missing a lot of stuff because they just moved in so we had to run back and forth from our apartment to grab stuff they needed because all they're stuff was still boxed up. It's was really cool and really fun.

We also had people ask us to come over for dinner too. Their names were the Stanfords. Sister Stanford has a catering business and her thanksgiving dinner was the bomb. We played a huge version of Jenga. In my mission we're not allowed to play board games or games with cards so Jenga was great. 

Elder Madsen 🐡

Pictures of the week:

Week 15, November 21, 2016

Ha, well a nearby companionship was having problems so I got Emergency
transferred since last time I sent an email. They let me know during
Preisthood on Sunday that I had to report to my new area by 4:30 so
right after church I had to run to the apartment and pack. I managed
to say goodbye to a couple families I have gotten close to while I've
been in El Monte. My companions and I took a companionship photo
before I left because we were all pretty tight and worked really well
together.
There was a really cool sunset the other day and I managed to take a
picture of it.
The new companion I'm with burned a shirt and a tie because he hit his
year mark. He is really tight with the ward and he let me
know that we get fed pretty regularly unlike my last ward so that's
something cool about this week haha. All I know is that my new area is
bigger than  my last area, I'll figure it
out all this week.

Burning the shirt and my new companion Elder Byam

Week 14 November 14, 2016

 Hi Guys,

This week has been a pretty fun week!
I'm doing good. Trying to find some investors but I'm good.
While we were teaching a less active family in their front yard a
helicopter flew over and began circling with a huge spot light pointed
down at the ground. After we ended our lesson we went to go check
it out and there were four cop cars blocking the street so no one could
get past and there was a crowd there so we took a selfie and left.

This week we got two investigators to go to church so that was really cool!
They both loved it so it was a cool experience. There wasn't a whole
lot of spiritual experiences this week so I'm sorry I didn't put them
in my letter.

The Mission President just changed the rules so now we can listen to
anything that goes with the standards of the white handbook.  I'm
excited to listen to more music.


Elder Madsen

Week 13 November 7, 2016

This week has been pretty good!  I'm getting along with my companions

really well.  We laugh a lot.

I gave my companions hair cuts this week. It's a lot of fun. There's never
really a dull moment. The hardest part is trying to teach because we
keep on interrupting each other because no one knows who's turn it is
to talk. Also my companions went the next day to get their 

haircuts fixed by the barber!! I cut my own hair and it was pretty good. 

Haha

Elder Madsen

Week 12 October 31, 2016

I am officially done being trained! I am a regular missionary now. I'm still way way new and I'm sure I'll continue to learn a lot to the very end of my mission as well. 

It's transfers week this Halloween and they don't like us out after dark so we will probably only be able to be out talking with investigators until 5pm. That'll be new,  but it'll defiantly let me be able to get caught up on a lot of stuff.

Elder Phillips got moved to La Canada. I know it's a goofy name but we are told it is the wealthiest ward in the world... going from El Monte to La Canada will be a big change for him.

Right now I have two companions. Elder Stucki and Elder Allard. They're pretty cool.  I'm excited for this new experience.

We haven't been able to go down over to Stevens house this week it was pretty busy. I really wanted to get over there as soon as possible but we had transfers....I'm excited  to go and see him  and some other people too, and introduce my new companions.

Elder Madsen