Week 75 January 15, 2018

Sorry this email is so short! I was really bad with my time today. This week had its ups and downs for sure. The first day of the week my old companion in Eastmont came back on exchanges and we went and visited some recent converts and other people we had taught together. We also visited some people that’s taking the lessons right now. It was kinda sad, we stopped by to see why they didn’t come to church and they had a pretty bad incident happen with their family. By the end of they week they were doing better and getting over it. We also had a baptism scheduled this week but some people got in the way and it didn’t happen. Things might change this week.

Week 74 January 8, 2018

This week was sad finding out that the Prophet had died. A member let us know the night it happen and we woke up in the morning and saw his text. I had a meeting that morning too and of course we sang, We thank thee, O God, for a Prophet.  While we sang that song though a part really stood out to me when we sang the the 4th verse and at the very end it said “While they who reject this glad message will never such happiness know”. That part really hit me and it made sense. Before being on my mission I had a different sense of what happiness was. I’m very thankful for going on a mission and to be sharing the Gospel with other people. 

    President Oaks came and spoke to our Mission. He really threw down and I learned a lot from what he had to say. He talked about the difference between what makes a good teacher from a bad teacher. Recently I’ve been studying PMG in the hopes to help me become a better teacher so I took notes like crazy when President Oaks spoke. He’s also a really funny guy. He roasted everyone.

     Also Elder Xu and I have been having a frustrating time recently. We're probably gonna start dropping a lot of people. I don’t have too much to say about them because there has been no progress.

Our district went to the driving range today for P-day and that was really fun. 

The camera guy also caught me trying to peak over the Sister missionaries so that I could see President Oaks when he walked in and he put it on Facebook.

Elder Madsen 🐡

Week 72 December 25, 2017

MERRY CHRISTMAS

I just talked to most of you so I’ll just send some pictures home this week. 

The first picture is me holding Shaq’s shoes.

Week 70 December 11, 2017

I’m sorry I didn’t write an email out to everyone last week. That’s my bad, but to bring you up to speed on whats been going on with me. This is what’s up. A couple people we’ve been working with for December baptisms are gonna get pushed back to January. I'm talking about Candy and Crystal. They’re here half the time because their parents are separated so we can’t see them as much as we would like to. They love going to church but they are with their Dad on the weekends so it’s kinda tough. They’ll get baptized but it just needs time. They’re a super cute family. 

This week we also had the Ward Christmas party and it was pretty fun. Some investigators came and had a good time. I participated in the nativity with the primary kids and also got a picture with Santa. 

I’ve also been reading the Book of Mormon and the New Testament at the same time instead of focusing on just one. It’s really helped me to learn more by comparing them and something else has recently stuck out to me as well. It’s how the Prophets in the Book of Mormon and Jesus Christ chose to act through their trials. It’s cool to see how they always go to Heavenly Father for protection or to be comforted. I thought that was way cool.

Ok to bring you guys up to speed on the car situation. We won’t get the car back until Friday and I got my driving privileges taken away also... Kinda sad I know, hopefully my driving skills don’t get any worse when I get home because it’ll be awhile without driving a car.  Since we’ve haven’t had a car this last week we’ve been on bikes and some other Elders have been kind enough to let us use theirs because they don’t use them.

This morning our Zone went on a hike and it has been awhile since I’ve done anything close to that. We took our investigator and her husband and they had a blast too. That pretty much sums it up for this week.

Week 69 December 4, 2017

Week 67 November 23, 2017

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! My thanksgiving will be my P-day, dinner over at the Bishops house and then Weekly planning afterwards. Our president asked us to move P-day and weekly planning to today so there it is. 

Here’s the first good news. I lost my wallet a while ago and my Drivers license was in it, so I had to get another one sent to me. I got it this week or last week. There’s the good news, ok here’s the bad news. A lady driving her car right in front of me tried to make a U-turn in the middle of the street and I totally rear ended her car with our car. Good news. Everyone was ok and her car was fine. Bad news. Our car was wrecked and will probably be in the shop for a week or two so it will be really hard to get around for awhile and see our investigators. Good news. We unexpectedly got Facebook the other day before the accident, so I’m on Facebook now and am able to have Skype and FaceTime lessons to reach out to those investigators. Bad news. I had to create a Facebook because I never had one before and something went wrong so now I’m logged out for a couple days waiting for it to get verified or something. Also the same day that we got into an accident I noticed that that my suit pants ripped open at my zipper... but that’s ok because that same day I took an investigator to the visitor center next to the LA temple and the spirit was there and our investigator is so pumped to learn more about the gospel.

Other than all that I’m doing pretty good. I hit my 16 month mark and the time is flying by. It is going by so fast now. I feel like I’m gonna be home sooner than I think. I really want to stay out.

Also the only place open to get a haircut is at a Chinese barber shop which is where I’m currently at.