Week 66 November 13, 2017

Before I get into telling you about my week I want to start off by saying how much I love this Ward that I’m serving in. There’s always something exciting happening and the members really are great, truly. There’s a lot of diversity in Southern California  with the members. This week we had dinner with a couple and they met while they were going to Harvard, both are straight genius and grew up in good homes.  Then we had dinner with this other family, I’ve always seen this lady and she has always been super nice, you wouldn’t think anything crazy about her. Then at dinner she told us  a crazy or how she got shot a couple times awhile back, because she used to be part of a gang?! I love this Ward.  Plus even though everyone comes from different backgrounds, they really go out of their way to help other people and it’s so cool to see how everyone just gets along. Everyone goes out of their way to introduce themselves to new people coming to the ward or coming back to the ward. 

       Also I talked about unexpected things that happen in this area I’m serving in. Something unexpected that happened a couple weeks ago was when a guy name Jay came in Investigating the church from Arkansas. This week they asked him to say the closing prayer in Sacrament Meeting. That was really cool and he killed it. Also it happen again. A lady and her daughter walked into church this Sunday wanting to join the church. She’s been looking at the different religions in Christianity and really liked the LDS church. There’s a lot that she likes about the church and she hasn’t really heard of the Restoration yet, which is weird because that’s the whole point of this church, but we will be teaching her and her daughter about that. They live about a block away from our church building and they are really excited to take the lessons. Well that happened AND a man came into church this Sunday from New Mexico and he was baptized in October. He moved over here and now Eastmont is his new Ward. He’s pretty cool. He talked to us on Sunday and told us that his wife is also investigation the church and he has some friends who are interested also. These are the things that happen in Eastmont! 

    Transfers came this week and I’m staying and I will be having the same companion. 6 weeks from now will be Christmas so the Mission President shortened this upcoming transfer to 5 weeks so this will be a shorter transfer. I forgot to take pictures this week so I’ll try and take some today to send home.

Elder Madsen 🐡

Week 65 November 6, 2017

I had a pretty eventful week last week. I had lots of fun as well as progress in our area. Last P-day I went to the driving range and had lots of fun there. I had the chance to go on two exchanges and on the first one I went with the Glendale YSA Elders and their Ward actually goes outside the Mission boundaries so I had the chance to go into downtown LA and Hollywood to teach some of their investigators. That was a pretty cool experience, and a chance to escape in a way out of the tiny mission boundaries. For the other exchange I went on I went back to my old area and I got to see Corey who was just baptized. He’s doing awesome.

     As for the work in our area things are looking better. There is this Mom and her two girls that want to come back to church. Jackie the Mom is pretty cool too. She’ll admit it and in her own words she “was a punk” and messed around too much when she was younger and she’s trying to straighten her life out now. She’s going back to school, coming back to church, and preparing for the army as well.

     Something else that happened this week was that we had interviews with our Mission President. During interviews the President’s wife, Sister Wells, had a big meeting with everyone else waiting to be interviewed. In the meeting she told us that in February every missionary will be getting a smart phone. That’s not the only crazy thing though. She said that if we were teaching anyone a lesson or a certain topic like tithing for example, and let’s say Grandma has an awesome story or testimony about tithing we could Skype or FaceTime Grandma into the lesson to teach with us. You all can be a missionary and help teach my Investigators!

Week 64 October 30, 2017

 I've always heard  stories of missionaries having people walk into church and ask to be baptized, and I never thought that would happen to me until this week. We came to church this week and some members met us at the door and told us that a man had came to church and wanted to take the missionary lessons and was looking for the missionaries. Crazy huh? The guy’s name is Jace and he super cool. He’s from Arkansas but unexpectedly got moved over here because of work. He’s planning on getting baptized in February by his family down in Arizona. He’s going to be down here in California until April. He hasn’t met with the missionaries too much back in Arkansas so mine and Elder Xu job is to teach him the lessons then he’ll go down to Arizona in February. I’ll tell you what, this guy has got things figured out.

     It’s a good thing that that had happened because it really balanced the week out. This week was not full of progress. I gave myself a bad haircut and there was this big hole on the side of my head and it was really embarrassing to walk around with a hole on the side of my head. Also  Elder Xu and I were tracting and contacting on the end of one of our areas that we don’t get to go to too often, when I got a bloody nose. I didn’t want to leave because we don’t get a chance to be down in that area too often so we kept on going. It wasn’t too successful, I guess because it’s very offsetting to have missionaries knocking on your door when the sun has gone down while one of them has a bloody nose... Our area has been struggling with teaching some one consistently. Well this week we established that with a girl named Anna. She is super cool and is very interested about the Restoration. We found out this week that her husband wants to learn too but he only speaks Spanish. We had to pass them off to the Spanish missionaries. We also found out right before we passed them off that this set of missionaries have been teaching English people and for some reason won’t pass them off to us. I was a little upset about that and  didn't want to pass off this perfect family to them, but my angelic companion helped me to do the right thing and we passed the family off to those missionaries. Butttt that’s what happened to me this week. Oh! A grandma also helped sneak us into an apartment building we were trying to get into and she acted like she was helping us escape nazi Germany. It was funny.  Other than that, I love what I’m doing and it is defiantly rough at times but I love what I’m doing and love teaching people the Gospel.

Elder Madsen 🐡

Week 63 October 23, 2017

A General Authority came to our mission this week, his name was Elder Dyches. There was a lot  of things that he taught us while he was here that we never knew before that could help us become better missionaries and to see more success through our efforts. He also corrected us on a lot of things that we thought we were doing right. Now I actually have it written down but I just summarized his job when he goes on mission tours. He’s supposed to teach and correct and he did a pretty job on both things. 

We got a new bishopric this week and it’s with cool guys in the ward that love to help out with missionary work so hopefully we can get some stuff moving with that. Our bishopric is pretty young too. The bishop is in his early 30’s and his 2nd counselor is 27. They’re pretty young. 

There’s not a whole lot to report on for what’s been going on in my area. Lorenzo is really busy and basically only has time to do things Sunday mornings, so he is available to go to church and he did come this week which was really exciting but we can't teach him at all. That’s the next step we have to work on and figure out. 

Also I’m sorry this email is so short please forgive me.

Week 62 October 16, 2017