Dear Family,
So I have arrived in California, and I love it here! My First Area is... Yucca Valley. It's the Desert, but its been cooling off here, so not too bad temperature wise. My companion is Sister Davis. So I guess I will start with Tuesday.
Tuesday we went to the church right next to the Temple, The temple is gorgeous by the way. We had an orientation meeting. Mission rules, and information, etc. We were all exhausted and trying to stay awake. We woke up at 2:40 that day so by the time the night ended, I think we actually went to bed at 9(which would be 10 Utah time) we had been awake for about 19 hours.. after we took care of things there we went to the mission home, we helped with dinner and were able to relax a bit. One of the VanCotts neigbors, Sister Larson came over for dinner. She is the sweetest lady ever! We had a mini FHE and President talked about how we aren't tracting, but focusing on working with the members. I was excited to hear that. The sisters all stayed at Sister Larsons house. It is the coolest old house ever, and it is huge. It brought back memories, because it reminded me of grandma and grandpa's place in Layton with all of the family pictures everywhere. Also when we got off the plane the first thing we saw outside the airport besides palm trees.. Mountains! There's only a few but these ones reminded me of Timp and G mountain. It feels like home! except they are North and not East.
Wednesday we had breakfast and then headed over to the Mission office. We had more meetings and training which was so good, then we ate lunch and found out who our companions are! Sister Davis is from Hennifer Ut, and shes super nice. We drove back to Yucca, which is about an hour away from Redlands. maybe an hour and a half. We also cover Joshua Tree, speaking of which, there's alot of those(tree's). Basically I unpacked and then we went to dinner with the Boyers. We went to a YW activity because we had an investigator there, we did water color with a Sister in the ward who is an artist, pretty cool. Both Sis. Davis and I started getting sick with a cold..
Thursday we had a referral from the Bishop, his name is George, he lives in Landers, which is out in the boonies, relative to Yucca, because I consider Yucca the boonies. Most everyone here has dirt yards, no lawns to mow, they rake them.. Especially in Landers, Dirt roads and the only way you know theres a house and a yard is because they have fences/gates around their yard. George actually knows quite a bit about the Church, he worked in Social services and with welfare and so they worked with church members that way and he has been to Temple square and read the Book of Mormon. It's been several years since then, but he loves learning, especially PBS, reminded me of Dad that way:D Because we were sick we had to cancel our appointment with a recent convert, She didn't want us to get her sick, don't blame her, But we have dinner every night with a member, so I'm definitely not starving, I better start working out more!.
Friday we felt pretty miserable and so we did alot of study and planning and training. We did go on a walk to the church, its about a 15 minute walk and right across from the high school so we stopped and talked to a few kids as they were walking home, most of them go to a church called Joshua Springs, they are kind of anti-Mormon there, they don't believe Mormons are Christians, but we will change that! We had dinner with the Quinlans, we had fish and it wasn't too bad, it was smoked and lemon peper seasoning so not much fish taste:D The Quinlans are really cool, Most of the members here are converts, so it's really cool to hear their stories.
Saturday I had a hard time focusing during study and training, but I learned a lot from what we did, so I'm glad that even though I didn't want to really do it I did it anyways. We stopped by on a Potential, Ken, I haven't taught him yet but he's single and raising his son and the Sisters were going around meeting the members, I guess a member used to live there but moved about a year ago. anyways he said his son could use some religion and decided he could probably too. So we stopped by to set up an appointment and we invited him to come to church, and He said he yes! More about that later. We went through the Area book and found a bunch of former investigators that we didnt know why they had stopped taking lessons and decided to contact them. We went to one and the numbers weren't on the apt. so we went next door to where he lived and found out they moved about 5 months ago but we talked to the girl who lived there, she's Muslim and from Fiji. We talked to her for a while and she has a lot of Christian friends and was interested in learning more about what we believe. We gave her a pass along card and some other info, she invited us to come over for dinner some time too, she seems like she wanted some more friends, she stays home and goes to school and her husband is in nursing school so she seems kinda lonely. Anyways we called another potential(Nel) that the Elders had met with a few times but we haven't met in person, she couldn't meet with us but we invited her to church also. Sister Davis invited almost everyone we talked to on Saturday to Church, which was good.
So Sunday, we are over a ward and a YSA branch and that keeps us pretty busy. We had meetings and then we went to go pick up Ken, we had told him it was at 11:30 and we would be by around 11:10, we got there and he wasn't there. We found out later that there was some miscommunication and he was ready at 11 and waiting for us, but since we didn't come they went to lunch. Next week for sure we will get him there! Right before Sacrament Nel called and said she would come to church but she would be late, so she was there for the end of Sacrament and the rest of church, Shes really cool as well. Born in Hungary and lived in Switzerland and Germany for most of her life. Super nice lady. We also had one of our investigators and a friend of hers come to Church, we taught them on Sunday, and Bruce is golden. I'm really excited to teach him.
Today we came to Email and I guess the other sisters that live with us have been struggling and so we are doing exchanges with them today. I am with Sister Gonzalez today. We played some piano, we played some hymns and then I played my Enya song.. So I taught her the first part. She plays by ear, so it's perfect. Its been a good P-day so far and a really good week. I love you all!
Sister Gardner
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