Email: April 16, 2018 - Half way through the transfer, exchanges, Mimi, the awkward Uber ride, Masaru, worst fear and the best Sunday night

This transfer has already gone by super fast. I guess the fast pace life of LA wraps everyone up even when you’re missionary.

Monday: P-day was super fun. We mainly just drove around the north end of LA. I almost bought a ukulele, but thankfully I didn't. We ended the day at our church building and played some basketball and there were a bunch of missionaries there. Most of them were from Torrance North. I actually saw Elder Terry again which was super cool because it has been a long time since I have seen him.

Tuesday: We have been waking up early a lot to play basketball at the church building. We also had interviews with our mission president and he said that we can have more than 3 companionships in the morning for workouts and basketball. So, we are planning on getting a big game together some time soon. 

Wednesday: I went on exchanges with my district leader Elder Carlson and went to my area. We are making a big push with the less active members in our area so we mainly focused on them. We also decided to reach out through Facebook as well.

We got a referral named Mimi who we decided to give a call and turns out she was available to meet right then and there. So we called up Uber and went over and had an awesome lesson with her. We invited her to be baptized and set it for May 27th. It was super cool and we were able to meet with her 3 times in 3 days, so it's a super solid investigator. We had a really good correlation meeting as well.

Thursday: Thursday was really good because we had 4 lessons lined up for the day. We also district meeting in the morning which was also really good. We decided again to use Uber to go to district meeting. We use Uber pool so we can contact more people. As we hopped in the Uber I got in the back and the person I sat next to was a lady in a bikini and she was sitting right on top of where I needed to clip my seatbelt into. So that was kind of an awkward conversation. 

The highlight of the day however was the fact that I had the opportunity to Skype into a lesson with Masaru from my former area. It was good to be able to speak with him again and catch up with him. We got him more comfortable with understanding the priesthood and he committed to set a day to receive it.

Friday: Was a good but slow day but not much happened 

Saturday: Saturday was an awesome day. We had the opportunity to visit a less active. He works at a clothing brand and he gave us some free clothes and he actually trains birds as well. He shared with us his conversion story. It was super sad, and it kind of shook me, because he talked about losing his significant other, which is my worst fear. So it was a super sad story and reminded me of Dan Smith’s story. 

Sunday: The Adams Ward had their really late Easter program today and sacrament meeting was double the size that it normally is since we had a bunch of less actives come to church. After church the 4 Adams elders sat around our kitchen table and asked each other a bunch of questions to get to know each other better. It was pretty funny cause we asked first kiss stories and a bunch of stupid questions like that and it got pretty hilarious.

We also had a barbeque with a bunch of missionaries and the our apartment manager (who are members) and it was a lot of fun. We ate good food, played basketball and had some good laughs. It was the first time that I have smelled like smoke in a long time and it reminded me of camp outs back home.

Sorry there are no pictures this week. Also, the mission as taught me that I am super accident prone so watch out when I get home

Elder Kyle Barton