Email: May 14, 2018 - Transfers!, Venice beach, loud bass, no proselyting clothes, graduation, Mother’s day

Well everyone the time has come and transfers are here. I will be staying here in the Adams ward for another transfer. This time however I will be covering all of the ward boundaries. So I officially have downtown LA as my proselyting area as well as Korea town. I'm excited that my area is bigger and there is more of everything for me to work with. More members, less actives, investigators and so on. I feel like this transfer is kind of a do or die and that a lot of faith is going to be needed. I'm hoping my new companion Elder Burnett is ready to work and that he is coming in with a lot of faith as well.

Monday: Monday was a fun p-day and it was the first one I actually spent with Elder Patrick. We decided we wanted to get out of the apartment and see the mission, so we got some bikes, jumped on a train and went straight to downtown Santa Monica. We jumped off and rode our bikes down to the coast and rode along the coast (without touching it of course) so we got to see the Santa Monica Pier, Venice beach, muscle beach and the Venice canal it was a ton of fun.

Tuesday: Tuesday was a good day. We took one of our less actives Frank to the VC and had a super awesome tour with him. We also had permission from the APs to work outside our zone for a bit and visit people that we have the records of but don't live inside our ward boundaries. Also, as we were sitting at a gas station fulling up the car another car had their bass all the way up and it was shaking the entire gas station it was so loud.

Wednesday: Wednesday was just full of service it started with helping out a potential with pulling some weeds in their backyard and she gave us some sodas. So we decided to have some fun with the sodas and we ended up shot gunning them. I'll see if I can get the video, but it was pretty funny and soda ended up all over me. 

We then and gave service and the Pumfrys and helped her in her garden. They ended up taking 5 hours. I spent most of the time digging out some small palm trees and making sure another tree doesn't fall over. But we had an awesome lunch afterwards. 

As we were heading back to our area we realized that we didn't have time to head back because the other elders had a lesson. So, all four of us showed up at the lesson in our service clothes. Then right after that lesson we had ward coordination, so we showed up at that in our service clothes as well. We then ended the night by buying the ward mission leader some ice cream to show our appreciation for him. So, we spent the entire day in service clothes.

Thursday: Thursday was district meeting and one of the elders in our district is going home so it was kind of sad since it was his last district meeting. As for the work today, it was pretty rough. It was just a day full of rejection and some people were just too lazy to say anything or come up with an excuse. But it’s not in vain because that just means we are getting closer and closer to the person who has been prepared.

Friday: Friday was kind of the same as Thursday. USC had their graduation today so traffic was even more horrendous than usual. Like even the side streets were backed up. But we did run into some members that were in town for graduation. We tried to visit a potential, but we ran into their neighbor. When we asked them about their neighbor they responded with "Oh...he's dead. He died about a year ago. He had a drinking problem...and he was racist." So there are some good life lessons there. Don't drink and don't be racist or else you'll die.

The Spanish ward had a mother's day party and we decided to pop in for a quick second before we went home and let me tell you, it actually was a party. They had loud Spanish music playing they had people dancing and others serving up some street tacos.

Saturday: Saturday kind of sucked. I wound up pretty sick and I was down for the whole day. 

Sunday: Sunday was awesome because of Mother’s day. It was awesome to skype home and see my family and just see how everything is going. It was an awesome time. Our apartment manager also gave us three milks cake and it was super. Then we spent the rest of the day waiting for our transfer calls.

I'm excited for this coming transfer because I know it is going to grow me as a missionary and a person. I ask that you all pray for me and keep sending me updates from home and abroad because I love reading your emails every week and if you haven't emailed me in a while, it’s ok, I forgive you

Elder Kyle Barton

Some things we found around town