Email: June 11, 2018 - P-week, Mormon Night
Well, well, well, ladies and gentlemen, I have returned again. This week was quite the interesting week and I have a lot of pictures this week.
Monday: Happy Birthday to me. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do for my birthday so I just let the other missionaries choose. We ended up going to the Promenade which is this long outdoor mall in Santa Monica that is just full of a bunch of high end stores. I’m talking the high end of Nike and Adidas where everything is super expensive. Don't even get me started on the shoes they had there. If you have ever seen the movie Step Up 3, there is a part where the characters show off their wall of fancy shoes. That's basically what this felt like. But most of the time we were there we just sat back and relaxed. We enjoyed the ocean breeze and just took some time to enjoy what we have in our mission.
We ended the night by waiting at the mission office with Elder Spalding and Elder Jones so they could pick up their new companion. Their new companion is Elder Carlisle. He is another missionary from Nicaragua since they pulled out the remaining missionaries. So we now have 4 missionaries in the mission from Nicaragua.
Tuesday: Today we had our quarterly temple trip and it was awesome as always. We had interviews afterwards and mine was near the end of the day. And our interviews were running about 1 and a half hours behind schedule. My interview was supposed to be at 4 and I didn't get in until 5:30. We then ended the night by giving service to some members that moved in. That itself took about 3 hours so Tuesday felt like another p-day but the members gave us chick-fil-a after, so it was worth it.
Wednesday. Today was just full of service. Just running back and forth dropping people off, pulling weeds, stocking shelves, you name it. We didn’t get in our proselyting clothes until 5 pm. It feels weird not being in our proselyting clothes but that’s how you know you are hard at work is when you have to wear your service clothes.
Thursday: District meeting was good as usual. We decided that it would be a good idea to start English and Spanish classes for people that may need it. It’s a great way to give service and let people know that we are more than just people from another church, but that we are actually here to help the community in any way that we can. We may not be the best teachers, but we try our best to be.
Friday: Today we had weekly planning and part of it we went through the entire list of potential investigators that we have (which there is a LOT of them) and just texted them inviting them to our classes. It was a good way to clean up and organize our area book and we got some really good conversations from it and a lot of people coming.
Saturday: Today is the big day! MORMON NIGHT AT DODGER STADIUM. Yup you heard me right. All of the missionaries got to go to a baseball game. It was a ton of fun! Now if you know me you know I don’t care for baseball all that much, but the mission has really made me appreciate the things that I used to have, but most importantly, the things I have now. Unfortunately, the Dodgers lost, but that is okay. It was the best night of my mission, it was so much fun. Most of us missionaries were all in the same section (don’t worry, there were still people we proselyted to) so that made it much more entertaining. A lot of missionaries got on the jumbo screen, so we got to show our presence and our humor.
Also, we didn’t get home until 11:00 pm and I was absolutely wiped out. To add some icing on the cake our neighbors were throwing this massive party, so they had loud Hispanic music playing for what seemed like all night.
Sunday: Sunday was pretty average. We got to teach primary again and it’s so much fun. The 11 year olds are so funny to me. I should probably be more concentrated on the lesson but watching Elder Burnett getting roasted by 11 year olds is just priceless.
We had the opportunity to give a blessing and the sacrament to a gentleman who is recovering from hand surgery in a hospital in our area. We got talking to him a bit and turns out he is a convert of about 2 years. Now I have a massive amount of respect for converts and it goes without saying why. Hearing where this man has come from and what he has been through to be here is impressive. He is a military veteran so even more respect there.
When we gave him the sacrament we didn’t actually have bread or water on us so we used what he had there in his room. So, we ended up using a sour cream and onion potato chip and the strawberry kiwi flavored Shasta. It was quite an interesting sacrament and it felt really weird saying "chip" rather than "bread" like it was super weird
I’m so grateful to be here on the mission. It really has showed me a lot and certainly taught me a lot of things. I’m grateful for the different people I'm able to meet. LA is definitely a unique place and there is nothing like it anywhere else in the world and I’m so glad that I get to be here to experience it
Take care out there!
-Elder Barton
Monday: Happy Birthday to me. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do for my birthday so I just let the other missionaries choose. We ended up going to the Promenade which is this long outdoor mall in Santa Monica that is just full of a bunch of high end stores. I’m talking the high end of Nike and Adidas where everything is super expensive. Don't even get me started on the shoes they had there. If you have ever seen the movie Step Up 3, there is a part where the characters show off their wall of fancy shoes. That's basically what this felt like. But most of the time we were there we just sat back and relaxed. We enjoyed the ocean breeze and just took some time to enjoy what we have in our mission.
We ended the night by waiting at the mission office with Elder Spalding and Elder Jones so they could pick up their new companion. Their new companion is Elder Carlisle. He is another missionary from Nicaragua since they pulled out the remaining missionaries. So we now have 4 missionaries in the mission from Nicaragua.
Tuesday: Today we had our quarterly temple trip and it was awesome as always. We had interviews afterwards and mine was near the end of the day. And our interviews were running about 1 and a half hours behind schedule. My interview was supposed to be at 4 and I didn't get in until 5:30. We then ended the night by giving service to some members that moved in. That itself took about 3 hours so Tuesday felt like another p-day but the members gave us chick-fil-a after, so it was worth it.
Wednesday. Today was just full of service. Just running back and forth dropping people off, pulling weeds, stocking shelves, you name it. We didn’t get in our proselyting clothes until 5 pm. It feels weird not being in our proselyting clothes but that’s how you know you are hard at work is when you have to wear your service clothes.
Thursday: District meeting was good as usual. We decided that it would be a good idea to start English and Spanish classes for people that may need it. It’s a great way to give service and let people know that we are more than just people from another church, but that we are actually here to help the community in any way that we can. We may not be the best teachers, but we try our best to be.
Friday: Today we had weekly planning and part of it we went through the entire list of potential investigators that we have (which there is a LOT of them) and just texted them inviting them to our classes. It was a good way to clean up and organize our area book and we got some really good conversations from it and a lot of people coming.
Saturday: Today is the big day! MORMON NIGHT AT DODGER STADIUM. Yup you heard me right. All of the missionaries got to go to a baseball game. It was a ton of fun! Now if you know me you know I don’t care for baseball all that much, but the mission has really made me appreciate the things that I used to have, but most importantly, the things I have now. Unfortunately, the Dodgers lost, but that is okay. It was the best night of my mission, it was so much fun. Most of us missionaries were all in the same section (don’t worry, there were still people we proselyted to) so that made it much more entertaining. A lot of missionaries got on the jumbo screen, so we got to show our presence and our humor.
Also, we didn’t get home until 11:00 pm and I was absolutely wiped out. To add some icing on the cake our neighbors were throwing this massive party, so they had loud Hispanic music playing for what seemed like all night.
Sunday: Sunday was pretty average. We got to teach primary again and it’s so much fun. The 11 year olds are so funny to me. I should probably be more concentrated on the lesson but watching Elder Burnett getting roasted by 11 year olds is just priceless.
We had the opportunity to give a blessing and the sacrament to a gentleman who is recovering from hand surgery in a hospital in our area. We got talking to him a bit and turns out he is a convert of about 2 years. Now I have a massive amount of respect for converts and it goes without saying why. Hearing where this man has come from and what he has been through to be here is impressive. He is a military veteran so even more respect there.
When we gave him the sacrament we didn’t actually have bread or water on us so we used what he had there in his room. So, we ended up using a sour cream and onion potato chip and the strawberry kiwi flavored Shasta. It was quite an interesting sacrament and it felt really weird saying "chip" rather than "bread" like it was super weird
I’m so grateful to be here on the mission. It really has showed me a lot and certainly taught me a lot of things. I’m grateful for the different people I'm able to meet. LA is definitely a unique place and there is nothing like it anywhere else in the world and I’m so glad that I get to be here to experience it
Take care out there!
-Elder Barton
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| Mormon night at Dodger Stadium |
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| Me and Elder Carlisle, he is such and awesome Elder |
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