Un misionero con una rana muerta

Day: one of them I'm not really sure

Pushup Count: 310

Muy buenos días a todos  I hope y'all are doing well wherever you are. I officially journaled one day this week, so we'll see how much I remember 

- We started off the week with a pretty brutal bashing, we got tricked pretty good and then we couldn't escape for about 45 minutes. Not fun. But we said a good prayer afterwards and immediately felt better, so it ended up being a cool experience

- Our friend had to cancel a lesson because he had to take a baby owl to the zoo (true story I promise)

- Someone gave a whole bag of chiles de árbol and now we have to figure out what to do with them

- Listened to an old mexican dude rant about political issues for a good while (no fun as a missionary who's not allowed to discuss that )

- Went on exchanges with Elder Espadin and struggled through Spanish work by myself  usually I don't have many problems but holy cow that day was tough haha

- We had stake conference yesterday and decided to watch it in Spanish. Unfortunately the translator was less than perfect  and I didn't end up getting much out of it

- Elder Winkler beat me at Magic... my losing streak continues

- Last night we did a bunch of cleaning :)

- I went on a 30 minute run and it was easy! First time it hasn't felt long in a very long time 

- Remember how our friend had the cancel that lesson cause of the owl? Well turns out he didn't end up taking it to the zoo like he was supposed to. We had a lesson with a different friend yesterday, who told us that HE found the owl in a box at the park  so then he had to call animal control and they ended up taking care of it

- We also found a dead frog 

Sorry for the short email, I promise I'll be better about journaling next week so that I actually remember anything interesting that happens .

Spiritual Thought:

Mosiah 7:33 says, "But if ye will turn to the Lord with full purpose of heart, and put your trust in him, and serve him with all diligence of mind, if ye do this, he will, according to his own will and pleasure, deliver you out of bondage."

Okay, a lot to unpack here. The basic message here is that if we trust in God he will deliver us. But when we look closer we realize that God requires a little bit of effort on our end in order to help us. We can't expect Him to just save us whenever things get tough. We have to have faith, and we have to serve him. But remember the little part at the end, "according to his own will and pleasure". Sometimes we have faith and we're working hard, but tough things still hit us. It's at these times that we have to realize that we have to just tough it out and figure out what God wants us to learn.

Anyway, cool scripture I read this week, let me know if you have any thoughts :)

Mucho amor, 

Élder Page

Fotos!

just the dead frog

Un misionero andando aki

Day: hottest day of the year so far

Pushup Count: 304

Hey y'all how's it going? We had transfers this week, so obviously I was exhausted and forgot to journal very much. But, sigamos adelante pues.

- Last Monday we went to McFarland  so that Elder Westerby could visit some old friends. I got to see the corner store and a cool mural

- We had an amazing lesson where our friends said that everything just made sense  ...and then they gave us posole

- Elder Westerby got transferred  but then I got Elder Winkler 

- A friend that we've been teaching for years asked us to stop coming by  hopefully he'll reach out again when he's ready

- Someone told us our Bible was wrong (which honestly was kinda fun cause usually they're more concerned about the Book of Mormon )

- We got on a guys porch for half an hour as he explained to us that he didn't need the bible... And then proceeded to quote the Bible

- We hadn't found at all this week, but God worked a miracle and we were able to find three new people yesterday :)

First week of the transfer is always long, especially ones like this where tons and tons of lessons fall through, but we're doing awesome :) my new companion is super positive and we're facing every new challenge with faith and a smile 

Spiritual Thought 

Just read 2 Nephi 31. I read it this week as part of our reading challenge and it's straight fire 

Mucho amor, 

Élder Page

Fotos!

Just a couple from McFarland this week

Un misionero con mucho comida

Day: officially the end of spring here in Bakersfield

Pushup Count: 298

Hey y'all how's it going? This was a long week - every journal entry I wrote has some variation of "I'm super tired" somewhere in it haha. Lots of good things happened tho, including a weird amount of stuff to do with food. Highlights:

- We saw the eclipse... It was cool I guess 

- We went and got wings with the district ( #1)

- We brought an inactive member to a lesson, which is lit, but then she kinda just distracted our friends the whole time  they ended up giving us shrimp pasta ( #2) 

- We did service and they gave us cinnabons after we packaged 360 rolls ( #3) 

- I went on exchanges with Elder Taylor who only has a couple months left in his mission. He doesn't speak Spanish so I had to teach two lessons by myself  he's a great scripture reader tho and we had a lot of good conversations 

- A sweet old member made us the best posole I've had on my mission so far ( #4) 

- We had a walk day and it was awesome! I know most missionaries are jealous of the fact that we have cars, but walking was so much fun

- It almost hit 90 here 

- After a couple super hot days, it started to downpour and it's just now stopping. I went on exchanges with my ZL Elder Gardner and we were soaked after just a couple minutes. Luckily, one of our friends let us in for an on the spot lesson and they gave us fish tacos ( #5) 

- We had a member meal with the coolest family ever - Hermano played us Spanish music and Justin Bieber while we ate taquitos ( #6) 

- We decided to knock on this tiny little house that was basically in someone's backyard and this sweet old Honduran lady answered. She told us she was so happy we visited because she's sick and she doesn't get to see people often (at least I think, catrachos don't open their mouths when they talk) She also did this funny thing where she would just yell a couple words out of nowhere and make us jump. She gave us orange juice ( #7) 

- We had a member meal last night and their daughter put makeup on all of us 

- I played a guitar for just long enough to realize that every time I pick up a guitar I've forgotten even more 

So yep. Lots of food and lots of being tired haha. The district leader/trainer list came out last night and made it pretty clear that Elder Westerby will be leaving. I'll let y'all know if I get a new comp next week. Let me know what the best food you had this week was! 

Spiritual Thought:

I just want to share a banger of a scripture this week. 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 says: 

"And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong"

I invite y'all to just think about that this week, how your weaknesses can be made strong through Christ :) 

Muchísimo amor, 

Élder Page

Fotos! 

probably the healthiest meal eaten in our mission this week

us lookin super pretty

Un misionero mirando la conferencia

Day: somewhere around 9 months

Pushup Count: 292

Buenos días a todos (a menos que no esté mañana para ti ). Another spring week down in the books. Here's what went down:

- We went on a hike

- Bishop measured my comp and I for a coffins

- Went for my first real run in months  google maps said it was a 5k... Not sure how much I trust that but it was fun. Unfortunately it hurt Elder Westerbys hamstring again so I had to go back to running circles around the park :/

- I got a little frustrated after visiting a referral 

- I made super mid aguachiles 

- My old companion Elder Ireland joined us for an evening and it was lit

- We were teaching a second lesson with someone and he told us he lost his Book of Mormon because he got arrested for no reason 

- We had a hair cutting party with chicken and rice with the zone leaders

- Due to the chicken party we had very little food, so we used ground beef to make beef and broccoli  not too bad, but way too salty

- We watched a baby chick hatch 

- We set up our "couch" (just an extra mattress) and watched conferencia all Saturday

- The zone leaders made us biscuits and gravy - except our zone leader is Dominican so he put adobo in it and it was super salty 

- Day two of conference - we watched one session at the church and we had some friends come watch it too

- Hung out with a family from Michoacan and taught them about prayer

- Got offered girlfriends twice... Still don't have good enough Spanish to really handle that situation well 

- We had about a million lessons fall through, but that just gave us time to knock more doors 

- We had a snowball fight with some ice in the road 

Not a crazy week, a little discouraging at times, but life has its ups and downs. We're heading into our last full week of this short transfer, so hopefully everything goes well.

Pensamiento Espiritual:

1 Nephi 14:14 - "And it came to pass that I, Nephi, beheld the power of the Lamb of God, that it descended upon the saints of the church of the Lamb, and upon the covenant people of the Lord, who were scattered upon all the face of the earth; and they were armed with righteousness and with the power of God in great glory." Literally every single talk during general conference this last weekend mentioned covenants, and then I read that scripture yesterday and thought it was super cool. Remember that covenants give us power and a stronger relationship with God. If you've made covenants, keep them! They're pretty cool :) If you haven't or you don't know what they are, send me an email, I'd love to help :) 

Mucho amor, 

Élder Page

Fotos!

Un misionero con un compa enfermito

Day: April fools 

Pushup Count: 286

Buenos días mi gente! A few days ago my companion got sick. It must have been pretty bad cause this last week was the first time in 18 months that he's taken a sick day. He's very stubborn though, so we still did a lot of phone work and studying. But anyways, we were still mia for a few days, so not a ton happened this week. Here's some highlights though:

- Last pday we went to the latino market and then played sports with some friends from my first area - it was super fun to see them

- I went on exchanges in Oildale (the sketchiest part of the mission) and it was so lit. It was an English area, so I got to do Spanish contacts and we got 3 numbers  we also taught some crazy people and a I saw a homeless lady with a giant gash in her head... Super cool 

- The next day elder Westerby got sick so we didn't do much. He drove me around while I put church flyers on doors and then we did a tooon of facebook

- We did what felt like a million phone calls (actually only like 40, but still a lot)

- Did so much Facebook work that now Facebook thinks I'm a bot and I can't even send messages anymore :)

- Since we were sick we had lots of time, so we filmed new Facebook intro videos

- Yesterday was Easter  we had a cool church service and I played the piano for a few songs 

- A member gave us provably the best carne asada I've ever had yesterday and we ate it at park. They didn't give us any utensils tho so we had to use the tortillas as spoons. It was fun :) Once we were done eating we realized that there were spoons in the bag the whole time 

- A couple weeks ago some really sweaty dude in the park came up to us and gave us his number. When we texted it, Elder Westerby already had it saved in his phone, which was weird. We finally taught him a lesson this week and we found out that Elder Westerby had taught him before when he lived in our old area in Bakersfield, and I'm pretty convinced I had met him before too  he had moved and disappeared, but it's  cool how God didn't forget about him 

So... not the most fun week being sick but it's okay :) We're both itching to get back to work fully so hopefully tonight we can. Hopefully next weeks email is a little more entertaining haha. 

Spiritual Thought

This week as a mission we're starting to read the Book of Mormon in the same time that Joseph Smith translated it (85 days). As a missionary, that's really not that much, but I'm gonna continue my Spanish reading at the same time, so I see a LOT of book of Mormon in the coming weeks haha. I'm super excited though, because I LOVE the Book of Mormon. Whether you love it or not yet, I hope you recognize that the Book of Mormon isn't just like any other book. President Nelson was right when he said that it was power. The power that comes into your life as you read and study it daily is real, so go read it! (it can't hurt right?) 

Les amo muchísimo, 

Élder Page

Fotos!