Un misionero relleno

Day: lunecito 

Pushup Count: 289

Buenos días mi gente, como les va? I'll be honest I forgot to journal most of this week so I don't remember much, but I'm gonna do my best!

- We played volleyball as a zone last Monday and it was super fuego 

- We taught one of our recent converts and then they gave us a bunch of food, including some soooper good birria

- We taught a lesson at 8:30 pm... That was tough 

- We stacked a bunch of breads at service 

- I went on exchanges with Elder Paxman and we spent a lot of time in my old area of Buena Vista... It was a little weird  But we saw some members that I love and taught a couple good lessons

- Elder Paxman and I ran a 5:46 mile... The Bakersfield air quality almost killed me

- We taught a lesson at 4 pm directly in the sun... By the way it's getting hot again. The weather here is kinda the worst 

- We had a lesson with our recent convert Alfredo and his new roommate was super interested! We gave him a Book of Mormon and he's been reading it nonstop since

- Our ward had a latino celebration with lots of food and people singing. There was also a live band and a couple of our friends showed up! We ate soooo much and we had leave before it ended cause it went so late

- I spoke in church about prophets and it went really well :)

- Last night someone gave us free horchata and we almost stole a chihuahua 

Not a whole ton of crazy stuff that I can remember, but let me know if anything crazy hapened to you! 

Spiritual Thought

We have general conference next week  I invite you all to go watch it and listen to the words of our prophet and apostles. It's gonna be awesome

Mucho amor, 

Elder Page 

Fotos

the mile 

dead something

bread

bread

a lil note Elder Archibald wrote

Un misionero con un mango

Day: 27584

Pushup Count: 295

First things first, have y'all seen the inside of a mango?!? That thing is crazy  Anyways it was a good week, I'm feeling better and this transfer is kinda flying by. Here's what went down:

- Went to the driving range sick, still hit a couple balls but I'm super bad at it 

- Our recent convert pulled out a verse in the Bible about how women should stay silent in the church... That was fun to navigate 

- We had interviews with President, probably my quickest one yet

- After one of our lessons we had a lady call out to us and ask us to help her move the next day. We showed up the next morning and the other Elders were there too  we carried a bunch of stuff from the second floor to the first floor of her apartment complex

- I had an exchange with the legendary Elder Durkin where we found two people and I tried kit kat cereal (don't recommend)

- My comp started a fire when I was on exchanges... We're all good tho 

- We had service in Lancaster and I got another Gatorade water. Literally just normal water but I'm convinced it's thicker 

- We helped a recent convert set up a church/family search account and it took an HOUR. It's a good thing I love him cause that was a grind 

- I went on exchanges with Elder Bachous. Since he's a greenie and I left my tiwi card in Bakersfield, we were on foot. I felt like we were as productive as we could've been but I was grateful to have the car back the next day

- We taught one of our eternigators (someone who's been taught for years but won't get baptized) and she literally taught US the whole restoration before we started. But she came to church so we made some progress

- We were out knocking doors and some dude came outside as we walked up. He started talking at us about who knows what. (At one point he quoted like half a chapter in Matthew, actually pretty impressive.) I've had this happen quite a few times on my mission and I'm always fighting to leave so this time I just decided to stay quiet until he tired himself out. Bad idea. My comp and I both went thirty minutes (lowkey kinda zone out ) without saying a word until finally he took a breath and I said goodbye.

- We saw some cats in a mop bucket 

- Hermana Montalban made us shrimp pasta and we promised her the gift of tongues... It was awesome 

So yeah. It was a good week. Let me know how y'all are doing!

Spiritual Thought

My scripture of the week is Mark 9:23-24. I'm too lazy to copy and paste it so just go read the story (it's in the photos too). It's really cool. The point is that we don't have to have perfect faith, we just have to believe in Christ and he'll make up the difference. If we have faith in Him, He'll perform miracles in our lives.

Los amo tantísimo :)

Élder Page

My new scripture wallpaper

The inside of a mango

We had candlelit popcorn during calls with our district leader

Cats in a bucket

Un misionero enfermo

Day: a super cold one 

Pushup Count: 301

Hey y'all how's it going? Sooo I've been feeling a little sick since last night, but I've made it this far without missing a week so I figured I had to send something. It's been a good week (except for last night ) but I'll send a update next Monday. Love you all! 

Un misionero con REAL pavos

Day: another brisk autumn day (it's 103)

Pushup Count: 307

Buenos días mi gente! Today starts my second full week in Palmdale and things are going great. We had a super busy week with lots of craziness, so I'm just gonna jump right into it:

- On pday we played volleyball and had a blast

- We did service at Saves and they gave us a bunch of food 

- We had zone conference in Santa Clarita so we got to drive down there with Elder Kemp and Elder Kerner. We told stories and laughed a lot, and Elder Kerner gave me sour gummy worms... My kryptonite 

- Two days later we had to drive back to Santa Clarita to do a baptismal interview. It went super well, the guy Marcos is super cool and super ready. Afterwards we got free food a yum yums and I saw my fried Elder Bolivar outside 

- We saw peacocks just chillin in a neighborhood 

- We have this super sweet old lady in our ward that believes really strongly in traditional medicine with like plants and stuff, which is super cool. She gave Elder Archibald some type of leaf to boil into a tea and she kept insisting that it would cure him. Unfortunately she doesn't seem to grasp the fact the he has type 1 diabetes and you can't exactly cure that  but we decided to make the leaf tea anyways cause who knows, maybe you she was right . We boiled the leaves and invited the other Elders over to try it. It ended up being super gross and made all three of them sick... I was fine for some reason tho  and in case you were wondering, Elder Archi does still have diabetes

- We did service at salvation army with a couple Elders from Lancaster and we had a blast making boxes of ridiculous amounts of cookies and pies. And a little bit of surfing on the cardboard cart... 

- I ate like 6 donuts in the last week 

- We had a lesson with our friend Eddie and we were able to teach a whole two points  he's kinda lonely so he talks a lot... But his dog is adorable!

- We got Starbucks... Super overrated btw  who's knows maybe it's better if you don't take out the coffee

- One of our members bought us pizza for dinner so we went and picked that up and then ate way too much

- We told each other the plots of our favorite movies in Spanish for language practice

- We put a cockroach in the freezer to see if it would wake up the next morning like captain america... It did not

- We found two new friends who are super cool. We had the lesson outside in the sketchier part of our area and we talked about how amazing prayer is! They told us that they want to read the Book of Mormon, pray, and come to church. Super awesome because we were about to go all week without finding and we talked to them at 8 on Sunday night :)

That's all for today. Love you all!

Spiritual Thought:

Just a quick quote from Elder Uchtdorf:

"My dear friends and brethren, no matter how many times you have slipped or fallen, rise up! Your destiny is a glorious one! Stand tall and walk in the light of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ! You are stronger than you realize. You are more capable than you can imagine. You can do it now!"

Mucho amor, 

Élder Page

Un misionero en Palmdale

Day: first pday in Palmdale

Pushup Count: 313

Buenos días mis amigos, como están? This week was absolutely crazy. We had transfers, so that meant lots of goodbyes, lots of driving, and lots of trying to learn the ropes in a new area. But I'm doing good, I'm excited and ready to start working hard in the desert again. But before all that:

- We went to a ramen place on pday and Elder Hanson got sushi for me to try... Super overrated btw 

- That night I went to say goodbye to one of my favorite families and they had made me ceviche :) we ate it on tostadas with hot sauce in true Mexican fashion. Then I shared my favorite scripture with them and they gave me a huge bag of candy (including some suckers that look like a raw chicken )

- Hermana Martinez told me that I have 3 years to come back to Shafter with my wife and a kid... Not sure how she thinks that'll happen but ok 

- On my last day in Shafter we taught our friend Star and she accepted a baptismal date! I'm so excited for her and I hope everything goes well

- I had one final meeting with Bishop Orozco and he gave me a bag of chocolates... I have no idea what I'm gonna do with all this candy

- I always promised myself that I would get donuts on my last morning in Shafter so we picked some up on the way to transfers... Then I made the silly mistake of eating two of them on the drive and I had an upset stomach through the whole meeting... Oops 

- We picked up Elder Hanson's greenie! Hopefully he likes Shafter as much as I do

- I met my new companion, Elder Archibald. He's a football player from Idaho and we get along great

- My first day in Palmdale we had a zone meeting with the stake president. He's super cool but the meeting took foreverrrr 

- I met some of the awesome people here in Palmdale. A lot of them are from El Salvador so I'm gonna have to brush up on my salvadoreño 

- We live in the same complex as our district leader, my dear friend Elder Kemp, so they came over one night and we ate more donuts

- On the way back from transfers a tiny little rock hit our windshield and left a little chip. Unfortunately that little chip quickly turned into an 18 inch crack so we had to go get the whole windshield replaced... It took almost three hours, so we eventually ran out of stuff to do and just watched TV in the waiting room 

- We've been called upon to give two blessings already this week. Always an awesome opportunity.

- We taught this dude named Eddie who kept bringing up politics and conspiracy theories so that was a tough lesson to navigate. His dog's really cute tho 

- I cleaned out my new closet and now have two stuffed trash bags of old clothes and garbage to take care of. And that's just the beginning of all the cleaning I have to do... Ah missionary apartments 

Anyways I'm doing good. Super tired because transfers completely wipe you, but I'm excited and I'm already kind of getting the hang of things. I'm still not sure how I feel about getting sent back to the desert though  the forecast for the next week has highs of 106. I love the cool fall weather here... Let me know how y'all are doing, I hope you have a good week!

Spiritual Thought:

A quick quote from Elder Bednar from the April 2014 general conference. He asks us to ponder, "Is the load I am carrying producing the spiritual traction that will enable me to press forward with faith in Christ on the strait and narrow path and avoid getting stuck? Is the load I am carrying creating sufficient spiritual traction so I ultimately can return home to Heavenly Father?" Think about that. We all need hard things to move forward, so make sure you're pushing yourselves, but if it's too much or too little, do what you have to do to get traction again. 

Mucho amor, 

Élder Page

Fotos!