A New Beginning Aug 18

So I have been neglectful in sending Kendell's letters out.  I will do better. 

Please note that this one has a challenge in it, and I hope that we all still accept his challenge even if it was made a couple of weeks ago.  We are working on it and I hope we all can report to him our success as we try it!

Love you all!

April

 Sent: Monday, August 18, 2014 5:24 PM
Subject: A New Beginning

Hey everyone!!!

Well this week brought a whole lot of changes and what not and it was hectic as all get out. But hey that's normal on a mission right? You'd think I'd be used to it by now. Now that I've hit my 13th month mark especially! Can you believe I've been gone for a whole 13 months now?!?!?! It really hit me yesterday when Elder Felix (him and his greenie split the ward with us and he came out with me) reminded me that it was the day. Time has gone by so fast and I don't know where it has gone. I think I am starting to really understand the reason why every adult tells their kids not to grow anymore. Time is just too fast. 

 Well to start off my week I spent PDay with Elder Felix cuz we didn't pick up our trainees until Tuesday. Boy I have never had such a crazy, hectic, chaotic PDay in my life! It was full of all of us trying to get rides to take us to our new areas and trying to find elders that were staying to be our companions for the day until our real ones got here. I'll tell you what happens when you put a bunch of 19 year old guys in charge of getting each other place to place....chaos. Haha Oh well. We finally got it all sorted out and were able to have dinner around 9:30 that night with Mama Munton. Tuesday was a little less stressful but it still had it's tense points. Tuesday morning I picked up my suit pants from one of the members who was re hemming them. At about 1 Elder Felix and I left for Riverside to meet for the Trainer/trainee Meeting where we were trained on how to be good trainers and met our new companions who were all looking exhausted,excited, and scared. I loved getting to see all of my good friends and fellow missionaries at the meeting as well! It definitely brought back memories and reminded me of when I came into the mission. So I'm sure you are all wondering who my new companion is. Like I said last week I am staying in the Perris ward as a district leader and will probably stay the same for the next three months as I train my new comp, Elder Hoyt. Elder Hoyt is from Smithfield, Utah which is close to Logan and he is 18 and just graduated high school. He is an awesome guy and we already are getting along pretty well. He has no fear of talking to people already which is amazing and so I know that I don't have to worry about him on that point. I just hope that I can be the trainer that he needs to become successful in his mission. I'm stoked to work with him and help him on his way as he helps me on mine. We have a lot of work to get done. Wednesday was District Meeting. The zone got together first and we did some introductions which thankfully took up some of the time so I wouldn't have to talk too much during my meeting. It's really weird being a "Relief Society" District Leader. It's gonna have to take some time getting used to. It will be good for me though. That night we had dinner with M and C which went very well actually. We didn't really even get into a deep gospel conversation until Bishop showed up and invited them to come to church and they said YES! It was awesome! I was totally surprised. Was I surprised when they didn't show up for church yesterday? Not really. But at the time when they said yes it was awesome. We are going to continue to visit them because there is so much potential with them. M is so ready to be baptized. We've just gotta get through to C first. I introduced Elder Hoyt to B and her family that night as well. I really don't know what we can do for them to help her get baptized. She just doesn't have a desire to do it really right now. We'll see. Hopefully something clicks with her soon. 

 Thursday President Mullen had all of the District Leaders come to Riverside for a training on how to be good DLs. It took most of the day. But again it was awesome to get to see a lot of my buddies there at the meeting. After the meeting a lot of us went to lunch and then we headed back home. Once I got home I took Elder Hoyt to visit A and E so we could see how they were doing since their baptism last Sunday. They are absolutely awesome and I don't have to worry about them at all. Friday we had weekly planning session which was probably the best weekly planning I've had since I was in Elsinore with Carbonneau. It was super long though and so we weren't able to get out of the house until later than we planned. We found out on Saturday that we are starting to run out of things to do and ways to find people out here now. We are just about done with going through the entire ward lists part member families and as soon as we finish with that and all of our past referrals and potentials, we aren't going to have anything to do but tract. I really really don't want it to have to come to that so we are going to really work with our ward members to start inviting friends to hear the missionary lessons. It's really really tough without the ward on our side. Our ward is great don't get me wrong. We just need a lot more help right now. 

So I ask you back home to make sure you are doing your part to invite everyone you know to hear the message of the gospel from the missionaries. It doesn't even matter if you know them. Just invite them. The worst they can say is no. And you can still be their friend. And if they say yes then just think about how much better friends you'll be when they come to know it was because of you that they now have salvation and eternal happiness! Because right now none of them have that. Everyone needs the Gospel of Jesus Christ in their life and we all know someone and probably multiple someones that don't have that in their life right now. I encourage and invite everyone that reads this to invite someone they know this week to hear from the missionaries. I promise that you, your friend, and the missionaries that teach and create a relationship with them and you will be eternally grateful you did. Try it out. And the key is to not stop trying it out. Even if you get a hundred no's or even a hundred yes's. There is still someone else out there that you just walked by or talked to that is secretly waiting for you to just ask them to learn more. The missionaries need your help. Your friends need your help. God needs your help. None of us can do it without you.

 

So I'm off of my little spill and back to my week. Sunday was a good day. A and E were confirmed which went well other than the fact that the guy confirming A thought she was the daughter and in the blessing started telling her to remember to "go to seminary when she comes of age and take a worthy young man to the temple one day". But it's whatever. Thankfully A was "covered" by the Spirit (her words) and didn't really catch his mistake. They are amazing and I really hope that when they get sealed in the temple a year from now, I can come back for that. After church we went straight over to C's house. Remember C? Well we ended up having a really long but good conversation with him and he accepted our invitation to listen to the lessons with his family and we will begin teaching them at the P's home as soon as C chooses the next day that he has time. School just started so it will probably be next weekend so I'll update you on him and his family as soon as we teach them. I'm pretty excited and we were able to already find out some of his concerns I didn't know of before and his interest seemed sincere. he told us he has been slacking on reading, praying, and going to church and he wants that for his family so what better place to go to and start than our church. The true church of Christ. After we saw C we stopped in on Brother L to see how he was doing and if he had any news on I cuz we were starting to get worried she wasn't too interested anymore since we hadn't really heard from either of them for the past two weeks. I'm really glad we stopped in. Brother L told us that I is actually super interested, even more so now than when we taught her the first lesson, and hasn't been able to come to church or meet with us due to work, but (wait for it) her supervisor is LDS and today she should be meeting with him to ask for the weekends off! I'm stoked to find out what happens! Please keep her in your prayers. She does have work off this Sunday already so she will be at church again and we will be meeting with her for our next lesson then! I'm super excited not just to teach her but I'm excited for Brother L too. He is so happy. It's awesome! We finished the night off with the Ps for dinner and a good nights sleep. So overall it was a pretty good week. I'm excited for this week as it will be Elder Hoyt's first normal week in the mission and I'm looking forward to see more of his greenie fire! 

 

Today has been good so far. This morning we met with our half of the mission to do President Mullens challenge of a crossfit workout. It was super intense and I realized just truly how out of shape I am. I'm thinking about using that workout to model my  own in the mornings from now on. Afterwards I had a nice breath of fresh air when we got to play basketball! It's been so long since I've balled this long and this hard with other good players. We've been playing soccer too much lately. I've missed playing basketball and I hope we can start it back up again. 

 

Well that's about all I can think of right now. I hope you all have a great week and enjoy (is it really) your last week of summer. I can't wait to hear from you all soon. Stay safe and invite someone this week. I love you all!

 

Love from Perris, California,

Elder Blaine Kendell Bushman