This Weeks Theme: Truck Drama-- 7 14 2014

Sent: Monday, July 14

   Hello everyone!!

I'm glad you so enjoyed your uneventful week! Haha I bet Dad really appreciated all the help at work you gave him. That tree-less  tree house sounds like a great idea! That would be such a fun project! I'm sorry to hear about Brother Greathouse. He did have a great, long life. I'm glad that Sister Greathouse is doing well. And I'm sorry to hear about President Zant as well. That's terrible. He has such an amazing testimony and outlook on life and the Gospel. I love the message he sent through his letter. I will continue to keep him in my prayers. Miracles can always happen.

Well this week was a pretty good week for us. Monday night we blitzed our area with the other set in our ward and were able to pick up a new investigator named R who was a refferral from some other missionaries. He can only meet on Monday's and Tuesday's due to working the rest of the week in Fantana. But after our lesson with him tonight we should know how muc potential he has and how serious he is about learning. I'm excited! Tuesday was another District Meeting and it started our vehicle drama for the week. So if you remember, the truck we have now, we just traded for the other week with some other missionaries. Which I understand now means, we have to deal with all of the problems with it now. There's only about 10,000 miles left on it before the church will sell it. (Usually mission vehicles are sold at about 50,000 miles) So Tuesday wasn't necessarily for us but it set the tone for the week I guess. We took the other guys to the Auto Shop to get their tire fixed. Wednesday morning as we were driving around out in the boonies trying to find a name from the ward list, we got a pretty bad flat tire. So we drove to the nearest parking lot and started to fix it when we realized that our newly given truck does not have a jack therefore we couldn't put the spare on. So we got a ride from Carbonneau and went home for lunch while we asked around the members for a jack to borrow. Once we found one we were able to switch the flat for the spare and by this time it was already 4 and there wasn't any point in driving all the way to Menifee to the Auto Shop again so we decided to wait until Friday. We saw the K's that day as well. They are doing alright. We weren't able to have a real sit down lesson with them though so no word yet on B's progress. Wednesday night was pretty cool. For the first time, our Bishop gathered together the Bishopric and other priesthood leaders and we all went out on splits to see families. Total during that hour we were out we were all able to see about 9 families. From that, we talked to two different part member families that invited us back for the missionary lessons! The J's and W's. So there will be more updates on them soon to come.

So Thursday was weekly planning and Friday we drove to the Auto Shop and had them put on 3 new tires. As we drove home, our check engine light and low tire light both came on again. So we waited until Saturday morning to go back. I don't know if I ever told you about Friday's here in this zone, but we have what is called Free Food Friday. A member in the stake goes to a bunch of stores at the end of the day and they give him all the food and such that otherwise they would just throw away and on Friday morning every week he has all the missionaries come over and take what we would like and need for the week! It's great! It definitely saves us money for other food. So Friday morning was the perfect time for us to go back to the shop. Sadly we found out that that was going to be the last Free Food Friday due to some issues the stores had had with other people doing the same thing but selling the food they got which I guess is illegal. Bummer, but anyways back to the truck story. So Saturday morning we went to the Auto Shop after doing some service moving a less active family from another ward, and asked them to check out everything that was wrong with it. After a little wait Paul (we're pracitcally on a first name basis with the guys there now since we see them so often now ;) haha) told us that he had some new for us. First, somehow we had a huge piece of metal sticking out of the inside side of one of the tires so they have to order another new tire for us and second their is something wrong with our air pump which is why our check engine light was going off. So tomorrow we are going back, hopefully for the last time, to get our new tire and the rest of the problems completely fixed. 

Just a long week of car problems. It was fun though. Thankfully when we weren't getting our truck fixed, we were able to have a lot of success finding and teaching. We taught a lot more lessons this week! Another highlight of the week was Saturday afternoon we were out trying to contact some referrals we had and we went to find a man named J. We had gone by his home multiple times but weren't ever able to get in due to the big gate out front. Luckily this time he was outside and we were able to talk with him. Come to find out he had talked to missionaries in Lake Elsinore 6 months ago (when I was there) and hadn't heard from them since. He was waiting for us. He is out of a job, has no car, and is trying to finish up school to be an electrician to get a job to take care of his 8 year old daughter. He is also divorced and lives with a brother and his parents. Sunday morning we set an appointment with him and taught him the first lesson, The Restoration! It went great and we had M, one of the guys in the ward who is leaving for his mission in a month. We put J on date for July 27th and he committed to do everything we asked him to do including pray, read, and go to church....Well church began and J wasn't there. I got a ride with one of the members to try and pick J up but he wasn't home either. I was pretty disappointed, but hopefully this week we can visit with him and get him to church this next week. I ended up having to teach gospel principles again and got a surprise invite to help teach elders quorum as well. I was not prepared at all. haha It went well though and somehow I got through with it and the class did too. ;) 

Well that was my week! It was good and I'm looking forward for this week's potential and surprises. This morning we played about an hour and a half of soccer with the rest of the elders in the zone which gave me a huge workout. I was super tired, but we had a blast. We're probably going to be doing that every PDay from now on. Other than that, today we have done some shopping and relaxed. It's going to be a good day! 

I hope your week goes great and you are able to catch up on work! I can't wait to hear from you again! Until next week..

Love,

Elder Bushman