Jacob - July 3, 2017

Hey everyone, so this week was littered with miracles. Elder cooper
and I did so much work that I'm still trying to wrap my head around
all that we were able to do. It was pretty tough in the aspect that we
didn't have AreaBook or a members list. Our goals leading into the
week were to try and have a meeting with the bishop, get to know the
members of our area, and also follow up with current investigators.
But due to our situation with a lack of resources, we weren't able to
really accomplish those goals. We also didn't have a phone for a few
days and Bishop is out of town. But despite that aspect of the work,
we met so many people and fortunately we had some members that signed
up for dinner for us, so we got to know them pretty well. There are
some great people here in Buena Park. Something else I've noticed is
that the people here are overall more friendly, people here just seem
to be open to talk. So we've been enjoying that. I will say though
that one struggle we have is that we live 20 minutes outside of our
area, so that kills us time wise, we usually come home every night at
9:30 just because we are so busy and talk with so many people that
time just seems to fly.

Also the reason for the title, I think it's something I've sort of
neglected to mention, but our mission President, president Taggart
ended his mission this past week. And so our new President and his
wife are the Golden's. They are super kind and we are excited for him.
He is a super smart man. He was quoting scriptures left and right when
he presented himself at a meeting a few days ago. Him and his wife
spoke mostly about faith, obedience, and obtaining a testimony of the
atonement of Jesus Christ. I look forward to working with them, they
are great people.

A few miracles about the week:

1.) We had a service opportunity this Tuesday where we went to this
second hand clothing store that sells "professional" styled clothing.
We just did a bunch of miscellaneous stuff there, cleaning and
sorting, but I noticed that they had a pair of really nice, almost
new, shoes that were size 15. I then remembered my companion, elder
Bean (the super tall companion I had a few months ago) anyways his
shoe size is 15 and he says it's super hard for him to find shoes, so
I bought them for him. They were only $8, closer to $6 with the
discount. But later that day when we were walking to dinner with our
member, I saw a wad of cash on the ground that turned out to be $16
dollars so that was pretty cool. Case in point we are blessed when we
have charity, in some cases it turns out to be physical blessings.

2.) This week we met a girl from El Salvador, she's been in the states
for about 2 years. But she was super excited to see us and recognized
us right away when we knocked. Turns out she had a friend back in her
home country that invited her to church and to the activities and they
were really good friends. We had a really good conversation with her
and set a return appointment. When we came back, we introduced some
members that live in her same complex and offered her a ride to
church. She said yes and sure enough she came yesterday and now had
plans on coming back. We are super excited for her and she mentioned
how her mom wants to come too, but got caught working. We are going to
keep working with her and hopefully everything will go well. It was
pretty cool to see fruits from the efforts we had given, especially to
have an investigator at church after only 1 week and also white
washing.

I'm trying to remember other stuff to write, but I think this is it
for now. I love you all and hope you have a great 4th of July! Take
care!

Elder Baer