Week 79

Brothers and Sisters,

I wanted to report to you that the earthquake that hit in the Napa area was of 6.1 magnitude.  It affected the Napa and Vallejo zones the most.  We are ready to help the community rebuild.

All our missionaries are safe - a few broken plates and glassware but we are all doing great.

Thank you so much for your sons and daughters, father and mother and grandparents and yes, even great-grandparents.  We are so fortunate to have such wonderful and incredible missionaries who consecrate their lives to the Savior.  We appreciate all your prayers in our behalf.

With love and appreciation,

President Alba

 

To answer the question, the earthquake did not affect us up here in
Crescent City. The earthquake happened just north (like 2 miles) of
American Canyon, which is like 5-8 miles away from Vallejo. Basically,
from what I've seen, everyone is ok, however the earthquake did affect
the home of Marcos and Norma and the homes of a few of our members
from the Los Santos branch. Keep them in your prayers, those people
are my people. I decided that we're going to sacrament there when we
come back since it's the best branch ever.

On Wednesday I hit my 18 month mark. Also, the craziest thing- all the
sisters that I was with in the MTC are now home. They finished their
mission. Which means that I have successfully completed a sister
mission. It's kind of weird to think that.

Well, a new week, a new transfer, and a new area. And basically, and
new proselyting language. This week has probably been the longest week
of my whole mission. I don't think I can articulate sufficiently how
I'm feeling now or just about everything that has happened in the last
week. I feel like it's been about three weeks since I've written you
guys. So this email might be long and dragging on, but read it anyway
because I'm your son and you have to.

Basically to make this short, I said my goodbyes to Marcos and Norma
and to Sauri and Jackie and to the G family (they took us to ice
cream!) and the A. Vallejo has a huuuuuuuge part of my heart. I
may have shed a tear or two leaving. It's gone now, but I'll be back.

So Tuesday was transfers. We went to transfers in Santa Rosa. It was
super cool seeing all my friends. Hermana Fernandez, the one from
Spain comes up to me, and she's all "Elder foster, I am ticked! I am
so ticked! This is poop!" She was pretty mad I wasn't going to Santa
Rosa with her. I also got to see Elder Teran, which was way nice, too.
Since the Eureka zone is so far north the mission vehicles don't drive
down here, it is a member in his truck with a trailer where we pack
all the stuff. It took us from 3 to 9 pm to get from Santa Rosa to Eureka.
So first off, this was one of the prettiest drives ever. It was like
being on the planet Endor. I mean, pure green everywhere. Giant
mountains painted green with pine trees. Toooooons of redwoods. Like
honestly, the biggest trees I've ever seen in my life. It is just
truly majestic. Well we got to Eureka, and Elder Hastings and I were
the only elders getting transferred to Crescent City, which is about
70 miles North of Eureka. When we got to Eureka, the Zone Lords gave
us the option to stay the night or drive up. We chose to drive up. So
it's pitch black outside, we drive the curviest highway up to Crescent
City. We knew we were driving right along the ocean, like literally
cliffs on the ocean edge, but we couldn't see the ocean because the
fog was so thick and it was so dark. So eventually we make it the
Crescent City at 10:20 and we get to the apartment and we got out
of the car and the first thing we notice is BAM! The smell of the
ocean hit us. And the. We heard the seals barking arf arf arf and
every 9 seconds there is like a foghorn that goes off, 24/7. I got to
the apartment, got down to my gym shorts, and just went to bed.

Background to this next part so that it all makes sense. I'll get onto
the week later. Elder Yepez is from LA, but born in Mexico. He has
been out 13 months. We live in a 2 man pad and we are the only elders
from 2nd ward. The other 4 elders live in the same apartment complex.
One companionship covers Klamath, the other Crescent City. We cover
Crescent City, but mainly outside of the actual city and more in the
offshoot neighborhoods, trailer parks, and all the way up to Oregon.
I've seen the Oregon border! And we should be going to the temple in
Medford. So Crescent City is pretty weird to explain. It's a town of
about 8,000 people, but that is including the prisoners at Pelican
Bay, which is the Maximum Security Prison here in California. Like the
baddest of the bad go here. Most of the people who live here work in
the prison as well. Since the town is so small, everyone here at least
knows one member of the church. At least. In fact, I haven't contacted
a single English person who hasn't met a member, but we haven
contacted that much anyway this week (we've been busy win teaching!).
There is also an older generation who all love to fish and I can
really relate to them too. It's been cool here. Dad would love it. If
I were to describe it nature wise? It'd be like the drive from our
cabin to West Yellowstone, but on the freeway imagine offshoots to
people's homes and bigger trees, and oh yeah it's ON THE PACIFIC
OCEAN. Yeah, it's beautiful up here. Except for it's foggy as heck.
And remember when I compared it to Endor? Well, Star Wars was filmed
up here. As was Jurassic Park and quite a few other movies. I'm just
waiting to see the ewoks. We also cover all the way up to Smith River,
which is a SMALL town on the way to Oregon, and it's where all the
Hispanics live. We also cover Hiuchi, which is in the forest. There is
a cool mix of people here, too, and everyone loves nature which is
really nice. Also, we don't see any other missionaries from the zone
unless it's zone conference. So basically we are the Crescent City
zone. Also, it's been between 61-68 degrees the whole time I've been
here. Perfect weather, and supposedly it sits between 50-60 all winter
long too. I'm loving it. 

Ok so basically, this week I have felt like a 17 year old girl. It's
been a roller coaster of emotions. I mean, it's been the most stress
filled, anxiety inducing, drama filled, miracle seeing, funniest,
longest, and most tiring week of my whole mission. I mean, I'm still
stressed to the max but it's good, you know? Sigh. I don't even know
where to start. When I say I feel like I have 3 weeks worth of
information to cover, I don't even feel like I've scratched the
surface and look how long this is already. Being in an English ward is
weird. Being the only companionship in a English ward where we
actually work closely with a ward mission leader that actually cares
about us is stressful. Teaching in English is the most stressful,
sometimes I feel like a fool. But I'm getting the hang of it, mostly.
I've already learned so much about church organization. I asked to not
be in a branch with 8 missionaries, and I got my wish. It's stressful,
but it's pushing me really hard at the same time.

We started off on Wednesday at a lesson with Sophie L. She is 18,
she went to girl's camp. We set a baptismal date with her for the 19th
of September. She wants to get baptized in a river and she hasn't told
her parents and that (the river and the parents) has become a huge
source of drama for pretty much everyone because everyone is talking
about it with us and stressing us out and everyone just wants what's
best for her. The important thing is that she is getting baptized.
This Sunday we are going to be fasting for her parents if you
would like to add that to your fast!

While our ward mission leader was driving with us on Saturday he
almost hit an elk because it came out of nowhere and luckily Elder
Yepez saw it. We almost died, but an Angel stopped that car I swear.

I'm starting to think that I really can't share everything that has
happened in this email. So we'll talk about 2 more stories. The first
is there is this part member family. I guess the mom, who is the only
member, and her 12 year old daughter named Grace went to church a few
months ago, Grace got roped into Girls Camp, and then they kind of
went under the radar. Well this member named Sister Olson told us to
go visit them, and so we called up the mom, we set up an appointment,
and so this Friday we went over with Sister Olson to teach the
Restoration. The have 3 kids, a 17 year old named Mckenzie, a 15 year
old named Spencer, and Grace. The father is Darryl. We taught them all
but Mckenzie. We taught the Restoration. Grace is a lot more open to
the Spirit, but Darryl and Spencer understand logic a little better.
Elder Yepez is better at the Spiritual part, I'm better at the logical
teaching part, so it worked out really well. At the end of the lesson
we asked them if they would get baptized, they all said yes, so we
asked them if they knew it was true by October 18th (we decided on
that date after praying before heading out to the lesson, which is in
the forest), and Darryl and spencer said yes, and then Lindsay started
crying and she said "why October?" And she looked tiiiiiiiicked. And
she said "what is it that you know about October?" And we were kind of
shocked. I honestly thought we were about to get kicked out of the
house. She then gets herself together and said that in October,
Grace's cousin turns 16 and they have plans to come out here and
baptize her. So boom, Miracles! So please pray for the B family.
They're way cool and they're going to get baptized!

When I got here, they had 3 baptismal dates, and we now have 9, and
they are 9 SOLID dates. I'm thankful for all the missionaries that
planted seeds here, and I know it's all from God. He's ready for this
area to explode. 

So last part. Smith River. It's this beautiful place on Highway 101 as
you head towards Oregon. There are lily fields, mountains with pine
trees, and the ocean as far as you can see. Honestly, just beautiful.
And it's where all the Hispanic people live. Throughout the week we go
there to teach people, but every day from after lunch until dinner
we go out there to do finding. Now normally, finding in a place like
this would be hard because it's soooooo spread out, however every
Sunday all of the Hispanics from all over meet together at a place
called La Joya Market for......... 

Fuuuuuuuutbooooooooooool!

There is a soccer league here, and so we're talking like 100-150
Hispanics every single week at this place, and they loooooooove us.
Brother Tinsley, our ward mission leader, told the other Elders to
start going over, so they've been going every Sunday for about 8
weeks. Like they absolutely love us. We go and just go from group of
people to people joking around with them and it's the best. You have
to remember, for these people it is the first time in their lives that
they have talked to missionaries in their native language. Right now,
we are trying to leave a good impression on these people of the
church. They might not be the most open to the message, but yesterday
we handed out a lot of copies of the Book of Mormon! They had lots of
doctrinal questions. My favorite line from yesterday was this guy kept
calling his friend over while he was talking to us, and so he finally
got tired, and yelled at his friend "estamos hablando de Dios, wey!" I
died laughing. Afterwards, they had a huge carne asada, so we went to
eat with them. While we were eating, this guy had these super cool
sandals, and so I told him "me gustan tus chanclas!" And he asked me
what size I was, he went into his house  and he grabbed me a pair that
didn't fit him that he had only worn once. So now I've got a pair of
chanclas haha. And that is how I spent my day!

Sorry this is so long. There was even more I wanted to email, but it's
not really important. It's cool here, I love it. It's stressful too,
but I'll get over it. I love you guys!