Week 97

Hey family! So this has been a wild and crazy week. I don't really know where to start, so I guess we'll get the big story out of the way.

It was early Saturday morning, around 1:33AM when I wake up to THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD "OPEN THE DOOR!" There were a few more seconds of silence, I thought I might have been dreaming until I heard THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD "WE CAN SEE YOU THROUGH THE BACK WINDOW, WE KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE, OPEN UP OR WE ARE BREAKING THE DOOR DOWN!" So at this point I'm thinking "feeeeeeetch" because there were two things that were sure- there was more than one person outside and we were going to have to put up a fight Clint Eastwood style. and I wake up Elder Rasch and I tell him "there are people outside trying to get in!" So then we wake everybody up, Elder Rasch grabs his lacrosse stick, I grab my knife, and Elder Whitaker grabs a dumbbell with no weight on it while we put Elder B and Elder K in the bathroom because, let's face it, they can't fight. So we are crouched down, I grab the phone and dial 911. I tell them the situation and the address, and their response is "you should probably open the door, it's the clearlake police." So then we were like what the heck? And so it was actually cops and they had a K-9 unit and they were trying to get into the upstairs apartment but since they were knocking on the door with a baton it sounded like they were knocking on our door. Anyway, we didn't have to crack any skulls, but I think I've played enough Legend of Zelda and Morrowind to know how to knife fight. Anyway, I couldn't sleep because of the adrenaline pumping. 

We also picked up a new investigator and then dropped him a few days later. Basically what it came down to for him was that "There is only one Cheese! There is lots of churches, but there is only one cheese!" He was trying to say Jesus, but he was just too Mexican. 

So there was another cool story! On New Years Eve we were out proselyting and we had so,e formers named Yessica and Paulina with absolutely no information  about them, so it was the last house we decided to try for the day. We knocked on the door and this old Hispanic lady answered and so we asked for the names and she was like "niñas, les hablan" and so this teenage Hispanic girl comes to the door and so then we had to have that whole awkward "oh well we promise we weren't trying to find the teenage girls to enter into polygamous relationships, but anyway we are servants of Jesus Christ..." So they let us in to say a prayer with the family, we left a house blessing and the adults told us they were Jehovah's Witnesses and they weren't interested, and we had to head to dinner but then one of the daughters, the older teenage one, said "wait, I'm actually interested." And so basically it turns out that she hates her parent's religion and knows a few Mormons from her school, and it was super duper cool and we are going back Tuesday to teach her!! Pray for Yessica and Paulina!

Well that was the week. Love you guys!

Nick

Week 96

There is a Flight of the Conchords song with the line "No I am not a large water dwelling mammal where did you get that preposterous hypothesis did Steve tell you that perchance? Grrr.... Steve...." Well there is a member here named Steve. He is a little... Fried. And he believes  EVERYTHING on Scifi and History Channel about aliens. And so at dinner last Monday he started to show us this show called Ancient Aliens. Of course we told him "Steve! We can't watch TV!" But he wouldn't let us not watch it, he was all "Just wait! I have a question!" And so he fast forwards to this part of the show and the first words we hear are "our next encounter takes us to Palmyra, New York..." And it was then that I knew that we were in for a wild ride. Well they went on to talk about how Moroni was actually an alien from the Pletus Star Cluster. So first off, on the show they didn't even like question the fact that Joseph Smith had seen am angel, that was totally the believable part, they just wanted to know where he angel was from. We need to find some investigators like that! Well the point is, now we say "No, Moroni was not an angel from the Pletus Star Cluster,me here did you get that preposterous hypothesis, did Steve tell you that perchance? Grrr.... Steve...."

On that note, this week was really fun! I'll give you guys the details about Christmas. On Christmas Eve we went caroling in Middletown (we = Elder Whitaker, Beeston, Rasch, Kay, and I and Sister Clawson and Burgess) and it was a lot of fun! We ate with the Kings and just relaxed. 

Christmas was awesome, too! Thanks for the scriptures, they are way cool. I used some of Grandpa's gift card to buy a case for them. And you guys know me too well, Fig Newtons, Oreos, fake Samoas and protein bars? It was a good Christmas. Talking to you guys made me excited to go home! We were able to carol in a rest home, and then we helped out with a dinner at a Methodist church. After that we went to the Jessips for dinner and oh my goodness it was so good! Sweet potatoes with pineapples and marshmallows, green bean casserole, deep fried turkey, ham, jello salad, rolls, and then on top of all of that they gave us each a box of homemade and decorated cookies! They are the greatest family of all time. 

We also picked up a new investigator Tony and Elder Beeston taught him on the doorstep! He was flustered, after we taught him he said "I didn't know what to do! No one ever wants to listen to us!"

And the Mendoza family came to church!

Well love you guys! 

Nick

Week 95

So this week has been super crazy. So it started off with driving to
Santa Rosa with Elder Wright, Herrmann, and Ford. It was fun going with the newly called AP Wright. And then I had the super duper best 2 day sleepover of all time with my best friend Elder Spanish Smith! It was the best being in Santa Rosa. It's the promised land. On Wednesday we had a sweet time at the Christmas party. I got to see all of my best friends, Hermana Fernandeth, Elder Sabin, Hastings, Mortenson, Mallory, Contla, Fonseca, Teran, Stuart. It was just way fun, they're
the best ever.

Week 94

The 5 week transfer is finished! Now we are in week 1 of a 7 week transfer, my last transfer in the field. As far as transfers goes, the biggest news is that Elder Wright is going AP! That's right, I raise my boys right! Anyway, I'm super proud of him and he's going to be the studliest AP. Here's a picture of me and him at the temple this last Wednesday

Elder Ford and Elder Herrmann are going home. Elder Rasch and Elder Kay are staying the same. I will be getting two new companions- Elder Whitaker who is the only Spanish Elder from my generation and I will be training. President Alba wants us both to be district leader, but I'm going to ask him if I can just focus on training since I'm the assigned trainer and then Elder Whitaker can be the DL. Being in a trio sucks, but just one more transfer. 

I don't know if you guys have been watching the weather, but it rained really really hard up here and the city of Clearlake flooded. So we filled up a couple hundred sandbags in the pouring rain, filled up people's cars with them, and we took about 30 for us to help out some less actives (Alma Hernandez, one of the Spanish less actives that we helped came to church!). 

Pretty much every street looked like this. Thank goodness for trucks! There was actually a lot of home damage to a lot of people... Pretty much everyone flooded so it was sad but it was cool to see the ward band together. 

On Wednesday we went to the temple. It was really cool, my last temple trip of the mission! Afterwards we went to Applebee's in Napa. The lady that seated us asked where we were all from and it turns out that she is from Orem! We had a different waitress, but while we were waiting for our food the girl from Orem came up and told us she was a member but her husband wasn't and she didn't know where to go in Napa for church and she wanted her husband to listen to the missionaries! So we gave her a card and the address of the church and the Napa 1st Ward elders.

We also made delicious hamburgers, steak, and sausage. Check it out.

Propane. Taste the meat and not the heat.

This week has been good, but because of the flooding and all the rain on a daily basis it has been hard to visit investigators, but this next week should be awesome. Love you!

Elder Foster

Week 93

This week has been a weird week, but I guess in Clearlake weird is normal.

First off, I went on exchanges to Kelseyville with Elder Delgado.
Elder Means lives in the same apartment in Kelseyville. He was a
missionary in the Ukraine but then they shipped them all out from that
mission and now he ended up here. Well he goes home with me, and he
was talking about how he was super nervous about dating and he's going
home to Provo. Well, I told him that he could go on a date with Sammie
and that I would double with him. That now gives Sammie the
responsibility to find a cute Hispanic to go on a date with me for the
double date.

Onto missionary work. Well, as I said, Clearlake is weird. And
dangerous. Well we decided to walk around in a neighborhood the other
day and while we were walking we saw down an alleyway and there were
three Mexicans yelling at each other and one was holding a machete and
waving it around and so we got out of there. That's a normal day out
here.

There is a less active Hispanic family here called the Mendozas. The
grandma is very eccentric but also incredibly vulgar and nuts. Well
she told us to not forget them and when we have kids we have to bring
them to her. Now every instinct of my very being tells me not to ever
being anyone under the age of 17 to that neighborhood, but I promised
her that I would on the condition that she came to church. She
promised.

The Diaz family wrote me a letter and they are super excited for their
sealing! They should be sending you guys and invitation/ Christmas
card in the mail soon!

Last night a member made us bearritos. Basically bear is a staple food
here in the Highlands wars since there is a yearly bear hunting trip.
Well bearritos were good!

You guys should all post he is the gift on your facebook with the
hashtag #heisthegift
Christmas.mormon.org

Week 92

This week has been a good week, there were some scary times, some funny times, and lots of eating. I'm super jealous of all the people that were over for thanksgiving! It sounds like it was a lot of fun! I'll start out with that.

On Thanksgiving we went to Lakeport and we had a turkey bowl with the ward. It was the run of the mill turkey bowl, too many people and not the funnest. After, however, we played Ultimate Frisbee and that was the BEST. Oh man, it was so much fun. We played three games and I ran my heart out. I think I have terrible knees from skanking too much back home. But my team was me, elder Delgado, Elder Herrmann, Elder Walpole, and Sister Burgess. It was super duper fun!! 

After that we went home and showered, and the Kings called us and told us to come over in clothes to play sports in, so we just showed up in normal clothes around 1 and we played more football with them and pictionary and such! So let me explain the Kings. 3 years ago Brother King was a huuuuuge marijuana dealer in the Midwest. I mean huuuuuuge. He decided that he was going to move to Miranda, Ca to become a drug lord basically. Well Miranda has a population of 600, every single person has special gardens, and it's often called Murder Mountain. About 4 transfers ago the missionaries were taken out after someone broke into their apartment with a shotgun at 11 at night. Just to give a little background. Well one day about 2 years ago a missionary talked to Brother King at a bus stop, the whole family was baptized, and his life completely changed. So about 6 months ago they moved here to Clearlake to start a new life. Since all their family is from the Midwest, they wanted us over for dinner because we are their family! 

So we ate the best turkey ever, stuffed ourselves basically. There was also Mountain Dew, which makes any meal a feast, and it was just delicious. I'm sad to say the Mac and cheese didn't compete with Auntie Michelle's, however their pecan pie was to die for! It was a lot of fun. Their youngest son is nine, and while we were sitting there he said "So do you guys wanna listen to Michael Jackson? Or Tupac?" And it was the funniest thing ever, I laughed so hard. Sister King even said "I'm all jacked up on Mountain Dew!" They are great. And they have the two cutest pit bulls ever! He knows like so much from the scriptures and prophets its asinine. 

This week I also finished the New Testament in Spanish! The book of revelations sucks in Spanish and like every other verse has a JST to it, and if it doesn't there is a footnote to doctrine and covenants so it took me a while to get through it but it was still really cool. President Alba wants us all to read the 4 Gospels before Christmas so I'll be working on that in Spanish again. 

So there is this area in clearlake called The Parks. It's like dirt roads and spread out houses and it is SKETCH. Basically I've said I'm never going to pros walk there again because last time we were about a mile away from our car and then there was a turf war between some Mexicans and White Supremacists! Moral of the story- don't leave sight of the car in the Parks in case you have to make a get away. 

Onto the nicer part of our area. It's called Hidden Valley. It's a gated community from the Middletown Ward. We have to be on someone's guest list to get in so we usually call the members to get in. There are very few Hispanics and we can't tract, so basically we have to know where they live and have their phone number. It's weird. But it's on a mountain and there are deer everywhere. So we were turning right, Elder Hermann was looking to the left and was about to turn and while I was looking straight I saw a deer running towards us so I was like "DON'T TURN YET!" And we weren't even moving and the stupid deer ran right into our truck! The deer was fine, it just ran off and it didn't dent us since we weren't moving but it made me think of King of the Hill. And speaking of TV, there are some English members in Hidden Valley and their dog's name is Bender and so I asked them if they like Futurama and with that we became best friends!

On Sunday at 830 we were waiting for our part in Branch Council and the ward clerk asked us "so are you guys ready for your talks?" And we laughed and he said "wait, this isn't a joke. You mean no one told you? It's the new ones that came that are speaking." So Elder Rasch spoke for about 10 minutes and then Elder Ford for about 5 which put me speaking at 10:40 with 25 minutes left to speak. So I gave my temptation talk from Crescent City, but instead of a 15 minute talk I dragged that sucker out! I told the story about snake island, I talked about the Diaz family, I talked about the Barrett family, and when the part that I had written ended I opened up to Moses 1:39 and I was all "This is what God gets up for every morning! This is his full time job!" And then I talked about how the ward can help us and oh man, I was ticked that no one told us. So I talked for 25 minutes. But anyway, the stake president was there and when the senior couple told him after that no one had told us we were speaking he was CHAPPED. I MEAN CHAPPED. So anyway, he said we did good jobs and it was just a funny experience. 

Elder Ford turned 27 yesterday. Throughout the day we spanked him 27 times (each) and the people that gave us dinner made us a cake! 

So this super cool (English) investigator gave the other Elders a key to her garage where she has a full gym in return for watering her plants once a week. So we are waking up at 6 every day to work out. I'm eating big to get big, protein shake and 2 hard boiled eggs for breakfast, pb&j for a snack, steak and brown rice for lunch, granola bar for a snack, and then dinner. I'll be like a Polynesian by the time I get home!

Love you guys!

Week 91

So his last week has been cool. Here are some redeeming qualities of
Clearlake. The stars here are really, really pretty and full. Another
redeeming quality is that there is a member who washes and presses all
of our clothes for us. We just drop them off on Sunday nights and we
pick them up Mondays!

So in Clearlake there is a part of town called the Avenues. It's not
like the Salt Lake City Avenues that are nice and pretty. The Avenues
is a huge part of town with lots of dirt roads and a couple thousand
people live there. There are only two roads in the whole city that go
in or out of the avenues. 90% of the people there grow marijuana.
There are no streetlights and at night there are dogs that roam the
streets, if you can call them dogs. They are pit-Bulls and or German
shepards mixed with Wolves. That's not a joke, there are half wolves
roaming the streets. It's like if you mixed Fall Out 3 and Borderlands
you would pretty much be in the Avenues, but since I'm a missionary I
can only carry a knife.

We found a super cool lady named Reyna, she's Christian but doesn't
have a church. She let us in, we gave her a Book of Mormon and she
said that she would read it and she said that when she doesn't work on
Sunday she'll be a church! We also found a different lady named
Adriana, she's was funny. Less solid than Reyna, but we'll try her
again. I don't know why, but middle aged Mexican Women are my
specialty.

We had a fast as a zone to find families. To break the fast we had a
super sweet break the fast. We made quesadillas and cream cheese
stuffed bacon wrapped habaneros. It was way fun!

Basically I'm just finding a lot of joy in the members and
investigators. They are nice and it's been good so far!

Love you guys!

Nick

Week 90

So here I am writing from Clearlake, California! Did you guys know
that the toothbrush was invented in Clearlake? If it had been invented
anywhere else it would have been called the teethbrush!

I feel like it was way way way over a week ago that I was in Crescent
City. We bowled and had a good last time together as a district. I
said goodbye to the Tinsleys after P Day and we closed it off by one
last Jone's soda at the beach. That night Elder Mortenson and I drove
down to Arcata and we spent the night. The next morning we went to the
Eureka chapel and loaded our stuff into the transfer trailer and went
to Santa Rosa. In Santa Rosa I saw some of my best friends, Hna
Fernandez, Elder Spanish Tyson Smith, Elder Fonseca, and Elder Contla.
It was awesome. We had transfer devotional and then loaded up our
stuff in the truck and headed up to Lake County. I drove with Elder
Wright and Elder Delgado. We went to Taco Bell in Santa Rosa. The cool
part is that Guy Fieri or whatever his name is has a restaurant right
across the street called "Johnny Garlic's" it looks way good.

We are in an English Ward, the Highlands Ward, but really it should be
an English branch. It's smaller than the Vallejo and Woodland Spanish
branches by a huuuuge number. In my district is us, a companionship of
sisters who serve in the Middletown Ward, a senior couple, and english
elders from Kelseyville. One of them is 26, the other served half his
mission in the Ukraine and them got shipped over here when things hit
the fan. Elder Wright is my zone leader which is way awesome. We are
in a 5 man pad. Elder Kay is in his second transfer and is really
weird and doesn't really know how to talk to people, like not even us
as missionaries. Elder Rasch also lives with us, he's way sick. He was
born in Fairfield with Elder Wright so I've known him for a long time.
He's from Park City and the 5 of us are in the Highlands Ward.

We live super close to the lake, and the water is disgusting. I mean
Elder Rasch and I had diarrhea because of it. I bought 4 gallons of
water to get me through the week. The city is kind of just falling
apart. It's a huge meth and marijuana city. Every neighborhood is just
dirt roads or potholes and mobile homes.

We have a really cool family that we are teaching, the Batrez family.
They are super cool. They have been talking to missionaries for a long
time but have never come to church, so we are going to get them to
chuch!

That's about it for the week. Love you guys!

Nick