Week 41 & 42

 Buenas tardes! 

So we had some cool experiences these past two weeks in our journey to put 15 people on date for baptism. 

The first one was Sebastián. We went to a member's house to share a message, and joining them was their 12-year old nephew, Sebastián. He would be living with his aunt, uncle, and cousins for the next year due to some family matters, and we were informed that he never had the chance to be baptized. We were given the green light to start teaching him the missionary discussions, and after our very first lesson, he accepted the invitation to be baptized on November 21!! And although that was a huge miracle, we ended up finding out that we need permission first from his parents in Mexico, and after a bunch of coordinating, we're not sure if we are going to be able to stick with that day. But he's for sure gonna get baptized soon 😉

The second one was Carlos. Just later that day that we taught Sebastián, we finally had an in-person lesson with Wilson and Yenny (the couple that we've been teaching English classes to for the last two months), and we find out that they have a roommate, Carlos 😮 He joins the lesson, kinda tunes out a little bit during the English class portion, but when we started sharing a spiritual message, he was eating... it... up! He asked some really good questions and we had some really good answers, and at the end, we asked him if he would like to be a member of the church - and he said "Realmenteee... Sí!" or "Reallyyy... Yea!". We put him on date for December 13th, and we moved back Wilson and Yenny's date to that day too cause they need a bit more time to prepare for baptism. 

On Sunday morning, we get a call from our mission president saying that he's outside of our basement and he would like to talk to Elder Bartolo 😨😱 After his chat with President, Elder Bartolo tells us that he's leaving us and he has to be packed up by today... because he just got called to be an Assistant to the President 🎉🎊!! I already know he's gonna kill it because he is such a hard-working, supportive, and obedient missionary. And imma miss him a bunch, and not just because his absence made me the senior companion and Zone Leader 1, and now I am stressinggg out biiigg time cause I don't know what I'm doing. 😓

And that all happened in Week 41! Week 42 was basically just Elder Carrier and I carrying our butts alone and surviving the week... And we did! Also we made pizza, so enjoy the pics! 

(Weeks consisting of 11/3/20 - 11/9/20 and 11/10/20 - 11/16/20) 

Elder Terry 

Fotos:

(Sorry for only having pictures of the one night where we made pizza. I gotta start taking more pics) 

1) How Italians hold their pizza

2) Elder Carrier gracefully tossing the pizza

3) Before aaaand... 

4) After

Week 40

 Hey! What's poppin'? 

This past week was a blast! For starters, we now have a seminary initiative in the mission to get in contact with the local high schools and middle schools (apparently seminary starts in middle school here... Utah, amirite?) and see if we can join some classes and teach the youths 👴 It was so weird to be back in seminary, and not to my surprise, the kids were just as dead tired as I was in seminary. Those were the good ol' days 😅

One morning near the beginning of the transfer, Elder Bartolo walks out of the bathroom, and says "I have received some shower revelation". He then proceeds to grab a piece of paper, writes a big ol' "15" on it, and slaps on the wall. He apparently was thinking in the shower about a goal for the transfer for the amount of people that we would put on date for baptism, and 15 was his answer. Since then, we've so many miracles of God putting people in our path, and we already have 3 people on date!! Now we just need 12 more... 😕🤤

This past Saturday was 🎃 Halloween 🎃 and most of my morning was spent carving a pumpkin that Elder Carrier's parents had sent to us. I carved the most spookiest thing I could think of - The First Visión 😱 Also, because most gathering in the mission are restricted, we got together on a Zoom call as a mission, and watched ❤️ Coco ❤️. So Halloween was pretty lit 👌🏼

Also the bishop in our ward has two dogs that we walk once a week, which is a blast cause they love stopping every 0.7461428 seconds to sniff something. They also just had a bunch of puppies, and I gotta punch a wall after seeing them to gain some inch of masculinity back. 

Life is good here, and I miss all of you as well back at home!

(Week consisting of 10/27/20 - 11/2/20) 

Elder Terry 

Fotos:

1 y 2) My pumpkin carving of the First Vision

3) Super cute lil' pupper 😍 but the only thing cuter than the puppy is the guapo holding it 😘

4) The "15" poster in all of its glory

5) Big shoutout to my aunt Sherrilynne and the Dangl family for hooking me up with some spooky decorations 

6) At the beginning of the transfer, I predicted that it would snow before November, and while we were in quarantine, it ❄️ snowed ❄️. Here is an epic, high-quality photo of the snow 😉😂

Week 38 & 39

 Hola! 

Once again, Utah has spiked in the number of Corona cases, and this time, it has been hitting the mission hard. Many missionaries are being tested, and about half of them are testing positive. We now can't have district councils in person for the first time in 7 months, and any inter-household activities are restricted as well. Soooo we basically can't get together in person with anyone in the mission 🙃

And theeeen... I woke up Tuesday morning, and my throat was feeling fuuuunny 👀, and it was one of those sore throats where it was super painful to eat, drink, and swallow. I tried to tough it out, but we had a Zone Conference that Thursday, and the meeting coincidentally started with our mission president's wife going down a list of Corona Virus symptoms, one of them being a sore throat 😕 

During a break, we told her that I had a sore throat, and without a moment's hesitation, she sent us home, told me to take the COVID test, and self-isolate until we got the results (video of me getting tested and having my brains scooped out down below). 

Being stuck inside a basement for 5 days is not the most fun experience. Elder Carrier and Elder Bartolo started showing symptoms as well, and we just knew that we had COVID even before the results came in, which didn't come in until Monday. And to our surprise... I actually tested negative. And that was a huge blessing cause I don't know how much longer I could've lasted not going outside. 

*MIRACLE TIME*

So I meant to mention this last week, but before this transfer, we were teaching English classes to this really cool couple, Wilson and Yenny, who were eating up everything we were teaching, including the gospel messages at the end of each class. We were covering the Springhill ward, and ended up finding out that they lived in a different area, the Copper Hills 5th ward. We were super sad to have to pass them off to other missionaries, and we said that we'd do it at the end of the transfer. 

Just before the transfer, I got a transfer call from the Assistants saying that I'd be moving to a new area, and take a wiiiild guess where I'd be going... yuuup the Copper Hills 5th ward!! So I'd still be able to keep teaching Wilson and Yenny, and the 2nd day of the transfer, we put them on date for baptism!!! So I know that I'm in this area for a reason, and I'm excited to see what keeps coming of it. 

(Weeks consisting of 10/13/20 - 10/19/20 and 10/20/20 - 10/26/20) 

Elder Terry 

Fotos:

1 y 2) Us losing our minds self-isolating in our basement

3) The last photo evidence seen of Elders Bartolo, Terry, and Carrier outside before being stuck in a basement for 5 days

4) A chapel with a nice sky

5) Nice sunset

6) Video of me getting my COVID test 😷

Week 37

 Talofa! 

Once again, this past Tuesday was transfer day! 

Things that didn't change: 

- ... 

Things that changed:

- I'm finally leaving the Springhill ward after three transfers of great memories and some pretty awesome members. I am now in the Copper Hills 5th Spanish ward

- Elder Brescia got transferred (or in his words, "banished") to Wendover, Nevada 😰 while Elder Powell is staying behind in the Springhill ward

- And once again (again again again...) I'm in another trio, this time with Elder Bartolo and Elder Carrier. Elder Bartolo is a stud and was one of my past zone leaders who's also from Orange County, CA. Elder Carrier was my roommate from just this past transfer and he's from Oregon. 

- I'm no longer a district leader anymore 😢 Although I had so much fun making such good friends with my district, the time comes in every man's life to be called as a 👌🏼 zone leader 👌🏼 over the Jordan Landing Zone. This zone covers an English district and a Tongan district, and guess which one ya boi is in... you bet your sweet cookies it's the Tongan District 🎉 I still am in a Spanish-speaking area though 😔

- We upgraded to a Toyota Rav4 🚗

- I moved into to a member's basement, and we do most of our studies on the ground now because it has some niiice carpet

I'm very excited for this next transfer as a zone leader!! And I hope you all have a great transfer too! 😉😂

Ofa atu

(Week consisting of 10/6/20 - 10/12/20) 

Elder Terry 

Fotos:

1) Elder Bartolo, Elder Carrier, and I

2) Fast Sundays be like... 

Week 35-36

 Waddup! I'm combining both of these weeks because the first one was pretty uneventful. 

As a missionary, it's a rare occasion to hear news since we're so secluded from society. So when we hear that the west coast is on fire, we know that it's a pretty big deal. To all of my family and friends in California, stay safe and realize how blessed you are to already have a mask to protect from the smoke. Speaking of which, we were like uh oh when we saw some smoke and thought there was a forest fire in the mountains. So we did what anyone would do and took pictures! 😁

Lorena, the person from Argentina that we've been teaching English classes for about a month now has been progressing and absolutely eating up our spiritual messages! She even watched General Conference (which was sooooooo awesome by the way) and she came to us afterwards with a bunch of notes and questions that she had!! Like it doesn't get better than that! But it does, because we passed her off to the missionaries in Argentina and they put her on date for baptism!!! 

We also did some service at a canning center that provides a bunch of the stock for a nearby bishop's storehouse. The food of the week was salsa, and we had a bunch of fun in the processing room washing off a bunch of excess salsa on the machines with some thick power hoses. And we will probably smell like salsa for the rest of the year 🙃

This was also the last week of arguably my favorite transfer yet in the mission! Imma miss ❤️ Elders Powell and Brescia ❤️ for making it a good one, since I'm going to get some more new companions. But more on that next email! 

General Conference was so hype this year! I watched all 5 sessions (even the General Women's Session 😉😅) and took so much notes. To sum up all 10 hours of it in one word:

Prepare

Y'all we gotta start getting ready for things to get worse before they get better. I'm excited to see what the Lord has in store for us, and I'm ready for whatever curveball he's gonna throw. 

Stay safe and good luck! 

(Weeks consisting of 9/22/20 - 9/28/20 and 9/29/20 - 10/5/20) 

Elder Terry 

Fotos:

1) Smoke in the mountains

2) There was this massive (silo?) thingy outside the canning center and it looked dope

3) The super awesome cannery

4) Us looking super cute in our canning outfits

5) Another car wash!! We did it so that their ticket in to the car wash was the name and number of someone that would be open to accept the missionary discussions

Week 34

Hola everyone! How have you been? 

So for the past six months we have had to live by a bunch of extra mission restrictions and guidelines because of the Corona Virus. However, and to the slight hesitation of our mission president, a few of these restrictions were relieved this past week. Some of the most notable ones being:

   - We can now go inside members houses!! This is only to share a short message no longer than 20 minutes, and food still is not able to be accepted 😔 but we finally get to see the members in their homes!! 

   - We can finally do exchanges with the companionships in our districts! 

   - We can now have 5 missionaries in a car if you live in the same housing! This was a pretty insignificant change for most, but we so happen to have 5 missionaries in our apt and a car!

But we now basically have to wear our masks 25/7 (yep 25 hours a day) just so we can live by these rules. But I'm super grateful cause things are starting to look up around here. 

Also just two months ago, there were just two missionaries in the Springhill ward that we cover - Elder Chelson and I. Since then, our area has been split down two times these past two months to fit the amount of new missionaries still coming to the mission, and now there are seven missionaries in just one ward! I feel bad for the members and all of the calls they probably get from three different missionary companionships during the week 😅

Gracias por escucharme! 

(Week consisting of 9/15/20 - 9/21/20) 

Elder Terry 

Fotos:

1) All 7 of us missionaries in the Springhill ward

2) Me and my guapo companions

3) We also did some service with the sisters in the district at the bishop's storehouse and completely forgot to take a picture there, so we took one when we conveniently ran into each other on the drive back

Week 33

Man it's crazy how much missionary work has changed! Just half a year ago, we were going outside, knocking doors, going into people's homes, eating with members, and having no reason not to have a meeting in person. Now, we stay inside, call people, make our own food, call people, have meetings through video call, and call people. 

But one thing I would have never imagined to ever hear on my mission is being told to go on Facebook - like obviously for missionary purposes, but still. I though I was gonna be isolated from my family and friends for two years, but that's all I ever see anymore. And because we're using Facebook to find and teach people, we now have mission funds dedicated to running advertisements! And the most fun part is that we get to make them!! So we made an ad to be run in our district that is advertising the free English classes that we've also been encouraged to teach. 

We also found a super awesome woman named Lorena in Argentina and although her original interest was in learning English, she has been super receptive to the spiritual thoughts that we share at the end of each class. She always gets all bubbly and says "¡Genial!" and "¡Qué lindo!" everytime we share something that resonates well with her. 

We went on a cute lil' hike and made some cute lil' rock stacks, and we also went to a super legit museum with basically every exhibit you could think of! Pics below 😉

I love you all! 

(Week consisting of 9/8/20 - 9/14/20) 

Elder Terry 

Fotos:

1) The district on the hike

2) Utah is kinda pretty, I guess 😍

3) Cute lil' rock stack 🤗

4-5) Reflection photos at the museum 

6) Some weird lookin' dog

Week 32

 Hola guapos! 

So this week was super awesome cause we found a bunch of new people through teaching English classes since there are a bunch of Hispanics in Utah that really want to learn to have better job opportunities and such. It's pretty fun to teach as well cause we're basically teaching from scratch solely based on what we know about English. We prepare for the class by setting up a whiteboard beforehand with a bunch of vocab and grammatical terms and do our best to explain it. 

We met a cool family, the Bustos, in our mission through these English classes and we have a blast teaching them English, and finishing every lesson off with a quick scripture or spiritual principle to hopefully grow their interest. 

We also woke up super duper early on p-day to go on a hike with the district. We were hiking in the dark for a good hour before the sun began to rise. We came across a cool waterfall and made sure to take a lot of pics!

(Week consisting of 9/1/20 - 9/7/20) 

Elder Terry 

Fotos:

1) Me and the boiz at the waterfall 👀😎

2) The coolest distrito ever (minus 2) making the waterfall feel insecure about its own beauty

3) Another district pic

4-5) Posing 

6-9) The views were super nice going all the way up 🌄

Week 31

Hola! I hope you are all healthy and happy! 

So this past Tuesday was transfer day! 

Things that didn't change:

- I'm still the District Leader in the Jordan District

- I'm still in the Springhill Spanish ward

- We still get to keep our car 🚗

Things that changed:

- Elders Chelson and Lamb were transferred to new areas, and... once again... I am in a trio with the fabulous Elder Powell and the half-greenie Elder Brescia! 

- I moved to a different apartment, which is for some reason a lot further away from my area than my previous apartment. I can't complain though cause this apartment has 5 missionaries and 2 bathrooms as opposed to 6 missionaries and 1 bathroom 🚽

- I have two new roommates Elders Roden and Carrier

- I am now the one behind the wheel! 🚘

- My district became one of the biggest in the mission with 17 missionaries

I'm excited for what this transfer holds, especially because just before the transfer, Elder Powell had put a post on Facebook advertising free English classes and it got over 80 comments! So it looks like I'll be teaching a bunch of English this transfer and hopefully we'll be able to make something good come out of it 😁

Week consisting of 8/25/20 - 8/31/20

Elder Terry 

Fotos:

1) Elder Brescia, me, and Elder Powell

2) For p-day, we went to a bowling alley 🎳!! It doesn't mean we went bowling... cause it ended up being closed 🙃 but we gotta nice picture and went to a thrift store instead

3) There's a story behind this picture, but here's photo evidence of my comps and I at In-N-Out

Week 30

 Hello all you lovelies! 

So I just wanted to talk about how awesome Utah is! Half a year ago, I was pretty bummed that I got reassigned to the Salt Lake City West Mission instead of Perú, which also paired with the bummer of being a virtual missionary as well (which crushed my dreams of eating so much good food with the members ). But honestly I'm super duper grateful to still be on a mission and also have all the benefits of living here in Utah. 

I'm super lucky to be in a mission that has technology, functioning plumbing, air conditioning, hot and cold water, cars, a (somewhat) logical road system, people that obey the law, real beds, and Walmart. But arguably the best thing is all of the support that we get here. It's basically impossible to walk down the street without getting honked at by every other car just to say hi. Also, the only people that are probably more devastated that we can't eat with the members are the members themselves! But... that doesn't mean we're not disappointed... cause we are. 

Another perk of being here is the occasional time that we go to a fast food place and the worker/owner either gives us a discount or sometimes they don't charge us at all!! There are also some more well-known missionary hook up restaurants that do indeed hook us up. For example, there's a restaurant called Leatherby's where just for the missionaries, the dessert is free. That sounds great, but what's even greater is how deliciously ginormous their ice cream is. 

Keep sending me emails and letters! I treasure everything that I get, and while I love you all equally, you will become highly favored in mine eyes 

(Week consisting of 8/18/20 - 8/24/20)

Elder Terry 

Fotos:

1) Some delicious boys and our delicious ice cream 

2) My BIG ol' ice cream

3) We recreated the photo that my district had taken a couple of transfers ago on the same hike

4 y 5) The district at the top of Ensign Peak

6) Nice sunrise on the way to the hike

7) Elder Clark and I hiking up the ol' countryside 🤠