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