Possible last transfer!!!

Bad news
Unfortunately Maria Rosales wasn't baptized this weekend. We learned
of some catholic beliefs that she's not convinced she needs to change
yet. Kind of an interesting situation when you believe this is Gods
only church on the earth but you don't want to give up old ways. I
guess we're all like that some times- know what we know, but just so
hard to change the things we like. Thankfully she put herself on date
for the 16th and we'll see how that goes.

Stake conference
Elder Dan Johnson of the 70 came for our stake conference and gave
wonderful council to us all. The crazy thing was for the adult session
the translator never showed up so I got to relive Wickenburg and
spontaneously translate for the Spanish people who came. It was great,
only that the hardest words I've ever heard were given. Try
translating for an accountant/70, pretty nerve racking. It gave me a
good glimpse at where I need to go to better myself and a boost of
adrenaline.

Lame duck
For most of the week I've been under the weather but thankfully good
enough to still work. It's been great to take the backseat (literally)
and watch elder Benolerao and Plourde get things done. This was a
little blessing because I got news today that I'll be transferred.
Easy transition now, because sometimes you can take your knowledge of
an area with you and for a little while the other elders struggle to
find where everything is and all that. Not going to be a problem here
and nothing will slow down.

Looking back to the past five months, they've been super sweet.
Marcelinas baptism, cleaning up the area, bettering relations with
ward leaders, and serving other elders. No regrets. I'm looking
forward to my new companion as well as what will be probably my last
area. Super stoked to work my tail off and get to meet new people.

Love,
Elder Bryan

P.S.

President just called me, I'm going to west Maricopa, la Joya ward
with my MTC comp! Elder Sperry!!

conference week

Elder Conover and I

 Zone movie (Freetown) with President Griffin

 I got some palm leaves from a contact

What a wonderful weekend of General Conference. Of the four I've had

in the mission field, this one was the best. Maybe it has to do with

being prepared to learn, who knows :)

Elders Plourde, Benolerao, and I have gotten a good hang of switching

off during lessons, having open communication, and keeping each other

up to speed on what we did on splits with members. It's been very

relaxing to say the least.

Baptisms

A problem this week was trying to have baptismal interviews, schedule

the only building we have available, and keep member help high as a

zone we have 7+ baptisms the 9th. My kind of problems right there.

It's been a moral booster to have every companionship with scheduled

baptisms for the next few weeks. I think the Lord is really trusting

us with His children here in the Glendale stake. Now if only our

people could come back from Mexico, or at least send a letter saying

they found missionaries there. I can't complain though, we're finding

people very regularly now. Elder Arnold actually responded to a

similar question when he was here. The missionary asked what do we do

when our investigators flake out. He replied, "Well you go out and

find three more people to teach and baptize. There will be someone

ready to hear you if you get out on the street"

Maria

With Maria's baptismal date for the 9th, we've been preparing her. I

think because of the faith we're exercising now more than ever, she's

been able to overcome bumps that have sprung up almost immediately

after we set the date. It's just too good to be normal coincidence.

Surprises

Elder Arnold asked every area to bring several lists of members when

he came. One thing we have realized as we continue to dig is that the

last ward clerk didn't do anything for the past four years besides

record convert baptisms. Like, nothing else. We were all shocked when

18 or so active children came up as unbaptized, including the bishops

son, Brian (good name btw). The big deal now is all of the families

have to look back to find the date or we'll have to rebaptize them.

Not too big of a deal but could have been avoided. Well...we hope it

won't be a big deal, we haven't told anyone besides the bishop so

we'll see how that goes. Also, if you know any of the rumors about

paper trails and Hispanics, know they're all true. My advice is this:

keep a journal, document important papers, and do your family history

before some Juan has to guesstimate which Juan you are. :)

Besides all of this, we're still working with Hermano Raygoza, half of

Oasis West Apartments, and some part member families-the which have

difficulty keeping appointments.

Life is good, Conference was Grrrrreat! And I'm having the best time

of my life out here.

Love,

Elder Bryan

Miracles come through exact obedience

Great week, here's some of what happened

Raygoza
Unfortunately Hermano Raygoza is still pretty firm in taking things
slow but he's opened up like never before. To give a mental picture,
Papa Raygoza looks like the pretend uncle in the beginning of SpyKids-
if you've ever seen that. We finally got him to agree to having a date
picked out and put on the baptismal calendar we gave him by our next
lesson as well as watching a session of general conference with us.
The coolest part of our lesson yesterday night was as we were going to
leave, he shook all of our hands and then a side hug. I've never
thought I'd get that from him. I could see a glisten in his eyes as he
squeezed my arm. He also challenged us to a arm wrestle/diamond push
ups. With all of the Capitaltada, flan, and piles of tortillas we get
on the daily, I'm not sure if I'll get close.

Put them on Date!
I think I've previously talked about the challenge in the zone to be
exactly obedient and we'll each put someone on date for the transfer.
The other Solano elders hadn't already put someone on date so for the
exchange this Friday I decided that I'd help them understand what
being exactly obedient entails and put someone on date for the 9th of
April. Elder Jónes and I went out to visit the guy who's on date for
the end of April to move him up but he was out of town. This kind of
crushed my idea,  I knew it'd be easy to bump him up because his
excuse against being baptized was a poor one and the missionaries
didn't ask follow up questions.
We moved on to our next lesson with a recently returned to activity
grandma and her granddaughter where we explained the temple and got
her excited for the temple prep class. I asked the 11year old girl if
she's looking forward to doing baptisms for the dead when to my
surprise, she responded to us that she wasn't baptized herself. Right
at that very moment her father came home from work, this huge muscle
man. I asked him to join us and for his permission to baptize his
daughter which he gave. The miracle was that many missionaries had
asked before but this was the time where his heart opened a little.
Grandma Lugo told me that she had just gotten a call from a friend in
Utah who told her she was praying for the dad to let his daughter to
be baptized and take the discussions himself. Crazy cool.

Book of Mormon Testimony
To help the Stake reach its goal of 500 copies of the Book of Mormon
handed out from the members, we decided to ask every member we have a
dinner or lesson with to take a copy and write their own testimony in
it and then to do one of several options: share it with a friend
themselves, come with us to a lesson and then give it to our
investigator, or leave it somewhere in the open in their home so
someone can ask about it. So far we've done this with ten people and
we need still to follow up with them but it's helped gain more trust
with the bishop and members as well as work away at the mountain of
books in the clerks office instead of us continually ordering more
copies from salt lake. I think I'll always have a testimony written in
each copy I give out from here on till the end. So much better this
way, there's a living testimony that someone actually believes in the
book they'll hold. More power with Moroni's promise.

Love you all,
Elder Bryan


March 21 2016


I don't have a lot of time so I picked two good miracles that happened
this week. For the most part our week consisted of us biking around
Phoenix and trying to talk to everyone, even the crazies. Especially
the crazies! Our mentality is that if we show the lord we are willing
to share the gospel with everyone then the Lord will bless us with
those golden people who are ready to hear the word.

Trash Can Hunting
After a super successful Saturday night of contacting I had this empty
water bottle that I needed to throw away. I took the lead in guiding
our companionship and decided that first we would search for a garbage
can and there we would find someone to teach. We walked around for
about two minutes in this unfamiliar complex until voilà, a pretty
little garbage can in the middle of a glen. I'm pretty sure there used
to be a picnic table but it had since ran away so it was just a
garbage can and a junky grill. As we approached the can, this guy
yelled "Elders" at us from a nearby apartment, hopped the little wall
and wobbled towards us. It had all the signs of another drunk
encounter but turns out Tony has terrible balance. He welcomed us back
into his apartment and introduced us to his girlfriend and dream
catcher 'prayer warrior disciple' brother. They told us they had just
been talking about which church they should go to tomorrow. Tony had
taken some of the lessons before in New Hampshire about 10 years ago
and both Tony and Chrinda are excited to have the missionaries over.
Even though they are English, it's still exciting. We're all on the
same team anyways. It definitely strengthened my faith that there are
people who are praying to find the truth, sometimes literally 5
minutes before you show up.

Raygoza
After the Easter fireside Sunday night we hustled over to the Raygozas
where we had a really good lesson. Hermano Raygoza has been a tougher
investigator, mainly since he's been having the missionaries over on
and off for 5 years and his wife was the old gospel principles teacher
who was all about preaching brimstone and fire until we got her
replaced. I can see how people have been a little pushy. Last night we
had him talk to us about his experience with our church, with God, and
his family. He opened up a little and when he accepted the invitation
to be baptized, a noticeable difference in air pressure was
well-welcomed. His daughters and son-in-law were tearing up and
everything was just sweet. Tender mercies.


Love,
Elder Bryan

New digs for the bike gang

We moved! 

It was pretty exciting getting to move apartments this week. The people at the new place are so kind and every outlet works it's a festivus miracle!

Mission Tour

Elder Arnold of the 70 came and spent the day with us on Wednesday. He had a powerhouse personality, similar to Elder Holland. We started in the gym of a stake center as the leaders of the mission sitting at tables with all of the items Elder Arnold told us to bring, specifically lists of every member in the ward, less active, part member families and unbaptized and over eight. We started to prep by reading the many scriptures and case studies we were asked to read in preparation.  Elder Arnold with briefcase in hand comes briskly walking, almost jogging, into the gym and shouts, "Number 11!" Everyone turned to see him and he repeats as he gets closer, "Everyone read Numbers 11, we have so much to cover today so we need to get running now." 

I felt a little nervous as I read the first verse- "And when the people complained, it displeased the Lord: and the Lord heard it; and his anger was kindled; and the fire of the Lord burnt among them, and consumed them that were in the uttermost parts of the camp." Gulp.

Thankfully, that wasn't the focus of the meeting. 

This was an incredible mission tour, just as good as when Elder Foster and Montoya came back in September. Elder Arnold taught us all of the little things we can and should do to be effective missionaries. He brought a great, 'you get up in that orange tree and pick oranges for your investigators'

Bike Gang

Elder Plourde finally got his bike frame transformed into a functioning bike and Elder Benolerao's bike arrived from his last area so we were able to be on bike much this week. We were able to contact so many people it was soo nice! It's a little interesting I'm sure for the people to see three white shirt and tie guys on bikes actually big enough for us riding down the streets of Phoenix and Glendale. It's my favorite thing though.

Miracles

On exchanges this week, Elder Young wanted to learn how to tract so after an appointment fell through we got to work getting those doors knocked. After a few doors I had a thought, 'man if there is loud noises coming from any of these apartments someone has got to be behind those doors'. I told Elder Young that we were going to play a game called, "Where's that noise coming from?" All three of the doors we found with big sounds invited us to come back. The coolest was this lady who when asked if she'd be interested in the Easter pagent out in Mesa she replied that she actually was looking for someone who could teach her how to study the bible because she made a New Year's Resolution to learn about different religions. Woah. Needless to say, this week was just great. I love missionary work!!

love,

Elder Bryan

March 7, 2016

Hey everyone!

Not going to lie, this week wasn't super eventful.

Moving
We got notified that we were going to be moving into a new apartment
February 29th but they kept moving the move in date because it wasn't
finished yet. Gratefully we get to move tomorrow. Not that I don't
appreciate having the police helicopter spotlighting our complex every
other night but change is good, especially since missionaries have
lived in this specific apartment since 2012. Where we are going is
right next to an elementary so it's a nicer part of town, whoo!

Food
For some reason, when we were supposed to move last week, we didn't
buy many groceries (maybe the reasoning was it'd be too much to carry
to the new apartment I can't remember). When the date got moved back
to tomorrow and most every dinner canceled on us, we realized what a
pickle we were in. We had to resort to whatever we had in our place. I
won't go into too much detail but for the record, "Manwich Sloppy Joe
Mega Mix" is just vinegar, tomato paste, and nastiness. Never again.
Today we corrected ourselves and now we have a stocked fridge yet
again.

Lists
Many of the things we did this week was in preparation for the mission
tour Wednesday with Elder Arnold of the 70. He has asked that every
area bring lists of all the members, less active members, part
members, and unbaptized and over eight. When we walked in to the
clerks office and had to instruct the clerk how to 1. Turn on the
computer and 2. Find the church's programs I knew we were in for the
long haul. Picture in your mind that epic moment on "Cloudy with a
Chance of Meatballs" when the Dad is struggling to work the computer
but manages to click the send email at the last second, only for it to
be the wrong email of a cat video. Yeah, that was us.
After a long, long, long month and a half I can proudly say that we
have managed to get those lists. And in perfect timing too. The best
part of the journey that were still on is trying to find where
everyone lives because you can almost guarantee that the address on
the record is outdated. Even the high priest leader's address was
wrong. My testimony that God is a God of order has increased ten fold.

This week we as a trio are planning on going on bike. Elder Plourde
has been building one since day one out of a frame he got at the
mission storage and elder Benolerao got his sick ride brought over
from his old zone. Here we go!


Love,
Elder Bryan

Three muskateers

This week was really cool, I'm super duper excited for this transfer
with Elder Plourde and Elder Benolerao. Elder Benolerao is a really
cool Filipino missionary who was trained in Wickenburg and hails from
The Big Apple. His Spanish is rocking which is nice, it's good to have
three people running around getting things done. We were able to go on
splits every night this week and doing so, covered a lot of ground.

Efrain
Old man who's been 'enternigating' the church told us this week that
he sent off a letter to Mexico to annul the marriage of his girlfriend
who's been separated from her husband for 32 years. Bout time they
cleared that up! But seriously it shows his sincere desire to get
baptized and hurtle over those tough obstacles. Lessons are a little
difficult since he runs a tienda/store out of his house and everyone
who lives in Oasis West knows it so in ten minutes you can expect to
get interrupted five times for customers.

Along with Efrain our other progressing investigators, Deyanira and
Maria are doing great. Unfortunately they didn't make it to church and
we'll find out tonight why but we had some great lessons where members
came and fellowshipped outside of the lesson! ¡Neat-o!

This Sunday, Elder Cespedes and I gave talks in church just like good
old times in Wickenburg/Wenden. We both talked about the attributes of
Christ but in different ways. He took it in breakdown of the
scriptural events and how Jesus responded while I talked on what it
means to become like a little child (see Mosiah 3:19). I feel like it
helped grow the trust with the ward.

Uke
We have been focusing on teaching members how to be missionaries and
the many ways to accomplish that. We set up some family home evenings
with members and in introducing elder Benolerao we played hymns that
helped focus the topic (I love to see the temple o I hope they call me
on a mission) on his Uke and sang all together followed by the
discussion. It's been sweet so far and is helping get the members
amped.

Next week is the mission tour with Elder Arnold of the 70. He's asked
us to prepare with a bunch of different documents, scripture passages
and bringing lists of members. I'm stoked for all that's coming.
Easter is on its way!

Love,
Elder Bryan

February 23, 2016

Maria Rosales
Of all of our investigators, Maria has emerged as the most progressing
(and still on date for that matter). You can see a difference in her
eyes and it's just awesome I can't explain it. Her only hang up was
not going to church, something always came up. This Sunday after
sacrament meeting, Carmen the recent convert/best missionary ever
motioned for us to come over and talk to her. Behind her was both
Maria and Deyanira who was referred to us by Maria a month ago but
just had surgery so we haven't seen her in forever. Made my week.
Neither of them had shown up since I've been here, éxito!
María is super pumped for her baptismal date on the 19th.

Service Day
Saturday morning was Glendale's 10th annual day of service and our
whole zone participated; each ward was assigned to a project and we
went with our respective wards. Great JustServe find and we
established good relationships with the city as well as the peacocks
that protect the library where Solano was stationed.

English Class
A couple who used to attend the Barrio Solano teach a English class
twice a week and invited us to check it out. Wasn't expecting much but
was surprised to see that ten people were there, most have been coming
for several years-all of them non members. I was praying for an
opportunity like this so elder Plourde and I could better our Spanish
and possibly teach some people, the kind of people who keep
appointments and can travel to a church building. Tonight we have been
asked to present a message for the students and regularly
attend/practice teach with them the English lesson. Super beyond
stoked for that.

People who left for Mexico are still nowhere to be found. There is
rumor that Gloria is coming back Saturday. Who knows, maybe we're
experiencing the winds of change.

Love,
Elder Bryan

UPDATE: I just got called by the assistants and it turns out that Elder Plourde and I will be joined by elder Benelero, been out a year who's from New York and is Filipino. I'm so excited. It's going to be crammed but such a fun ride #sleepingonthefloor4life

Love,
Elder Bryan

Ole'!

I couldn't catch it very well but the blue was so vibrant. Short
sleeve weather now

This week kinda flipped on us. Mikey's mom hasn't been returning our
texts, calls and we haven't had a lesson for a week. Maria didn't come
to church again, which was too bad because we know she wants to its
just hard to make something happen. Gloria is in Mexico right now and
no one seems to know when she'll be back or how to contact her. So in
one swoop, all of our people on date are now up in the air. Good time
to work hard and hang on.
Despite those sad setbacks, good things happened.

Guatemalans
A family from the English ward called us to get some help moving. They
wanted us to get to know their neighbors who speak no English and were
planning on helping the move. First, best move I've ever helped with.
Everything was nicely packed into bins and categorized by weight and
fragility. Night and day to some of the evictions we've seen. Second,
the Guatemalan family is really nice and have serious potential. The
mans name is Micho and came from Guatemala about 7 months ago. He's
interested in the English classes going one twice a week and wants us
to come back. We plan on stopping by tonight to give him info on the
English class and hopefully a return appointment.

Lorena
She's an investigator who's been on the back burner because she needs
to get a divorce before she can get married before she can get
baptized. That's the case with five couples we're working with,
there's just not much we can do about that. However, we decided to
invite her and Elias to go check out the Mesa Temple Visitors Center
with us to help give them motivation to do these hard things. When we
stopped by Saturday night, she told us she had just decided to live
her life in accordance with the baptismal questions. "Just a small
thing but I'm proud" she told us. Haha it was cool. Feeling good about
her specially since she came to church again even though Elias had to
work. If people can work to keep the commitments we give them, it's a
good indicator they'll be good at keeping covenants as well. We see
the people who, when invited to repent and change, see it as a hard
thing and slowly drift away from us.

It was a big shock to pull up Facebook this week and see the news of
Sadie Wells' passing. Life truly is unpredictable and has its
highlows. I thought to myself as I was feeling sad, "Isn't this the
good news that we bring though? To lift up the discouraged and
helpless and enlarge the understanding we have of the plan of
salvation. Think about how you feel right now Elder Bryan, now think
about how you would feel if you didn't have this. That's why you have
to be diligent in sharing the gospel with everyone you meet and pass
by. It's about 'helping Everyone come unto Christ' now go out there
and share it."

I love how I feel when I have spiritual experiences. I've noticed that
I have them more often and strong when it's helping others and seeing
the light come into people's eyes as they accept what is being taught
to their hearts by the Holy Spirit.

Love,
Elder Bryan

February 7 2016

On Date
Gloria and Mikey are progressing really well. Gloria 
walks to church
and is positive despite getting some flax from her extended family
that she lives with. Mikey and his family are solid, even though it
takes a while to get started for our lesson waiting for all the boys
to put on shirts. David helped Mikey say a pray at the end of our
lesson and told him to say something about thanking Jesus for being
selfless. Mikey couldn't hear and asked, "What?" With which David gave
him a two minute explanation about how Jesus was selfless and
everything he did was for us. He got exhausted and said, "ok never
mind, just end the prayer, I'll explain it later." Super cool to see
the boys teaching each other, even if it stalls the prayer.

Ward Council Presentation
President Juchau from the mission presidency came to ward council and
taught them the flowchart from the Apostles. It felt like things got
across and everything was sweet until they went around the room to
give their updates and then argued about the same things they've been
doing forever. *facepalm*. But that was just some of the leaders, we
have some key people that were going to focus on until the others can
catch the vision and get on board. The new focus is this: don't work
on lists of 100s of people. Instead take that list and pray to know
one to three people who would be ready to come back/get baptized and
then focus on them until it works because if God said it, then it'll
work. Repeat process.
Elder Plourde and I are going to focus on the Bishop and elders Quorum
president who himself was found by the old Elders Quorum President by
the same pattern a decade ago.

Maria Rosales
When I first got here the missionaries were teaching a lady who lives
in Oasis West (surprise surprise) but then stopped keeping
appointments. Just lately we picked her back up and had one of the
best lessons of my mission. The Spanish was on point and it was just
like having a normal lesson. Didn't feel forced o nothin. At the end I
felt impressed to ask her how she felt about our church. Tears came to
her eyes as she unloaded everything that's been weighing her down.
Seeing how Carmen has changed since joining the church has made her
want to change too. Elder Plourde didn't need any hint to ask her to
be baptized and now she's on date for the 13 of March.

Enjoying this 80 weather right now. Pretty soon it'll be back in the
100s. On Sunday, Elder Plourde called a kid named Jose, Olé which made
everyone around laugh pretty hard. The ward has really taken Elder
Plourde to heart and helping him learn Spanish. I have a great
companion y'all.

Love,
Elder Bryan

Golden Plates

Gloria

We met with Gloria outside her house Friday morning and had a great

lesson. It was a little weird starting out, "so we want to help you

achieve your goal of getting baptized... how does the 20th sound?" One

thing that threw us off was when she told us that she quit her job so

she could keep going to church and went to another who was offering a

position. However they told her she needed to learn English first. She

told us she was going to be frequently traveling to Mexico to help her 

family sell things so she can stay afloat. We let her know about the 

English classes and told her that the Lord will help her as she does 

all she can to make this work. Promising that made me reflect. Do I 

believe that? If someone told me that would I follow? It's incredible 

to see how believing these humble people are. It strengthens my faith.

La familia Soto

Teaching their family is awesome. The kids ask great questions and

read every night together out of the children Book of Mormon. The best

part was seeing them walk into church. The light we're always looking

for in progressing investigators is found in the Soto family. When

Mikey asked us when he was going to be baptized, it was the icing on

the cake. Now we have Gloria one week and Mikey the following. Getting

people to these lessons so they can see the Atonement at work is our

big focus right now. When members see these guys, they'll only want

more.

Zone Conference

Best zone conference I've had. We focused on the training given from

last week. At one point President called three random people to lead

discussions for each speaker. No better way to keep people focused and

participating then the fear of potentially having to teach the

missionaries in zone conference at a moments notice. I loved it! One

of the take-aways was if we are honest, we can change. Our vision and

culture we want can happen if we start at the individual level. Much

goodness.

With vehicle inspections, our car got #1 in the zone. Normally this

wouldn't be super cool but they brought back the license plate

holders. "#1 car in zone; the Golden Plates" for the next few

transfers, I get to roll around with that.

Remember in the "Other Side of Heaven", when elder Johnson(?) is

reading the bible in both languages for several days to learn the

language? Well, there's a promise that if you read the Book of Mormon

in your mission language out loud, you'll be fluent. Right now I'm at

good old Jacob 5 chapter and I've seen an immense improvement. It

doesn't take the place of my language study rather an add-on. I think

it's working because I'm showing more effort and the Lord is helping

me retain what I study.

On a random note, I walked out of the shower one morning to find a

refrigerator blocking my view. Since I couldn't get out, it migrated

to the living room and there it has stayed. The breaker in the kitchen

went out or something because everything has been switching on and off

for hours at a time. Until the apartment office can help us

troubleshoot we get the pleasure of having our kitchen scattered

throughout our rooms. We have the toaster in ours :)

It's cloudy but warm, all you need is a light jacket. The work is

incredible. The people are the best.

I love you guys,

Elder Bryan