First Zone Conference

Hello everybody!

This past week I had my first zone conference here in the mission.  That was really cool!  It was also cool to meet a lot of new missionaries.  I've heard about so many cool missionaries in the mission and I finally got to meet a lot of them.  There are 3 zone conferences so only the southern third of the mission was there but I got to meet a lot of people.  Two that I was excited to meet were Elders Villar and Christenson.  Elder Villar is from Peru and is a really really good soccer player from what I've heard.  Apparently he had heard that I was a good soccer player somehow too, so we talked a lot and maybe I'll end up serving with him sometime since he's only been out about a year.  Elder Christenson is an elder from Moroni, Utah and has a really "southern" sounding accent.  He likes a lot of the same things as Elder Grow, Pickering, and I so we got along well.  We learned a lot of good stuff.  One of the coolest things I had found out is that Elder Holland came to our mission in February and at the very end promised that our mission was going to start having a lot of success that this mission hasn't seen yet and that we would be remembered in this mission for it all.  In the past 4 months since he has said this nothing has happened so President Lewis talked to us a lot about how it's not President Holland's fault that this isn't being fulfilled, it must be something to do with us as missionaries and something that we need to do to step it up.  I learned a lot and have plenty of things that I need to change to be better but I really loved the zone conference.

Without TV, radio, and the internet we miss out on everything big that happens in the world and I forgot that the Euro 2012 is about to start! We figured it out this week since there have been a couple games that Mexico has played so everyone is really excited about it.  (Also, yesterday barely anyone was at church and none of the missionaries had investigators to church and I'm convinced it's because Mexico played Brazil yesterday). But it would be awesome if someone would keep me updated from home and send scores and any other interesting news (:

I just typed up this really long paragraph about recent news with investigators and this laptop decided it wanted to highlight it all and delete it really quick so now it's gone and I don't feel like typing it again so here's the basics: Familia Guzman is progressing still.  The mother in law of a newly active member accepted to be baptized (without a date).  We found an awesome couple last week that loves everything we say and even got engaged last week after the first time we met them.  They said it is because we mentioned that something to the extent of "marriage is ordained of God between a man and a woman and every couple should be married".  We have lots of other cool people too.

It's been really really hot here and has only barely broken 100 degrees. It's raining today so I'm hoping this happens a lot in the summer because I don't like the heat.

Elder Guzman also almost got eaten by a dog last week when we were tracting but I saved his life.  It wasn't anything cool but he was looking down/opening a fence to walk into some one's yard and he didn't see this big/ferocious dog bounding towards him.

I can't think of too much more that was interesting to talk about but last night was interesting.  We went to go see familia Guzman and the we ended up hanging out with all the family members.  One of their neighbors who we want to start teaching came home from church (where he plays the guitar and sings) and we convinced him to play and sing for us.  Then one of the drunk neighbors came out and started singing too.  Then all the neighborhood little kids came and played with us (basketball).  We pretty much had the whole community of Latinos outside singing religious songs that I've never heard (in Spanish) and playing basketball.  It was a lot of fun.

I also think I forgot to mention last week that I almost got in a car accident. Someone was getting on the freeway and tried to turn into my lane when I was right next to him.  I had to weave in and out of cars as I swerved trying to dodge this guy.  It was all adrenaline at the time but Elder Guzman was really impressed and wanted to kiss me because I saved his life (the guy would have hit his door and probably our back end and we would have spun out and likely rolled on the freeway which would be disastrous).  Luckily none of that happened and my professional driver instincts took over. Anyway, that almost happened again today so that's what made me think of it.  California is full of crazy drivers and I don't like it.

Well that's about all I've got this week! I hope all is well and everyone is enjoying the cooler weather that is anywhere outside of Sacramento!

Les Quiero,

Elder Gaskill