There and back again, an Elders tale!

 

Elder Chriss and his new District! Including his friend from Oly Hermana Warner and his new companion Elder Abbott!

Well I am back to the area that I came to for my first day in the mission. If you remember I came out with a one day trainer for a day until President decided who I was do be with. So Elder Chriss is back in Lynwood Southgate 1st branch! 

Well to start things off I have a new comp, Elder Abbot. So far I love the crap out of him! He is fun and he is not... trunky! He has been in this area for 2 transfers so he knows his stuff. This new area is pretty big and again I am in a bike area. We have quite a few members and a ton of less actives. We will definitely be busy this transfer. 

Our apartment is nice and roomy. Luckily Elder Abbott killed all the roaches before I came with traps. So I'm going 3 for 3 on buggless apartments. so that is some positive news. The Branch that I am in is small and it needs some lovin!  It is still a branch and not a ward just because we don't have enough active members. 

Also some pretty cool news Hermana Warner and her companion is in the branch as well, they are white washing their area. Funny thing is that yesterday both Hermana. Warner and I spoke in church.... Man they chose the 2 whitest people in the building to speak in the Spanish branch which I thought pretty funny. I can definitely work on my Spanish, but wow I don't know where the words came from (God obviously). 

 

We have been doing quite a bit of service in this area its great. 

 

One thing that I have noticed is that missionaries are no longer tracting in LA as much. After the broadcast we as missionaries are focusing on member work. With all the changes you can't help think "Wow the work is moving along".

 

We haven't heard anything about recent changes to the mission we just hear things from our President when ever he decides what is best for the mission and we still have our back packs here. 

 

Mom I love all the care packages that you have been sending to me. If you could send me some Andrea Bocelli that would be fantastic. Also more pictures of family and friends would be great.

 

For this week my best is my new Comp! I am so lucky to have him as a companion. As for my worst it;s just being away from my family. 

 

Before I leave y'all, I want to bear my testimony of this Gospel.

 

Yo se que este iglesia es la iglesia de Dios, Se que Jesucristo es me salvador y la Roca de nuestro Salvacion. Mediente El, podemos vivir con nuestro familias para siempre. "Recodad hijos mios quien es la Roca de nuestro Redentor" El es Cristo. en quien lo debo todo lo.

 

I love you all and hope to hear from you soon!

Love Elder Chriss

 

A member from his old area

Some graffiti from his area

 

3rd Transfer, 3rd Area, 3rd Companion!

The sweet family that treated the Elders to "The Boiling Crab"!  Thanks for taking good care of my son!

Hey everybody how's it going? 

Well its that time again... Transfers, I will be moving again to an new area. My new area will be North Lynwood with Elder Abbot. I am excited for all the things and experiences that I will have in my new area. I wish that I was staying in Cimarron, just because I want to get to know the families in an area better than I have so far. But we will have to see. It will be interesting to see if I leave for Argentina at the end of this transfer. No more news of coarse about my visa but that's alright I'm needed here for a reason. 

It was weird saying good bye to Elder Winterrose, although I am excited for him to leave and to start his life. He is going to school at BYU Hawaii. 

All I have to say is that a mission is the hardest thing that I have ever done, and all of your love and support really keeps me going. Going from place to place is really hard because I don't have that ward family connection  with any one yet, mainly because I'm moving so much. But I am staying strong and working hard. 

 

This was a long week. Elder Winterrose had a bigilion things that he had to do before he left so I was just a tag along for most of the week.  This Sunday was great though because we had a Departing Missionary Fireside. This Is a fireside where all the leaving missionaries go up sing and bare there testimonies. It was cool to see all of the missionaries that have given two years of their lives to the Lord. It was also super cool when President Weidman asked the people in the audience who were baptized by one of the missionaries up front to stand. Nearly 20 stood up. It was so cool to see the work of the Lord done by these Elders.

 

Next week I will tell you all about all of my new stuff (Companion and Area) haven't met him yet....  

 

For the 4th of July we watched a super big firework show over the USC Coliseum, which is right next to our apartment. It was so cool to watch them from our apartment. The rule for the mission was to be back home by seven 'o clock so we got to watch all of those. 

 

The members in the ward are fantastic, they feed us mostly every night and I rarely have to cook.  When I do have to cook I usually boil water and cook frozen Ravioli. So my cooking skills aren't needed to bad.

 

With the new president, he has pretty much thrown out all of the rules that President Baker made. He says that we use our judgment if what we are doing is best for the mission. He told us to just follow the Missionary Handbook. So not to much change. 

 

Elder Winterrose and Elder Chriss.  Their last dinner before Elder Winterrose heads home!  Good luck Elder! (I think they both went to the same barber where my Marine son-in-law gets his hair cut!)

Best part of the week was one of our families took us to an amazing seafood place last night, I'm not the biggest fan of seafood, but man that was great.. It was called the Boiling Crab. 

 

The worst part was finding out that I'm moving.... I hate to pack all of my stuff up and leave.  I swear that I leave stuff each time. 

 

Well I have to go and finish packing I love you all SOOO much especially my MOM.

I will send you a email next week.

LOVE  ELDER CHRISS!!!!

New President, No Visa!!!

   

 

New and Old!  President and Sister Weidman and President and Sister Baker!

    Well the title tells it no visa yet. So I will be here probably until August. This is a little bit of a disappointment but I'm staying cool about all of it. 

    The big news of the week is that we got a new Mission President!!! His name is president Weidman and he is fantastic. He is such a cool man, and he is the 83rd most powerful man in the world so... pretty legit. The real cool thing about this fact is that he gave it all up for 3 years to come and do the things which the Lord asked of him. We got to have a meeting as a zone with him this past Saturday. The first thing as I come up to say hi was, that he gave me a big hug. Now I've had some hugs in my life time but there is something special about getting a hug from your mission President. His wife is also super awesome. She is very sweet and kind. You can just tell that they are excited to be here in LA serving as a Mission President.

    Cool thing Number 2 was in our ward yesterday we had a special missionary meeting.  In the meeting all of us missionaries got up and bore our testimonies/gave a talk about missionary work. We also as a group sang Joseph Smith's First Vision to the tune of Come thou Fount. It was such a cool thing to do for the ward and I loved being able to sing for them. There are ten Elders in that ward so we had quite the group.

    Man the weather is about to kill me.... It is sooooo hot here in Los Angeles, and there is no relief from said hotness. Nobody in this part of town has air conditioning and neither does our apartment. This is a minor complaint that only bothers us when we stop to think about it. So just one more of many motivations to keep busy. 

    We haven't had any new investigators this week which is pretty disappointing, but we are still knockin those doors and helping out our less actives.

    Funny thing with president Baker leaving was one day he was here and the next day he was gone It wasn't a very sad deal because we didn't notice that he left. Just a text saying hey this is President Weidman! Pretty funny. 

    Didn't have the opportunity of doing service this week, I love doing service because it is one of the best ways to spread the gospel. I would rather do service for an investigator for 2 hours than tract for 4 hours. true story....

    Dad I'm so happy every time I get your letters, I miss you so much and just getting those letters lifts my spirit. I hope that you will get a letter soon I wrote one last Monday and finally had the chance to send it this Friday (Darn Busy). I really appreciate all the love you send my way. I promise I will work on getting better at sending letters. keep on sending them.

    And to all my good friends I would love to be able to send you some letters so if you want you can send me and email with you home mailing address and I will try and write you all.

   For my Best and worst of the week. The Best was meeting President Weidman and his wonderful wife. They are great people and I'm excited to get to know them more. And the worst is that my Comp is leaving this transfer so he has hit Trunkey (the want to go home) Fever pretty dang bad and so not much has been going on. One more week of the transfer. But all is good here in the hood.

    Before I leave I want to share a thought. I was reading in the new Conference Ensign, the talk by President Uchtdorf. and It made me think of this City. Where we need to accept that there is darkness in our lives and in the world- but not dwell there.  But also remember that light exists and that is where we choose to dwell. Even though things in this City aren't the brightest doesn't mean we need to dwell there. As missionaries we are to lift the light that is Christ and be the beacon to all that we come in contact. Though we live in a world where darkness is abounding every where we choose to stay positive and dwell in the light. Hope that was good I'm not the most poetic person.

  

   Well until next week, your missionary in the Los Angeles California mission

Elder Chriss

PS. MOM I LOVE YOU SO MUCH

FIRST BAPTISM!!!

Elder Chriss, Enrique, Elder Marin, and Elder Clawson

Well this was a great week I'd have to say! Yesterday I went to my first baptism of one of my investigators WOOOOOH!  Enrique Got baptized!!!! I got the call on Saturday from my old comp saying that he was getting baptized, then an hour later Elder Clawson (Visa waiter who  came out with me and is in my old area) called and told me that Enrique wanted me to speak at the baptism. 

So I gave the talk on baptism. The talk went way good I think... yet again it was in Spanish so all the people in the audience were probably just smiling to be nice.... but I got smiles!!! It was so cool to have seen the entire process with Enrique, from the time we knocked on the door through all the lessons, to the Visitor Center, and now into the font. It was a great service and I got to see a bunch of members from my old area. Nothing beats watching some one you care soooo much about be baptized.

   

I loved the broadcast yesterday as well.  I'm sure It was cool for all the people in the MTC to watch it, but for me I thought it was better. Because the call to rally members didn't make sense to me in the MTC, I just thought that's how it worked already. But after being in the field and seeing the difference in the work from member work I got a lot more out of it. 

I'm good with having a Facebook!!! New set of numbers to send in at the end of the week: HOW MANY NEW FRIENDS DO YOU HAVE.... and HOW MANY INVESTIGATOR POKES THIS WEEK. But that was a great broadcast for members and missionaries a like.

I got my new debt card!!! This time I am keeping it away from dogs and small children, anything that likes to put things in their mouths. 

The best/worst part of my week was a service opportunity we had this week.... we cleaned out this ladies jumbo shed. Now this shed was a perfect allegory of our investigators lives. The place was full of junk things that had been thrown in there over years, some not so good magazines, old dvds, video games, tables, lots of wood, old clothes, and deep down a couple of bibles and scriptures. My description can't come close to help you understand how nasty this place was..... but back to my allegory, our investigators lives are like this shed, there are a lot of things can distract them or thing in there past that have built up over time.Things that they wish never came up or happened. But here is were the allegory gets better. All they need to do is call the missionaries! After several hours of cleaning, teaching and baptizing all of those things are gone and forgotten. Through the lord all things can be cleaned and forgiven.

Well I'm out of time, so I will keep you updated on every thing. Still no news on my visa but I will keep you in the loop about that as well.

Stay strong! Love you all!

LOVE 

Elder Chriss

  Elder Chriss and Elder Aguilar who came back to the mission after a month home

Elder Chriss and his companion Elder Winterrose

Fixed his speakers and taught him the Restoration!

 

The Coliseum Zone saying goodbye to President and Sister Baker! 
The CLAM will have a new President starting July 1.

Que paso, mi amigos! 

Well this was a great week! 

Elder Winterrose and I have not had much success in this area when it comes to contacting new investigators, so we decided to focus on part member families and less actives. This direction is working a lot better for this area. The only problem with trying to help reactivate a lot of the people is, they are tricky. A lot of the times they tell us they would love to meet with us, but not now and they will set something up with us on Sunday... and they don't come to church. So we just need to get into the home and talk to them.... darn tricky people.

So far we have had much more success with working with the less actives. So some other great news, our investigator made it to church. Things are moving along. This investigators name is Louis.  He is a very nice man who we tracted into. When we knocked on his door he said he would love to talk but he is trying to fix his speakers.  Elder Winterrose jumped on the opportunity and offered to help. We got in, fixed his speakers, and taught him the restoration. Now after a few attempts we got him to church!

Also, other good news, I received my Patriarchal  Blessing yesterday afternoon from the LA Stake Patriarch. This was a wonderful opportunity and a major blessing. I definitely needed the guidance and the help in this work and that blessing  definitely did the trick. He is going to try and get me the blessing all printed out by this Friday. That blessing is something that I will cherish forever. To any one preparing on going to a mission I highly recommend it before you leave.  I wish I would have.

No news on my visa but that is alright this mission has made me a lot more patient. With families in this area we really only have the Quintana family, they are a part member family who we are working heavily with.

I love all the gift cards you send me  mom I use them as much as I can. We haven't heard anything about our new mission president really other than he is a big time business man with a great testimony. I am also exited to meet my new president in BAN we will see when I do though.

My comp is good. It was not the most exiting of weeks. Just talking to a lot of odd people here. LA has a lot of weird people about. Best part of my week was my Blessing yesterday, and the worst part was only having 2 other lessons this week. 

The work is moving but insanely slow. On the bright side still haven't had to speak in church so far. There are 5 companionships in my ward so even if a missionary does speak I have less of a chance. 

I don't have picture this week I know you love them but I for got my cable today.

Well I love and miss you all!!  Keep me up dated.

Love

Elder Chriss.

P.S: I would love a new wallet because mine was completely destroyed by that dog!!! hahahaha.

Dog ate my wallet!!!

Hey everyone, a pretty good week!

All I have to say is this city never ceases to amaze me. Right next to our house is a pretty big apartment complex and I swear there are police going in there all day. Normally bringing some one out. LA Justice.... A little bit down the street from us is the Coliseum for USC and a jumbo museum and science center, very fancy and quite nice. So on one side of us a police bustin hot spot and on the other a nice University and Coliseum. You are not sure what you will find here on a regular day. Some of the things can be broken up into three groups

1.People

2.Places

3.Transportation

The biggest group is obviously PEOPLE. If I had a dollar for every drunk I have talked to I would have a lot of dollars. The things people wear are quite odd. Gosh darn sagging pants.

PLACES is a large group as well . There are over 1500 Christian churches in this city. Every where you turn is another church. Most if not all buildings have some type of Graffiti. And a there are a bagililion 99cent stores. 

TRANSPORTATION, there is no constant type of vehicle in this city. In one day I will see a brand new Ferrari, Lambo, and a couple hundred Camaros. And in the same day, I kid you not, a Latino man on a burro (Donkey) selling Tomalis ( the best tasting, you don't understand how good tomalis are until you have bought one off a man on a donkey), People on bikes, bikes with 50 mirrors on the handle bars, and of coarse the cursed... Ice Cream trucks. Now I know what you are thinking what is wrong with Ice cream trucks. the problem with them is they are every where. Always with that darn song. Plus they are not cute little ice cream trucks. These are armored vehicles with a creepy cartoon character on the side. And to tell you the truth... I think they follow us. FACT: there are more Ice cream trucks in Los Angeles than fish in the pacific ocean.

This is just a taste of LA.

So far the investigators in my last area haven't been baptized, but we will have to see. I am really getting to know my new Comp. So far I enjoy every second of hanging out and working with him. I am in LA 6th ward.  Its a pretty small ward but they are all great, we get fed most nights. Not as much as are last area but still a lot.

The best part of the week was a service project we have been doing. We are helping a part member family install a new sprinkler system. And when I say part member I mean Grandma is a member and all of her big family is not. Hna Quintana and her family are fantastic and I love them so much.

Also this was my worst part of my week because as I was working and one of their dogs ate my wallet.... everything inside is alright except my Debit Card has a bite taken out of it. So I do need a new one of those not sure how to go at that but I'm sure we can figure that out.

I love the care package and the brownies were fantastic. 

So all I really know is that as long as I am faithful I will be blessed.   

I just want to let you all know that I know this church is true, that is why I am out here and that is what I am teaching every day. Love you all and I will see you in a few (years).

Love, Elder Chriss

Temple PDay!!!!!!

Elder Chriss after attending a session at the LA Temple.  
You can tell it is Wednesday because he is wearing his Bro Tie!

Hey all so good to be able to shoot you an Email! Today is Temple P-day so that explains why I am sending this on Wednesday. It was an awesome session, what a beautiful temple!

It's a bit over cast today.... THANK YOU!!! It gets really hot here, not to mention I'm riding around all day in a white shirt and tie. So us missionaries are thankful for the cooler weather. 

I am in a new area this transfer The area is called Cimarron and all I have to say is L.A Ghetto, but I love it here. My new Companion is Elder Winterrose, from Washington State. He is a great Elder, He only has one transfer left of his mission so I am going to learn as much as I can from him. Our apartment is a pretty big apartment nice wood floors big rooms not much in the rooms but very clean. its on a second floor of a complex. 

My new ward I am assigned to is LA 6th ward. its a pretty small ward but we have great members. As in most wards each person has like 2 different callings in the church. But so far I love the ward. Biking in this area isn't bad there aren't very many big streets to worry about and since the main source of transportation is biking for the people in my area, people are used to bikers. My butt always hurts from being on my bike all the time, but I'm okay with it. 

So far the best part of my week was this mornings Temple session, the Los Angeles Temple is huge and so beautiful, inside and out. The worst part of my week was getting chased by a big dog who a little girl opened the door for. SNAP that was terrifying and we got a way bite free. 

I love the music you sent me, mom. I listen to it all the time. Well when I'm not out working. All the food you send me is so great. The muffins made it safe and sound as did the cookies in the pringles can!!! Also thank you for the camera charger it works!!!! 

I have to say that even though this place is incredibly hard, I will never lose hope and keep looking for those who the Lord has prepared. If you want to talk about a hard people, these are it. My zone also covers USC so that can give you a good reference point of where I am. Also I am right next to the "Jungle" for those who know what that is. 

The other day I was pretty down from a day of complete denials.  When I got back to our apartment I had a prompting to read my letter from Doris Armstrong. As I read the letter one phrase stood out to me. "I noticed the hand of the Lord at bringing the missionaries to my small town in England." This stood out to me so much because as a missionary I am being guided by the Lord to bring people unto Christ. We are being guided by our Heavenly Father's hands. 

Though the work is hard and the people's hearts seem harder, I will never give up because I am being guided and I know that this is where I am meant to be. I love you all so much and miss you just as much. Until next week!

Con Amor,

Elder Chriss

Ps - I went and got a doughnut from Randy's in Inglewood right before I left.  The pictures are me at the temple and the last is me and Aldo and his mom the Ramirez family a family in my first area.