The need for Repentance

This week was super interesting. Everyday I meet people and i have the thought "you could really REALLY need Jesus in your life". And that's exactly what I try to help them do. Sometimes it goes good and sometimes it doesn't.

This is pretty much my first area where I see people, who we would probably refer to as "tweakers", pretty much everyday, multiple times a day. My heart gets really sad when I see them. I know that God loves them and is sad at the choices they made in their lives that put them in that situation. We're semi teaching this guy named Bruce whose life has gotten really messed up from drugs. He loves church but it's really hard for him to progress so please pray for Bruce.

On a happier note, we gave our friend Jay a baptismal date and he's excited to work towards it.

Also this week our friend Pedro showed up to church and our members made him feel super welcome. He also had a lot of clarifying questions about the Book of Mormon so those were super cool to answer.

We have a returning member named Rachel who reached out to us. She came to church and we met her. We talked about her concerns. She started off with the things she liked and that made sense to her. She understands the sacrament, and baptism, and the temple, and prophets, but the one thing that she wasn't too sure on was the Book of Mormon. We had a phone call with her and she was just asking about the structure of the Book of Mormon. We gave her a rough outline and explained how Mormon was the person who organized the Book into what we have today. She said she was taking a lot car drive so she was just gonna start from the beginning and listen. It was awesome to see the Spirit work because the next day we got a text that said "I finally understand it now".

We had a lesson yesterday with our friend Collin and it started pretty rough. He told us some horrible things that have happened to him. With the story i thought that the Spirit wasn't going to be there. I was honestly very hesitant to share what we had prepared but my companion started the lesson we prepared and we invited Collin to be baptized. He said yes, absolutely that would be his next step. Surely enough we had one of the most Spirit filled lessons I've had on the mission. Collin wasn't ready to set a date yet but he gave us a day that he wanted to set the day. I hope that last sentence made sense. He's planning to make church a regular part of his schedule in the next few weeks!

I was pretty humbled this week. It was a combination of a lot of different things. I'm follow up training right now and you'd think when someone says they're training it means that they've gotten a handle on missionary work and know everything that they're doing. From training two different people two transfers in a row and can simply say that that isn't the case. I am learning so much right now. Not only from the situations we're put in but also from my companions, with some of them being a missionary for less than a month. I have a long way to go and for those of you who made it this far in my email i just want to say thank you. I know reading emails can be hard so thanks for bearing with me.

Anyways... I hope I can stay humble and I invite y'all to be humble as well and just accepts God's will. It's really hard sometimes and I'm still learning how to do it. But i want to be better and I know thats part of the process.

Hope everyone had a good week. This feels like a long email. I'm grateful for all my many blessings out here in California. Also I heard about Charlie Kirk and that's sad.