Email Semanal 10 de febrero 2014

So I figured my 6 months left resolution was to actually get up, and stay awake in the morning, since I wake up, and the first thing I have been doing is getting in the shower, not the best idea so I figured I should actually do what the white handbook says and workout. I got an app on the appstore that is called the '7 minute workout' and it basically tells you what to do. It's pretty boss, I really like it. Anyway, so i'm awake now, usually I would be asleep on my chair or the couch right around this point... (it's 7:22 am and i'm eating cereal... cinnamon toast crunch to be exact) so I want to write about yesterday.

yesterday was preparation day, and we had a great day, this past week or whatever I got a gift card from Rocky, he was a guy we taught in Cupertino for a while, we mostly just helped him get a job since he doesn't have many qualifications, so anyway receive a gift card from him for 80 dollars at a restaurant called BJ's, and they don't have a ton of locations, the closest one to us was in San Mateo, which is out of the mission, so naturally we got permission to go to the one in Cupertino that's on Apple's Campus, so I invited the Spanish Elders, Spanish Sisters, and the Stake Sisters. Elder Perez, Harouny, and Sisters Billings, Baird, Schank and Ikegami. I also invited Helena, which I was happy to do.

Our rest of the p-day consisted of going to Daiso, getting a few news things for the house, and going home and napping until 6. That was really nice.

To make a long story short, I didn't make it the rest of the week writing in my journal every day, it's been a rough week in the work, so it's been hard, but here's a new week, so hopefully I will do better.

My companion got sick over the weekend, and so it made it hard to do work over the weekend, but we were able to get some stuff done. Sunday ended up being a lot better of a day than Friday and Saturday. Saturday we had a mission wide conference with Elder Quentin L. Cook there to speak to us. It was an amazing conference, and I felt the spirit for sure. He gave an apostolic blessing upon the mission and gave us some really great council. He was incredibly impressed with the mission, and said about 5 times how important this mission is on many different fronts, how some very important people live in this mission, and I think that included the large Chinese population as well.

It was great, after he left, we had a mission wide conference with President Watkins, you can feel he is leaving soon, and I don't want him to leave. This was the last 'mission wide' conference that he will have as a mission president here. I could feel it as he left (he had to leave early) but I'll have some 1 on 1 time with him before he leaves of course, we still have 1 month zone conference and 2 more interviews with him (one is next week, or this week rather?) and so i'll be looking forward to that.

Other than that, we are working with our investigators, it's just hard to get a time to meet with them right now, Luis, our most promising, we can't even get a hold of right now because of new job and new hours working there. I wish people didn't have to work. It's quite annoying in missionary work.

I just hope everyone has a safe week with all of this snow on the east coast. It's raining here a lot, and it's supposed to keep raining here, makes it hard for us to talk to people on the street, and just biking in general but we'll see how this week goes. This is the most rain I've seen in California since I've been here, and that's not saying much because it only rained 5 days in the year of 2013.

Have a good week,

Elder Sanchez

Email Semanal 3 de Febrero 2014

Hey everyone. Here's February. 

This week was a crazy week, we finally finally met the goals we meant to do, 20 lessons and 140 contacts, it was finally met. We are happy.

So over this past week, we went working really hard out there, we worked on talking to everyone, and we did just that, no matter what we were doing, no matter where we were heading, no matter how fast we were pedaling, we would stop and talk to the people, in their yards, in the street, and just talk about their lives. When talking to someone, a point that they bring up about their lives will always be related to a point of the gospel. It’s been fun and we have found numerous potential investigators this week alone. It’s been a lot of fun.

Monday was a good one, we were able to spend our preparation day with the other elders, we went shopping at Costco, and did all of this stuff. It was fun. After p-day ended we had a chance to have dinner with our bishop and his wife. That was cool, it was the first time we had a chance to get to know him a little bit better, and his wife as well. That was a great appointment and it was an opportunity to get their focus more on missionary work more in their daily lives.

We had made a new investigator the previous week, that was living in the same house as Luis Santos another investigator that we have been teaching, his name is Leo and he is 14. We taught him an intro into the Book of Mormon and talked more about the restoration of the gospel, and he said to come back and share more, so after Bishops dinner we headed over there, our appointed time of 7 pm. But he wasn’t there, his Aunt was there (she’s Luis’ wife) and she was like “I don’t think he was interested much in your message, he just has these bad ideas in his head about what life is, and so he doesn’t want to listen right now” so instead we met with her, and her son, they are both non-members, and so that was good. She isn’t interested in joining the church right now because she has her roots elsewhere when it comes to religion. That was that.

We had to quickly bike up to Redwood City to Cesars house from there in East Palo Alto, because we had an appointment with him at 8, so we got there, and it was the first time we were going to meet with him to teach him the lessons again. Cesar is the husband of the primary president of our ward. He is awesome, and is really friendly with us, we told him we had to teach him the lessons in Spanish even though his English is nearly perfect, so we did just that. It was a great lesson, and he seemed to know a lot more than he puts off to know, and so we asked a lot of questions in order to gain an understanding of his knowledge of the gospel, and most importantly we invited him to act, just as we are called to do. He had a question about why don’t we revere the Virgin Mary the same way that Catholics do (he is Catholic) and so we explained that we revere her and a chaste virtuous daughter of God that was worthy to bear the very Son of God, but that we don’t worship her, because she is but a mere human, and that we worship God and his son Jesus Christ only. He seemed to have took that answer well. We will be finishing the first lesson tonight at 8.

On Tuesday night, we had a great night, we were able to work in East Palo Alto primarily, we were able to meet with the Zamora family, they are a little less active in the church, and they are the ones that have 11 kids. So it was a really great to see how they doing and to see what we could do to help them out right now. They are moving to another house (which is long overdue) and that was good that we were able to lift their spirits some since they are going through a lot of trials right now (all in the game of 11 kids right?)

After that we had a chance with visit with our ‘investigator’ Edgar, he is the son of one of my favorite families here in the ward the Alfaro family, he just turned 8, but his parents want him to have the whole missionary lessons before he gets baptized in order to make sure that he understands the gospel as best as he can to make the proper decision to be baptized or not to be. We have to teach him really slow, and with a lot of visuals of course, and we can not take more than 15 minutes to teach. Teaching 8 year olds is hard work. But we manage to help him understand, so it’s good. We were fed some by the Alfaro’s as we always are, this week they had homemade chile rellenos (they were really nice mom)

After that we had the Ruiz family (as we do every single Tuesday) for dinner. This week was delicious, it was catered (he has some catering points with another restaurant so I think he got this food for nearly free from them) it was from another restaurant called Paradise, and it’s Persian/Iranian food. Basmati rice, beef kebab, chicken kebab, seared tomatoes, and seared jalapenos. It’s quite amazing. Brother Ruiz had taken us there a few weeks back, and he loves that restaurant. He tells us in the 20 years he has lived here in the US he has never eaten commercialized food in restaurants like McDonalds or Panda Express. He’s a boss.

Some other highlights from this week is that we have been able to get to know a lot of the members in the other areas this week, and had dinner with 3 of them. It was awesome, but the downside of that is, is that 3 members took us to Panda Express 3 days in a row this week. It was interesting to have that much panda express.

We did a lot of work, and we had 7 non-member lessons. The most interesting non-member lesson this week was on the street last night(Sunday night) on University Ave in Palo Alto (it’s basically about a mile+ of really expensive stores and restaurants, right down the street from Stanford) their names were Kevin and Shannon, and they looked visibly… under some influence, but still at the same time, normal enough to listen. I was with Elder Terry temporarily, and so we taught them about the basic tenets of the church. They understood, but they somehow took what we talked about, and brought into how drinking is bad and drugs are okay. So we heard their 10 minutes about how drugs are okay for your body and mind since they were put on the earth. We then kept bearing testimony about the church and the gospel, and asked them if we could leave them with a prayer, they then asked if they could kneel because that's how they pray, and so at 9 pm on University ave, on the sidewalk we knelt and prayed with them. Pretty weird and cool at the same time haha. After the prayer, he was like “This is going to sound super weird, but I want to give you a momento for this time we spent together this evening, and he pulled out a mini pink lighter, and signed his name in it with sharpie, and so did Shannon, and then they walked away. Super weird.

I know I’m supposed to write about my experiences on my mission, like about lessons and stuff, but I love writing about food experiences (I should go into foodblogging?... nah) anyway there’s always a best meal of the week, usually it’s with the Ruiz’s here, but this week it was different. Elder Phillips my companion has been wanting to go get sushi like for the past 3 weeks. Just non-stop nagging “Let’s go to Little Madfish and get some sushi” so finally on Saturday, we got 2 other Elders to come along, Elder Payne and Terry, and we went to this restaurant in Redwood City called Little Madfish, and we all got sushi, it’s basically selling sushi by the roll, and so I must say I have had sushi a few times on my mission, and have never really liked it a whole lot, just kind of like “Well okay, I can see why people would like it, but…” but this time was a lot different, this was really good stuff. I thought you needed to pay 40 dollars to get full at a sushi restaurant, but this place, 10 dollars and I was satisfied. I got the Philadelphia roll and the California Roll. From what I have here it’s http://www.littlemadfishrwc.com/Menu/menu.html

Email Semanal 27 de enero 2014

1/27/13

Time flies past so quickly, and in the mission it's like a time warp. Elder Perez which is the other spanish elder serving here in the area, are going home at the same time in August, and we were talking about how we don't have any time left at all. 4 transfers after this one, and then that's it. It's crazy to think about it, but I really am getting sucked into this time warp which we call the last 6 months. I was talking to an Elder named Elder Lambdin around April of last year and he said the same thing, he was talking about how he was going home in September and how he has like no time left at all, and then next thing that I knew... he went home. It's been a great mission so far, now lets make the last 6 months totally awesome.

This week we had great success, and we nearly (barely almost) made the standards of excellence for the mission. I realized Elder Phillips and I need to work harder on asking for information and a return appointment from people while we contact on the street, and we also need to work on our teaching skills in Spanish.

We had a chance this week to go with our investigator Luis (finally) to a courthouse to receive his license to be married to his wife, in order to be baptized. We went to the Palo Alto courthouse and it didn't work out, because Luis and Cecilia live in East Palo Alto (which is another city) and Palo Alto only does residents stuff. So we found out we had to go to Redwood City to do it, so Luis said we have to do it another day. We showed up to his house the next day and he wasn't there unfortunately. We will still keep trying.

Our investigator Oscar and his member wife Sylvia and doing really well, Oscar wants to be baptized pretty bad, and quite honestly is ready, but he has a pending divorce in Chile that needs to go through. We had dinner with him this past week, and it was really good. I enjoy being them, they have a lot of great stories to tell.

We had Elder Perez with us for 2 or 3 days this week as a trio, his companion was down with President Watkins because he needed to receive knee surgery. His new companions name is Elder Harouny and he's from Utah. That was fun to be in a trio for a few days, we definitely covered a lot of ground while we were all together.

The biggest moment of the week for sure was Saturday. Saturday Elder Phillips went into Elder Perez area with him, and Elder Olsen (one of the travelling assistants to the president) came with me for training and things like this. Elder Olsen is from Utah/ New Jersey and he's Dominican. He's a cool guy. He came into the area to show us how to contact more efficiently for spanish people, and how to invite to meet with us and stuff. He did a lot of training and roleplaying with me, and it really helped a lot. That day we got 12 addresses, and 11 of those said to come back. We got 2 new investigators that day, and it was awesome. It showed me really how to talk to people and invite people in this culture, since i'm not used to this culture in missionary work. Elder Olsen is awesome.

I really don't know what to say besides we really had a really great week this week, we are going to see great things in the next 5 weeks, and I am determined to leave this area better than I found it.

 Well have a great week everyone

Email Semanal 21 de enero 2014

1/27/13

Time flies past so quickly, and in the mission it's like a time warp. Elder Perez  the other spanish elder serving here in the area, is going home at the same time in August, and we were talking about how we don't have any time left at all. 4 transfers after this one, and then that's it. It's crazy to think about it, but I really am getting sucked into this time warp which we call the last 6 months. I was talking to an Elder named Elder Lambdin around April of last year and he said the same thing, he was talking about how he was going home in September and how he has like no time left at all, and then next thing that I knew... he went home. It's been a great mission so far, now lets make the last 6 months totally awesome.

This week we had great success, and we nearly (barely almost) made the standards of excellence for the mission. I realized Elder Phillips and I need to work harder on asking for information and a return appointment from people while we contact on the street, and we also need to work on our teaching skills in Spanish.

We had a chance this week to go with our investigator Luis (finally) to a courthouse to receive his license to be married to his wife, in order to be baptized. We went to the Palo Alto courthouse and it didn't work out, because Luis and Cecilia live in East Palo Alto (which is another city) and Palo Alto only does residents stuff. So we found out we had to go to Redwood City to do it, so Luis said we have to do it another day. We showed up to his house the next day and he wasn't there unfortunately. We will still keep trying.

Our investigator Oscar and his member wife Sylvia and doing really well, Oscar wants to be baptized pretty bad, and quite honestly is ready, but he has a pending divorce in Chile that needs to go through. We had dinner with him this past week, and it was really good. I enjoy being them, they have a lot of great stories to tell.

We had Elder Perez with us for 2 or 3 days this week as a trio, his companion was down with President Watkins because he needed to receive knee surgery. His new companions name is Elder Harouny and he's from Utah. That was fun to be in a trio for a few days, we definitely covered a lot of ground while we were all together.

The biggest moment of the week for sure was Saturday. Saturday Elder Phillips went into Elder Perez area with him, and Elder Olsen (one of the travelling assistants to the president) came with me for training and things like this. Elder Olsen is from Utah/ New Jersey and he's Dominican. He's a cool guy. He came into the area to show us how to contact more efficiently for spanish people, and how to invite to meet with us and stuff. He did a lot of training and roleplaying with me, and it really helped a lot. That day we got 12 addresses, and 11 of those said to come back. We got 2 new investigators that day, and it was awesome. It showed me really how to talk to people and invite people in this culture, since i'm not used to this culture in missionary work. Elder Olsen is awesome.

I really don't know what to say besides we really had a really great week this week, we are going to see great things in the next 5 weeks, and I am determined to leave this area better than I found it.

 Well have a great week everyone

Email Semanal 13 de enero 2014

Another hard working week, and the results have paid off, were working up to the standards of excellence for the mission week by week. This week has definitely been a hard one, but I am relieved we got through it, and that it's a preparation day now. So to tell you about this week!

This week was Week 5 of 6 of this transfer, the transfers sure do go by fast. My companion thinks he's going to get transferred and I will train a spanish missionary, but I very highly doubt that. I would rather not do that, but I finished guessing what The Lord wants for his missionaries.

On Monday, we had a pretty good night, we cleaned a lot during the day, and used our dinner in which we didn't have anyone sign up to clean more. President Watkins is doing apartment inspections this week, so we are trying to prepare some before he comes. When I first came to this apartment is was a garbage dump, and I've become a little bit of a neat freak since i've been on my mission, because a garbage dump apartment = bad missionary work. A clean pristine temple like apartment will bring forth more blessings. So, i've been doing a lot of cleaning here and there on the down time of the morning and night. It's pretty decently clean now, but we have to do some still to do. After that we went finding, and we went a visit a less active family that live pretty close to our house here in Menlo Park. They are from Salvador, and it's grandparents in their 50's taking care of their grandson. They are both decently successful in what they do, they are one of the few members that live in Menlo Park in our ward (it's a rather high end area) We were able to eat dinner with them, and have a great lesson on the Atonement and the new year.

On Tuesday we worked super hard to find new investigators, we spent 3 hours+ walking the streets of "Mini Michoacan" finding and contacting lots of people on the street. I'm not used to contacting in spanish, I often stutter over my words, and I often think of the way to say things in Chinese. My mind is very much in Chinese, and I often think in Chinese. No offense to English or Spanish for that matter but it's a superior language. It's great. We were able to have 3 lessons on the street, and able to get a few peoples information as well. After visiting a few people on our list of members and less actives to visit, we headed off to the Ruiz home, i've mentioned Brother Ruiz before in the past but he makes the best food. He's a chef, and a boss. He always has a theme for every one of his meals, so this time it was Italian night. We started off with a mozzarella, heirloom tomato, and lettuce with a vinaigrette on top with a homemade bruschetta with those bottled peppers in oil from Italy on top of the bruschetta. It was really nice, then the main course was a homemade lasagna with everything homemade (I think he even made the noodles?) it was nice, too filling. The drink was a coconut italian soda that was the best coconut drink i've ever had, just delicious. The end was some sort of pan dulce (mexican this time) that they only have once a year (some sort of king holiday on january 6?) and mexican hot chocolate. good way to end the meal.

Wednesday definitely we could have done more, it was a very service oriented day, and we did a lot of that. We should have had more contacts and lessons but we really did try our best.

Thursday we had a Zone Training meeting where we learned of new changes going on in the mission, nothing really too fancy or whatever just changes in taking numbers down at the end of the week. It was a good ZTM. After that we went with the other spanish elders and the polynesian elders to go try this challenge we've been meaning to do for little while, it was the "King of Philly" challenge at the Cheesesteak Shop in Palo Alto. This place is pretty legit and has real Philly cheesesteaks, they have rolls shipped in like every couple days from philadelphia, and they even ship in Tastykake (which I had totally forgotten about until I walked in there last week) it was cool. The challenge is 20 dollars, and it's 2 15 inch cheesesteaks with double meat, large coke, large fry and 1 tastykake, and if you finish all of that in under and hour you get your money back, a picture on the wall (there's only 5 pictures on the wall) and a T Shirt that says "King of Philly" on it. So the Tongan elders decided not to do it last minute because they wanted to eat Hawaiian BBQ instead, but Elder Phillips and I did it (keep in mind elder phillips is like 5"3' and 135 lbs) so I got the cheesesteaks, and the fries, and I went for it. Elder Phillips after 20 minutes of eating gave up, he barely even finished one, and half his fries. Poor guy. But I went at it for the whole allotted time, and I did it. I ate all of it. I can't believe I did, I really can't but I did. I was really super hungry too. I was the 6th person in the past 3 years to do it. Pretty boss, I didn't beat the record time unfortunately, but I did get on the wall of fame. +1 for the church, right? Maybe.

After that, we went with the Tongan elders to give a blessing, they needed to go really quick because the person was in bad condition, so we went on campus to stanford hospital, and we did a quick in and out to give the blessing. We went home, got all ready to go, and headed off to East Palo Alto on our bikes. We ended up meeting a member at a Less actives house who has been drinking a lot, he has 11 kids, and it's just a crazy house. We were able to teach a lesson to people outside of their house... 3 nonmembers just smoking and drinking out there. It was good. After that we went and finally met our promising investigator and his member wife. Oscar and Sylvia. Oscar is from Chile and Sylvia is from Peru. They are awesome! We had our member Jose Hernandez come along, and it was just really awesome. We will set a date for baptism the next time we go by. We also went by Luiz Santos' house that night, and he just came to the door and said "I'll be baptized... when can I be baptized" and we said how about "February 15?" and he said "Great." So really good night.

The rest of the week was really good, and we met our standards of excellence numbers for contacting, Saturday was a crazy day. Elder Barbosa (the other spanish elder in the other area) and Elder Phillips were both sick, so we did an exchange, Elder Phillips and Elder Barbosa together, and then Elder Perez and I, we went and worked in both of the areas, and it was a great day, we did mostly service all day (unplanned acts of service) we helped 2 sets of Sisters fix their bikes, we changes a flat tire that had burst on the side of Willow in EPA, and we just did a lot. We had a great dinner with a recent convert family, and was able to see another recent convert that night named Allan Da Cunha (he's from Brazil). It was just a good day.

By the way, Granny. What I bought with the money you gave me was two new T Shirts (which I LOVE) and a new pair of shoes (the first pair of shoes i've bought on my mission, it's about time!!) 

Hope everyone has a great week, and we'll talk next week.

Elder Nathan Sanchez

6 de enero 2014

Bear with me, this email is more of my goals this year, and the things I have learned last year. Not really much about this week.

1/6/13

Another year has come along in missionary work here in the beautiful California San Jose Mission and it's going to be a doozy. This year has some very lofty goals for the mission, and for the work here in this area. President Watkins has mentioned how this mission should be baptizing a lot less, not the most baptizing mission in California. This mission has 2.2 million people living in it, it contains the most godless city in the United States (that's a fact) Santa Cruz, and the proportion of Hindu and Chinese, the amount of peoples typical workday ending around 8 pm, proposition 8, and all of these things are pointing to this mission not being a mission that baptizes that much, but this past year we had 500 baptisms, more than any mission here, and we are projected to have closer to 800 this next year. I will not be here for all of that but I am surely looking forward to being here until August at least to see how this mission and this hastened work will end up looking like. It would be crazy to be a mission president, we will have to see what lies in store for the mission work in the rest of my life. China will open soon to missionary work, and I wonder what lies in store for me then.

The things I have learned in the past year are many, and are too many to list, but I will try to list them as they come to mind.

I have really learned a lot of patience in this past year, I have had companions where we might have no always been on the same page, and sometimes there needs to be a certain degree of righteous anger that comes into play. I love that scripture "reproving betimes with sharpness" and then afterwards comes with an increase of love. I definitely love that scripture. This has been a year where I definitely have learned hard work, yes there is times where I'll fall asleep during study time, or something other but I have seen hard work pay off in this past year. I have realize what a waste of time media can be in peoples homes, I am now looking from the inside out on what a waste of time these things can be. I have not fully decided on whether video games will be in my future at all or not, but I feel like at the very least video games and maybe in fact movies and television will be severely limited in my post mission life. It's just such a time waster. I have seen major miracles in my life in the use of time wisely, whether it be with my Chinese and spending countless hours studying sentence structure, characters and slang in Chinese, and everything in between (my slang is pretty up to date, not that that matters much here in the field though).

I have learned that rules are rules, and obedience is obedience. There isn't a middle ground in the gospel, that is, that when we break a rule, we lose blessings, and we sadden our Heavenly Father. I am not the perfect missionary in any sense of the word, I don't want anyone to think that I am absolutely just perfect in every aspect, every missionary has weaknesses, but I have seen that the more close to being exact, the better off we are. Now this is a shout out to Mom, but this is a scripture that I enjoy very much, and I know I was not a very good kid growing up, and it shows a lot in the way my mom and dad raised me, and they raised me well.

 21 Yea, and they did aobey and observe to perform every word of command with exactness; yea, and even according to their faith it was done unto them; and I did remember the words which they said unto me that their bmothers had taught them.

(Alma 57:21)

I remember speaking at stake conference priesthood meeting about my mission call here to this mission, and President Dunford got up and introduced me to the congregation (mom unfortunately you weren't there) but he started crying a little bit and said how grateful he was for you two for the way you raised me, and I appreciate it that very much. That is also something I am very grateful for in this new year, is that I might not have had a perfect childhood, but I know what is right because of it, and that's all that matters.

Now onto my goals, this is only a small tidbit of what I have learned this year, but here are my goals.

My goals for this year are lofty, and are really aimed towards who I am as a person and who I want to be. I want to go home with the best Chinese I can possibly have by the end of a two year mission, and I have set more specific goals, with reading, writing, and speaking in order to reach these goals. I will know more than 4000 characters by the time I go home (I know around 2000 now...) and I will get through my list of vocabulary words that I have written down in lessons, and during talks and things (it's a lot... I hope I can get through it and learn all of the words) and most importantly I think my accent still has tweaks here and there that I can work on, being in the Spanish program isn't helping much, but I am definitely working hard when I do have time to study Chinese to work on that. Generally Chinese people are honest, and being around a bunch of Spanish missionaries they ask "well how is his Chinese?" and a lot of the time they say perfect, but I really hope they don't mean that, because it is far from perfect, I still have years of work to do on it. We went to service the other day, and there was a chinese lady that worked at this senior home in Palo Alto and I found she is from Hebei so I started talking to her, and just doing little conversation here and there, and then Elder Perez was curious and he asked "How does he sound, is it good chinese?" and she said "If I closed my eyes and he was just speaking to me, I would find it hard to tell if he was American" so that tells me a little bit about where I am with the language. I still have a while to go.

Spiritual goals are always super important. One of my biggest goals by the end of the year/end of my mission is to be free of getting into ruts, no habits, no nothing to this extent. I know exactly what I need to do, so I do it, regardless of habits, or anything that I'm used to. I think that's something I have learned from my mission a lot is that "I do what I ought to do when I ought to do it, no matter what" That's not to say that i'm perfect at that in any way, but it's a principle that I have certainly learned while out here. Another spiritual goal I have is to be more versed in the scriptures, especially the New Testament. I made it a goal to read the whole New Testament by the end of my mission, and I am currently in 2 Corinthians 1, so I'm not too far off. I also would like to get through the Book of Mormon once more (I read super slow, I used an institute manual to study, and I do a lot of cross referencing and highlighting, it's a laborious slow process but worth it)

So these are some of my goals for this year, just pushing these last 7 months to do everything I can to make it count. This past week has been a pretty good week, the weeks go by too quick, and I've been here in the spanish program almost a transfer. According to President Watkins I'll be put back into Chinese on March 4th, and it looks like I'll be with Elder Butcher again in Pleasanton. I'm pretty excited for that, Elder Butcher is the best.

Anyway so this past week! We got a new investigator on Thursday, that was really cool, she is living with less active members, she's 20 years old. She has met with missionaries before and knows what we are about generally. We are excited for that, we have an appointment this next Sunday with her.

I had an opportunity this week to go on exchanges as well, I went with Elder Barbosa. Elder Barbosa is from Garden Grove, CA. He's a recent convert to the church of about a year and a half. He's been on his mission since August. I get along with him really well, he's become a really good friend of mine along with Elder Perez as well. There's those people that you meet on your mission that you know will be your friends long after the mission and these people definitely will. The exchange went really well, and we had a lot of fun. We were able to have 2 lessons and make a few contacts here and there with really promising people. 

All in all, it's been a good week. Increasing our lesson each week, so hopefully we can hit 17 this week. I'm praying that my spanish continues to improve, it still needs a lot of work.

 I love you all, and I hope all of you will set both spiritual and other goals for yourself, may I remind you that the year has past and we need not go back to the bad things that happened in the past, move on. That's why the Atonement is there.

I'll end my email with one of my favorite scriptures, it's from the Doctrine and Covenants.

 42 Behold, he who has arepented of his bsins, the same is cforgiven, and I, the Lord, remember them no more.

D&C 58:42

Elder Sanchez

30 de diciembre 2013

Well this week was Christmas and it was really nice talking to the whole family this week. The hour goes by pretty quick, and it's really quite crazy to think that I will have one more call home.

Christmas Eve and Christmas were all a lot of fun. For Christmas Eve we had the Christmas Breakfast and Devotional hosted by President Watkins himself. The Breakfast was a steak breakfast with all of the other typical american fare you can think of. I wasn't that hungry so I really didn't eat all that much but I had a good time talking to everyone and being able to reconnect with all my old friends and associates here in the mission. I was able to see Sister Li. Sister Li is the sister of the other Sister Li at the temple. Every time I've brought investigators to the temple visitors center in Oakland it's been Sister Li, she's from Hong Kong and so I've gotten to know her really well. Well Sister Li (her sister) is in our mission for 3 transfers, she is a temple square sister, and Temple Square sisters get a chance to come to another mission for 2-3 transfers. She came up to me and she said "So YOU'RE the Elder Sanchez my sister was telling me about..." It's weird because they look the same, except the Sister in our mission just looks younger.

I got to see everyone I used to see, all the Chinese missionaries, and my old zone, it was really fun. Our zone (Menlo Park) did a little gift exchange. My gift was a picture frame. It was a white elephant gift exchange so you didn't know what you were going to get. My picture frame was snatched up by Elder Call. I got Elder Peal's present which was 2 half pound reese's cups. I like Reese's quite a lot so that was good. It was just too much so I gave a lot of pieces to other missionaries.

The Devotional was really great, we all sat down, and heard special musical numbers by other missionaries, and then we had a chance to hear from Sister Packer the wife of the area authority here in the north California. Elder Packer then spoke, and his testimony is always really powerful. I've been able to hear from Elder Packer a lot in the past few months because he's been in the Saratoga stake twice while I was there. Really awesome guy.

President Watkins spoke about how important the work is here, and specifically talking about bringing a light and spirit into our families the following day through our phone calls and skyping home. He told a story about his own life, and in which President Watkins was nearly crying the whole time. He said "What limb would I have to give up? What check would I have to write? What would I have to do to go back to this day?" He related this story to making our parents proud and making sure we realize that we need not and should not waste a moment to be good to our parents, and our families. President Watkins did not want to go on a mission when he was younger but since he had so much pressure with the family and the people around him since his dad was a patriarch and all of this,  he put his mission papers into Salt Lake, and he received his call to go to the Mexico Mexico City mission. He told us about him and his mom boarded a plane to Salt Lake City and the whole time he was just full of dread and regret of going on a mission and just didn't want to go. They got to the MTC and He just had a bad attitude. Him and his mother went into the MTC and still had this bad attitude and look on his face. His mom grabbed him, and brought him to a section of hallway where no one was able to see. She pushed him up against the wall, and said "Elder Watkins, you need to be obedient and you need to work hard" and he responded with and as he mentioned with a typical eye roll and not making eye contact "Alright, I get it..." and then she repeated "You need to be obedient, and you need to work hard" and he said "alright mom, mom I get it. I get it" and then she said "This will be the last time you will see me in mortality, now you better work hard, and be obedient" and he responded with "Okay mom, isn't this hard enough?" and she walked away right when he said that. President Watkins mom died a little over a year later. He expressed how much he regretted that day, and how he would do anything to change that day. It was really touching.

Wednesday was another really great day of my mission, and I had a ton of fun. We woke up and opened our presents. I got a new Citizen Watch that is just plain handsome. A ton of candy too. We went to the Ruiz's house for a brunch. Brother Ruiz is a famous caterer here in the Bay Area and he loves food. He treats food pretty sacred. He has never ever been to a fast food restaurant or any commercial restaurant in 20 years +. He is the man, and so Elder Phillips and I sat with 4 sister missionaries for brunch and had a good time. Sister Billings, Sister Baird, Sister Ikegami, and Sister Schank. We had a wonderful brunch, and it was delicious, and then afterwards we got to call home. It was wonderful to talk to everyone, and be able to see everyone again as well.

After that we did more planning and studies, and went to dinner to a Polynesian family in the Menlo Park ward named the Navarros. It was good but I was still full from the Brunch. We then had a gift exchange which was a secret santa. I got Sister Sotele, which I served with in Saratoga when she first came out. She's Tongan from Utah. I got her a picture frame from Ikea with a cheesy picture of me and my testimony in it, and a bamboo plant in a decorative vase, it was nice, and I hope she liked it. I received a tie from Elder Strauss, which was really nice. Elder Strauss turns out used to go to the Nazareth ward for around 3 years back in 2001-2004. I don't remember him at all though?

We met with Members all week, and tried visiting with investigators too. We had a better week for sure. We had one of the AP's with us on Saturday, Elder Alvarez from Guatemala, and he helped us a lot with the area, since he served here for 5 transfers. Helped us get all the resources to gather all the people in this goldmine of an area. The highlight of that exchange was teaching my first "lesson 1" to a non-member in spanish. it went okay, my spanish definitely  not as good as my Chinese. But that was awesome.

Sunday was a great day as well, as I got to teach Christina!! It was awesome being back and teaching in Chinese again. I was on exchanges with Elder Zollinger, and he's brand new Chinese missionary to the field, only been here like 2 months. I love that family.

It has been an awesome week.

It's been weird to think that the entire year of 2013 I have spent serving. 2014 is 8 months and that's it. I am on the downhill, and it's a fast one.