Tuesday, November 1, 2016

ELDER MATTHEW LEBARON...Hello, Hello...with Pictures.



So transfers were today, me and Elder Katanuma are staying together in
Glendora 3rd, but there are a ton of changes coming up in our district, and
zone, every companionship in our district besides ours is being affected by
transfers, and we are even getting a new zone leader, transfers kind of
suck, because you start to develop close friendships with a lot of the
elders you work around, and the next thing you know, they're gone. One of
my favorite Elders, E. Astel, is getting transferred but we got to see him
before he left when p-day started. I'm betting on leaving next transfer
because after this , it will mean that I've been here for 6 months, and not
many missionaries make it passed that unless something weird happens.
Anyways its a relief, but kind of a burden at the same time, I was looking
forward to seeing another area of the mission, but find comfort in staying
where I know all the streets and ward members fairly well.

This past week it's rained a lot, which is good and bad for us, good
because I freaking love the rain, and its something different other than
sun all the time, bad because we don't really have a place to put our
bikes, so they get rained on, and also we aren't supposed to ride our bikes
in the rain, so it makes missionaries work hard. This is the first time
that I've actually seen real rain on my mission, and its wonderful, nothing
beats that cool fresh feel after a good rainstorm. After spending a good
amount of time sweating out here, its nice to be a little cold for once, I
looking forward to wearing sweaters, thats going to be sweet, everyone just
seems to be a little bit nicer when things cool down, seriously though, we
haven't been cussed out ever since its started to cool down.

Missionary work is hard, sometimes I wonder if we are in Europe, me and
Elder Katanuma have been working a lot with Former Investigators, mixed
with tracting, we will knock the formers house, the house on its left,
right, and the house behind it too, there is nothing more discouraging than
tracting in this mission, I couldn't even tell you how many doors we have
gotten slammed in our faces, and how many people just do not care about
religion, it is really heart breaking to see how many people don't believe
in anything, especially in Southern California. Every once in a while you
find someone, maybe they're not too terribly interested, but they're nice
to you, which is something that I find very refreshing, and at the same
time I'm a little hesitant, "wait, you don't want to flip us off, and throw
rocks at us?" That's... weird... one of he most important things that I
have learned in this mission is that you have to have a sense of humor, and
you have to laugh throughout the day, or there's no way you're going to
make it through.

There is this one family that is really really nice to us, and even invited
us to dinner one night, they are Catholic, but a different kind of Catholic
that I've every heard about before they are probably one of the most open
minded people that we have talked to that is devoted to their religion, and
we have given everyone in the family a Book of Mormon except the Mom, and
they have all agreed to read and ask if the book is true, they are so
freaking nice to us, and it makes me smile to know that they're are people
that are nice out here (well I'm sure a lot of people are nice out here,
but when you put on the white shirt and tag, it tends to make them a little
less nice.)

We are teaching this less active part member family, and after the lesson
they asked us if we wanted to stay and carve pumpkins, we agreed and got
all sorts of messy cleaning out pumpkins, which I was soon reminded is a
hard process, you pull all of the guts out, and scrap and scrap and scrap,
and scrap some more, until your hands cramp up, and then the carving
begins, it was pretty awesome to be able to take part in some of the
American traditions even while on a mission, me and E. Katanuma had a
blast! [image: image1.JPG][image: image2.JPG]
It was a pretty good week, we worked pretty hard, and I learned a lot
about different things you can do to improve your area, but so I think it
was pretty successful, even when you can't hit those key indicators I find
satisfaction knowing that I worked my hardest,

Thank everyone for all the emails, and support!

Elder LeBaron



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