March 30, 2015

Hola Familia/Amigos

    Well, another week has come and gone. And where did it go? I have no
idea! All I know is that I better email home otherwise I will probably
get quite the email in response to nothing from my loving Mother!

     However, I do have a few good things for you to take note of that I

want to share with you. I had a wonderful experience this
past week to be able to watch a very good friend of mine, that I met in
Sebastopol enter the waters of Baptism! It was such a good experience
to see someone who has come so far in his life, willing to do absolutely
anything to follow his Savior Jesus Christ! It was absolutely amazing.

     This past week, we took a small amount of time to plan out what we are
going to do for the wedding of The Luna Family, and also when we are
going to do it. I am very sad, because I am not going to
be able to watch the actual wedding take place because Hermano Joel

Rodriguez is going to take them to Oakland so they can
just get it done super quickly. However, we are going to have a
reception with a small amount of food and everything on the 10th of
April and then Hermano Ricardo Luna will be baptized on the 11th along
with his daughter Maria who turns 8 on the 9th of April. I am so
excited to be a part of this family becoming united, and in 1 year be
able to enter the House of the Lord to be sealed for time and all eternity.

      So I have to talk about last P-Day as well! It is so much fun to
be here in Woodland as well as serving around Elder Choffin! He is
such a great kid, and is from Sugar Salem! We actually watched him
play his last high school game at Meridian High School when they got
beat by Filer High School. Basketball is so much fun with him, it
actually surprised me how well we play together, and how we know each
other's next move. We went to the community center again and boy did
we destroy some of those guys. They were so shocked when we told them
that we were missionaries from the church, but we grew up in Idaho!
They would have never guessed that such ballers came from a small state
like Idaho. Especially some of players we played against that were
actual players from UC Davis. It was a ton of fun.

     Elder Choffin and I both have decided that we are probably going to go
to BYU-I for 1 year, and then we would like to both transfer together
to see if we can play basketball at Idaho State. It should be a ton of
fun, and we will see if things all work out, but we have been setting
it up, and planning it out for sure. He goes home in September!

We had a pretty killer week overall though. We struggled a little bit
when it comes to the number of lessons and such, however it is important
for us to remember that it's not about the number of lessons we teach
it's more about how much we help others to come unto the savior Jesus
Christ.

Elder Jeske and I have set a goal for this coming week.  We want to

find a family that we will teach and prepare for baptism.  We would like them to be
ready to be baptized the weekend before I come home. I am so excited
to exercise my faith, prayer, and diligence so that way we can find this
family! If you would all like to join in with this end of the work
through prayer that would be super awesome! I am so excited!

Tuesday was another wonderful District meeting. Gosh dang, I am really
starting to enjoying teaching district meetings now. The first time in
Vallejo was just way too stressful. Now I am to the point where I
realize that it's more about having fun, than being serious all the
time. Also it’s making sure that it is more of a discussion than a District
Leader preaching to the choir. Everyone in my District is getting
along super well, and we truly are enjoying our time together here in
Woodland!

     This week definitely had its ups and downs though, that's for sure. We
had to drop quite a few investigators because we finally got them to
open up to us, and they straight up told us they didn't want to get
baptized. Which is completely fine with me, because we are looking for
those who are ready. They will be ready when their day comes around. I

know that we all have our agency to choose what we want from this life.

It's been a little tough lately, since my allergies are absolutely killing me!

I hope you guys are all Doing well!

I love and miss you all!

Love,
Elder Albertson

March 23, 2015

Hola Familia/ Amigos

     Wow! This week seemed like it was taking forever to go by, but now looking back at things, I don't even know where it all began, let alone where it went! However it has been a wonderful week. I absolutely enjoyed it all. 

     Elder Jeske, my new companion, who I have quite a history with here in the mission, is absolutely amazing. We have enjoyed our time so much so far. It's been great.  We’re working hard and having fun! We served around each other in Santa Rosa when Elder Jeske was actually a greenie! In other words I watched him be born into the mission. Then we served around each other in Vallejo! I was actually his district leader for a transfer and we had some wonderful exchanges. Now we are together here in Woodland!!  

     I do have a few words for my Father, as well as my Brother-n-law! I am not happy with either of you right now. At this moment March Madness is going on, and I am not getting updated about any of this! However, just so you all know, GO ARIZONA WILDCATS! 

     Alrighty let's see how the week went! To begin let me start off by telling you all how much fun P-Day was last week. We played so good hardcore basketball. It was amazing. We found a city rec center here in Woodland that is free to play at and a ton of people from all over the area come to play ball! We played some people from Sacramento, Davis, Woodland, and even Roseville last week! It was so much fun and very competitive. It was really intense. I had a ton of fun and got a lot of exercise. Never have I been able to just full on ball like I was in high school throughout my mission! It was awesome! 

    Monday night was absolutely just crazy because the fact that Elder Long had to pack his bags. We then spent the night flying around our area, trying to visit all of the members, and investigators that he wanted to say goodbye to before he took off Tuesday morning! It was super sad for both of us especially when we were at the Luna families home having to say goodbye. The good thing though is that he will be on Skype when we baptize the Luna family here in 2 weeks! We are super excited! Please keep them in your prayers that they will make it! 

     Speaking of keeping people in your Prayers, can you all remember to pray for my brother Eric Long who lives in Sebastopol. He is on day 12 of no smoking, got married on Saturday and will be getting baptized this Saturday! I love him so much. He is definitely one of my brothers who I know I came on my mission to find and teach, an watch get baptized. I am so excited for Eric. Heavenly Father truly has been answering my prayers. 

     Tuesday was a day full of chaos. With transfers and everything it was absolutely crazy. We had a lot of fun. I was with Elder Shen all day. He is super funny and super laid back! We decided that we were going to give my bike a new paint job, which we did! It went super well.  We did this while waiting for the other missionaries to come back from transfer meeting! My bike has absolutely been changed forever! It looks so good. I am even considering selling it for a $150 or so.  

    Elder Jeske and the rest of the elders didn't even show up here in Woodland until 6:30 that evening. If was stressful because we had splits with the some members that evening. We had some very important lessons to teach that night that we couldn’t miss. Luckily when they got back we grabbed them and ran like crazy. We had a super successful night that evening. It was awesome.  

    I can't express how excited I am for this transfer! It is going to be so much fun! The rest of the week didn't go as well as we planned for it to go. However that's pretty common when it's week one of a new transfer, because you’re just constantly trying to get everything reorganized, get used to the area, and such. However it didn't go as bad as I thought it was going to. 

     Friday we had a wonderful district meeting. It was so weird to be teaching a district meeting once again. However I really enjoyed it. More importantly though I think my district enjoyed it as well and I know they will learn to love it even more. We are going to have such a good time because everyone in my district is absolutely awesome, and such great missionaries, that I don't feel like I am really going to have to do much except for teaching the district meetings. I am so very excited for everything! 

    We had some super good lessons with the Luna Family. They keep coming to church and are progressing so well. We are so excited that they are ready to take the step to be married as well. And they plan to take the step of baptism on April 11th! 

    Everything is going super well here in Woodland! I am enjoying my time so much and am very thankful for everything I have learned these last 2 years on my mission, and continue looking for more opportunities to learn! 

Thank you all so much for you support! I hope all goes well!

Mom, and MaKaul I am very sorry that this is late, however FELIZ CUMPLEAÑOS!!! 

Love you all! 

Elder Albertson  

March 16, 2015

Hola Familia/ Amigos 

In this email, I am going to have some super good and cool information to share. However, on the flip side there is going to a few things that I will mention that are not so exciting. We will see how things turn out, with my upcoming transfer and all. 

Well, to start it off, I just want to say I am so sad that transfers have come so quickly. It's so weird to me, that I started my mission with a 12 week training program and now I am super sad to say, that I only have 12 weeks left. It's scary to think about. However I know that my time will come to an end, when the Lord will have something else in his plans for me. 

My good old companion Elder Long will be leaving Woodland! It sucks to see this happen, because we have had such a wonderful transfer together. I’ve probably had some of the best memories, and miracles happen in this last transfer. However we did a really bad job documenting it. We didn't take very many pictures or videos this transfer. Elder Long is going to be headed down to San Rafael to serve the souls there. 

My new companion, who will be coming in, and I have served around each other quite a bit during my mission. He was in Santa Rosa, way back in the day when I was training Elder Dunlap! He has been out about 18 months I believe and I was also his district leader in Vallejo! So we have had some good times together! Elder Jeske is his Name! He is from Orem Utah! Another Utahteco Pues. 

This past week has been absolutely wonderful! We have had so much fun working hard, and enjoying our time together. We definitely didn't think it would be coming to an end like this. However, we both understand that the Lord has a plan for each of us. 

We have been dealing with a few new things, that we just learned in the past little bit. We actually found out that the Luna family, who we have been working with so consistently and are planning on getting baptized on the 11th of April. Although we just found out they are not actually married. So we have one more trial that has been placed before us. However, we know that we can take care of something like this super simply. It is just take a matter of time. 

We are still struggling to get the importance of coming to church into the minds of our other investigators. They are constantly telling us that they want to come to church, but then every Sunday they just come up with some kind of excuse of why they didn’t come. It's super disappointing, however we will get them there. It will just take a bit more time. 

On Wednesday we all had to wake up at 4:30 in the morning so that we could be in Santa Rosa by 9:30 for an all mission conference with Elder Nielson and Bro. Heaton who are from the MTC and the 1st Quorum of the Seventy! It was awesome! All of us missionaries received new ipads. The missionaries who have longer than 6 months left on their missions, actually paid for these ipads which means they will take it home. Their parents had to pay a $381 dollar technology fee. Those who have less than 6 months still have an ipad on lease from the church. 

We learned a lot about the reason we have ipads in the first place! Yes! it is to build up the kingdom of God, but more importantly is so we can all grow and learn how to use technology in a way that is righteous. Develop good habits for after the mission! 

Most of all, the church wants us all to learn how to use technology an have the strength not to get caught up in Pornography. Where is a better place to learn than on your mission? On our missions we are protected from the temptations our devices can bring and so are our companions, and leaders in the mission! I am super excited to see where, and how the work is going. By the end of May they will have 88 missions with these new devices, some of them in the Eastern Countries. 

So Friday, being transfer doctrine day, made the entire day super interesting. Everyone in the zone suggested me to be a trainer. So we thought we would have been receiving a call from Presidente Alba for that! Although there was only 1 new spanish speaking missionary coming into the mission. Well on our way to dinner at 4:48 we received that call from Presidente Alba, however our phone was in the trunk of the car so we missed the call! Immediately afterwards, the other elders got a call and we found out that Elder Blaylock who I live with was called to be our new District Leader. Well since my companion Elder Long was the district leader, we knew he was most likely leaving. This led us all to believe that I was definitely being called as a Trainer. However, when we finally got into communication with President Alba, he called me to be a District leader once again! I am not too excited about this calling, but have accepted it, and will fulfill it to the best of my abilities. 

Saturday and Sunday we had Stake conference, which was super cool! We actually had Elder Sitati show up from the 1st quorum of the seventy and speak to the Woodland stake. Something super interesting was the fact that I had to translate for Elder Sitati. It was a super fun experience but also super hard. I guess I did a good enough job! That’s just something that falls on your shoulders when you are the oldest missionary in the district! 

We also had a super cool meeting with him as missionaries Sunday morning where he wanted to meet and greet all of our returning less actives, and investigators. It was a ton of fun! He did a great job answering their questions in an amazingly spiritual way! 

Well I don't have much more to report on! I hope you all have had a wonderful week! I love and miss you all! 

Love you! 

Elder Albertson