Elder Parker Albertson- California Santa Rosa Mission: September 8, 2014

Dear Familia/ Amigos

Wow! This has been a tough week, and a great week. I don't even know
where to begin. We had a great week, teaching many lessons, and
helping others come unto Christ. However, we are going through quite
the process of refining ourselves, and trying to become better, from
some mistakes we have made! We are not all perfect, and it's such a
blessing we have the Atonement in our life, to become
better, and be forgiven of our mistakes.

Monday was a pretty interesting day. We were able to have a lot of
fun, and play some good basketball! However, since we had a vehicle we
are required to wash it weekly, so we do so on Monday. Being a
missionary, we thought we might be able to trick the system a little
bit, so we decided to go to a car wash where if we pay $5 we can wash
our car for along as we want, up to 20 minutes. We thought we could
wash each car for about 10 minutes and that would do a great job.
However we soon found out that we aren't as smart as we thought, and
when we went to move our car, to pull the Zone Leaders car in. The
machine turned off. Next thing we know I look over and see a sign that
said "Car wash has Scale, machine will turn off when vehicle leaves
Car wash bay." So disappointed. Ha ha

Monday night was such a great night. We had such a wonderful lesson
with Jefferson Medina who has been at a Soccer tournament, and we
haven't been able to see him in about 2 weeks! It was great to finally
be able to meet with him again, and see how he is doing. His desire
to be baptized has been lost a little bit, however I know that it will
be back once he begins to feel the spirit again in his life. We also
had a wonderful first lesson with a couple whose last name is La
Familia Hernandez, we were walking down the street and saw them, and
began to talk with them. They are awesome. Hopefully we will be able
to see them again soon.

Tuesday was not the best day, when it came to some of our decisions,
however the Zone meeting that we had that morning was great! We were
able to learn so much, concerning the desire, and sacrifice that we
need to have as missionaries. Such a great learning experience that I
had.

Tuesday night went very well. We had such a great night
teaching a ton of lessons. We taught three great lessons that night, with
La Familia Carreon who lives in Benicia. They were super solid, until
Thursday night when we got a phone call that they are not interested in
meeting with us anymore. Super sad, because they were great. I am
hopeful that they will be baptized eventually. We also taught a wonderful
lesson with Hermano y Hermana Rabanales. Their health is starting to
get so much better. I really hope that one day they will be able to
return and make it to church, and that Hermana Rabanales will be able
to be baptized and join her husband. We also taught a great lesson
with La Familia Ramos. I was able to even get their signatures, that
they will all be able to make it to church on Sunday.

Wednesday was another fun day. We tried having lunch at 1:00 to see if
it would help with us in maybe being able to teach a lesson or two
before lunch. We went to see a lady that we recently found named,
Rosalia Padilla, who is super nice, but says she is Catholic. That's
okay though, we just want to strengthen peoples faith right? Ha ha. She
is actually starting to progress a little bit. She is going to be a solid
investigator now that we are going to start getting our point across.

Wednesday night, we had a pretty successful night as well! We were
able to teach a very powerful lesson to Jefferson. Jefferson, was very
down on his game. Something was triggering and hitting him hard in life
at that time. However, we were prompted to share
the video “Mountains to Climb with Him”. He took it very well! He
actually really liked it. It's such a blessing to have an iPad as a
missionary tool, and be able to share all of the wonderful messages that
the church has made, and turns into a small videos to share. They are
so powerful and can invite the spirit so strong into people’s homes.

We taught a crazy fun lesson with an older gentleman whose name is
Alejandro. He is super funny. We were going through the records, and
found Alejandro and decided that we would go and try and see him. He
let us in immediately and was super funny. Hopefully he will be able
to set more time aside so that we can start teaching him more
consistently. He is such a great guy, kind of reminds me of you Dad, but
in a Hispanic way! If you know what I mean?

Thursday was kind of a wild day! Having a wonderful lesson before lunch
with Rosalia Padilla! This time the lesson went so much better. We were

able to teach her without her constantly saying she was
Catholic which was such a blessing. We actually got somewhere with her
this time.

We went to the Tapatia for lunch, dropped in to see how much a super
burrito cost, cause we were starving and figured a burrito would do us
well! While we were there a member walked up to us from Fairfield who
actually ended up being the Sister of Elder Carlos Amado. She was
super nice and bought us lunch, what a blessing members can be in our
lives. We then sat down to eat with her and Elder Carlos Amado's Mom,
and next thing we knew the whole Amado family was there except Carlos.
It was a lot of fun. And we were able to talk to them about what it is
like to have a brother or son as a quorum of 70! Pretty interesting.

Around 1:30 is when we did our exchanges this week! The exchange that I went on with Elder Jeske was great! We had a lot of fun, and were able to get a lot of things done! I had a great wrestling match with the concrete though! It was a lot stronger than me though! The concrete definitely won the battle! Since Elder Jeske and Elder Ford are on bikes, I had the opportunity to go to their area and work with Elder Jeske. Well, while riding to an appointment, I hit the curb wrong and wrecked with my tube exploding and then eating the concrete! I couldn't walk for the rest of the day. In fact I couldn't even get my leg to really move that well! I was a little concerned that I had fractured my hip! It wouldn't have surprised me since I was going 20 or 25 MPH! Helmet went flying off, so did my Invicta watch that is now broken, and my arm which is all cut up! It was a pretty interesting day! I will admit that I didn't waste the rest of the day! I went and got Elder Ashton's bike and rode it for the rest of the day!

Thursday night, I slept on the couch at the other Elder’s apartment because I was in so much pain that I couldn't get myself situated on the bed to be able to sleep! Unfortunately, I couldn't do it on the couch either! Considering the fact I laid in bed until about 4 in the morning wide awake and in pain even when breathing. I think I got about 2 or 3 hours of sleep that night!

Saturday night we were able to go to Stake Conference in Napa! Elder Acosta was there and gave a wonderful talk in the Saturday night session concerning Missionary work, and how important it is for us to be successful! Also how important it is for even just 1 person to convert themselves. There was also a wonderful talk on Obedience! At the end of the meeting I was able to shake hands with Elder Acosta, and talk with him, in Spanish! That was great.

Sunday was another great day of Stake conference! Not much happened, however we had an investigator there! She loved it! Hermana Ramos is probably going to be getting baptized soon! I was able to fast, and truly ask to help humble myself and repent for the mistakes I had made! I am on my way to become a changed man from the mistakes I made!

Overall it was a pretty good week! It’s been hard, but good! It will be great because our entire mission is going to be taking a break from Facebook, and re-evaluating how we work on Facebook for a while! Not sure for how long, but those distractions will be gone, which will be great!

Love you.

Love,

Elder Albertson