Elder Shields in Carlsbad, CA

So this is my first week with a new trainee. I went and picked him up on Tuesday night. His name is Elder Snyder and he is from Ogden Utah. He's a pretty cool guy! He's a little shy tho and a little apprehensive to talk to people but I'm gonna get him broken out of his shell in no time! A lot changed in the zone, I got a new district leader and a new zone leader, two areas got whitewashed and there was like five other people getting transferred out. It's gonna be a lot of fun getting to know all the new missionaries!  We got to teach Shaelee this week, we taught her at the Jamchis house, it was pretty sweet. We really need to talk to the parents tho to find out where they are at on letting her be baptized and all that good stuff.  Bridgette's kid is having surgery this week so we won't be able to meet with her, but plz keep her in your prayers, we definitely are and we are doing whatever we can to help her during this hard time!! Thanksgiving was so fun!...

So transfers are this week I am staying in French Valley, and I got a call on Friday and I found out that I will be training! I have to go down to Vista tomorrow night to pick up my greenie, I will send pics and stuff for that next week!  Got to go to Mormon Battalion this week which was super fun! They do a little tour and we got to learn all the history of the Mormon Battalion and then we did a little devotional in one of the rooms in the buildings, it was super cool to see how big of a role the Mormons played in the history of the country!  For Zone Conference unfortunately L Whitney Clayton got reassigned at the last second, so we got Elder Taniela B Wakolo and his wife. It was super good tho! I learned a ton about some of the patterns that are used in our church and we talked a lot about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, The Atonement of Jesus Christ and about the saving ordinances in our church and why they are necessary, it was sweet.  No good news from Bridget and...

Definitely felt the prayers this week, because we had a super solid lesson with Bridget on Tuesday! It was good to finally get into contact with her again. Since it had been so long since we met with her we just read the Book of Mormon with her. She had some concerns about why bad things happen to good people, which is always a really tough subject, she was especially fired up about it because of all the shootings in Texas and Vegas and other places. We shared the scripture Alma 60:13 with her and she immediately expressed that she felt a lot better about it! Matt Bradshaw was at the lesson with us. Since he is a RM and doesn't have a job yet and isn't going to school, all he wants to do is go out and work with us, he even went tracting with us on Thursday. I enjoyed it a lot.  Went on two exchanges this week, one with Elder Taylor, who is the same mission age as me, and one with Elder Phillips, who is going home in 8 days. It was a really good experience to go out with Elder...

Hello, so all day P day was straight up so baller!!! Got a sweet deal on bowling cuz we went in the middle of the day and there was like 30 of us so we got a group deal, and then we got to just go to the church building eat Hawaiian food that was catered to us because of a member in the Murrieta stake, and play ping pong and basketball and just to whatever. I only watched some of the Saratov Approach, because I was much more interested in playing around the world or dynamite haha.  So we taught Shaelee again and she said that if it is okay with her parents that she would want to be baptized!! but the mom isn't too thrilled about it she was pretty cold to us after that and she cancelled our appointment with them for this upcoming week, so from now on when working with them we just need to take it very slow, but it's good to know that that is something that Shaelee wants for sure.  We have an appointment with Bridget on Tuesday, and plzzz pray that it doesn't fall through...