Elder Shields in Carlsbad, CA

Hello Family what is upppp!!?  SO basically the lowdown with the Emmichs is that they don't feel like this ward is the ward that they will come back to the church in, they think all the people in the ward are fake and that they don't really care about them, which is super sad because that is not the situation at all!! If anything the complete opposite is true, the people love them and want them to come back, and we will continue to express that to them, but they still are unlikely to come back to church. They still want us to come over to teach Shaelee, but the family is unlikely to come back, we will continue to work with them.  Taught two new people this week, Mark and Shawnda. Mark has talked a lot with missionaries in the past, and all of his concerns are on nit picky things. For example, why we use the King James version of the Bible instead of the Douay-Rhiems and why the apostolic succession ended so quickly after Christ's death. If anyone has any input please s...

Hello everyone hope everything's going awesome wherever you all are at!!  Had zone conferece this week which was super awesome!! We talked a lot about the conversion process and how the investigator needs to know, feel, and do in order to experience conversion. The only one we have control over is the know, so we have to own that by teaching clearly and simply and extending bold invitations! We also spent a lot of time with the Sister Fulcher case study, which basically teaches about an amazing missionary who served in Boston (Shout out to Sarah, served in the same mission!! probs was a better missionary than Sister Fulcher too!) who did everything she could to use the ward in all her efforts! Super inspired and taught me a lot of good ways to get involved with the members!! While Elder Snyder was on exchanges in our area, the lesson with Richard and the fam fell through again, we are not sure how much longer we are going to keep trying to work with them, they just are so flak...

Pretty Solid week this week! We found out that our mission will be transitioning to smart phones in the next month or so, so that will be super weird! We will also be using facebook, which is definitely something I was not going to be able to look at for like another 19 months.  Had an interesting lesson with Shaelee and her fam. We have been trying to get her to come to church for a long time, but she just doesn't have the support from her parents to get her to go. While we were in the lesson Sister Emmich basically told us that Shaelee playing softball comes before her going to church. That girl needs to sort out her priorities (hopefully everyone gets that movie quote). We will continue to work with them, but the fact that they just don't place any importance on church attendance is making is very difficult for Shaelee to progress towards baptism.  Also went on exchanges with the zone leaders. I went with Elder Pond this time and quite a bit happened! We finally got ba...

Hey everyone!!  One of the slower weeks out on here in Temecula, but still a good one. Although Bridget did officially drop us which was super unfortunate. Her life is just too crazy right now and her relationship with her family is getting strained because of her learning more about the church. It is sad to see someone start to change and realize that the Gospel will be a blessing in their life, and then just drop it. The ward is going to continue to reach out to her, but for now we will not have any contact with her:(  We did have a super solid lesson with Shaelee and her family! Her mom expressed to us that she thinks that Shaelee being baptized will bring their family closer together because they haven't been involved in the church in a long time! And she seems like she wants to start coming to church again too! But the dad is still SUPER hesitant and it is really frustrating, we trying to find out why the dad doesn't want to come back to church, because once we resol...

Happy New Year everyone!! Sorry everyone I forgot to tell you that my P day was actually on Tuesday this week. My bad!!   It was a pretty slow week because EVERYONE was busy because of the holidays. We did go on exchanges this week with the zone leaders. I worked in the YSA while Elder Snyder got to take over the area for the first time! He was pretty dang nervous, but I knew he would do awesome, and he did.  One of the Elders in Lake Skinner (the neighboring ward) got pretty sick, so me and Elder Snyder had to do a sick exchange with them for a little bit so that they could still have some time to work their area. So I went out and worked the Lake Skinner ward for like 3 hours, and it was the weirdest thing ever!   New Years Eve was pretty dang fun! Had a way cool church block, there was a double homecoming out ward, and they were twins so that is even cooler. We also got to go over to a part member families house named the Craigs for a bit after we had d...