Elder Shields in Carlsbad, CA

This week was pretty awesome!   The highlight was definitely the zone conference we had this week. We had a visiting authority here, Elder Bangerter. The instruction we recieved was focused on a few different things, how our desires effect our choices and actions and therefore our exaltation, our ability to access God's power (and that everyone has that ability), and developing faith. I will share a quote he shared that particularly influenced me, "Our (all missionaries) setting apart entitles us to know that God, by His Spirit goes up the pathway and through the door and into the hearts and minds of the people we meet before we ever step foot on their property." This strengthened my faith that God is preparing people, He has His hand in the work, I have seen it in action.   Elder Bangerter also had a few people selected that he could speak with one on one after zone conference. I was one who had the privilege of doing this. He asked me a few questions about the ...

Hey everyone!   This week was pretty sweet! We had a ton of service that we did. First was removing this huge stump from a lady in our wards lawn. It was so much fun tho. We did it with Elder Gibson (who is now and in San Pasqual ward) and his new comp elder snyder (my son). We also helped someone put in turf grass in their yard and helped someone else feed their roses in their rose garden. And they had over 200 roses. 🙃   We met with John and Steve this week. Steve's main concern right now is the priesthood. He is just having a hard time believing the fact that the priesthood was restored. But other than that he is doing well. John is doing well too. He had us over for dinner on Friday. He had a lot of his friends there and we were able to talk with a lot of them about the Gospel!   We started the recent convert lessons with Laura this week also. She and Yusuf are doing so awesome!   We also had a non member just walk into church yester...

Hello everybody!   This week was super awesome! Definitely the highlight was Laura's baptism. It was really such an amazing service. After the baptism itself Laura got up and bore her testimony about the church and it was so powerful! The Spirit was so present in that whole program.   It has been pretty crazy covering two areas. We have been super busy and we have spent more time in a car than we normally do. But we did get to do a combined district council because me and Elder Gibson are both district leaders so that was way fun!   We got our car towed this week which was super fun! Haha not really but it happens. We had switched cars because of being in both areas and we didn't realize that we had to have a certain sticker on the car to park in our apartment parking lot. And one day we went out to go somewhere and there was no car to be found. We got it back tho so don't worry.   There was also a man hunt going on in our area last night,...

Hi  So this week was pretty interesting. One of the Elders in the neighboring wards (San Pasqual) had to go home due to surgery and his companion needed a place to be for the last week and a half of the transfer, so me and Elder DeMille got another companion! His name is Elder Gibson. He is from Clarksville Tennessee and he has been out for about 22 months. He is awesome! It has been a ton of fun having him with us.  I also met Carrie Stringham (now Thompson) and her husband Andrew. We played basketball with him last Saturday and we saw both of them at church this week, because now we are covering both wards and had to go to both meetings.  I got to go to MLC (Mission Leadership Council) this week. Once every quarter the district leaders go to MLC so that is why I was there. It was a ton of fun. Received a bunch of good counsel on how to be better leaders. We also got to do some activities to help us learn leadership that was way fun.  Laura is still doing we...