Elder Shields in Carlsbad, CA

Hey everyone!!   This week was super pretty cool. First week in the Fallbrook 5th ward. I love it here. The members here are awesome! Super helpful and really missionary minded.   My companion like I said last week is Elder Norman. He is from Sugar City Idaho and he LOVES Idaho and is very proud of the fact that he is from there haha. He is a big baseball fan and he likes boating and dirt bikes and cliff jumping, and just everything outdoors. So me and him have gotten along super well. He has been out for just one transfer longer than I have.   The area is doing pretty well. We have a few people we are teaching. Sandy and Jim, and Jason and Tanya are two couples that we are teaching. Tanya and Sandy are sisters. Tanya originally found the church when she broke her leg, she needed help and her daughter who is a member got the bishop over to here to help and she has been love with the church ever since. Jason is not a big fan of the church and t...

Hey Everyone!   Got some transfer doctrine this week! I will be being transferred to the Fallbrook 5th Ward! My new companion is named Elder Norman, I don't know much about him, but I have heard good things about him from other missionaries. Me and Elder Norman will be the zone leaders over the Vista zone!   Elder DeMilles new companion is going to be Elder Phillips. Weird to know that one of my last companions will be taking my spot haha.   Evalina is doing super well and she looks like she will make her baptismal date for November 3rd! I am unsure yet if I will be able to return to Escondido to see her baptism. Unfortunately we haven't had much progress with anyone else we are teaching.   We went to Mormon Battalion this week as tradition for the finishing of a missionaries training. It is always such a faith promoting experience and uplifting experience to visit there. If any of you are visiting San Diego any time I strongly rec...

What is up everyone??   First off I want to congratulate Sarah and Tim for their big day this week!! Welcome to the family Tim!   This week was super awesome! We got to go to the temple with Laura and Yusuf to do baptisms for the dead! We all had a really amazing experience there. Laura just couldn't stop talking about how amazing the temple was. How clean and white and pure it felt. Yusuf also recieved his endowment this week. And them they moved to Cedar City, haha. So if you guys go down that way. Look them up and say hi for me!   Evalina Hernandez (the part member family we started teaching last week) is now on date to be baptized on November 3rd! Evelyn (her mom) also got up this Sunday for fast and testimony meeting and thanked me and Elder DeMille personally for our persistence (we have tried to meet with them for a while), and not giving up on them. She also bore her testimony on baptism and shared how happy she is for Evalina to be baptized. ...

Hi everyone how are you!?   This week was pretty awesome! Obviously conference was amazing I loved all of it. One of my favorite talks had to be Elder Rasband. Some if the insights he shared about having people on the other side of the veil with us were awesome!!   We haven't been able to makr contact with Eric unfortunately.   We did start teaching a part member family tho. The Hernandez family. The daughter (Evalina is who we are teaching). She is 10 and is very likely to get baptized! We don't have a date yet but hopefully that will come soon.   We went bowling for pday today, which was a blast. I did awful but I really didn't care haha.  Love you all so much!   Elder Shields  General Conference Breakfast Bowling with the Bear Valley District

Hi everyone!!  THANKS FOR ALL THE BIRTHDAY WISHES!!!  Awesome week out here in Escondido yet again! Just so you know it was not me who got stitched it was Elder DeMille. We were doing service for a less active member of our ward breaking down pallets, and Elder DeMille was pulling a nail out of the board with a crowbar. The crowbar slipped off the nail and hit him right in the chin! So we took a trip to the doctor to get him stitched up.   President interviews were this week! Had a fun time there. They were on my birthday so President and Sister Thomas sang for me after I was out of the interview! It was so funny   None of the people we were teaching were progressing so we just kinda stopped teaching all of them and decided to start fresh! It is a bummer but none of the people we were working with were willing to make commitments. We found a new person (on my birthday) named Erick. He is in High School right now and just loved the Restoration and th...

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...