Brian

6-7-2011
I am doing so good, the weather is cool (we are in “June Gloom” right now).  But it is super nice.  The ocean is beautiful and I love seeing it every day!
Miercoles: We went to the train station and we sang hymns and contacted people and it was SO fun.  We had some sweet experiences.  This one guy from Africa came and talked to us and [we] were able to teach the Restoration to him and he felt the spirit strong!  Then, this one lady came up to us and said that she was thinking about the missionaries that morning and how she needs help with her daughter who is heavily addicted to drugs, so they set up an appointment and met with them that night!!!

6-14-2011
Wow, so for my news….I am being transferred!  It was a shocker for sure.  I was not expecting that, not even for a minute.  I was only here in San Juan Capistrano for 6 weeks?!  Gah.  Well, I guess the Lord needs me somewhere else, so I am ready to go for it.  This area is insanely crazy, we have seen way more miracles than we have deserved.  This has been the most productive area that I have been in, and truly it has been a great experience.  On Sunday at the stake missionary correlation I was talking to President Cook and I am also being released as a Zone Leader!!!  Hallelujah!  I have been a Zone leader for 8 months.  It is time for someone else to be a zone leader too.  What President Cook told me was that I am going to be a district leader in a Spanish area (hooray), so that this transfer I can get to know the area and then for the rest of my mission I will train.  President wants to have the experienced missionaries be trainers because for awhile most of them were just really young and inexperienced.  This transfer there aren’t any Spanish missionaries coming in, so he is “arranging his pieces”, so that next transfer and the transfers that follow, I can train.  So that will be awesome, I am
really, really, really excited for that, but I am sad to leave San Juan.

6-21-2011
Ok so for the news on my transfer.  So now I am serving in Mission Viejo as the district leader of the Mission Viejo Spanish District.  I cover the entire Mission Viejo stake, and the ward that I am serving in, (the Mission Viejo 5th Ward), covers three stakes!  So there is one companionship assigned to each stake and there are 6 missionaries in the ward. We cover the cities of Lake Forest, Mission Viejo, Ladera Ranch, and Wagon Wheel.  President Cook told me that they are putting me in position so that I can train here soon. The district is small, only 6 missionaries, and they are all great, so this will be a really nice transfer, where we can get a lot done!!  We have a full-time car (covering 4 cities), but the car got wrecked a few days before I got here, so we were walking and hitching rides until a few days ago when we got the car back.  The area has a ton of potential, and historically has always seen a lot of success.  Right now, we don’t have a whole lot going on, but we will see here in a little bit and hopefully we can get things rolling!

6-28-2011
I do now know my release date and everything.  So the official day (as of right now) is December 20th.  That is a Tuesday, so I will either stay in the mission home that night and come home on the 21st, or I will go home that day.
Jueves:  In the morning we had a MIRACLE!!!  We were going to check up on a referral in these apartment complexes and this 15 year old kid came out.  He was all like, they aren’t there, but you can teach me if you want!  So, we did, and we taught him about the plan of salvation and the Restoration and we invited him to be baptized and he said yes!!  We are working for July 30th!  He is awesome and has so much potential.  After him, a lot of our appointments fell through until we were able to teach one of our progressing investigators in the evening.  It was a really good lesson about the plan and she really felt the spirit strong.  Then after that we ran over to English classes and helped out with them, and then at the end we gave the spiritual thought.  The classes are so fun!  I love teaching English!

This work truly is the work of angels and miracles never cease to exist!!

Brian sent a photo CD with some new shots of him.  These include the mono months.

(Click on any photo to see them all in a gallery).

May 3, 2011
Martes:  We woke up early and we drove down to Del Mar to see Elder Perry.  I played an hour of prelude before our mission meeting that we had at 11 and then another 1 1/2 hours of prelude while we were waiting for Elder and Sister Perry and President and Sister Clayton of the Presidency of the 70 to arrive.  The first bit was on the organ, but then I was sick of playing the organ so I switched to the piano.  I played really good all of the songs, and something really, really special happened.  It was pretty dang sweet.  Elder Perry was hilarious and it was a really good talk and the spirit was strong.  I was on the front row because I was playing the organ so that was sweet.  I was exhausted so I slept on the way back. Prayers work!!!  Great spiritual day!! Super tired.

Miercoles:  I was way tired and so I slept and then went to District Meeting and then we taught [a family] and then I came back and slept some more.  I felt really, really sick and decided that I shouldn’t go out and teach in the evening, so we made arrangements and I slept.

Sabado:  First, we went down to San Onofre State Beach to help with the state-wide Mormon Helping Hands service project.  We all donned the yellow vests and helped out.  I didn’t do anything crazy hard, so don’t worry, but it was nice to get out and to be doing something else.  It was really fun and then we went down to this beach house of someone in our ward to have shakes.

May 10, 2011
So, my infection hasn’t gone away yet, but I have only been on the meds for like 5 days, so hopefully here soon it will start to clear up.  I am super, super, stuffed up but doing well. I have been getting lots of rest.

Jueves:  In the morning we hosted this meeting for all of the leadership in San Clemente.  We made plans and set goals for the transfer as a zone and it was a very effective and productive meeting.  Then I came home and slept.

Viernes:  Weekly planning.  That went really well and then after that I slept some more.  At this point I was really sick, so that is when [the mission doctor] came over to the house and he wrote me a prescription for some medicine.  After him, I felt pretty sick and so I decided that I shouldn’t go out in the evening.

Sabado:  I went to correlation in the morning and then I stayed in all day.  Elder Thomas came and sat with me all day while Elder Gibbons and Ochoa went out and worked.  However, I did have some needed projects set up so we were able to do those.  We made this huge map of the stake with all of the ward boundaries in it to hang up on the wall, so that took a while.  I slept and then by 9, the other Elders had come back.

May 17, 2011

Miercoles:  I was still pretty sick, this cold just wasn’t going away. In the evening we went and we taught English classes which are SO fun!  I love teaching English classes. We also did this activity with all of the young women to kind of build unity and everything.  It went really well.

Jueves:  In the morning, we went to the San Clemente district meeting and then I had to take a siesta because I am still recovering.

Lunes:  Awesome day!  We were running all over the place.  At lunch, the wall hit me, and I just fell asleep and slept for like 3 hours.  Which was good, because then after that it was nonstop for the rest of the night.  It is raining today which is no fun, but it is a nice change.  San Juan Capistrano is such a cool city, I really like it a lot.  It has tons of history.

May 24, 2011

Some not so good news, yesterday I got pink eye :(.  No fun.  I am pretty sure that the next thing is going to be boils haha.  Today it hurts pretty bad, but it should blow over here in a few days.  Besides that, life is good.

Viernes:  I slept in, because my mono was killing me and I had NO energy.  Then we had to take our car up to Aliso Viejo because our check engine light came on, and so we weekly planned at some library up there in Aliso Viejo.  That night was sweet because Elder Gibbons got invited to a baptism in the Oceanside 5th ward, the ward I used to serve in.  So, because our stakes touch, we could go to it.  The cool thing was that I got to see a lot of my recent converts.

Sabado:  The end of the world!!!  So many people came up and talked to us about it.

May 31, 2011

Wow, we had such a great week!!  Our area is exploding.  Really, it is awesome.  I don’t think that I have ever seen an area like this before.  Even Escondido which was the gold mine of Spanish work, I think that this definitely rivals/maybe succeeds it.  The Lord truly is blessing us and his children here in San Juan Capistrano.  Our teaching pool right now is so strong!!  It is the strongest that I have had my whole mission.  We are getting legit member referrals every day it seems like and all of these crazy miracles are happening!!  It is so sweet!

So just so you know, my pink eye has now subsided thank goodness and I am doing much better. Apart from one tiny inflamed lymph node, I think that it would be safe to say that I am all of the way back to normal.  It has been 11 weeks now, and I feel much much better.  So yes, take heart in that I am fine and doing well.

Basically we are doing so good and for some reason the Lord is blessing us.  Just this morning, we got a call from the Mission office saying that someone called in from Irvine because the family that cleans their house had a Book of Mormon and they read it every night and they knew all of the stories and they want to be baptized, they just need to go to a church that meets in Spanish and in the afternoon.  WE MEET AT 1!!!  So we called him a bit ago and he was all up for it and we are meeting with him and his family tonight.  Wow.

I am doing so good here and I can’t believe that tomorrow is June.  Wow, it is going way way way too fast.

April 5, 2011
To get right to the chase…I am ill.  Very ill.  I have been sick for two weeks and the doctor came over a week and a half ago and said that it was a bacterial infection so I was on Augmentin but then I was getting worse.  It got to the point that I had absolutely no energy to do anything.  My throat is SO sore, and I have incredible headaches, I am really weak, and I have these big lumps on my neck.  So the doctor in our mission came over to the house yesterday and he is 99% sure that I have mono.  But the only way to for sure know is to get bloodwork done, so this morning we went up to Laguna Beach to the hospital to get the work done.  We hung around to get the results back for one of the tests and that is what it is looking to be, but the definitive one, we haven’t got results back from yet.  If it is mono, it is going to knock me out for 6 weeks – 3 months. Disclaimer:  None of this is definite. But a little more info about mono, it is unknown how it is contracted, and there is not a cure.  Basically, you just have to wait it out.  I have been taking like 2-3 hour naps every day because I am so exhausted, and I don’t have the energy to do anything.  If this all plays out the way it is looking like it is, I am not exactly sure what they are going to do with me, if they are going to leave me still as zone leader, or what, but it will be interesting to see.  So that is my life right now, I just sleep all the time and can’t swallow.  The lumps on my neck are all severely swollen lymph nodes that are trying to fight off the infection.

(A call home from the Mission President the next day confirmed that he has a severe case of mono with an enlarged spleen).

April 12, 2011
Well, this week has been…fun.  Haha, not really, it has sucked, but I am doing better.  So my week was pretty much just me sleeping in bed, and doing stuff and being in members houses. My throat is fine now, I can swallow and everything and I am doing good.  Kind of how I am is that I sleep and then I wake up and I have a ton of energy and then that energy wears off quick and then in 3-4 hours I am tired again.  But, each day I feel that I am improving, and so now I am trying to time my naps so that I can minimize the time that I am sleeping and maximize the time when I am awake.
Wednesday:  I get a call from President saying that he had left a message with you and that if I were to do ANY work, that he would send me home just because he did not want to play around with my health.  So that was kind of discouraging, especially the mandate to stay at home for an entire week!  BAH!  So that brings us to today. Today is the last day of my confinement, (I think).

April 19, 2011
OK, so I am continuing to do better.  I kind of plateaued, but I am doing well.  I still get tired, but now I can wake up and make it through most of the day.  I only have to take one nap at about 3-5.  That is when my energy really crashes.
Miercoles:  I went over to [a member home] and spent the afternoon  sleeping there, and then we went over to our President’s interviews.  We talked about things, and he feels VERY strong that I need to stay.  And so do I.  Apparently Mission Medical recommended that I go home a week or so ago, but he wanted to do everything so that I could stay, and so, here I am still here and doing better.  So the terms were that I could only go to appointments and then besides that I needed to be sleeping.  Thanks for everything, I am so grateful for all of your prayers/fasting/support.  I am happy that I am staying for now, and I hope I continue to do better.

April 25, 2011
For me, I am doing better each week.  This marks 5 weeks of being sick, and I am for sure getting tired of it.  Some days are better than others, and I am still just getting headaches and feeling really tired.  But I feel like I am making improvements and doing better. It has just been a REALLY slow process and I feel like I have been sick for sooo long.  But yeah, I am still taking it easy for the most part and trying to get better. I am trying to gain some weight back, because I lost some, so I have been drinking a lot of protein shakes to try and get some weight, and it seems to be working.