Hey Family!Things are going extremely well with us right now! I can't believe i forgot to mention in my last e-mail that we are living in a house! We live with the Saugus 3rd Elders as well! It's definitely the best missionary arrangement in the mission! We feel super spoiled. It's just us four with the house to ourselves. It's such a blast and to say the least, life is good :)
It's Elder Bates, Me, Elder Shrum (who has been out for 6 months, from salt lake) who is training Elder Ballard (been out for 2 weeks, from Texas, but grew up in the Bahamas). So they are super Legit and us four have been having such a great time together! I forgot how much fun a 4 man Pad is... Starting in one and now finishing in one. The only thing different about this one is i love how mature they are. Everyone here is focused on the work and we all motivate each other and share our miracles/crazy stories of the day for a hilarious time. I have been catching myself literally laughing out loud at the overwhelming joy this whole experience is bringing. I already love these guys so much and it's only been two weeks! I have also been able to help out the Saugus 3rd Elders with the area and people to visit so it's been a very inspiring experience.
Elder Bates and I attended another Zone Leader Council on Wednesday and then trained the zone last Friday for 3 hours and got very well acquainted with them already and feel we have great relationships with each one of them already! We have been doing 24 hour companion exchanges with quite a few of them already to get to know them better on a personal level. These missionaries are incredible! Elder Ballard is 22 and has such an amazing story about how he sacrificed everything to come out here on a mission and he is just the happiest guy to be a missionary right now! It's crazy, recently i have felt such a burning love that feels like it is just stuck in my chest making it feel like it's going to explode! I can't really describe it very well, but as i have been praying for more charity i have felt a taste of God's love he has for his children and how proud he is of his faithful missionaries. I also got a call from the Meza family this week and all the kids saying how much they missed having us around! As i talked to each of them on the phone for a second Mother Meza mentioned how it feels like her son is calling home from his mission. So many emotions! I'm not really the emotional type, but now as it is getting closer to the end, Heavenly Father is really pulling on my Heart strings with all these amazing relationships and experiences i have been so blessed to have during my mission. Elder Bates and i don't want to waste a moment since he only has 4 weeks left! We have made a rating system this past week of how effectively we are using our time and on average we are working as hard as we can for 90% of the days! When we have any free time we are quickly sharing messages with members and asking for referrals then off to the next place. We have been doing a lot of spiritual tracting when we don't have appointments and spent around 20 hours knocking this week! It's been a blast and we have had some really great experience from running into some that are atheist and yelling/lauging/cursing at us all the way to contacting others who start crying while telling us we have been an answer to their prayers as we teach them! Priceless experiences.
I also wanted to mention that i got the package! I got a hold of Pres. Jex and he ran it up here to Santa Clarita and i was able to have a great visit with him at our house haha. The salsa is a major hit and we have all been trying to discipline ourselves to make it last the rest of this transfer! It's a serious matter around here and we treat it like gold, so thank you so much for that!
Then lastly, we were spiritually filled with listening to General Conference again! We watched all the sessions at the stake center with the missionaries in our zone. It was hilarious, we compared all our notes and the inspirations we received to come up with what the theme for each of us was. At the end it was awesome to see all the new missionaries picking out all the cliche missionary work themes and then i was shocked to see that the majority of Elder Bates's and my notes was marriage and families!?! haha everyone seemed to get a kick out of that ;) We were laughing so hard when we realized that we did this and shocked we are starting to think about this now....?
P.s. i did get my first ticket a while ago and just hurried and paid it... Unfortunately i made a u-turn where i wasn't supposed to since it was in a "business area". Now i'm terrified of making a u-turn anywhere... But it was a cop who was definitely having a hard day or something because he was not a joy to talk to. Anyways though i was super shocked at the price when i logged onto the website! 250$ burned! For making one wrong turn in California... :( California is insanely expensive! We were confused when others were making that same u-turn but getting away with it even the members we were riding with! haha. But we think it was the lord's way of saying,"No, i assigned you elders to a bike area, and you are still driving cars all the time..." LOL> But now i am officially in a car area so it should be all good :)
I love you all!Have a great week!Love, Elder Brady20514 Caitlin Ln.Santa Clarita, CA 91350NO REGRETS
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