Monday, September 29, 2014

Week 1 was Awesome

Sept 29, 2014


So hello again this week was been super duper fun with Elder Moreno

But again I am changing the format of my email to use my time better! 
hope you enjoy this weeks adventures cause I sure did!

Our area is going great we found a new investigator named Veronica and she went to church and the womans conference Saturday night and Sunday night she asked if we could talk to her and asked us "what is the baptism process?" so we told her what we need to teach her and told her to pray about her baptismal date it was awesome she even had a talk with her friend and talked about how it is her choice so her friend should respect that.

We also meet with the P family and they are going great! We taught them an English class and the restoration, and Carmen (the mother) went to the womans conference as well. it was a great restoration lesson and as far as we are aware they are going to stay in Fillmore we helped them find a job for a strawberry farm field thing. We gave them the plan of salvation pamphlet to help them prepare for us to teach that to them this next week!

That is the biggest highlights of the week. We also have been meeting with Bernard and we found out that he can travel to Santa Paula but not to the lake in Piru so we asked him to pray about where he should get baptized, were going to follow up on that this week when we see him next. 

 Elder Moreno is the best! I was so excited to be able to serve with him it is going to be a great 6 weeks! He is learning how to be a great district leader and its going to be great to see him grow and progress!

 This week was been a great week in studies, and Elder Parrish taught me something really profound about Ether, well the brother of Jared, he had 3 problems and the lord gave him 2 answers and he brought the 16 stones to the top of the mountain and prayed the the lord would touch them and one by one the Lord touched the stones and gave him his answers, and compared that to bring questions to conference and how 1 by 1 the lord will answer us.

 This week we had a lot of fun helping Bernard changing his spark plugs, but just like his oil we sucked.... and only changed 3 of the 6 and tomorrow are going to finish the project. :)

and of course pictures!

so the disrict Elder Moreno and Me, Hermanas Miller, Clark and Shepherd, Hermanas Young and Killpack, and Elders Lopez and Simpson

and some camels and zebras we pasted looking for a house. turns out we passed the turn :)

hope you have a great week!

-Elder Joshua Mackay

Monday, September 22, 2014

Transfers??

Sept 27, 2014

Well its that time again and I am staying and Elder Moreno is coming to work in Fillmore!

Elder Parrish is heading to Oxnard

Well this week is going great and next is sure going to be better I cant wait to start working with Elder Moreno! anyways here are some highlights.

Well here in fillmore its going great we are working very hard, and we got a family set with a baptism date for the 18th of october, if they find work and dont move to bakersfeild that is. so i am hoping they find work we have been keeping our ears open for work! but its a family of 5 but the young is 1 and a half so she wont get baptized with her family.

We have been working hard with bernard as well and he is doing good but is feeling very sick so he didn't come to church again, I hope and pray everything goods well. 

And on thursday we went to a part members house and invited (last minute) to a fire side with elder malm and she said she would go if she could bring and friend and we said YES OF COURSE YOU CAN. So she brought her friend Brianna and Brianna enjoyed the fireside better then Nicole so we started to teach her this week and sunday we found out that her best friend is a member (very active member too) so things are looking up here in fillmore.

Well this week was been a blast sorry its so short but i love you all I and I am writing my testimony whether you like it or not!

But i know  that Jesus Christ live and that He died for all of us and the we can truly be saved through His grace that He gives to us, and that you can discover this truth through reading and praying in the book of Mormon. As a representative of Jesus Christ I invite all of you to read the Book of Mormon and to pray about it to find that it is true and after that know that nothing else in this world can take that away from you, because you are built on a testimony of Jesus Christ.

Anyways no pictures this week forgot my cord at the apartment sorry!

with tons of love and prayers 
-Elder Joshua Mackay

Some more fun in the sun!

Sept 8, 2014


well this week was a great week it was awesome we had some good fun!

I am going to try doing this email differently so I will see how it turns out but I will talk about everything that happened still!

This week we meet with Bernard a ton and he even had his baptismal interview with Elder Carter yesterday (but he doesn't currently have a baptism date) yet he passed! Me and elder Parrish have just been in some many appointment he didn't see him until Sunday morning at church. But he still wants to learn more and keep reading the book of Mormon and praying so that he will still be ready for when he feels healthy again. But he came to church and we had a great talk after church!

We saw Fred a couple times this week and we helped him build a TV stand for his church it was pretty fun he had to do all the cutting, grinding, and drilling, but we help with everything else it looks pretty nice (nicer then our churches TV stands) and then yesterday he helped us download I'm a Mormon videos for the open house on Saturday, Elder Parrish and Elder Lopez saw him on exchanges. 

Thursday we meet with Claudia, Willie, and Salma. They wanted to feed us and talk more about our church after we met on Monday and talked about the Restoration, they are awesome Claudia and Willie met in Cube (deployed to Guantanamo bay) and got married 2 years ago and Salma is Claudia's daughter from a previous marriage. Salma is going to a Christian school and asked us to help her on her project on the baptism of Jesus. It is going to be cool, they all go to the catholic church but are very open to changing religion after we invited them to read and pray about the Book of Mormon, Willie said that "I have never received an answer like that, but I believe I will get an answer"

We also had an exchange with the other Elders, Elder Berg and Elder Lopez, I was with Elder Berg in his area biking all day I was tired by the end of it, but we did alot of good work and talked to alot of people we talked to a man named Jose, and I thought he was going to beat us up (he was holding a baseball bat, and is super strong) but we talked to him for a little bit and then a cop started driving on the bike path...... and he ran off cause he thought he was coming to check him for drugs it was pretty weird, we saw Jose later that day as well so the cop didn't take him to jail. And once we walked into our apartment I was so tired I fell asleep during planning like 3 times.....

but that was the highlights of the week!

see you next week BYE

-Elder Joshua Mackay

Last week in this transfer!

Sept 15, 2014

Hello everyone is has been 3 seconds since i wrote last week

But as it is the last week where am i going? (elder Parrish and i have been together for 3 transfers now)

But on the best note our week was great and this next week is going to be greater! This week we are having a mission tour with Elder Malm of the second quorum of the 70, and hopefully we will have an investigator go to his fireside so we can see him again.. :D

But we saw a lot of good stuff this week and we had a church open house on Saturday with a chili cook off it was a lot of fun Elder Lopez and I were suppose to be judges but he chickened out so Elder Parrish did it for him, and a person from Santa Paula, there were some pretty good chilies there but they all hurt Sunday night..... but at the open house we had 24 non members there (i counted 24 but Elder Parrish counted 29) but we had 2 familys we have been teaching come and we gave them church tours and then one of the families came to church on Sunday.

the 2 families were Fred and his wife (Maria) and the Paralta Family (we found them this week) Fred had been helping us set up the open house by getting us i'm Mormon videos off of YouTube and he LOVED our church he thought it is awesome to have classes where different ages learn differently so we had a couple of great lesson with him watching Mormon.org videos it was pretty cool my new favorite video is because of him. oh its so good i invite you all to watch it for me! the Paralta family are awesome as well they were waiting outside for us and the Gonzales family brought them in for us and sat with them and they are pretty good friends now its crazy to see how once the missionary work is sparked in someone they can do anything, they even invited them to the movie coming out "meet the Mormons" but it is a family of 5 Father (Valeriano) Mother (Carmen) 2 boys and a girl Eddie (14) Rudy (12) and Jennifer (3) we have only taught Valeriano and Carmen though. 

Bernard is still doing good he was feeling sick over the weekend but we helped him wash his car this week which was pretty fun, Thursday night we had a lesson with him in the Baptism Font room and it was awesome he felt the spirit there a ton he asked us how we knew he felt different and we told him it was cause we felt it to and then he asked what that was and we dropped the ball.... and taught the plan of salvation..... ... but we repented and we asked him to study about the holy ghost and to teach us about it so he is preparing a lesson for us for Tuesday (tomorrow) so hopefully all goes well with that.

but that is the highlights of this awesome week i hope you all had a great one as well take care and see you next week!

enjoy pictures of the rock gorilla and the oil well we found during correlation!

-Elder Joshua Mackay




Monday, September 1, 2014

Week 51 - Another FANTASTIC Week

September 1, 2014

Well hello there how was your week?

Well i had a awesome week-  on Monday we had a district potluck and played croquet it was pretty fun! But we then went to visit N. she is awesome we talked about the restoration and reviewed it a little, it was pretty good for some reason it is hard to teach her with her mom around, but that is not the first time that has happened.

Tuesday was great we had a zone conference with the Santa Barbara zone so I got to see Elder Cavazos again and boy he has gained a little weight!  But it was a great conference i learned a lot. When we made it back to Fillmore we had a lesson with a investigator and we talked about how they felt about baptism, they said they felt ready spiritual but not physically, so asked if we could postpone the date to a later time. But let us back track to the beginning of the day when a member called us at 7 asking us for help to move her friend out of a house so we loaded up and tried to help but the lady is a hoarder and nothing was packed so after moving everything out of the way to make a path we moved a desk out and had to leave to change and head to Ventura.

Wednesday morning we went back to go help S. the lady who needed help but this time we waited tell after studies, but we packed up all her sons nintendos and some games, dvds and dvd players and anything else that we thought he might want back it was pretty fun helping. Then we went to see Bernard and we talked about Peter and what we had learned in zone conference it was pretty cool. He felt the spirit and asked for another blessing but we forgot to ask for permission to give it so we haven't done that yet.

Thursday we meet with N again and we talked about her past experience with missionaries (we found an old record looking though the area book trying to find new investigators) and she told us she hated being told when she is getting baptized that she will do it when she wants to and we talked about when she wants to get baptized and she told us she will pray about it, but wants to do it before transfers so we told her to pray about the 20th and set that as a goal for her baptism.

Friday, after weekly planning we meet Bernard at the church and had a lesson at the church, then we drove to Santa Paula to exchange companions. Elder parrish went to my Beloved Ventura and I stayed in Fillmore with Elder James.

Saturday. It was a normal day in Fillmore we talked to S in Piru and she told us she wants to get baptized in December before Christmas, so we set a date of December 6th and she is excited about that we talked about Baptism and what it is and what it means. We also had a lesson with Bernard and we just read from the Book of Mormon. It was a pretty great day.

Sunday we had 5 investigators at church and we meet with Bernard and how we can help him the best! My time has run out and I got to go!

Figure out the picture and good luck have a great week!

-Elder Joshua Mackay

Some sort of ramp made out of scriptures...
One year finished celebration.
1/2 way done package
Elder MacKay and Elder Berg(?)
Elder Parrish and his muffins, somehow it has become a joke that he will be my son in law...