Friday, May 29, 2015

Exchanges... 3 in 3 days!

May 25, 2015

well hello there!

It has been a great week and we found a TON of tanks, it was awesome.

A. well this week we went on a hand full of exchanges it has been very good. We had some solid lesson with Cynthia this week and they were awesome. The first one was with Elder Toa and we talked about small and simple thing and I failed the lesson - of counting all the "f"s in 1 nephi 1:1 it has a good one and I even learned things, and then we talked about prayer, it was very good. The prayer lesson was with Elder Fyffe, it was a good lesson as well and she commented on praying about going on a mission and hopefully that goes well.

Exchanges went very well with Elder Toa we found a couple of great solid people and it was an awesome day. Then with Elder Fyffe we had a good day, but appointments fell through and it was just rough... but it was very fun!!! and then with Elder Goad in the english ward it was awesome we found some people to talk to and it was an awesome day!

One of the people we found on exchanges was Liz. The sisters wrote that there was a awesome guy and no name so we tried it and she opened and wanted to learn more about our church. and so we talked and it was awesome!! we are going back this week to follow up on her reading!

C. well out of all the companions I have had this week, I missed Elder Jones the most. It was been awesome working with him and hopefully it doesn't end next week but I would love to be at transfer meeting to see all my friends leave, well mixed feelings - I would and I wouldn't. its a rough life....

T.  this week I learned that English Elders can't speak spanish.... and that when they do testify of what they think you taught it still invites the spirit and it was awesome to see the spirit working through the language barrier.

S. this week we sorted rotten apples from good one at the food bank.. it was awesome!!!

On exchanges with Elder Fyffe we missed the turn and almost left the mission area but we turned left and found a ton of tanks and a chinook heli flying around so we took pictures acted like spies and left... it was fun.

anyways have a great week!!!

-Elder Joshua Mackay








Well it has been a good one!!


May 18, 2015

well hello there its been a great week!!!

and this is what happened 

A. this week has been great!! we had a lot of lessons and a lot of success and a lot of great journal entries. so to start out the week we had a dinner with a part member family in the branch and it was great we talked about honoring our parents (the day after mothers day) and then we went to go see another part member family and we watched the mountain of the lord with them it was great they had a lot of questions about temple that the movie answered better then we could.

It was a great start to a great week... Then we were eating dinner and we asked the son about to leave on his mission if he wanted to come with us to see an investigator, unfortunately the appointment with her fell though, so we tried a former named Mario, we knocked on the door and long story short he died on the 4th so we talked to the family about the plan of salvation, they are shaken up about it so we said a prayer with them and will stop by this week to see what we can do for them. but then Fabi (the member) asked if we have seen Jose, we haven't seen him in a while so we stopped by his house and had another great lesson with him, and it was great to get our minds off of what just happened...

It has been an awesome week with a lot of awesome things going on, the last one is Nelly, Sunday we were in Shandon knocking through the potentials list and then we had to go to San Miguel to pick our ward mission leader to bring to dinner so we could go inside so we headed over then via back roads so we didnt have to go to paso and then to san miguel and we were going to get there super early so we tried Nelly who lives out in the back roads and we had a great lesson with her about prayer to seek revelation she is going through a tough time in school and trying to figure things out it was awesome and filled in the time for traveling faster then we thought.

C. Elder Jones is awesome he is very concerned about the district and it has been great working with him.

T. this week we did a zone activity and it was a lot of fun but one thing the happened is when I was blindfolded on the hike I couldn't hear Elder Jones so I kept on trekking up the hill and when I started to feel grass rub against my leg a realized I shouldn't be there and I found my way to the path and then I heard him say stop so I stopped and turns out in my journey on the grass on the way there Elder Jones was telling my to stop but I didn't hear it and then I ran into an elder, didn't feel it and he went down (fell over) and then I hit grass and got back on the path and hear him tell me to stop. but what i learned is when we don't listen to the spirit or in my case elder jones we get off the path and sometimes we take others with us and knock them off the path... but we always need to find our way back to the path.

S. this week i tackled a tree!!!! it was awesome a less active asked us to come remove some died trees and that is how I removed one, I chopped one, pulled one, tackled one and hand sawed another it was awesome!! and then I cooked the burgers to eat afterwards!!

yep it has been awesome week and the only pictures i have to prove it are of this fox we found, i named him redd. he is awesome he is my friend.

anyways have a great week!
-Elder Joshua Mackay


I found these pictures of the blind folded hike on the Mission blog. He is in Orange Timpview apparel as usual:)






Thursday, May 28, 2015

Happy Mother's Day!


May 11, 2015

well how is it going? good great!!

ok well this week was awesome and were is what happened!

A. Paso is doing awesome! something I learned this week is that the full name of Paso Robles, is the city of el paso de los robles. which i thought was funny!

but we had a less active we have been working with invite us to watch her play soccer and we were in the area and stop by for a second and i guess we were bad luck charms cause her wrecked her ankle, well not to badly but she won't be playing soccer for a couple weeks, but since I played football for awhile, I semi know how to take care of injured limbs. We helped her tape it up and taught her the basics of treatment and I gave her some of my good icy hot to feel better she says she is doing a lot better.

but thats not the point, she is so hard to meet up with cause she is always playing soccer and now she can't so we had a couple super solid lessons with her this week and she said she will pray about going on a mission and work on reading PMG to learn more about what we and her best friend do from day to day.

we also had a investigator come to church he is in a part member family the parents are less active and she wanted to feed us this week but after a lesson with the son this week we learned that he is totally ready for baptism but his dad is not ready to baptize him. so we are going to start focusing on the dad. and go from there.

C. Elder Jones is awesome and he has a great family too. but this week a learned a lot about Elder Jones that I would never have thought of in my live, there is a member who is really good at reading people and there personalities we talk to him for 5 minutes and he know us just about as good as our parents do it was super cool and he talked about what it means and what we do and even talked about what type of person were going to marry, that was the weirdest part but we will see in a couple years.

T. well this week something happened yesterday at church.... the speakers didnt show up both of them..... so the branch president said he will talk for a second and then open it up for other people to talk, so I being a missionary thought oh I better get something together to share just in case and then I learned that there are so many great stories of mothers in the scriptures and thats awesome there is: eve, mary, the mothers of the stripling warriors, emma was also a faithful mother and wife, and then sariah. the list is endless and it was a great talk I prepared and didn't even use because the president talked for the whole hour and he did a good job too!

S. this week we did some volunteer work at the food bank and it was a ton of fun! and smelly too!!!

so guess what i found my camera!! but i never lost it!!
so that is lake nacimiento to get to the northern part (were people live) we have to leave the mission for 2 miles. it was fun going up there though

well have a great day!!

-Elder Joshua Mackay


Another Week in Paso Home to gross water!


May 4, 2015

well this week i learned the water here is bad BAD.

But it was a great week!

A. Well paso robles is awesome, I love it here, this weekend we had a mothers day party in the branch and it was a huge hit! we worked super hard on making sure all the less active mothers in the ward knew about it and finding them rides to get there and they did we fill the little gym we used and there wasn't any food for the late comers. which is bad but for us it was great cause so many people came!!! 

this week was been a little bit slower then other weeks we worked super hard but it just felt like time stood still for a lot of this week. but we had some great lesson with Andriana, it was awesome we had planned to talk to a less active about prophets so we had a Liahona with us from May of last year to show them how the prophets were and read some talks but we brought it to meet with Andriana and she asked about the magazine and so we talked to her about prophets and such, and then a couple of days later we meet with her again and she asked us why we decided to serve missions and so we talked about our conversion stories and bore testimonies and there was a powerful spirit, but then she noticed she was late for work and had to leave.

C. Elder jones was a very powerfull testimony he is a great elder and he will be a great elder until the day he dies in 50+ years

T. W
ell this week I found some old testament dvd and watched them during lunch and had a great crash course on the old testament it was a great refresher! 

S. this week we helped someone old move a ton of furniture into someones apartment and boy was it heavy!!!

but ya this week was great and more fun thing are to come!! I can feel it in the air, or is that just the gross water particles who knows anyways have a great week sorry no pictures this week but I will have some for next week!!

-Elder Joshua Mackay

Paso Robles!

April 27, 2015

Well the first week in Paso wasn't bad at all!

A. Paso Robles is awesome the branch here is great. but I suck at names, but I am good with faces! Here I have meet a couple of less actives and investigators and I will talk about one that I can put a name to the face.

Cynthia is a daughter of a member, she is less active, her best friend is serving a mission and I forgot to ask where but her dad LOVES to talk to us. When we try to teach her he comes and tries to talk to us and then Cynthia tries to leave so we went for a walk and to talk with her and we talked about her and her life. Boy has she changed in the past 2 transfers, she talked about how 3 months ago she would have told the missionaries to leave her alone, and not very politely, but she talked about how she has always loved Jesus and went through a lot of tough times. God helped her through it. and then we talked about missionary service and if that is something she wants to do, she didn't say yes but she didn't say no, so we have our work cut out for us!

but the branch here is awesome they are very close to each other the ward mission leader was a missionary 2 years ago and is very good and doing what he is doing and helping us out with our investigators it just a great place to be and its going to be fun here!

C. Elder Jones is awesome he is just down to earth and wants to serve the lord the best he can.

T. well this week has been an adventure and its been a fun one. This week I just learn to be my self, have fun, and enjoy this new area. Most the time in a new area I take time to adjust but this time I was just myself and I felt comfortable after the second day here (which is when i finished unpacking) it has been interesting to be a missionary and I can't wait for what I learn next!

S. well this week we helped at the food share and it was good, there was a lot of work to do and we got it done fast we were the last group to start and the first to finish all our work they had for us to do it was a lot of fun! 

yep it was a fun week!

thats my district Elder Rosenlof, Elder fyffe, Elder Goad, elder Magoon, Elder J

ones and me!

well have a great week!!

-elder joshua mackay!