Another Week in the past

February 23, 2015

Well Hello there it was been a pretty good week this week with lots of fun and sun... not really it rained all weekend but we need the water.

Well this is what happened:

A. Newbury Park is awesome. We had a missionary return home this week he served in New York, New York City South, and he we had a birthday/return party cause his birthday was the day of his return and we had a ton of people there, mostly English but we had a gold Spanish investigator show up her name is Reselda she is awesome! Elder Passey said that she dropped them when he first got here but her entire "heart" of the church changed and she even came to church we are going to meet her this week and maybe baptize her in 2 weeks if all goes well.

This week we also help a resent convert write a talk to give this past Sunday and it was awesome her topic was "how can I strengthen my testimony daily" it was perfect for her because she could use but it was awesome they had me bear my testimony because I am the new missionary and then her talk and then Elder/Brother Diaz the one that just got back. It was a awesome day at church Melony the resent convert did a very good job on her talk we are proud of her!

Also this week we had a weird Thursday without district meeting but it turned out to be a great day! We met with alot of people and had a couple lesson we meet with Jenny that day too and we talked about faith and enduring to the end it was awesome, but we found out she wasn't reading the Book of Mormon..... so we committed her to give it another effort and we will see what happened this week!

C. Elder Passey is awesome he is really fun to serve around and when ever our plans fall through he always has someone we can go and see.

T. This week I read about testimony vs. conversion in the ensign along with other things and it was interesting to think that were really not converted at baptism but its an on going process and we have to strengthen our testimonies daily and keep on moving forward.

S. This week we were able to help someone bring in their groceries and get a couple other more dirty projects set up for this week! I have missed working in jeans....

Well I cannot wait to dig some holes!!!!! I had to convince the person to let us do it but it wasn't that hard....

Anyways have a great week! Sorry I forgot to take pictures...

-Elder Joshua Mackay

Pictures from the Mission Presidents wife Sister Felix from their last zone conference.

Birthday Recognition 

Newbury Park

Zone Conference

Tie trade!

Another Fly by Week

February 16, 2015

Hello there!

I had a great week this week I didn't get hurt on Friday.... and Saturday I was stuffed with all kinds of goodness!

so this is what happened this week!

A. Newbury is going good. we had a great week! well this week flew by cause I can't remember to much about what happened but we did have a solid miracle here. we have been trying to see this less active lady and we could never find her but this week as it happened, turns out she is a care giver and she has work a 24 hour day and then a 12 hour day and then again a 24 hour day, you get the point she was working a ton, but her client passed away and so now she has less hours and so we got to talk to her and then she said she would be at church this coming Sunday so we will see what happens.

Then we went to a investigators house and a member opened up the door and she told everybody that she left for Mexico or somewhere but turns out she didn't go or something, I don't know all I know is we had a great lesson about going to church on Sunday and then she didn't show up so hopefully we find her again...

C. Elder Passey is awesome he is so funny this week he said he is going to lose weight and so when ever he is full or doesn't want to eat more, he waits until I and the people were eating with look away and then he will put it on my plate.. and I caught him every time he is great I love him!

T. well this week I studied the living Christ in preparation for the up coming zone conference and it was awesome after reading it again at lunch I took my lunch time lie down and this is the thing I hate about revelation it always comes when your about to fall asleep but the good thing about being a missionary is that your plan is always in arms reach! but I got my talk ready for zone conference!

S. and I don't recall any service outside of eating extra food for Elder Passey....

yep it was fun!

so we went on a hike this past week and here are some picture of the water(trickle)fall hike

Have a great week!

-Elder Joshua Mackay!

The Best Week Ever

February 9, 2015

So some of you might not know why it was the best week ever but its because a family I taught in ventura went to the temple and I got to go!!!!!! It was awesome there was 8 missionaries there for this family it was some much fun!!

But in Newbury Park this is what happened!

A. Newbury park is awesome. The people are so easy to get along with and for the most part humble, very humble!

This week was awesome we had a great miracle happen. We had 6 members present it was awesome! The best one happened last night when we were heading out the door leaving a non member walked in and she has a boyfriend on the mission so she asked us what we like to get in packages and so we talked about that for a second and ended up teaching her about faith and the gospel of Jesus Christ and we used an object lesson/trick thing and after we finished she said "that was cool do you have any more of those?" so we stay for another 20 minutes and taught her about having christ as our foundation and putting on the whole armor of god. And then a  returned missionary friend came over with her to help us teach/ he taught us a new one about faith it was pretty cool and a lot of fun. But then we had to leave so we could go see some other people.

C. Elder Passey I learned has a lot of fun dinner messages that people hate, but love because they learn a lot one of my favorites is called the game of sacrifice. Details will come when I figure out how to explain it.

T. Well this week in the spanish unit I had to give a talk about John 14:15 "If you love me keep my commandments" so I prepared my talk and I was already to give it and I stood at the table we have for our pulpit and the entire talk changed I talked about thing I had never even thought about talking about a for some reason (the spirit) I needed to say what I said and everybody loved it. It was a weird experience for me and it prove that I know spanish! 

S. We didnt have any serve this week not even trash to take out....

It was a awesome week and the best week ever its going to be hard for this week to be beat!

But pictures!

so that is the family and the missionaries with a sister from the ventura branch and the temple and my district my companion and I are the only spanish speaker in the district

anyways love you all have a great week!

-elder joshua mackay 

Week 1 with Elder Passey

February 2, 2015

hello from newbury park!

Elder Passey is awesome and the people here are awesomer!

but this is how our week went!

A. Newbury Park is awesome I love the people here! So we work in a spanish unit, so there is an English ward and then us going on at the same time. It is awesome, we had 31 people in the unit yesterday and Elder Passey said that is more then he has ever seen! But none of them are investigators because he baptized them all....

But yes the whole unit is recent converts or less active we spend most our day in a place nicked named las casitas which gets boring at times, but the people there are awesome! we have been teaching a less active named Angel. My goodness he is a talented mechanic he has people ask for his service all the time, oh ya he is also 75% blind, he relies on feeling the parts and such. He works alot of custom street race cars.

Another recent convert we have been working with is Melony she is awesome she is the niece of Angel so she is over there a ton and just a awesome person.

And the final person that we have been working with is an investigator named Jenny, she wants to get baptized but her dad wont let her. One night she asked if we have any movies, and we left them in the apartment so we had her pull up the Joseph Smith movie on her phone and watch it later and then at 12:00 midnight we got a text saying she finished the movie and loved it and thought that it was awesome how Joseph Smith never gave up even though the trials were stacking up against him.

C. Elder Passey is a hoot! He is so funny and easy to get a long with and the people we teach love him and he loves them. That the first thing I noticed about Elder Passey

T. This week I studied a little bit in ch 5 in PMG about the Book of Mormon and it was a good reminder about how we should be using the Book of Mormon as much as possible.

S. We took out Angels trash one day.... its was smelly lol!

It was pretty fun! I would love to send pictures but I forgot my camera at home so next week for sure!

-Elder Joshua Mackay

Newbury Park? Better Have good Berries!

January 27, 2015

Well I guess I am need to leave Oxnard and head to Newbury Park.

Yep but it all fun in the sun!

Here we go!

A. Well I never thought I would leave Oxnard, sometimes missionaries have a hard time leaving it but I finished what I needed to do here I guess and off to new berry park I go! It was great we had a great lesson with Marisa this week and it was funny we didn't know what to teach her but she asked about Elder Sorensen's name and he talked about family history and now she wants to do more of it to learn where she is from and about her family.

We also met with a recent converts son named Elisa. He is cool, he loves God but doesn't want to leave his church, he grew up going to different churches and youth activities in those churches, but we taught him the restoration and it was a good lesson he changed his mind set a little bit on our church because his mom was kinda trying to force it on him and I guess he just didn't like that to much.

C. It has been way too much fun with these 2 Elders I'm going to miss them, but  guess now I can cross them off of my wish list to serve with :) this week I noticed that Elder Sorensen is really concerned about the people we teach, and would much rather by on time to appointments then have a full hour dinner, and Elder Lopez I noticed that he is looking for people to talk to all the time, he is always looking for people to teach.

T. Well this week I have been battling some sort of cold illness or something - we all were, and it was hard to get out of bed at 6:30 and it was even harder to keep on going though out the day but it seemed we always had the perfect amount of energy to keep on going and it wasn't from the amount of rest we received but from those boost engines of angels pushing us on.  

S. This week we had a interesting thing happen we were helping some one and they gave us some dress shoes that didn't fit. We were about to throw them out today (p day) but there are 2 boys preparing to go on their missions and one of them needs 2 pairs of shoes, and he wears the same size as the ones given to us. Double service!

This week was pretty cool I had lots of fun!

Pictures!

cool waterfall hike we did, and us playing with native weapons...

Have a good week!

-Elder Joshua Mackay

Elder Sorenson

Elder MacKay, Lopez, Sorenson 

Elder MacKay at his finest

Well a lot of pain means a lot of gain right?

Jan 12, 2015

Hello so some of you might be wondering why I choose the subject well I crashed hard this week on my bike.

 

Someone thought it would be cool to put there trash can on the corner a little further out the normal and after coming around the corner it start to "trash talk" me so I hit it..... hard and did a flip into the road (still on my bike) and landed on my feet and walked away with a ton of blood in my hand....... but other then that my bike is in perfect condiction!!!

 

But other then that this was a great week!

 

A. oxnard is awesome as ever this week we had a couple great lessons with Julliette to get her to go to the temple on saturday, and all was looking well until she didn't get interveiwed with everyone else who was going but never fear the ward had 3 baptisms this week so the bishop was at church all week end pretty much so she got her interview the night before they left. and she went and had a great time!

 

This week we talked to Paco and turns out someone (a member of an english ward) gave him the 12 step booklet to stop addictions, so he is doing very good on his goal to quit drinking he has cut back a ton and gives his wife all the money so he can't buy it himself!

 

So this week Elder Sorenson asked Elder Hernandez and I to prepare an edpep about help investigators feel and recongize the spirit so we taught a couple lesson with our investigator on feeling and recongizing the spirit, one of the good ones was with Jesus, he is a teenager really cool kid who want to do what is right and still have a good time. we asked what the holy ghost is to him and he shared an experince of it telling him to kick his feet so he swims and wouldn't drown, he didn't know how to swim. it was an awesome lesson he talked about what happened and why and it was very powerful.

 

C. Elder Hernandez is great what more can I say. but after he has had 6 transfers in oxnard he wants out...

 

T. This week I had a member ask to help with family history because he has never done reseach in Canada so I let him take a swing at my dads line, Mackay and he found a ton of stuff and it was really cool to me is that he didn't look to hard and he found a ton of info, it really just told me that God is in charge and got my excited to do my own family history work when I return home.

 

S. This week we weeded someones yard that hadn't been touched since their sons who are going on a mission  were little kids in diapers. it was fun.!

yep fun fun fun!

 

Love you all thanks for everything, remember keep your cans close to the curb!

 

sorry out of time bloodly hand pictures for next week!

 

-Elder Joshua Mackay!

.... WHAT HAPPENED TO 2014?

January 5, 2014

WHAT its 2015 i don't believe it...

Well this is what happened in part of 2014 :)

Area. Oxnard is awesome as always it has been really fun and this week we had an exchange with elder Sorenson and Elder Lopez but we will talk about that later the coolest thing this week is we found a new family to teach and 2nd one of our investigators told us that he wanted to quit drinking! and is totally working super hard to do that! he told us that he doesn't want to drink and that he wants to spend more time with his family!!!! 

so this man named "paco" told us this week he is going to quit drink as one of his new year goals and we taught him the word of wisdom right there and it went pretty well he told us that he is going to try his hardest to quit. he also told us he wants to learn how to speak English so we are starting an English class for him and any other person in Oxnard that wants to learn!

so the new family is actually a part member family the husband/father is a less active man named Robert I have never got to meet him because they saw found him on the exchange but from what Elder Hernandez told me they are awesome!! It is a pretty big family too Elder Sorenson said that its a family of 10-15 people .. !!! wooh!!

And the Exchange was awesome I went with Elder Lopez and we had a blast of a time and worked every hard too! We went and saw a less active named "pikachu" that's his nick name I don't know his real name but it was cool we helped him and his brothers change their rims on their truck. Then we went to go see there investigator named Rosario, on Christmas he hit a motorcyclist and he died so he was shaken up and in a park and Elder Sorenson and Elder Lopez talked to him and talked about the plan of Salvation and stuff so we went over and taught the restoration and it was very good the spirit was very strong there. Finally we saw their investigator Esmeralda she is getting baptized on Friday she made us dinner and then she had to leave cause her son was missing and it was dark in the not safe place in Oxnard so she left, and we taught her nieghbor a quick lesson and got out of there before we go missing.....

Pretty good week if I don't say so myself!

Companion. Elder Hernandez is awesome he has had a little bit of a hard time with opening his mouth recently but we talked about it and he seems to be doing a lot better! Goes to show companion inventories go a long ways!

Testimony. this week I read the January ensign and it is sweet! I loved the talk titled "Why Michigan?" to bad that story wont happen to me but I am completely fine with that! All in all it was a very lift and spiritual building week of reading, I love the ensign!

Service. this week we help re paint a house just like the missionaries helped us do many years ago, but sometimes it just feels like yesterday we lived in Canada and we were painting our basement pretty cool, but this week we were pretty warm considering its January!

Mainly just the service happened in 2014 but so long past your out of here!!

pictures!!

mostly old one i forgot to send....

but i got hold of a santa suit and wore it to carol and give cookies and small toys to kids we teach, and then the pjs my mom sent us!

-Elder Joshua Mackay.

MY GOODNESS I AM GOING HOME SOON TIME NEEDS TO SLOW DOWN NOW!!!!!