Dear Family and Friends,
As usual you know things are the best out here in Seaside. I have absolutely nothing to complain about as I forget about life and go to work for the Master. I just got an email from my boy Micah Probeyahn, my roommate at BYUI during the fall semester. I’m so pumped as he just emailed me from his missionary email account. At the beginning of my mission I wrote him and told him to go on a mission and he wasn’t too sure about going. After 6 months of not hearing from him, my boy sends me an email saying, “YO BRAHHHHHHHH, it’s your boy and I’m in Los Angeles serving the Lord on his errand!!" That got me way pumped because I remember every night me and my boy Micah would have companionship prayers kneeling in our room before we went to bed. Now he is out here serving the Lord, Chyeah!!!!
Well I’m pretty excited about that and its sounds like everything is going great for you back at home. That’s cool that you have been teaching temple prep at the Cherokee Branch and are on the third lesson. Last Sunday we taught a temple prep lesson and it was a really cool experience as these people are getting ready to enter into the Lords house.
I’ll give you the scoop on every question you asked so you can see what’s going on out here; I also have almost finished my 3rd journal so I will be sending that home too. Anyway, first question how Elder Sanchez is, Elder Sanchez is A LATIN THUG and I love the guy. He is 24 and is the only member in his family other than his brother. He has 13 people in his family and he is really cool. He and I get along great and he is really trying to help me with my Spanish. We just made a deal with each other yesterday, no speaking English for a full week. That will be good for me as I will be returning to Spanish is no time! Elder Allred got transferred to Molalla which is a small town with 3 Wards in it. Compared with all the other companions I have had, Elder Sanchez and I are getting along great. I have gotten along well with all my companions, just some take more time to get to know. With Elder Sanchez, we were tight on the first day and are like long lost Latino brothers. He is teaching me Spanish and in turn he has asked me to teach him English slang. So we will be riding in the car and all of a sudden when I’m talking he will say, “Be quiet Bro, you wanna get merked!” in a Mexican accent. It’s awesome and it’s hilarious when he tries to speak slang because the Mexican accent works perfectly with it. Another one of his classic slang lines he likes to use, " Hey man, you wanna get Swiss cheesed up!!!????" That means like if you get shot and you have holes in you like Swiss cheese. He always threatens me with that one but in a loving, companion kinda way. I feel that this is my last transfer in English and they will send me back to Spanish next transfer. There are 3 weeks left and we will see, but let the Lords will be done because I’m never really quite sure.
We have some wonderful investigators now, but it is sad to say but Satan always seems to get a grip on the people that are getting ready for baptism. My boy Richard has fallen on some hard times as one day we stopped by to see how he was doing and he told us he started smoking again. We told him not to get himself too down but things like that happen. He didn’t want to talk and just shut the door on us. We haven’t heard from him since as he doesn’t answer the door but we are praying and hoping he will be alright. Juliana, the 73 year old lady we have been teaching is not progressing and we let her know we would not be able to keep teaching her if she is not committed to changing and she committed to keep the commitments we had been giving her. Rigoberto is awesome and is ready for baptism but the only problem is he works on Sunday. We will teach him more about faith and prayer and try to help him make it to church. Eric and his brother Luis continue to come to church and we are starting to teach their Mom and Dad. Charlie came to church and is ready to be baptized as well; we just need to get his Mom ready too.
I had some pretty cool experiences last week and one was a tender mercy. We all went to go out to eat at after district meeting at a taco shop, about 10 missionaries in all. Well a member was there eating and I said hi to him. Anyway, we went on with our own business and finally when we were finished eating and went to go pay for our food, the owner said that a guy already paid for all of it. So Brother Smith bought all 10 missionaries there lunch! We were super grateful and wanted to pay him back so we wrote him a thank you letter. It turns out that day he had just sold his truck that he had been trying to sell for about 2 months. Isn’t that awesome? The Lord works in mysterious ways.
Love,
Elder Payne
