Bueanas Dias Weros!

It has been a pretty weeky week!

Dinner with Elder Jarnigan

This week we had some pretty great exchanges with the other Elders. We spent a whole 30 hours with them as we have been trying to help them out with their area as one of the Elders has been sick quite a bit recently. I got a few "aggressive drivings" because they have a pretty nice V6 Altima with Sport Mode so its a little spicy.

Looks like our unofficial roommate Stewart (the mouse) has been at work!

On exchanges with Elder Landrin, we went and saw Johnny, and his front door was all shattered. We asked him what happened and he told us an "intruder" had entered, and Johhny was not having it. He intended on "Pistol whipping his white a**" but since Johnny isn't as spry as he used to be, he just shot at his foot. He missed, and poor Johnny was left with a shattered glass front door and a hole in his porch. Classic Johnny. And of course he pulled out the loaded gun that was used and showed it to us. Fun!

Elder Jarnigan with flyin dug!

Also, check it out! Elder Jarnugin got his Eno hammock recently and we just finished setting it up. GronolaLevel++. It's pretty sick though, especially with the weather warming up. Weekly Planning outside yay!

Great new hammock for enjoying the warmer weather.

One really exciting thing that has been going on recently is that we are quitting smoking with Mike (our Less-Active former drug addict) this week, using the 15 Step LDS Stop Smoking program. If he follows the steps then he should be done with smoking in a week, and he has been smoke-free since Thursday night, so we will see! He is doing great and we are super proud of him. Part of the program is signing a contract and drinking raw grapefruit juice every day. So there's a pic of both of those things happening.

Our work in progress Mike after enjoying some grapefruit juice. All part of his anti-smoking program.

Not much else went on this week. Just workin hard. Have a good one everybuddy!

Nick

General Authorities and Mexican Food!

It was a pretty chron diggity dank week and subsequent Easter.

The whole west side (best side) of the mission got to gather together to listen to a day of trainings by Elder Brent H. Nielson of the 70. He is currently the Director of the Church Missionary Department, and he basically told us to not tract ever! No but seriously he told us that finding through members (referrals and part member families) is by far the best way to do things. Which has been told to us before but hopefully this time it will stick. So don't forget to give your local missionaries some referrals!

Mission Tour with the beauties.

The MTC District!

At the mission tour I also got to see my father (Elder Guzman) and the whole MTC District! They're all doing great in their respective areas.#toomuchsauce. Theeeeen, on Wednesday, we had dinner with an awesome Spanish family that fed us some fetching sweet burritos and tacos. It was the first somewhat authentic Mexican food Elder Jarnagin has had in a while so he was animado (excited). After the awesome food, Hermano Rivera asked for a blessing for his eyes, because he has diabetes and is starting to lose vision in both eyes. I did the anointing (first part of the blessing) and it was in Spanish! Whoa! Then the blessing was given by Elder Jarnagin and it was really powerful. Faith brings miracles!

We have been working hard with Mike, our returning less-active recovering drug-addict bro. We have been having really great lessons with him with his case workers present, so I think somewhere down the line they would be interested in investigating. They always have great questions. And Mike is progressing slowly but surely. He has very high goals of receiving the priesthood and attending the temple, so we are trying to help him quit like everything at once, unfortunately. He is doing great with avoiding the hard stuff but when it comes to smoking, he is still really struggling. But he is weening himself off very slowly! Faith!

On Friday we had a sick coordination meeting with our Ward Mission Leader in South Lake Tahoe. He lives right on the beach so he took us out to the pier. Now that's motivation to find a good career and work hard!

At the beach with Elder Jardin's.

Rich people beach at Tahoe.

Rich people pier at Tahoe.

Things have been going great out here. Our investigator Darrian is going to be getting married and soon after baptized in June, so unfortunately I wont be here for that, but I am super happy for her and her fiancee!

New Easter cards.

Also something funny that just happened this morning. We had to drive Mike to Walmart to help him buy some non-smoking supplies, but we usually can't take anyone in our car unless we are doing missionary work with them.  So we stopped to knock on one door so that it counted as missionary work (even though it's P-day), and the guy actually let us in and now we have a return appointment. This was in a very rich neighborhood where tracting is useful pretty much 1.2 percent of the time. So that was nothing short of a miracle! Mike was pretty confused to say the least lol. Anyway.

Missionary work is very rewarding! 

That's all folks, talk to you next week! Have a swell one.

Blessings for the nude and afflicted!

Had a pretty loco week this week!

Elder Jarnin and I started last week with a little of a boring p-day, as it was transfers so we aren't allowed to hang out with any other missionaries that whole day. But this day should be way more fun! We have a new SLT(Sister Training Leader), a new ZL(Zone Leader), and a new DLB(District Leader Buddy, Like me! - not a real calling btw-) in our zone! Should be fun today to meet all these people!

Stoppin for a visit

On Tuesday Elder Jarninja and I were trying to visit a less active man on the top of a mountain, and then he wasn't home, so we got a little distracted. We ended up climbing up this huge hill so I sledded down it in my "water resistant" pants. Not as resistant as I would have liked.

Elder Jarnagin with a bird's eye view.

Then, later that day, we saw Mike! Mike is a very interesting fellow. He was baptised like a year ago and then got very heavily into drugs. He realized how much they messed him up, so he want's to change, however. We see him literally every day to help him along his path to recovering from his addictions. He has already kicked the big stuff, now we're just trying to help him  quit weed and tobacco. But anyway, on Tuesday night we went over there and he answered the door without a shirt on and we're like, it's fine, it's Mike, he's weird. But then he goes, "Guys I'm having really bad withdrawals and I'm overheating, so I have no clothes on." And I said, "Like down to your skivvys or NO clothes?" and then by a swift opening of the door he confirmed that he really meant NO clothes. So Elder Jardin and I got a face full of Mike, but it's alright, we are troopers. We came in and proceeded to give him some doctrinal comfort, and then he asked me to give him a blessing. So, ladies and gentlemen, at approximately 2030 hours on a Tuesday night in April, I gave a priesthood blessing to a fully naked man in a beach chair in his living room. Gardnerville is fun!

I went on exchanges on Friday with Elder Mills in his area. I didn't realize how much I love all o my investigators until I had to spend a day in someone else's area not teaching my peeps! But it's ok, they kind of all cancelled that day anyway so I didn't really miss out lol.

Some local wildlife.

Some funny stuff happened on the exchanges too. Like we were at some less-actives' house and they gave us this really hot salsa that was really good. Then after that we booked it to our dinner across town. When we got there, we started dinner promptly and after the prayer they apologized because we were having fajitas but they were almost out of salsa. Then Elder Mills goes, "Don't worry, I have some!" and pulls out the recently acquired spicy sauce and places it on the table to the confusion and amazement of the dinner hosts. We all started laughing and I told the hosts to not think he was weird, we just happened to get some from some less-actives and he had just forgotten it was in his pocket. Classic Elder Mills.

On Saturday, we had a church tour with Mike and he really liked it. It was funny because he had all of his Social Workers there to watch him and they were all in awe by the Spirit as we entered the Chapel.  He said he felt all warm inside when he was in there. Spirit++!!

A gift for our little visitor Stewart from Elder J's mom

A cool weird small milagro happened this week, too. Elder Jarganin and I were walking to a less active Spanish family's house and we were like dang we aren't going to have time to walk all the way there to set up this meeting, and then go back to the church in time (we had a meeting with out Ward Mission Leader there).  So we turned around and just decided we would have to come back another time. (It turns out we had missed the turn for their house a long time before that but it's ok, no one has to know). We were walking for about five minutes and we came across a Spanish man, and yes, it was Brother Rivera, the very man we were trying to see! He comes up to E' Jarnagin, and says, "Hola, son Mormones? Quero ser Mormon tambien!" (Are you Mormons, I want to be Mormon too!) Elder Jarnagin doesn't know who he is yet and says with a look of wonder on his face, "En Serio? perfecto!" (Seriously? perfect!) Then Bro Rivera says, "Pero ya soy."(But I already am) Then he figured it out haha. It was pretty great and we set up the appointment and everything!

Not much else went on this week! I am having a great time here in Nevada. Love you all and have a great one!

Adios.

Conferencia General

​​​​Hola Everyone!

Hope you all had a great week and General Conference weekend! Elder Jarnagin and I had a swell one!

Hangin with Elder Leon

We had a pretty sweet lesson with one of our investigators in the forest in South Lake Tahoe. He brought his four ADHD dogs so it was a little hectic but we got settled down and enjoyed a lesson in the beauty of God's Creation. Really could feel the spirit there!

Heading out to the forest with one of our investigators and his dogs.

I found a wiener dog that looks just like my old dog, Ed!

On Wednesday Elder Jarnagin was super excited to get to eat at one of our less-active member's homes, the Rodriguez Family. He was excited because they are from Guadalajara Mexico and he was excited for some "genuine" Mexican cuisine. Much to his chagrin, they had forgotten about out appointment and had to order a pepperoni pizza. I was laughing pretty hard as he sulked over his za'.

More quality time in the beautiful outdoors of Nevada.

We also met a semi recent convert who unfortunately fell back into some bad habits of hard drug abuse, but we are working with him and pretty much talking to him every day and he is already really improving. He is in the process of giving up the hard drugs and he's even trying to quit the smaller stuff like smoking and what not. He reeeally wants to go to the temple so that's his driving factor. Also he keeps having dreams where he sees Jesus's face, so that's probably a good sign!

Service work in the snow.

Friday we dug a motorcycle trailer out of a ten foot pile of snow for a disabled veteran who is one of our progressing investigators! It was actually a lot of fun! His kids are goobers though and kept dumping snow down my shirt!

Then this weekend we watched some General Conference with our recent convert Claud and with some awesome members in our ward, the Millers!

A view from the hills during our hike this week.

Some down time with my fellow missionaries. Note my sweet Texas Forever shirt my mom sent me.

The main thing I took away from Conference this weekend is that I need to work on having more charity towards others. I find I am quick to judge and not be as Christ-like as I should be at all times. So I am working on seeing others as Christ would see them!

Not much else went on this week! Just working hard to bring others unto Christ! Hope everyone has a great week, adios!​​​​