Meeting with Elder L. Tom Perry

Dear Family,

If you sent an e-mail to me yesterday or today, well I didn't get it. So I can't answer any of the questions that you may or may not have sent to me.

This week was a really good but tough week. Tuesday was probably one of the toughest days as far as the work is concerned. We had four member present lessons planned- all of them fell through. That was kinda rough.

We set a baptismal date with Natty!!!..... in August. Natty and her fiance Eriberto (who is a return missionary that went inactive) are getting married in August, so we're trying to get them to move that date up. It's kinda a tough subject for us though. We're probably going to let the branch president take care of that.
We also have a baptismal date with Bryan for the 1st of April, and he's pretty much ready. We're just trying to get in the lessons so that he can get baptized because  he is totally ready.

We got tired of knocking empty doors on Saturday so we tried doing something a little bit different: basketball contacting. That was probably the best idea we have ever had. We got so many great contacts out of that, English and Spanish. It's great when two guys show up in white shirt and tie to take on everyone in basketball, and then they go on and beat them. A whole bunch of people were watching and we were able to talk to pretty much all of them. Plus it was fun. Not like knocking.

Elder L. Tom Perry came to speak with us today. That was pretty sweet. I got to play the organ for that. All the missionaries in the mission (except for 10 in the Ridgecrest zone) were there, and each one got to shake his hand and tell him where they were from. I said I was from El Paso, TX and he just said "Well, that's too bad." The funnier part was that the whole mission heard it since I was the last one and everyone was watching me.

He's a very funny man. He was talking about how he's in charge of Public Affairs for the Church. "Worst job in the Church; I can't wait for them to release me from that." He was also talking about how he gets to sleep: "I recite the Articles of Faith. On odd days, I start with #1, on even days, I start with #13 and go backwards. Why do I do that? Because I can never get all the way to #13 because they make me fall asleep." Pretty good.

He did compliment my organ playing. "Your mother must have been very tough on you to be able to play the organ that well." Yes, mom, you were very tough on me. Sis. Perry said that I should consider studying organ in college. That gives me something to think about. If it was any ordinary person, I wouldn't really care. But c'mon, this is an apostle's wife.

As for what was spoken about, well I don't remember.

It was fun being with all the missionaries in the mission. I got to see a lot of people that I knew back in the valley and I was so happy to see them.

I think that's pretty much it for this week.

Transfers come up again this weekend, and there's a 50% chance that I stay and a 50% chance that I go. I think the more likely thing is that I'll be staying. But there is a good possibility that I'll be going. I'm not too sure. Rumors about transfers don't fly around quite as much here in Palmdale primarily because we're not around each other as often.

I'm just kidding about not remember what Elder Perry talked about. He talked about priesthood and the importance of the priesthood to the Church. Mostly he was telling stories and making us laugh. I took notes, don't worry.

Have a great day and a great week. Tell everyone hi.

Con amor,

Elder Nathan Gruenewald

March 5, 2012

Hey,

     Things are going good. Elder Black and I are doing well and the work was good this week. The meals are good. We're trying out the calendar. 

     The Preach My Gospel DVD's are awesome. Make sure Kayla shows you the Law of Chastity: German. That one is super good. 

     That's pretty awesome about Jocie's friend. The thing that I would encourage is to get her involved in activities. The job of members is mostly social conversion. I'm not saying go away from talking about church, keep talking about church. But the more you can involve her in the social part of the gospel, the easier it will be to transition to even deeper gospel conversion. I kinda want to read the new FtSoY pamphlet. 

     That's pretty sweet about Brian getting into BYU-I do. The thing that I think would be best would be going to EAC. Then again, what do I know? The thing I'm thinking is that BYU-I doesn't really like people that go to BYU-I with the intent of going to BYU. Either or is best. And I think he should keep going with clarinet and do vocal performance. Do both.

     Jocie: The website is www.byu.edu.

     That's awesome about dad being able to be promoted to major. 

     Just kidding about Jocie's website. Go to google and type in "onestop byu" and click the first link. Then follow the instructions.

     This week was pretty good. We're still struggling for lessons but we're getting a lot of new investigators. In the past 3 weeks we've had 15 new investigators. Most of those investigators have been families which was really good. This week though, we have about 5 member present lessons planned (we get at most two a week), and we might even get 3 on Tuesday if everything works out. We're pretty excited about that.

     We found one family, the Diaz family, that is awesome. Last Friday, we didn't have a dinner with a member, so they invited us over. We had some of the best pupusas we've ever had. These were amazing. Pupusas are like stuffed tortillas with queso, frijoles, and chicharron. They look like this:

Put a little curtido and some salsa on there and it is the most delicious thing that I have had. Except for brownies. They are a great family with a lot of potential. The only problem is that we can't get them focused enough to teach a good lesson. So mostly we teach a good ten minute lesson and then talk with them a little bit 'cuz then people just scatter and then go in and out. Still great though.

     We were doing a blitz and we went on exchanges with the other missionaries in our district (I was with Elder Jossie [pronounced Jocie]). We knocked into this old lady that absolutely loves missionaries of any kind. It was pretty funny. We taught her a little bit and then we said a prayer with her. And then she blessed us. That was probably the most interesting experience of my mission. She like made us kneel down and she starts praying for us and crying. We left feeling more rejuvenated and ready to go.

     We also got permission to teach one guy who's girlfriend is a member. We had to get permission from like 5 different people to be able to teach him because he doesn't live in our area, or our ward. The reason why we wanted to teach him was because a member requested that we teach him, and Pres. Martin said if he's not happy, the missionary work in the ward suffers. So we had to get permission from the other elders who were teaching him before, the elders who are in charge of the area that he lives in, our district leader, and it was pretty crazy. His name's Bryan and he's pretty ready. Basically, the only reason why we're teaching him is because he's totally ready and because he just needs the lessons. He wants to get baptized by the end of the month. We can only meet with him once a week, so we'd have to squeeze the lessons together, but he pretty much knows everything through his girlfriend, who has pretty much taught him everything.

     Well that's it. I'm getting pretty much kicked off because we e-mail in the family history library and there's a line of like 20 missionaries behind me waiting to e-mail. 

Talk to you later.

Con amor, 

Elder Nathan Gruenewald