December 27, 2011

Hey Family,

     Sounds like your Christmas dinner was good. Better than my shrimp patties with mole.... Oh goodness.

     I enjoyed talking to you guys too. That was nice.

     So, on Sunday, dad gave me the address for Wayne and Donna in Lone Pine. Later on that day, I found out that one of the elders that I know in the other zone is being transferred to Lone Pine in English. So I wrote a little note on sticky-notes (I didn't have any real paper) and gave it to him and gave him the address. So he'll be going up there and giving the note to them.

     Yesterday was transfer day. Hna. Busch has left the district after 7 1/2 transfers (11 months) in this ward. That was nice for her. She will be missed because she was such a good misionera. But we got Hna. Beauchamp, who is also a great misionera.

     Elder Vazquez is also leaving to go whitewash an area with a greenie. That was kinda interesting and totally unexpected because Elder Vazquez dies this transfer (goes home), and usually you don't train your last transfer. We're getting Elder Banuelos to replace him as zone leader. He also dies this transfer.

We set a baptismal date with Emily. Emily is the 14 year old daughter of one of our eternigators (eternal investigators) that really hadn't been taught much in the past. So we're really focusing our efforts on her. And we're excited for her.

     We also are focusing a little our efforts on Karen, Elizabeth's daughter. The only problem is the baby’s daddy. Karen wants to get married to him, Elizabeth does not want her to get married to him. Nor do I want her to marry him.

     Miriam and Chris have been sick and busy and out of town and family in town and just everything relating to busy-ness. But we still want to visit them.

     And that's about it.

     Thanks for everything.

Con amor,

Elder Nathan Gruenewald

December 19, 2011

Hi Everyone,

     Things have been really difficult this week. Two to three weeks ago, we had 20 investigators, we were teaching like 20 lessons a week, and things were just fine and peachy. As of yesterday, we have 8 investigators, we might be dropping another one depending on whether or not he reads, and we struggle to get over 10 lessons. One of our golden investigators decided to move, another one of our golden investigator referrals feels more comfortable with English, and none of our other investigators want to keep commitments. It's tough right now. We've started spending about 6 hours a day just knocking. We're really good at finding people, we're just not doing a good job of finding people that will let us in the door, and not doing a good job of finding those prepared people. And we're really good at setting citas (appointments) but they always fall through.

     And the difficulties aren't just in our companionship's area. Our whole district is really struggling. The zone leaders also only have 8 investigators, but they have one progressing investigator, which is good. And the hermanas are also struggling with finding prepared people, but again, they have one or two progressing investigators. It can get a little frustrating and even a little discouraging at times, but we keep working.

     But there have been a few bright notes, a few fun moments for us this week.

     On Monday, we had a cita with a less active member (less active, as in, hasn't been to church in six years) and his wife. The wife was toda borracha (totally drunk). It was the funniest thing. Poor Elder Bushman, the lady was making fun of him ("Ay, mi ganchito, porque te ves tan enojado? [Oh, my little blonde boy, why do you look so angry?] She repeated that like 20 times in an hour) and he had no idea what was going on. She kept telling us to get her purse and pointing at it, only her purse wasn't where she was pointing. And she tried to give us the phone number to her work, except she gave us only 9 digits and when we asked for the last digit, she said that that was the right number. That will be a lesson I remember for a long time.

     But, in that same lesson, we talked to the less active member for a while (who was only slightly drunk). He showed us his stake missionary plaque that he has and he said that even though he's been inactive for six years, he's still an elder and still has the Melchezidek Priesthood and he has not been living worthily of holding that. He wants to come back to church, but work has kept him away. Fortunately, with the time change, he can start coming back to church. I think he could be a real strong leader in the church. Just kinda got that impression when I met him.

     We also went knocking for about 7 hours on Saturday and that was a lot of fun. We had some really funny moments. I knocked one door and some white lady answers the door. I say "Hi, I'm Elder Bushman, and we're... Wait a second, I'm not Elder Bushman, he's Elder Bushman, and I'm Elder Gruenewald." The lady just kinda stood there and looked at us blankly. It was kinda a lost cause, but we were laughing so hard after that one.

      We also knocked into an Armenian guy that didn't speak English or Spanish or German (which are the only three languages I could do door approaches in) and we realized that we didn't have anything Armenian. So we made our own Armenian pass-along cards. We found an Armenian pamphlet that said "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints" (in Armenian, of course) and we copied that down onto some Mormon.org pass-along cards. That was pretty fun.

      We also had a few interesting moments...

      On Thursday, I got an impression to knock an apartment complex that I had never been to before. So we went. And we stood in the complex for like 5 minutes trying to decide which doors to knock (we can only knock like one or two doors in apartment complexes before people get mad and kick us out). Then we looked and guess who we saw... JESUS!! No, not Jesus (said in a Hispanic accent), Jesus Christ!! Yeah, crazy. Someone put a Jesus Christ pass along card that we give out on their door. So we looked at the card, and it was from missionaries about two years ago (we know that because we read the area book a lot and we get to know what missionaries have been in the area in the past). We knocked on the door... No one was there, but that was kinda an interesting experience. We'll keep knocking that door.

      Yesterday, we talked with Helio (we found out his name is Helio, not Heliot). And we had one of those interesting Ammon experiences where the missionary stays silent for a long time while the investigator thinks. We stayed quite for about 15 minutes while he just thought. Not quite an hour, but still a long time.

      Well, I think that's about it.

      Oh yeah, calling on Sunday. Well, I'll be calling probably somewhere around 2:00 or 3:00 o'clock. In the morning. No just kidding. In the afternoon. What was the phone number again? Kidding....Ok, now I think that's it.

      Hope you got my Christmas card.

      Well. Merry Christmas everyone. Hope you have fun. Remember the reason for the season... Presents!! No, that's not the reason for the season. The reason for the season is Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son, who was born in humble circumstances, who suffered for our sins and was crucified and was resurrected the third day, so that we can have the opportunity to return to live with our Father in Heaven.

      Feliz Navidad.

Con amor,

Elder Nathan Gruenewald

December 12, 2011

Hi everyone that reads this letter,

     This week has been somewhat of a difficult week.

     Mission packages sent to the mission office take a while to get to me. We have to wait for someone in the zone to go to the office up in Santa Clarita and then we finally get it. Usually, people are up there once a week.

     We made Christmas cards!! So hopefully we'll be sending those out today (knowing us, it probably won't get done until next P-Day, but you know, it'll get to you).

     We just keep going through investigators. Picking up, dropping, picked up, being dropped, finding, teaching, dropping. Not so much baptizing. It's kinda tough to get anything going, and our ward is starting to get a little upset with us because of our lack of success in baptisms, whereas the sister ward NoHo 4to is baptizing left and right. We're just in a bit of a rut right now where we just haven't been able to have the baptismal success that has been seen in the past. But, I'm really not too worried about that right now because I know that we're working our hardest as a district, and that's all I really care about.

     I went on exchanges with the zone leaders this past Tuesday. I had requested that I do my exchanges with them earlier in the transfer because I felt like I needed to learn as soon as possible so that I could be a better trainer sooner and a better district leader sooner.

     We have a few progressing investigators. Karen Mendez is the daughter of Elizabeth (my first baptism). She wants to get baptized and knows that this church is true. Two problems: 1) She doesn't want to go to church because she's being lazy. 2) She is not married to the guy she is living with. They want to get married. Elizabeth is completely against them getting marired (I don't blame her). So that becomes a pretty big issue. We're not really sure what to do.

     Miriam and Chris are progressing, especially Chris. We found out that one of our good young men (Alfredo) is going to go to the same school as Chris, and they really hit it off. That was pretty sweet. The only problem is that Chris always seems to go out of town on the weekends (Palmdale, San Diego, places like that) where it makes it tough for him to go to church. He did go one week, and he kinda liked it. The young men were a little rowdy that week (except for Alfredo, he's always pretty good).

     We had a Christmas music devotional. Guess who got asked to play the piano for basically all the wards about 30 minutes before it started... Mhmm. It was really nice though.

     Elder Bushman and I have been pretty sick recently. Yesterday, my voice was completely gone. We couldn't get any lessons yesterday because my companion can't speak Spanish and I couldn't speak period.

     It's raining right now...

     Everything else is going well... I guess.

     Well, there's not much else to report on.

Con amor,

Elder Nathan Gruenewald

December 5, 2011

Hi Everyone,

     Sounds like everything is going good.

     We decorated our Christmas tree... It has one ornament because we can't afford anything more. We found some stockings, so we hung those on the tree too. We found a few pine cones, stuck them in the tree. It's a wonderful tree.

     So we did have wind, not as bad as what you saw on the news. Yeah it was pretty windy. And no, I haven't felt an earthquake. I kinda want to though. And for an earthquake, you don't run to the doorways, you crouch down next to the sofa. At least, that's what everyone at the mission office tells us to do. And I trust the mission office more when it comes to earthquakes because they have experience with this.

     Training and DL'ing are both really fun but really tough. I am having a blast with Elder Bushman but I also feel really bad because I don't have much that I can teach him because I'm learning just as much as he is. That's why I requested exchanges tomorrow with the zone leaders, so that I can learn some things from the zone leaders and gain some experience with them and be able to teach Elder Bushman the things that I learned.

     It was cool, because Elder Herrera (one of the zone leaders) taught me a good way to get into someone's home for the first time. Just tell them you want to offer a prayer in their home and most people are qilling to allow you to do that. And then you spend the next 20 minutes telling them how important prayer is and how great prayer is and stuff like that. It works.

     List of birthdays would be nice. I can never remember when mom was born. For all I know, we were still in the Dark Ages when she was born...Kidding... kinda :P

     Dad told me about Jordan's voice changing and how it makes it kinda funny when you guys tease him. Wish I was there to see that haha.

     Speaking of Christmas, Tina has become quite a celebrity in our district with her rendition of "Oh, Christmas Tree." Now, every time anyone in our district sees a Christmas tree, we sing "Oh Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree... nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, BRANCHES!!!"

     Ok, now to investigators.

     We're doing a lot of finding because I'm kinda tired of the lack of progression of our current investigators. We've found two new families that we hope will progress. We're doing a lot of knocking (which, I can only do for about 3 hours at a time because of the hernia). So, our numbers don't look too good (especially the investigators at church: another 0) but we're working hard and that's all that matters to me.

     The hernia doesn't bug me unless I do a lot of walking.

     We had to drop Heliot about two weeks ago. The next day in church, one of the hermanas' investigators asked me about Heliot and why he wasn't coming to church. So, that was kinda weird. Then, a week and a half later, we saw him while we were eating cena at a members' home because he was buying pupusas from a member. Totally random. So, we think God is trying to tell us to pick him back up again...

     Pupusas- mom you would be disgusted by the way we have to eat these. With our hands, all messy. Mmmmm but they are so good. El Salvadorian delicacy.

     Have a fun week.

Con amor,

Elder Nathan Gruenewald

November 28

Dear Everyone,

     So yes, I did remember it was mom and dad's birthday. I actually can never remember the exact days that they're on. I think dad's like the 25th or the 23rd and mom's is like the 23rd or 25th... or something like that. And Jocie's is on the 1st. I figure if I send three letters for all three of you in one envelope between all your birthdays, I'm safe. So don't be all mad with me (ichy wa-wa woo). Mail's slow...

     When you wrote about who came to the Thanksgiving thing, I thought it said the Giraffes, the Hedgehogs and the Peacocks at first. I had to read it twice...

     Thanksgiving was good. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We spent it doing our weekly planning and studying the scriptures. We went to one of our less active member's home and had turkey, not tamales.

     My verdecito is doing good. He's progressing everyday. The only trouble he's having is when people are talking back to him in Spanish. So I have to start talking with him a lot more in Spanish so that he can gain that comprehension. Otherwise, he's a great missionary. We have to do a lot of roleplaying, which I absolutely hated when I was a greenie (wait a second, I'm still a greenie) because it made me feel like an incompetent missionary. But I know how necessary it is. Sounds like everything is going good with your member missionary work.

     So this week was not a very good proselyting week for us. Monday was P-Day. Tuesday I had a leadership training up in Santa Clarita, and that took all day. Wednesday I had another leadership training in Santa Clarita, so that took most of the day. Thursday was Thanksgiving, and most people wouldn't be too happy if we just sorta dropped by while they were eating their stuffing and pavo (turkey). Friday was at least somewhat regular, except we had district meeting. Saturday was regular. And Sunday, well that's church (and once again we had 0 investigators at church... We're really trying to change that). But somehow, we ended up with 5 new investigators.

      One of the great stories that I have this week is that of Alejandra. We were going to a potential investigator's home when their 14 year old son (Rodolfo) opened the door for us. He invited us to sit down at the table, where Alejandra was, and then just kinda left. Alejandra was filling applications out for college (she's 18).

     Sidenote: For some reason, we have a thing where pretty much all our investigators (about 80%) are either 14-24 year old girls or the mothers of 14-24 year old girls. I think it might have something to do with the white shirt, tie, blue eyes, blonde hair, gueros guapos...

     Anyways, Alejandra was not very open to us at all at first. She was just like whatever, didn't really take us seriously and stuff like that. Then we asked her a question about her religion and she was just like "I'm Catholic and I'm one of those that's actually Catholic. I'm a Cathechism teacher." But then we felt like she didn't really know if God was there and that she had a void in her heart. We told her that and she just started crying. "How did you know? I just don't feel it." So, we told her how she could fill the void in her heart and she just kept crying and stuff like that. It was good.

     Today, a Jehova Witness came up to me today and tried to do his missionary work with me. I was just like "Oh really? I'm a missionary too! We have a great message about the gospel of Jesus Christ." He was not very happy about how I turned the tables on him and started explaining our message. He was just like "Well, can I give you this to read?" (a copy of the Lighthouse). I was just like "You know, we have some stuff that we read that we would love to share with you." He wouldn't accept our card or pamphlets and just walked out of the laundromat. It was fun though :)

Sorry, I don't have time to send individual e-mails.

     Surgery recovery is good. The only bad thing is I have a bit of a cold and sore throat, so there's a bit of coughing and sneezing. That tends to be a little painful. But other than that I'm good. Not much else to report on. Prayer is good.

Con amor,

Elder Nathan Gruenewald

Hola!

Hey guys,

 

How disappointed I was not to recieve an e-mail from you guys... Tsk tsk tsk.

However, I was very happy to receive the two pound bag of Swedish Fish and all the other goodies that were in there. And the pictures too!!! I was so excited for that!! Now my investigators know what my family looks like and how tall they all really are. Thanks so much. And the thing that Sis. Galan made for the choir was very funny.

So being a trainer and district leader is not as tough as I thought it would be. Elder Bushman has been very patient with me as I struggle to get 100% healthy. I feel great. I think the thing that hurts the most is when I have to take of the gauze from the stitches because the skin around there is all raw from having to take the gauze off so many times. And then it burns whenever I have to take a shower. But other than that, I feel no pain, except for the occasional misstep here and there, a cough here and there, a sneeze here and there. The doctor keeps rescheduling my appointment with him so I haven't been able to see him since my surgery, but I go in today. So we'll see.

Elder Bushman came in on Wednesday. I felt really bad because I could do nothing to help with the luggage. I couldn't carry it up the stairs, so here he is, carrying 130 pounds of luggage by himself, while I stand by idly watching. Poor guy. It's kinda funny that I only have 6 more weeks in the mission than he does. So yeah.... But he's a great missionary. His Spanish... is improving every day. I think he'll do great. He knows how to speak the language fairly okay, it's just being able to understand what people are saying to him. But we're working on that. We take an hour everyday of language study, where basically he can ask me any question that he needs answered about Spanish and then we listen to someone speak in Spanish and we practice Spanish pronunciation. It's fun.

We don't have a lot of proselyting time because of all our additional studies. We have to do about 4 hours of studies everyday. But we've done a pretty good job of doing our studies.

Oh, so on Elder Bushman's first day, we set baptismal dates with Miriam and Chris for Dec. 18!! It was awesome. Going into the lesson, I really had no idea that they we were going to invite them to get baptized. And poor Elder Bushman, I had told him we were going to be teaching the second lesson, and instead I felt like we should change and go over the first lesson again. It turned out to be a good thing.

The next day, we had to go to the new missionary training and Pres. Martin asked "how many companionships were able to set baptismal dates on their first day?" And we were the only companionship that raised our hands. We received much praise from Pres. Martin for that. "Hahaha, I guess it takes a greenie and a crippled elder to set baptismal dates in our mission." Good one, president... Haha, no I love Pres. Martin.

Speaking of the new missionary training, that was good. It was the same exact meeting that I went to 12 weeks ago, when I got into the mission. We went over the same exact program that I went through. We watched the same exact movies that we watched when I was a greenie. I think the only thing that was different was the AP's. So, I learned some new things...

It was funny because during the training, we read the introduction of the new missionary program. Pres. Martin had me read, I think it was like the third paragraph, where it says "This program is designed to help missionaries, if called upon, be prepared to train a new missionary when they are done with this program." Then, he says "Elder Gruenewald, how long have you been in the mission." "This is my third transfer." "See, elders and sisters, this 12 week program does help missionaries be prepared to train after just 3 months." Thanks president. It was a little embarassing.

It was kinda weird because I knew only a handful of missionaries there, whereas pretty much every missionary knew every other missionary. I think that Elder Bushman probably knew more missionaries at that training than I did.

And then Chris came to church yesterday! Ok, a little about Chris, Chris is a 15 year old kid who is just great. It was kinda funny because on Saturday we stopped by quickly to make sure he would come to church and we were about to leave and he says "Aren't we forgetting to do something?? We forgot a prayer!" So we said a prayer. He's a great kid, and I think he will be able to go through with his baptismal date. Miriam probably won't because she works off-and-on on Sundays, but she says she will come to church. It helps that they have a member, Daisy, her sister, that lives with them.

Hna. Busch was so excited when Chris came on Sunday because she was the one that find them when she worked our south area, and then they were just sort of forgetten after she left. So when we picked them up again, she was so excited and when he came to church, she was just even more excited. Poor misionera, this is her 7th transfer in this ward. Almost a year. And she has not had it easy. They had 8 baptismal dates a few months ago, and there have been 0 baptisms as a result. But now, she's perservered and she has a lot of baptisms set up for next month. Some people that just kinda went missing are being found again. And she is happy again (because she was disappointed when she found out she'd be staying yet another transfer here; there's been speculation for like the past 3 transfers that she would be leaving the ward).

As for district leading, I don't feel any different. Basically the only thing different is that I have to give the trainings on Friday and we have a lot more meetings, which really stinks because that takes time away from proselyting and miles from our car (we get 1000 miles each month). But I know they're necessary. I have to go to meetings in Santa Clarita this Tuesday and Wednesday for district leader stuff.

We went knocking on Saturday. I did a few example door contacts for Elder Bushman and then I just kinda threw him out there. Poor kid, he just kinda froze at the first door. Some Philippino guy answers the door and he starts speaking Spanish to him and the Phillipino guys just like "I'm Phillipino." After that, Elder Bushman really didn't know what to do. But he'll get better. I think we just have to do a lot of roleplaying so he feels comfortable. It's ok though. I remember my first door, the guy just slammed the door in my face. Not fun. And my second door, the guy started speaking English and I had no idea what to do. It was funny. Once he gets those jitters out (which, quite frankly, I still have), he'll be okay.

Well, that's about it. Hasta luego.

 

Con amor,

 

Elder Nathan Gruenewald

OOOOOO Spooky Halloween Letter!!

Hey everyone!!!

So what I meant from I don't hear anything from my sibs is that they hadn't sent me an e-mail in forever or a letter. And that was the e-mail I sent like years ago (okay, fine 2 weeks, but still).

I'm glad you love Sis. Martin because, well, I love Sis. Martin. And I'm glad you're keeping me in your prayers with my surgery and not in everything else. Haha just kidding.

Yes, I heard my cousin is engaged, Granny JoAnny told me. And I called it first. You heard it first from me. It was me that said it first. Let me direct you to what I said the last week I was in the MTC: "I saw Kelly with her future fiance today at the MTC." Yeah, I think I wrote that to dad or something. But yeah, I knew it would happen.

We have some beautiful decorations in our apartment. I think they're beautiful. And tomorrow we're decorating the apartment for Christmas!! Yay!!!

So we're doing a very good job of teaching lessons. We have had between 17 and 20 lessons per week this month. We're doing a bad job of getting investigators to church. Yesterday we had one. Last week 0. Yeah, I dunno what it is. Here, it is so easy to commit people to baptism but a huge thing to get them to actually come to church. We're working on that.

We were teaching this kid to pray and I told him that we had to be thankful for things. We had to express our thanks for things, for our food, our clothes, our house, and our money. I started giggling a little bit hehehe.

I have to tell you about Kenny, the 3 year old kid of Darwin, one of our members. Yesterday, we were asked to go and give a blessing to them. We get in there, he says "Daddy, me van a bautizar" (Daddy, they're gonna baptize me) and he puts his hands on Elder Hawke's head. We were confused and then Darwin was like "Esta diciendo que le va a dar una bendicion" (He means, they're going to be giving me a blessing). So then Kenny says "Tiene las llaves?" (Do you have the keys?). We were like dang this kid is three years old and he is asking if we have the priesthood keys to give a blessing. After a few minutes, we realized he meant an oil vial. He thought we used keys to give a blessing because normally you have the oil vial on your keychain. So he was asking if we had the "keys" when he actually meant if we had the oil on the keychain. It was pretty funny. But we gave the blessings and it was nice.

There's a thrift store we went to last Monday called "It's a Wrap!" Basically, all the movie and television studios here give all the stuff they don't auction off to this thrift store. They have stuff from like Suite Life of Zach and Cody, High School Musical, and yes, NCIS. It was a lot of fun, because since it's Halloween, they had the costumes out. Which was a lot of fun to try on. Elder Hawke bought a yamalkha.

Speaking of yamalkha, we found out yesterday why some Jews wear yamalkhas and why some Jews wear top hats. The Jews that wear top hats are European Jews that most of the time wear yamalkhas underneath. It's just sort of a tradition thing that's just kinda stuck over the years.

We have a lot of squirrels in our area. I think we might have hit one with our car. We also have a lot of Jews and Armenians, but we try not to hit those with our car. I don't think I even knew what an Armenian was when before I came here. They don't like us too much.

We were talking the other day and Elder Hawke did a lot of musical theater growing up. We talked about the King & I and a couple of thoughts ran across my mind. "My cup of tea" for Brian, and Jordan farting when Mr. Maldonado was mad.

Well, I think that's about it. Say hi to everyone.

Con amor,

Elder Nathan Gruenewald