Brian sent a photo CD with some new shots of him. These include the mono months.
(Click on any photo to see them all in a gallery).
May 3, 2011
Martes: We woke up early and we drove down to Del Mar to see Elder Perry. I played an hour of prelude before our mission meeting that we had at 11 and then another 1 1/2 hours of prelude while we were waiting for Elder and Sister Perry and President and Sister Clayton of the Presidency of the 70 to arrive. The first bit was on the organ, but then I was sick of playing the organ so I switched to the piano. I played really good all of the songs, and something really, really special happened. It was pretty dang sweet. Elder Perry was hilarious and it was a really good talk and the spirit was strong. I was on the front row because I was playing the organ so that was sweet. I was exhausted so I slept on the way back. Prayers work!!! Great spiritual day!! Super tired.
Miercoles: I was way tired and so I slept and then went to District Meeting and then we taught [a family] and then I came back and slept some more. I felt really, really sick and decided that I shouldn’t go out and teach in the evening, so we made arrangements and I slept.
Sabado: First, we went down to San Onofre State Beach to help with the state-wide Mormon Helping Hands service project. We all donned the yellow vests and helped out. I didn’t do anything crazy hard, so don’t worry, but it was nice to get out and to be doing something else. It was really fun and then we went down to this beach house of someone in our ward to have shakes.
May 10, 2011
So, my infection hasn’t gone away yet, but I have only been on the meds for like 5 days, so hopefully here soon it will start to clear up. I am super, super, stuffed up but doing well. I have been getting lots of rest.
Jueves: In the morning we hosted this meeting for all of the leadership in San Clemente. We made plans and set goals for the transfer as a zone and it was a very effective and productive meeting. Then I came home and slept.
Viernes: Weekly planning. That went really well and then after that I slept some more. At this point I was really sick, so that is when [the mission doctor] came over to the house and he wrote me a prescription for some medicine. After him, I felt pretty sick and so I decided that I shouldn’t go out in the evening.
Sabado: I went to correlation in the morning and then I stayed in all day. Elder Thomas came and sat with me all day while Elder Gibbons and Ochoa went out and worked. However, I did have some needed projects set up so we were able to do those. We made this huge map of the stake with all of the ward boundaries in it to hang up on the wall, so that took a while. I slept and then by 9, the other Elders had come back.
May 17, 2011
Miercoles: I was still pretty sick, this cold just wasn’t going away. In the evening we went and we taught English classes which are SO fun! I love teaching English classes. We also did this activity with all of the young women to kind of build unity and everything. It went really well.
Jueves: In the morning, we went to the San Clemente district meeting and then I had to take a siesta because I am still recovering.
Lunes: Awesome day! We were running all over the place. At lunch, the wall hit me, and I just fell asleep and slept for like 3 hours. Which was good, because then after that it was nonstop for the rest of the night. It is raining today which is no fun, but it is a nice change. San Juan Capistrano is such a cool city, I really like it a lot. It has tons of history.
May 24, 2011
Some not so good news, yesterday I got pink eye :(. No fun. I am pretty sure that the next thing is going to be boils haha. Today it hurts pretty bad, but it should blow over here in a few days. Besides that, life is good.
Viernes: I slept in, because my mono was killing me and I had NO energy. Then we had to take our car up to Aliso Viejo because our check engine light came on, and so we weekly planned at some library up there in Aliso Viejo. That night was sweet because Elder Gibbons got invited to a baptism in the Oceanside 5th ward, the ward I used to serve in. So, because our stakes touch, we could go to it. The cool thing was that I got to see a lot of my recent converts.
Sabado: The end of the world!!! So many people came up and talked to us about it.
May 31, 2011
Wow, we had such a great week!! Our area is exploding. Really, it is awesome. I don’t think that I have ever seen an area like this before. Even Escondido which was the gold mine of Spanish work, I think that this definitely rivals/maybe succeeds it. The Lord truly is blessing us and his children here in San Juan Capistrano. Our teaching pool right now is so strong!! It is the strongest that I have had my whole mission. We are getting legit member referrals every day it seems like and all of these crazy miracles are happening!! It is so sweet!
So just so you know, my pink eye has now subsided thank goodness and I am doing much better. Apart from one tiny inflamed lymph node, I think that it would be safe to say that I am all of the way back to normal. It has been 11 weeks now, and I feel much much better. So yes, take heart in that I am fine and doing well.
Basically we are doing so good and for some reason the Lord is blessing us. Just this morning, we got a call from the Mission office saying that someone called in from Irvine because the family that cleans their house had a Book of Mormon and they read it every night and they knew all of the stories and they want to be baptized, they just need to go to a church that meets in Spanish and in the afternoon. WE MEET AT 1!!! So we called him a bit ago and he was all up for it and we are meeting with him and his family tonight. Wow.
I am doing so good here and I can’t believe that tomorrow is June. Wow, it is going way way way too fast.
April 5, 2011
To get right to the chase…I am ill. Very ill. I have been sick for two weeks and the doctor came over a week and a half ago and said that it was a bacterial infection so I was on Augmentin but then I was getting worse. It got to the point that I had absolutely no energy to do anything. My throat is SO sore, and I have incredible headaches, I am really weak, and I have these big lumps on my neck. So the doctor in our mission came over to the house yesterday and he is 99% sure that I have mono. But the only way to for sure know is to get bloodwork done, so this morning we went up to Laguna Beach to the hospital to get the work done. We hung around to get the results back for one of the tests and that is what it is looking to be, but the definitive one, we haven’t got results back from yet. If it is mono, it is going to knock me out for 6 weeks – 3 months. Disclaimer: None of this is definite. But a little more info about mono, it is unknown how it is contracted, and there is not a cure. Basically, you just have to wait it out. I have been taking like 2-3 hour naps every day because I am so exhausted, and I don’t have the energy to do anything. If this all plays out the way it is looking like it is, I am not exactly sure what they are going to do with me, if they are going to leave me still as zone leader, or what, but it will be interesting to see. So that is my life right now, I just sleep all the time and can’t swallow. The lumps on my neck are all severely swollen lymph nodes that are trying to fight off the infection.
(A call home from the Mission President the next day confirmed that he has a severe case of mono with an enlarged spleen).
April 12, 2011
Well, this week has been…fun. Haha, not really, it has sucked, but I am doing better. So my week was pretty much just me sleeping in bed, and doing stuff and being in members houses. My throat is fine now, I can swallow and everything and I am doing good. Kind of how I am is that I sleep and then I wake up and I have a ton of energy and then that energy wears off quick and then in 3-4 hours I am tired again. But, each day I feel that I am improving, and so now I am trying to time my naps so that I can minimize the time that I am sleeping and maximize the time when I am awake.
Wednesday: I get a call from President saying that he had left a message with you and that if I were to do ANY work, that he would send me home just because he did not want to play around with my health. So that was kind of discouraging, especially the mandate to stay at home for an entire week! BAH! So that brings us to today. Today is the last day of my confinement, (I think).
April 19, 2011
OK, so I am continuing to do better. I kind of plateaued, but I am doing well. I still get tired, but now I can wake up and make it through most of the day. I only have to take one nap at about 3-5. That is when my energy really crashes.
Miercoles: I went over to [a member home] and spent the afternoon sleeping there, and then we went over to our President’s interviews. We talked about things, and he feels VERY strong that I need to stay. And so do I. Apparently Mission Medical recommended that I go home a week or so ago, but he wanted to do everything so that I could stay, and so, here I am still here and doing better. So the terms were that I could only go to appointments and then besides that I needed to be sleeping. Thanks for everything, I am so grateful for all of your prayers/fasting/support. I am happy that I am staying for now, and I hope I continue to do better.
April 25, 2011
For me, I am doing better each week. This marks 5 weeks of being sick, and I am for sure getting tired of it. Some days are better than others, and I am still just getting headaches and feeling really tired. But I feel like I am making improvements and doing better. It has just been a REALLY slow process and I feel like I have been sick for sooo long. But yeah, I am still taking it easy for the most part and trying to get better. I am trying to gain some weight back, because I lost some, so I have been drinking a lot of protein shakes to try and get some weight, and it seems to be working.
March 1, 2011
Domingo: I LOVE SUNDAYS!!! They are the best day of the week. In church I performed. I played piano and sang. I had a boom mike set up and everything, it was pretty intense. I performed my arrangement of a Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief. You HAVE to hear it, when I get home. It was super spiritual and there were a lot of tears. So that went really well, and we had 4 investigators at church. It was great. Then these two priests took me up to Aliso Viejo to go to the singles ward. That was also awesome. We ended up teaching Gospel Principles. We taught this less active kid and then we gave a youth fireside. We were the speakers in the bishop’s fireside and it went way good. After the fireside, while everyone was eating I performed again. I had them pick a Disney song, a hymn, a primary song, and a pop song and I mashed it together. The kids LOVED it.
March 8, 2011
I am doing amazing. Can you believe that tomorrow will be my one year mark in the field? That is crazy.
Viernes: We had to drive up to Mission Viejo to drop something off and then we went down to Capistrano Beach to visit some less actives. After that we went to this rest home, and I played piano for the people living there, and we sang songs and it was really fun. We got to meet some neat people. Then after that we went and gave bread to the homeless which was also really fun.
March 15, 2011
But Japan! Wow, that was nuts. We got a call at 5:30 in the morning on Friday saying to stay away from the beach because there is a reported tsunami that was going to be hitting California. Luckily, nothing hit, I think it raised maybe like 4 feet and that was it. So that is good. Pretty nuts though. We haven’t heard very much of anything, just little bits and pieces and what we hear from members. It sounds pretty bad though.
Saturday: The BAPTISM!!!!! Everything went really good for the most part. So first, the hot water didn’t work, so we prayed really hard, and then it was warm!! Then, the drain wasn’t working, so all the water was slowly leaving so we had to find a way to stop the water, so we found this rubber disk randomly and just slapped it on, and it worked. Then the programs were all messed up, so we had to have someone fix them. Our ward mission leader was in Hawaii, so we had to get the programs fixed without him. All good though. The service was great, and the spirit was strong, and it was awesome.
March 22, 2011
Lunes: We had to drive up to Aliso Viejo to get our car fixed and while we were up there, we went out to eat at Cafe Rio. Yep, you heard it, Cafe Rio. The first Cafe Rio in California. I have pictures to prove it. We walked in, and the entire restaurant was full of Mormons. We saw people from our ward (we were very far away), and we had 3 offers from different people to pay for our meal. Yeah it rocked. Then the entire time people came up to us and said hi Elders! There are more Mormons at Cafe Rio than at church!!
Domingo: Then a huge miracle. We were going over to dinner at [a family], and we went and knocked their door without thinking twice. It wasn’t them. It was their next door neighbors which actually is a very small assisted living center. This man from the Philippines (one of the two workers), let us in and we started talking. He said “I have always seen you in Manila, but I have never gotten the chance to talk to you. I saw you in the peephole and something inside me told me to open the door. I know God sent you here for a reason and I know that what you are sharing is true.” YES IT IS TRUE!!!! We didn’t even share anything with him really. It was a miracle. He said to come over on Monday night.
March 29, 2011
Saturday: Not much happened until the evening. We FINALLY got a hold of our miracle man and we had a lesson in [a member’s] home!! Wow, it went AWESOME! He is SO in tune with the spirit, and he said that when he heard it, it sounded “familiar and like I was coming home”. Of the First Vision, “I feel warmth and like something inside of me, is telling me that is true.” When invited to be baptized, “I will walk 40 miles to have that”!! Wow, it was awesome. Then after him, we had another sweet lesson with [an investigator]. We talked about the Book of Mormon, and we got all of his questions answered about it.
February 1, 2011
Sabado: We went up to Dixon Lake, this park in North Escondido, and we were able to talk to some people up there. Then we drove up to Valley Center to do a baptismal interview for [elders there]. To finish off the evening, we went over to [a family] and we talked to them about Family Home Evening. We actually made a cute little assignment wheel out of cardboard and it looked pretty legit. Oh yes.
Lunes: We are trying to volunteer at Salvation Army so we went over there, and then we are also going to be performing at this retirement center so we got things set up for that too. To finish off the evening we taught these former investigators and it went really well.
February 8, 2011
So basically the news is….I am getting transferred. I am pretty bummed, because I have loved being with Elder Kidd and I love Escondido, but I was kind of expecting it. I have been in this ward for 9 months. It has been pretty crazy. It was pretty hard saying goodbye to everyone again, but that is ok. This ward has been my family and it was hard to say goodbye again. We took pictures and stuff. So even though I didn’t have any baptisms in this area, we saw so much success. It was pretty cool. I am excited to see where the Lord wants me to be next and what he wants me to do.
Miercoles: We went to district meeting and I sang a musical number, “Savior Redeemer of My Soul”. It is the hymn words, but to a tune that is absolutely beautiful. I will have to show it to you when I get home. We didn’t have music, but Elder Kidd and I just made it up (he played piano).
February 15, 2011
I got transferred to stay a Zone Leader in the San Clemente Zone. I am in English Work and I am serving in 2 wards. The San Clemente 4th Ward (family ward), and the San Clemente 5th YSA ward. I am living in San Juan Capistrano. Wow, this is the most beautiful place that I have ever been. We are right down on the ocean and there really isn’t a time where you don’t see the ocean. This is also the first time that I have served in Orange County, I have been in San Diego County for my whole mission thus far. It was kind of a surprise to be going into English work, but it is all good, I have a lot to learn. The style of work is completely different too. The members here are great and are giving us tons of referrals. Little known fact, our mission gives the most member referrals than any other mission in the U.S. and Canada.
February 22, 2011
Tuesday: So after we went emailing we went to the church and we spent all day doing this project. We got a map of the two stakes, cut it into 2″ squares and then blew it up 400% and then pieced it together. Then we took our entire wall in our apartment to hang up this map that we made. Then what we have been doing is putting pins in where all of the active/less active members of our ward live with a number so that we can know who lives there. It is pretty awesome. If anyone were to get whitewashed into this area, they would be really grateful.