September 23rd 2013

Another Week in LOS ANGELES!                                     

Hola Familia!

Bueno esta semana fue muy bien!

            We really went to work this week. We visited a lot of families so it was good. One thing I did this week, and I should have been doing forever ago was to be super bold with people. Tell them what you know and offer your help. I love helping people here. I love my area. Next week is transfers and if I get moved I know it will be super hard for me but I’d understand that the Lord needs me somewhere else. Wednesday was super fun though. First off Wed. morning we kind of locked ourselves out of our apartment. Ha-ha my companion was so mad! It’s all-good though. We ate dinner with an older lady named Rosita and she is amazing! She always has non-members work for her and every time we come by she makes them sit down to listen! Ha we have a new investigator actually because of that. Her name is Ana. So Rosita helps out a lot. We went to church and taught a class there and then after that some young men were playing soccer so I played a little and it was way fun! I love just hanging out with them and I am getting way comfortable here. I know almost everyone by name now and I love it.

            Later in the week on Saturday was super fun! We had this fair with all these countries food and there was dances that were performed and stuff! I love my ward! Ha-ha I ate a lot of food and we brought a lot of investigators to the event! I had so much fun though! I was representing PERU of course and everyone loved my jersey I was wearing. I am like the only one from Peru but it's alright. The ward loves us missionaries too! This one lady always says, every Sunday, "Son angeles del cielo" ha-ha "You are angels from heaven" ha-ha but Saturday was way fun!

            Sunday I'd say was probably one of the lonnnnnngest days so far.

Woke up at 6:30, got ready, had ward counsel at 8:30am then church for the rest of the time until 1:30. We had a combined sacrament with the English and Spanish ward for the primary program! It reminded me of back in the day when I did that. Go up and read a scripture! Ha-ha all the little kids were funny! Some were crying but it's okay they all did good. So anyways this is were it gets crazy! We got invited to eat Carne Asada at 2pm but we had someone else already going to feed us at 3:30 well we were SUPPOSED to cancel on the 3:30 one but we kind of forgot! So both families were expecting us over for both. ahhhh man. Well we ate at 2.... annnnnnd then we ate at 3:30 again... they were both Carne Asadas. My stomach was going to explode. Elder Rodrigues (Elder Cockriel's companion was about to cry) hahaha man.

            Well anyways then we had a BAPTISM at 5pm for SINDY! She is 9 years old and she was so happy to be baptized, so was I of course! Ha It went great and Hno. Osorio (in the stake presidency) baptized her. I gave here a "CTR" ring and she loved it! She’s a super cool girl! Well right after that we went up to the Temple Visitor's Center with a family and it went great! The whole family are members, but the dad, but he wants to get baptized! So we are working with him! We drove home and got there like at 10 and just fell asleep! Ha-ha it was a good Sunday though!

Well that was my week! I love you all!

Love, Elder Puertas

September 16th 2013

            This week was an excellent week! Some amazing things that happened this week were that we invited 6 people to be baptized and they all accepted. 2 of them live outside the area so they can't be baptized by us, but that’s ok. So hopefully about 5 will be baptized on the 20th of Oct. still a month away, but I am just happy they are committed! We are on bikes now so that's fun. I always get to appointments all sweaty and stuff it sucks. It's still so hot here! We are really getting things going though. Our ward is AMAZING! We had ward counsel and it was so awesome! I love our ward and I am so excited for the future for them! The families are so cool here too! I am getting super comfortable here and I already know it's going to be really hard when I get transferred out :(

            We played Basketball for like 10 minutes on Wednesday and this kid from our ward named Isaiah was talking trash on me and Elder Cockriel and how he can beat us and that missionaries can't ball haha, well we played to 5pts and I had the ball and of coarse did some moves, scored and then I just looked at him. We always joke about that now at church and stuff! He's a way cool kid and his family is too! The Osorio family!

            We had Zone Conference on Friday and it was super good. One thing I really liked about it was when our mission president said " You can tell what kind of Missionary (person) you are by what you think about when there's nothing to think about" I loved that quote and I know I can be a lot better.

            Friday there was a boxing match and literally everyone was screaming the whole night! Crazy! Other than that everything is good! I love you all!

Last thing we went over to Erica's house last night and we were talking with Brandon and the funniest thing.... we asked him "Whats you're favorite Mexican food" he said, "Hot Cheetos" haha and he was serious! His fingers are always SOOO RED! haha!

P.S HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO DAVID SANTANA! AND REIDOOOOOOO LOVE YOU BOTH MAN! HOPE YOU GUYS HAVE A GOOD ONE!

Love, Elder Doors!

P.S. I also learned how to make these flowers out of palm leave, pretty cool.

September 9th 2013

Hola Familia y amigos!

Well first off I want to say HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my dad! I love you a lot Negro! Also Happy birthday to two of my best friends Elder Kasey Henson and Cristal!! I miss you guys a lot and I hope everything is going well!

Okay this week has been good! Tough, but good.

Monday was probably one of the best days ever! After we emailed we went to go hike the HOLLYWOOD sign and it was super cool! A little tiring but super fun! But don't worry no hikes here can compare to ANY Hawaii hikes ha-ha. Well after that we went and drove down Hollywood Blvd., which was awesome. That’s already something I need to do once I’m done with my mission. We took some pictures at LA Ink (TV show) that was pretty cool and then we went to this Art Exhibit and that was probably one of the coolest things I have done also. There was this spot where they had a bunch of Lamps and it was a crazy cool place to check out! I took some pictures don't worry.

Anyways we left and we were heading home and then guess what.... ANOTHER car wreck. Only on PDAYS and ONLY when I am with Elder Cockriel. This one was bad though. It was on our left and all of the sudden the car just swerved and started coming towards us, missed us and crashed right into the wall of our right side. This all happened on the Freeway. Well we got home and visited with Hector and Maria, then we visited Jenny but she's not doing that good.

Not much happened Tuesday except we did see some weird guy dancing. He was just in the middle of this road and he was crouching down like he was going to go #2 ha-ha (the pants are on though) and he was just moving his knees in circles and waving his hands up! Ha-ha yeah I don't know!

Wednesday was cool we met this guy named Sergio and he is now an investigator. I’ll tell you a little about how we met him. Okay so we were eating dinner at the Alimillo's home at 5pm. We wanted to be somewhere at 6pm so when it was about 5:50 we told them we had to go and they kept talking and talking and I’m not going to lie I was getting a little bit frustrated. Anyways we didn't leave until 6:15, well we were walking back to our car down the street and there was a guy that just walked outside his house to throw away his trash. We said hi and everything and then he asked us what we did. We explained and all of the sudden he's like "you know what, come in and teach me right now, I want to know more" so we went in. His name is Sergio and he is from Mexico but he speaks good English and Spanish. Well we taught him and he loved it. He wants to change super bad. He's a way nice guy but his only problem is drinking. He wants help with that so we are going to visit him like 2 or 3 times a week. I love this because even though I was getting frustrated with the Alimillo's and I wanted to leave, God had a plan for us to go over our time with them just so we can run into Sergio. There are just those small miracles everywhere, and I love it.

Thursday nothing much happened but on Friday it was interesting! We met this girl named Mary; she’s a Christian in Spirit, meaning she talks to God whenever she wants. Sooooo yeah that's about it with her. Ha-ha. Saturday I spent all morning cutting down trees and there were so many spiders! I hate spiders but it's all good! Sunday I was super sore from all the hard work and it was stake conference so it was pretty cool seeing a bunch of missionaries there and a lot of people there. I saw Elder Aaron Malpica there so that was pretty cool. One last thing, I am now on Bike! So that's one way I’m getting fit again! Ha-ha. I love you all and miss you a ton!

Elder Puertas!

September 2nd, 2013

          Well another amazing week here in LA! A CRAZY week! Well like I said, I went through temple on Wednesday and it was probably the sweetest experience so far! I loved it! 

         On Friday we had our district meeting then we went out to eat at Boulevard Burger! These HUGE burgers for $1, they were really good. Well also on Friday we met this guy and he was kind of Racist. He said he wasn't but he defiantly was. He was saying things about me too but don't worry I didn't do anything :) neither did my companion. In fact we tried to be his friend and we shared the gospel to him and invited him to church. Ha well he laughed and said no but we tried. There are some weird people here in LA.

         Okay Saturday was the sickest day ever! Of coarse as usual we woke up, got ready, studied and went to Sinthia's house to teach her. She's an investigator that we have been teaching for awhile. She want's to be baptized but she can’t because she's kind of on Parole so she has to wait. Anyways on with the day, we went to visit the Gytan family (super less active) and we are working with them to reactivate again! We went over and had some AMAZING tacos! Wow she can cook! They fasted that day so we did too to help them out! They love it when we come by! Ok so this is when it gets good. So then we went to a member's wedding! They just got sealed in the temple so they were celebrating it at the stake center! We walked in, sat down ate some amazing food, of coarse, and the music was super loud! I wanted to dance soooo bad! I love Spanish music I recommend it to everyone! Listen to some Aventura!! Ha-ha. There was this kid there that had a hat on and some shades on the whole time. He was probably like 14, 15 years old and wow, yaaaa I recommend to NOT do that ever. Ha trust me. Well we were there for like 2 hours and it was super fun! After that we went to this member’s 15 year party! We helped set up the place so they invited us to come by. So we did for like 10 min, enough time to get in, get some food and get out. Ha-ha.

         So we dropped the other missionaries off at their house and we get back to our house. So we are inside relaxing and I hear all this yelling outside! I look outside and there’s this truck in the middle of the road and these 2 guys are yelling, swearing like crazy trying to fight this guy in the truck. Everyone is out like chismosos (us too) watching it and I see Andy, Jacob and Andre out there too. (They are the 3 kids we teach every night, they live across the street) anyways they are there and its there family member trying to fight so I wanted to get them out of there but we can’t get involved in stuff like that. Long story short there was this huge brawl and I remember Jacob was just yelling "Stop it, Stop it" and man I wanted to help. The truck drove off and I walk outside when the police came (because we called them) and Andy sees us so he runs over too me and I asked him how he was doing and he just said "I’m scared" I felt so bad they have to grow up in all this stuff. With gangs, violence, drugs, bad examples. I feel for them and I want to help them out so bad! But ya, that was my crazy Saturday! I almost felt like I was living the normal life again. Ha-ha think about it 2 parties and a fight at the end in one night?

         Sunday was good too! I kind of love going to church now. The families are super cool! We broke our fast at the Gytans family again and the food was incredible! Some Mexican ceviche puro pescado! :) Wow! The Hermana can cook! Ha-ha well anyways we went to visit a lot of less actives to just set return appointments and we did get some so that was good. Another interesting night to end on though. We were just sitting outside and these two guys come over, around our age I’m guessing, all tatted up and just super high and they were just asking us all these questions. Well they don't believe in God. They think we are dumb for not partying and smoking drugs but something cool was that they are coming back on Wed. to try out what we have to offer. We convinced them to just "try" it out and if it doesn't work then we are wrong. They accepted and we will be teaching them from the next couple of weeks hopefully! The spirit will help us out!

         Well that was my week and it was good! Today we are finally going to hike to the HOLLYWOOD sign and I’m super pumped!  The Book Mormon is true! Stay faithful my friends :) love you all!

Con Mucho Amor, Elder Puertas