Elder Joseph Janson, California Santa Rosa Mission: 12/1/14 Two months in California!

Hey everybody!

So what's crazy about today, is I've now been in the field for exactly
two months! That's weird. Pretty soon I won't be a greenie anymore,
which is defined as your first 3 months in the field. But then more is
expected of me at the same time haha.

It was a sweet week! We got a little more relaxation time. I told you
all on Wednesday about the temple trip, which was SWEET. Well
Thursday, which of course was thanksgiving was amazing. First, we did
some service for Sister Stewart, who happens to be the mission nurse
everyone doesn't like talking to. 😜 haha she was in charge of setting
up the Crèche festival, which is just like our stake that did the
Nativity festival, with nativities from all over the world. It's a big
thing in the Santa Rosa stake, and it's big for our missionary work
too. If someone obviously doesn't want to talk to us, we just pull out
the card and invite them to this nativity festival before they can
slam the door. It's genius! I might send some pictures of it, because
I think we get to go.

Then we went to the singles ward Turkey bowl and played football at
this high school. It was so nice and the weather was unbelievably
nice. There at least 40 people there for football, including a large
amount of missionaries. We had like three games going at once, and we
got dirty cause the ground was muddy. It felt good to run around for
like 3 hours straight! That night we also were allowed a zone
activity, which basically means 2 hours of sports at the church. All
of this fun leads to the next morning, me and Elder Reeder wake up and
we can't move our legs, and we can't get out of the car, and we walk
like old men. Needless to say, we rarely get such a large amount of
exercise, and we took advantage of it, but we sure payed the price. We
all walked like penguins for the past few days.

Me and my comp had thanksgiving dinner at Bishop Yancey's in our Ward.
They are super cool and weird just like me, so it's perfect. Haha they
had so much food, and I had trouble eating all that. It was wonderful.
They had frog-eye salad, and I commented on the amount of frogs they
had to massacre to make just a bowl of that stuff. Hahaha it was
funny. Elder Reeder is also obsessed with pumpkin pie, and can't stop
talking about it right now. So of course, they had pumpkin pie, and he
went crazy. The best part of the night was we did a Noah's ark puzzle
which was like 750 pieces. Us and their kids were having way too much
fun doing a puzzle together. It was a very relaxing day, which we
don't get much of! The Yanceys are the best! They have a kid named
Zach and Joe, which are me and my comp's name. Kind of weird but cool!

So that was sweet! We went on exchanges on Saturday with the zone
leaders, and I went up to their area, the Shiloh park Ward. It's quite
a bit larger than our area haha. I was with Elder Hacking, who is from
Vernal, Utah! I thought my family might be excited to hear that. He
was surprised I knew what it was haha. We did a ridiculous service
project where we helped people in their Ward move. It was ridiculous
because they were definitely hoarders, and had way too much ancient
worthless things. We were there for forever!!! But service is good.
Don't get me wrong.

It's a sweet week coming up. We have about 28 lessons planned for this
upcoming week... And that is A LOT. Just a little bit of potential
investigator hunting has led to us not having time for everything!
It's crazy to have that problem. We are just trying to meet all these
people in our merged area, and we have plenty to see and plenty of
doors to knock. It's starting to get pretty rainy up here, so having a
car is kind of nice, even though we are pretty sure it will be gone at
the end of this transfer in a couple weeks and we will be back on
bike. But that's ok, we gotta keep getting big!

I'm excited to see all these people! Sometimes I get kind of tired of
talking to people all day, but as you just immerse yourself in helping
them and not worrying about yourself, it all becomes a lot more
worthwhile. I'm so glad we can be here working, and I know the gospel
can bring joy to all who accept it and make it part of their life. I
hope I can be an instrument in the lords hands, and forget myself!!

Scripture for the day is Alma 48:17. Check it out. Moroni is a boss.

This month we are reading the four gospels as a mission to celebrate
Christ and his life and birth. I invite you all to do so also! We read
abut 7 pages a day to be done by Christmas!

I love you all and thanks for the prayers and emails!

Elder Janson