Elder LaRochelle & Elder Barnes
Sunday, December 20, 2015
30 Youth Referrals
From Dec 15...
Hey everyone! This week was pretty awesome but really busy! But before I tell you about my week we found out this morning that Elder Anderson is getting transferred and I'm staying!!! And I'm not training again! Yay back to 2 hours of study!
Last Wednesday I had a doctors appointment which is a 70 mile trip there and back! After that we went and saw a less active that a member of the ward told us to stop by! He was a really cool guy though! He has some horses and stuff in the back yard. After talking for 15 minutes he told us that we had to go because the rodeo was about to start on the TV haha.
Friday we had a mission tour with Elder L. Whitney Clayton of the Presidency of the Seventy! He was pretty awesome! We had to split the mission tour into two days because he had to go down to Tijuana to get ready for the temple open house!
So on Saturday we had the second part of the mission tour! It went until 5 pm and afterwards we had the ward Christmas party. Gerald our investigator wasn't at the party so we stopped by to see what was up and they told us that they only had enough gas to go to the church once so they chose to go to church the next day! It was so awesome to see them make the choice to go to church! Elder Anderson and I got some extra food from the party so we gave it to them since they couldn't go.
Sunday was a really good day! Elder Anderson and I taught all the youth about missionary work and got almost 30 referrals! It was awesome! The youth are definitely the best resource for missionary work in this ward!
I think that's it for this week. We didn't have a baptism Saturday Gerald, our investigator, went 5 days without smoking which is the best he has ever done! I'm excited that I'm staying in Ramona Oaks Ward!
Love you guys,
Elder LaRochelle
Hey everyone! This week was pretty awesome but really busy! But before I tell you about my week we found out this morning that Elder Anderson is getting transferred and I'm staying!!! And I'm not training again! Yay back to 2 hours of study!
Last Wednesday I had a doctors appointment which is a 70 mile trip there and back! After that we went and saw a less active that a member of the ward told us to stop by! He was a really cool guy though! He has some horses and stuff in the back yard. After talking for 15 minutes he told us that we had to go because the rodeo was about to start on the TV haha.
Friday we had a mission tour with Elder L. Whitney Clayton of the Presidency of the Seventy! He was pretty awesome! We had to split the mission tour into two days because he had to go down to Tijuana to get ready for the temple open house!
So on Saturday we had the second part of the mission tour! It went until 5 pm and afterwards we had the ward Christmas party. Gerald our investigator wasn't at the party so we stopped by to see what was up and they told us that they only had enough gas to go to the church once so they chose to go to church the next day! It was so awesome to see them make the choice to go to church! Elder Anderson and I got some extra food from the party so we gave it to them since they couldn't go.
Sunday was a really good day! Elder Anderson and I taught all the youth about missionary work and got almost 30 referrals! It was awesome! The youth are definitely the best resource for missionary work in this ward!
I think that's it for this week. We didn't have a baptism Saturday Gerald, our investigator, went 5 days without smoking which is the best he has ever done! I'm excited that I'm staying in Ramona Oaks Ward!
Love you guys,
Elder LaRochelle
Slow Week
From Dec 8...
Hey everyone!
Kind of a slow week. Elder Anderson had his Senior week last week. Senior week is when the trainee takes over the area for a week, so he leads out in all finding teaching and planning activities. It's a pretty hard week for me haha, it's hard to sit back and let him make wrong choices sometimes, but he learn more by making mistakes. I was thinking about this on a larger scale with our Heavenly Father and how sometimes I think he just wants to come down to earth and take us by the hand to make sure we don't make dumb choices. He knows how important it is that we learn from our mistakes.
Elder Anderson and I are doing good. Transfers are next week! I'm probably leaving because Elder Anderson is done with training. I love Ramona though, there are a lot of amazing members up here. Hopefully Gerald gets baptized this Saturday! Pray that he will not start smoking again!
This week we have a mission tour from Elder Whitney L. Clayton of the Presidency of the Seventy which is pretty cool. Other then that I don't have to much to share! Love you guys!
Love,
Elder LaRochelle
Hey everyone!
Kind of a slow week. Elder Anderson had his Senior week last week. Senior week is when the trainee takes over the area for a week, so he leads out in all finding teaching and planning activities. It's a pretty hard week for me haha, it's hard to sit back and let him make wrong choices sometimes, but he learn more by making mistakes. I was thinking about this on a larger scale with our Heavenly Father and how sometimes I think he just wants to come down to earth and take us by the hand to make sure we don't make dumb choices. He knows how important it is that we learn from our mistakes.
Elder Anderson and I are doing good. Transfers are next week! I'm probably leaving because Elder Anderson is done with training. I love Ramona though, there are a lot of amazing members up here. Hopefully Gerald gets baptized this Saturday! Pray that he will not start smoking again!
This week we have a mission tour from Elder Whitney L. Clayton of the Presidency of the Seventy which is pretty cool. Other then that I don't have to much to share! Love you guys!
Love,
Elder LaRochelle
Rough Week
From Nov 24...
So I don't have to much time this week. We had MTE (missionary training exchange) from yesterday to today. I went with Elder Augusto! Elder Augusto is from Portugal and he was trained by Elder Nielsen too. So in mission terms he is my brother haha.
So I don't have to much time this week. We had MTE (missionary training exchange) from yesterday to today. I went with Elder Augusto! Elder Augusto is from Portugal and he was trained by Elder Nielsen too. So in mission terms he is my brother haha.
Last Wednesday I
was on splits with Elder Seavey from Highland Valley Ward. At the end
of the day we went and saw Gerald and we were talking to him and I put
my iPad on top of the car and forgot about it. We finished talking
talking with him and I forgot I left it on top of the car and drove off. The iPad fell off the car when we were going like 60 mph so I broke
it... like really broke it haha. But it's all good. I talked to the
mission office and I have a loaner right now.
On Thursday we went on splits with members of the ward. Since my iPad was
broke I didn't have addresses for people so we went and saw people I knew
how to get to. We stopped by our investigators and it was like at 7:30
and I had the impression that it was probably too late and that we
shouldn't stop by. I told the member and he suggested that we leave a
note on the door so we do and he comes outside his house and yells at us
because it's too late and threatens us... it was pretty awkward haha but
its all good. The member that was with us just got off his mission.
On Friday Elder Anderson and I went on a hike and I stepped on a rock. My foot slipped and I hurt my ankle. Later that day we were doing
service and we were splitting wood and I was holding a wedge for Elder Anderson and he accidentally hit my hand which hurt pretty bad haha but
it's all good. It's getting better.
On Saturday we
fasted for our investigator that he would accept a baptism date. At the
end of the day after planning I got up to go change and I felt pretty
light-headed and then my body shut down and blacked out and fell on the
ground haha. Elder Anderson thought I was joking haha but luckily I didn't
hit my head on anything!
So yeah that was my
week haha. It was hard but its all good! I'm staying positive. sorry if
there is a lot of misspellings and stuff I didn't have a lot of time.
Love you
Elder Chris LaRochelle
Thanksgiving
From Dec 1...
Hey everyone this week was great! We are teaching a whole lot more and we have a lot more investigators! When we first got to the area we were barely teaching 10 lessons a week and now this past week we taught 25 so things are definitely picking up for sure!
Last Wednesday we had exchanges and Elder Schroeder came to my area and we had An awesome day and saw lots of miracles.
We made it a goal to talk to 20 people that day, we talked to 17 and got two potentials out of it and added two new investigators named Mike and Nancy! How we met Mike and Nancy was actually really cool. We went to a less active family's house and the male wasn't home but the wife said he should be back soon so we told her we would come back in 15 minutes. So we walked away and we were debating on knocking on some doors because it was 7:30 which is kinda late for Ramona, everyone usually shuts down at like 6pm. But we prayed about it and we were like eh what the heck the worst that will happen is that they will yell at us. So the first door we knocked on we met Mike and we asked if we could share a message and he was like sure! So he let us in and it was crazy because his wife walked in the room and didn't ask any questions and sat down and listened to it was pretty awesome!
Thursday was pretty awesome. We started the day by meeting as a zone to play football at 6:30 am. After that we had studies and then we had a zone thanksgiving lunch. The funny thing is that we set our zone lunch like it was a fancy thanksgiving dinner. We even had one of the elders play piano as everyone else walked in haha.
After that we had dinner with a recent convert and his family. Then we went and visited with some people that were spending the holidays by themselves.
Saturday we had a really good day we stopped by the Burns family to have a lesson with them and they told us that they couldn't do it today because he had to go fill sand bags because of recent flooding that happened here. So we offered to help him and we ended up filling like 100 sand bags which was A LOT haha. Afterwards we were able to have a lesson with them too!
On Sunday the new video for the church came out called A Savior is Born. The mission office gave us special pass along cards for it and we brought them all to church to try and invite members to hand them out. They took pretty much all of them haha. It was awesome!
That's pretty much it for this week! Things are going well here in Ramona! Love you guys!
Love,
Elder Chris LaRochelle
Hey everyone this week was great! We are teaching a whole lot more and we have a lot more investigators! When we first got to the area we were barely teaching 10 lessons a week and now this past week we taught 25 so things are definitely picking up for sure!
Last Wednesday we had exchanges and Elder Schroeder came to my area and we had An awesome day and saw lots of miracles.
We made it a goal to talk to 20 people that day, we talked to 17 and got two potentials out of it and added two new investigators named Mike and Nancy! How we met Mike and Nancy was actually really cool. We went to a less active family's house and the male wasn't home but the wife said he should be back soon so we told her we would come back in 15 minutes. So we walked away and we were debating on knocking on some doors because it was 7:30 which is kinda late for Ramona, everyone usually shuts down at like 6pm. But we prayed about it and we were like eh what the heck the worst that will happen is that they will yell at us. So the first door we knocked on we met Mike and we asked if we could share a message and he was like sure! So he let us in and it was crazy because his wife walked in the room and didn't ask any questions and sat down and listened to it was pretty awesome!
Thursday was pretty awesome. We started the day by meeting as a zone to play football at 6:30 am. After that we had studies and then we had a zone thanksgiving lunch. The funny thing is that we set our zone lunch like it was a fancy thanksgiving dinner. We even had one of the elders play piano as everyone else walked in haha.
After that we had dinner with a recent convert and his family. Then we went and visited with some people that were spending the holidays by themselves.
Saturday we had a really good day we stopped by the Burns family to have a lesson with them and they told us that they couldn't do it today because he had to go fill sand bags because of recent flooding that happened here. So we offered to help him and we ended up filling like 100 sand bags which was A LOT haha. Afterwards we were able to have a lesson with them too!
On Sunday the new video for the church came out called A Savior is Born. The mission office gave us special pass along cards for it and we brought them all to church to try and invite members to hand them out. They took pretty much all of them haha. It was awesome!
That's pretty much it for this week! Things are going well here in Ramona! Love you guys!
Love,
Elder Chris LaRochelle
Spiders & Snakes
From Nov 10...
Hey everyone!
This week has been pretty awesome! President challenged every companionship in the mission to add 10 investigators this past week. We added 3 which is more then we have added all transfer combined so it was pretty successful! President also challenged every companionship to set their goals to add the rest of the 10. We decided to set our goal to 10 again! We have some appointments with some families this week so it should go great!
This past week I was on splits with our ward mission leader. He is British so he was telling me about England and everything. We were walking to the car and there are no street lights in Ramona so as we were walking I felt something crawl on my foot. So as he was talking I go from totally chill to totally freaking out and shaking my foot all over the place and running toward the car haha. It was pretty funny and for the rest of the night he was laughing at me haha. I still have no idea what was on my foot. It could have been a tarantula or a snake. Last night we saw a little snake and when we shined a light it pretended to be dead haha.
Last night we went over our ward mission leader's house. They have 6 kids and they are all British. Elder Anderson and I challenged them to see who could teach the restoration faster. Elder Anderson and I taught it in 9 minutes. We told them that if they beat us we would buy them donuts haha. They ended up getting like 11 minutes haha they were all yelling over each other to teach it faster haha.
Something else that's pretty cool. We live with a family in the ward and their son came back into activity about a year ago and now he wants to serve a mission so I'm pretty much double training haha jk. But we are going to have comp study with him and he is going to come out with us and stuff which is pretty sweet.
Well I think that's it for this week! Keep praying that we will add people! Love you all! :)
-Elder LaRochelle
Hey everyone!
This week has been pretty awesome! President challenged every companionship in the mission to add 10 investigators this past week. We added 3 which is more then we have added all transfer combined so it was pretty successful! President also challenged every companionship to set their goals to add the rest of the 10. We decided to set our goal to 10 again! We have some appointments with some families this week so it should go great!
This past week I was on splits with our ward mission leader. He is British so he was telling me about England and everything. We were walking to the car and there are no street lights in Ramona so as we were walking I felt something crawl on my foot. So as he was talking I go from totally chill to totally freaking out and shaking my foot all over the place and running toward the car haha. It was pretty funny and for the rest of the night he was laughing at me haha. I still have no idea what was on my foot. It could have been a tarantula or a snake. Last night we saw a little snake and when we shined a light it pretended to be dead haha.
Last night we went over our ward mission leader's house. They have 6 kids and they are all British. Elder Anderson and I challenged them to see who could teach the restoration faster. Elder Anderson and I taught it in 9 minutes. We told them that if they beat us we would buy them donuts haha. They ended up getting like 11 minutes haha they were all yelling over each other to teach it faster haha.
Something else that's pretty cool. We live with a family in the ward and their son came back into activity about a year ago and now he wants to serve a mission so I'm pretty much double training haha jk. But we are going to have comp study with him and he is going to come out with us and stuff which is pretty sweet.
Well I think that's it for this week! Keep praying that we will add people! Love you all! :)
-Elder LaRochelle
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
From Nov 3...
Hey everyone! This week was pretty great! Things are starting to pick up here in Ramona! This week we changed our prayers. We prayed very specifically and when we prayed we told Heavenly Father where we were going and what time and what he could do to help. We have also stepped up our planning. If we want to see miracles we need to have inspired plans. This week we were able to teach some potentials we have, we also added a new investigator named Nathan! He is member referred by our ward mission leaders daughter. It was awesome to teach him, he has been going to seminary for a couple months now so he is pretty awesome.
We are also still working with Gerald, he is having a hard time quitting smoking so if you could keep him in your prayers that would be awesome! We were setting specific dates with him to get baptized and it was helping him, but we feel like his wife is pressuring him too much. One thing that was great is that Gerald came to church, he hasn't been to church since Elder Anderson and I have gotten here but he was there on Sunday which was good.
On Friday we went to the trunk or treat and the whole zone decorated one trunk and handed out candy. As we were handing out candy I had a good idea to play hymns from the car haha. It was pretty cool actually. We also had a bunch of book of Mormons and pamphlets and stuff that we were giving away. At the end of the night we gave away like 10 Book of Mormons. It was pretty sweet and a lot of members came up to us and told us that we had the best trunk.
This past week we fasted that we could add 10 investigators this week. The whole mission fasted for this so if you could continue to pray for us that we can find people that are ready to hear the gospel. The ward is really awesome though, they are all doing missionary work and inviting their friends to do things.
Kinda a funny story this week. We went and saw the Cabrera's. Sister Cabrera has been doing some missionary work with her sister so we were going to go by and talk to her. So we pull into their driveway and we see our zone leaders car and we are like what the heck are they doing here, so we talk to brother Cabrera and he told us that they are in the back, so we walk around back and they are playing putt putt. The Cabrera's have a putting green in their back yard and our zone leaders were practicing haha.
Yesterday I went on exchanges with Elder Matos, one of my zone leaders, he came to my area and we had a good time and got a lot done.
Our hard work is paying off, we are seeing many blessing in The Ramona Oaks Ward. Thanks for everything you do :) love you all!
-Elder LaRochelle
Hey everyone! This week was pretty great! Things are starting to pick up here in Ramona! This week we changed our prayers. We prayed very specifically and when we prayed we told Heavenly Father where we were going and what time and what he could do to help. We have also stepped up our planning. If we want to see miracles we need to have inspired plans. This week we were able to teach some potentials we have, we also added a new investigator named Nathan! He is member referred by our ward mission leaders daughter. It was awesome to teach him, he has been going to seminary for a couple months now so he is pretty awesome.
We are also still working with Gerald, he is having a hard time quitting smoking so if you could keep him in your prayers that would be awesome! We were setting specific dates with him to get baptized and it was helping him, but we feel like his wife is pressuring him too much. One thing that was great is that Gerald came to church, he hasn't been to church since Elder Anderson and I have gotten here but he was there on Sunday which was good.
On Friday we went to the trunk or treat and the whole zone decorated one trunk and handed out candy. As we were handing out candy I had a good idea to play hymns from the car haha. It was pretty cool actually. We also had a bunch of book of Mormons and pamphlets and stuff that we were giving away. At the end of the night we gave away like 10 Book of Mormons. It was pretty sweet and a lot of members came up to us and told us that we had the best trunk.
This past week we fasted that we could add 10 investigators this week. The whole mission fasted for this so if you could continue to pray for us that we can find people that are ready to hear the gospel. The ward is really awesome though, they are all doing missionary work and inviting their friends to do things.
Kinda a funny story this week. We went and saw the Cabrera's. Sister Cabrera has been doing some missionary work with her sister so we were going to go by and talk to her. So we pull into their driveway and we see our zone leaders car and we are like what the heck are they doing here, so we talk to brother Cabrera and he told us that they are in the back, so we walk around back and they are playing putt putt. The Cabrera's have a putting green in their back yard and our zone leaders were practicing haha.
Yesterday I went on exchanges with Elder Matos, one of my zone leaders, he came to my area and we had a good time and got a lot done.
Our hard work is paying off, we are seeing many blessing in The Ramona Oaks Ward. Thanks for everything you do :) love you all!
-Elder LaRochelle
From Oct 27....
Hey everyone so this week has been pretty interesting and a lot happened.
Last Tuesday was awesome. We had p-day with another zone and had a Nerf war. It was pretty fun. After p-day Elder Anderson and I made it a goal to talk to 10 people that night. That's something President has asked us to do. So we did! We talked to 10 people and we saw many miracles come from it!
On Wednesday morning we went on exchanges and I went with Elder Schroeder to his area. That morning we drove up to Julian to help someone do some service. Usually missionaries aren't allowed to go up to Julian because the branch up there doesn't want missionaries or new converts. But the lady we were doing service for is a nonmember and she has been having a really hard time. She is getting kicked out of her house, she has had 4 deaths in her family the past year, her car is broken down, she is getting divorced and she has 4 kids. A member of the church saw her crying in the parking lot and asked if everything was OK and she explained the situation to him and he gave her the missionaries number. We decided to go up there and help her and we tried to call some members in the Julian branch to help but none of them would. It was pretty sad. The next day we had interviews that morning and after interviews there was a member in one of the wards in Ramona that offered to help bring a refrigerator and a dryer up to her new house. After that we were really struggling to know how we could help her because we didn't have miles to drive back and forth between her houses to move things and we didn't know how we were going to get her stuff there. So we decided to pull over and pray. After we prayed we went to work and started packing her stuff and some other missionaries were making some phone calls and they called a member in their ward and asked them if they could help and they said they would love to. They told us that in their prayers that morning they prayed that they would have the opportunity to help someone else that day. They also called someone in the branch in Julian and they said they could help. It was really cool to see the hand of God in her life. It wasn't until we humbled ourselves and realized that we couldn't do it on our own that we felt like God had answered our prayers.
My exchange with Elder Schroeder was good though. We had a good time and he had a lot of questions for me because he is training right now too and he just got out of training.
On Friday we had district meeting. Elder Schroeder asked if I would teach so I taught district meeting which was fun. I taught on faith and the difference between the faith to try and the faith to do. I used the talk the "Faith to Reap" by Elder Bednar which was good.
Saturday was a good day!! That morning I went back to Santee to see Taylor Beitler get baptized which was awesome. Don baptized her and they asked me to talk about baptism at her baptism so it awesome!
Afterwards we had lunch with Elder Callahan and his companion. Elder Callahan is doing great though. He is a good missionary.
I think that's it for this week. Things in Ramona are starting to pick up though. I'm pretty excited. Well I hope you are all doing great love and miss you all :).
-Elder LaRochelle
Hey everyone so this week has been pretty interesting and a lot happened.
Last Tuesday was awesome. We had p-day with another zone and had a Nerf war. It was pretty fun. After p-day Elder Anderson and I made it a goal to talk to 10 people that night. That's something President has asked us to do. So we did! We talked to 10 people and we saw many miracles come from it!
On Wednesday morning we went on exchanges and I went with Elder Schroeder to his area. That morning we drove up to Julian to help someone do some service. Usually missionaries aren't allowed to go up to Julian because the branch up there doesn't want missionaries or new converts. But the lady we were doing service for is a nonmember and she has been having a really hard time. She is getting kicked out of her house, she has had 4 deaths in her family the past year, her car is broken down, she is getting divorced and she has 4 kids. A member of the church saw her crying in the parking lot and asked if everything was OK and she explained the situation to him and he gave her the missionaries number. We decided to go up there and help her and we tried to call some members in the Julian branch to help but none of them would. It was pretty sad. The next day we had interviews that morning and after interviews there was a member in one of the wards in Ramona that offered to help bring a refrigerator and a dryer up to her new house. After that we were really struggling to know how we could help her because we didn't have miles to drive back and forth between her houses to move things and we didn't know how we were going to get her stuff there. So we decided to pull over and pray. After we prayed we went to work and started packing her stuff and some other missionaries were making some phone calls and they called a member in their ward and asked them if they could help and they said they would love to. They told us that in their prayers that morning they prayed that they would have the opportunity to help someone else that day. They also called someone in the branch in Julian and they said they could help. It was really cool to see the hand of God in her life. It wasn't until we humbled ourselves and realized that we couldn't do it on our own that we felt like God had answered our prayers.
My exchange with Elder Schroeder was good though. We had a good time and he had a lot of questions for me because he is training right now too and he just got out of training.
On Friday we had district meeting. Elder Schroeder asked if I would teach so I taught district meeting which was fun. I taught on faith and the difference between the faith to try and the faith to do. I used the talk the "Faith to Reap" by Elder Bednar which was good.
Saturday was a good day!! That morning I went back to Santee to see Taylor Beitler get baptized which was awesome. Don baptized her and they asked me to talk about baptism at her baptism so it awesome!
Afterwards we had lunch with Elder Callahan and his companion. Elder Callahan is doing great though. He is a good missionary.
I think that's it for this week. Things in Ramona are starting to pick up though. I'm pretty excited. Well I hope you are all doing great love and miss you all :).
-Elder LaRochelle
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