Working with less actives is great!

I love our mission pres. and his wife they are so awesome! President Bowen is one of the most amazing people I have ever met. We have Korean Vietmanse Tongan Spanish and Samoan Missionaries as well. But someone can always speak english in them so they're ok haha. We have district meetings every thursday and that is the same day that we get our mail. MY zone has the korean and the vietmanese elders in it along with one english speaking district. We are a lot closer with the Viet. Elders.

District meetings are good I always get something new out of it and I always am able to improve my teaching skills that way. I used to have to help set up DM and help run them since I always had a district leader comp. But now that its just me and Elder Ham I finally get to just arrive at a normal time and sit back and do role plays like everyone else haha it's pretty nice.

Last Zone confrence we had Elder Ellis come and speak to us and he is way funny it was really good. The word on the streets is that the next zone confrence we have Elder Bednar will be here....so i'm getting pretty pumped for that. Zone confrence and zone training are my favorite I always learn so much! I have really good zone Leaders that i have been able to get pretty close with they're way funny! One of my zone leaders Elder Rogers feels the same pain as me....(He's also a Dallas Cowboys fan) hahaha. So we connected pretty quick.

Our Pdays aren't like real pdays. Since me and Eldfer Ham pretty much got white washed into the North area we go get our emails done then go do studies and then tract all day. We have no real investigators except for 2. So all our time is spent on finding. But mostly P days we work with less actives. I love working with less actives and I focus a lot of my attention on them. Our branch has so many less actives it's crazy. Also those people once had a testimony so I just do what it takes to get the fire lit again...Me and Elder Ham last week went through our area book and called every single less acctive in our area (Over 30+) people! We have found out a lot of them were either just offended or have moved. That's one of the perks of being a missionary is that most of the less actives won't meet with members only missionaries because they already know our intentions since they were once active. Elder Kim is the reason i work so much with less active because he was the only one that found them to be important so he passed down that conection to me.  I' ve seen so many families slowly but surely change. So in our branch our branch pres. comes to us for less active info because he knows we'll care about them. I have  a strong testimony for less active work because shoot I was pretty much inactive for a few years and wanted nothing to do with church and I've seen how just a simple friend who is strong in the church can change one's whole lifestyle. So thats what i'm trying to do and I really love working with them because theyre so kind and normally were just offeneded at one point.

Anyways we gave one of my investigators Yoo Gene a baptism date and he's progressing super fast! He used to be a "Eternal Investigator" But he's finally changing and there's a lot more to his story but i'll let you know more about him when we meet up with him again.

 

Love you

Love Elder Meza

Musicial Fireside

Anyways this week has been really good! We didn't get to tract as much because saturday we had a musical fireside. Elder Choi one of my previous companions is pretty much a musical prodigy and can listen to any song and just play it after hearing it and can make any song or remix anything it's SO cool!  But, he put together (He's the new DL) this musical fireside with the musical talents in our district and the youth of our branch. We made some really nice invitations for it and pretty much invited everysingle person we have ever taught because it's a really good way to bring people into the church and to feel the spirit in a non threatening environment because not everyone is then trying to baptize them haha. But all the viet. Elders came with their investigators and the white Elders did to, along with our mission president and most of our branch and Elder Kims parents, so it turned out great! We even had some extremely inactive people participate. It was awesome because two of our english class students came and they really enjoyed it and fellowshiped with some of the members and they really like our church.
So a few weeks ago we went tracting and met this korean preacher of his own church and he tried to bible bash us and when we left nobody was in a good mood except for me because I was stoked at the fact someone tried to bible bash us because I have never had that happen before. He said he wanted to invite us over again sometime to share our beliefs and my comps didnt want to go because they didn't want to bible bash but....since he offered us food as well, I insisted that we should go haha. So we ended up going met his family and some ex mormons that he brought over anyways long story short he's taken us to some really nice restaurants and he's now one of our really good friends. I know we will probably never bring him to our church because he has set up his own church that is actually growing pretty fast but a really cool thing about him is that he likes learning more about us from us because he's just an sincere truth seeker. He doesn't want to take other people's word for what our church is about. So he actually backs our church up when he hears people telling lies about mormons haha...Even at his own church he clarifies  what we believe so people don't have the wrong misconception of  who we are. Yesterday we went to his church and it was definately different.......its a "charismatic church" everyone just jams out to gospel music and kinda starts freaking out haha. But those were easily some of the nicest people I have ever met and me and Elder Ham just split up in the room and talked to as many people as we could and tried just helping as much as possible during the dinner to give a good view on mormons and we ended up teaching 2 lessons and we have a new investigator from it haha.
Anyways thats just a little bit of what happened this week!
Love you mom
Love Elder Meza 

Ice Skating & Event

Planning Youth Activities

Happy Birthday Ashley!

Hey Mom the mission front is going great! Today was transfer day and now its just me and Elder Ham in the north area, Elder Choi has gone down to the south. It's kind of funny because Elder Ham has only been out for 1 week longer than me haha. He's from Provo and was orginally born in Korea so his Korean is very good hes just not fluent. But it's really good for us because it forces our Korean to improve. Elder Ham and I were pretty much white washed into this area so we're starting from scratch haha. Me and him found this kid DJ a few weeks ago and we have met with him a few times and he is progressing so fast!!! He's super awesome and super smart! We used to always have to meet at a boba loca and now he said he'd finally rather meet at one of our churches :)

Because it was transfer day I didn't have much time to read but I really like the emails I get from Uncle Stan and Aunt Carrie.We are planning an activity around a show called "Running Man"  and I need some ideas from it. It's like a gameshow. I'm in charge of holding a game/activity called Running Man in January and we already have some good ideas but I need just a few more for it. Last year they did it and the youth really liked it and they said that it was so much fun last year and becuase they have faith that we will do a good job,  they willl invite all their non lds friends. It takes forever to get everything for it and set it up so I want to make it really good, thank you so much!

It's crazy that Dallin is already has his release date! Elder Kim gets released to a member tomorrow and will be with his parents next week. I cant believe they're both dying! He's actually going to Utah in I think in 2 weeks to visit the temple because he wants his parents to see also he's going to stop by our house because he wants to meet you and say thank you.  He's such a cool guy and a great missionary you'll love him! He told me if I come to Korean I just need to buy my plane ticket and he'll take care of everything. And he said in return when I'm home that I would do the same. I really want to be able to go to Korea after my mission. I think that would be so awesome!

You're an awesome person and an amazing mother and I know you will continue to be blessed for your great example to me and others!

Love Elder Meza

P.S. I don't want anything for christmas I just am super cold now because it's always cloudy now so if you could send some money for me to buy a sweater that would be pretty cool :)

Busy Week!

One cool story. So we're starting to try and build a huge english class and get investigators that way. Because the Korean program before it got shut down had the biggest english program in California. So we started giving this lady Erin Han english lessons then we always share a gospel message at the end which has been going really good and she has been progressing really fast. We normally do classes on tuesdays but we had to move it to thursday this last week and she brought her friend which is awesome because we love referrals :) But half way through our class some random lady shows up and was said that she had gone to every door at our church looking for us and she said she just walking by and remembered seeing a add from the missionaries 10 years ago!!!! and thought she would check it out haha. It was crazy! So now we're teaching her and she is also very receptive to the gospel! 

I'm way sorry to hear that!(my gas was syphoned from my car while in Gunnison at my moms) That person will get theres someday haha. Tell Grandma and Grandpa that I miss them and love them. Not a whole ton happened this week because we were super busy getting our baptism prepared and inviting others to it. We had to make Korean-English programs for the first time which was way fun! I started our first youth activity! We now do youth activities  on Fridays! Last Friday was really fun we played this soccer volleyball game.

Anyways I'm super busy but I love you a ton! 

You're the best mom in the world and I'm so grateful for everything and so sorry for everything you had to put up with. I love you!

Love Elder Meza

Nikko and Angel

Working Hard

Thank you so much for sending Elder Kim the package it was so nice of you! Elder  Kim almost started crying haha it was only the second package he has recieved on his mission! So thank you! Also he's going to Utah to visit his 1st comp. after his mission and he wants to stop by and just say hello and get to meet you. I really hope I can visit him after my mission as well. He has to do military service and when he finishes his military service my mission will be over and he wants me to come stay for a few weeks and meet his parents!  During personal study time the other day I read a scripture and it reminded me of you. (Mosiah 24:14) So i hope your next show goes well! Tell grandma and grandpa hi for me! Also tell them thank you for being such and awesome family that was super nice of grandma to sit with you and it just really means a lot to even me.

This week was really good! I didn't think we were doing that well this week until we totaled our numbers up at the end of the week. I didn't realize that every day we had at least one other lesson....I thought our numbers were really low and I was pretty dissapointed in myself and my companionship because we didn't have any "wow" days, but I failed to see we had just a bunch of good hard working days! We had 12 other lessons and now have 3 new investigators. This guy name D.J is super smart but really sincere and he loves our church (he's just super realistic) James Kim one our "eternal investigators" showed up to church yesterday and we didn't even get to meet with him this week so I was very shocked when I saw him but I was very happy! We challenged him again to be baptized and for the 1st time he said yes but he really wants his kids to be bapt. which is a very complicated situation right now.

Last Pday one of our investigators Kenny took the north and south team out for pday and showed us around newport and took us hiking and to the coolest view of the ocean and just what newport was all about then he to us to this place called 3 thirty 3 and and so grateful or his time and generosity! Kenny is so cool and is very sincere about our church and is easily the smartest man I have ever met. He's moving to Hawaii soon which kinda bums me out but he said if I ever visit I always have a place to stay. He really likes the missionaries and is progressing so much. Im not sure if I will see him baptized but I know he will.

 Anyways I love you tons! Thank you for everything!!
Love Elder Meza