Facebook is an effective finding tool!

My week has been really good but extremely busy. I've had a ton of meetings for the IPads and a lot of training sessions to get the last few groups of missionaries who don't have them to be on them. We had zone conference this week and it was really good I was asked on to speak on how we can make FB an effective
finding tool. And a lot of the missionaries are having a big problem adjusting to the ipads and FB because they're just old fashioned but thats okay so far I'm loving it! I've been able to see a lot of success from both things. Especially FB, last week we tracted so much and had not jack sqaut for results and then in like 2 hours of Facebook we had gotten 4 new investigators haha. I've tried a ton of different methods on FB and my district makes fun of me because of all the weird stuff I do to try and get peoples attention long enough to share about the restoration. But a wise man once told me this regarding missionary work "If it's not illegal try it out!" haha and ever since then I'm always trying different things but because of it I've been able to teach a lot of korean people lately. This week we have a meeting with President to discuss opening a new area and I might get to go lead that area I'm super excited but kinda sad at the same time because I'm super close with a couple of our investigators here and I will miss them :/ But also I translated the citizenship packet so its in english and korean now and this week we are going to start having a citizenship class down in Irvine and I'm super stoked. A lot of people have already said they would love to come to that so I'll let you know how that goes

I can't believe Dallin is already home that is so crazy! Time goes by so fast. It makes me sad knowing I've already been out for 8 months. I already asked president if I can extend a transfer and if he said if it was up to him he'd love for me to stay but it's not up to him since he will be leaving soon which also makes me kind of sad. He's such an amazing guy who has helped me out so much!

Tell the family thank you for everything they do and that I really appreciate everything!  And that Ii love them all.

 Thanks for everything mom I love you!
Love Elder Meza

A new area?

This week has been just a very typical week.  One
cool thing though is our recent convert is making SO much progress. At
first she didn't even want to come to our Korean branch and she now
she comes to all activites and atteneds church, she even called us
yesterday and asked about modesty and what she can do to be better.
Its so awesome I can see her serving a mission and being an amazing
missionary! Also I 'vv been praying a ton on what to do to find
Korean people to teach because the work is super poopy when it comes
to tracting in the south. Everyone here in Irvine is flippin
Chinese!!! So I was praying and I felt that I should go look at our
areas and see who covers what area and see why we weren't having success. It then
hit me, it's because our location isn't very good. The north team lives
in Anaheim but has to drive 35 min north everyday to go tract in
Fullerton and La mirada because in Anaheim its just Mexicans. Also
Central has messed up boundaries haha so I suggested to pres. that now
we have enough elders that we could open a new area and move the
norths apartment and he think that would be a good idea as well haha.
So this saturday I'm meetting with him to discuss where we should and
what we will do with companions and he's asked me to open the area so
I'm super stoked! The other new area will be actually in the Long
Beach Mission but it will cover Cerritos Hawaaiin Gardens and Fountian
Valley and Hunigton Beach! so I'm pretty excited.

This upcoming week we have zone confrence and I have been asked along
with another one of the tech elder so speak on staying focused on FB
and keeping to our purpose and then I get to talk a little about Nate.
FB is so weird I hate tracting on it but yesterday I had 3 other
lesson and got a new english class student so I can't complain to much
haha. Anyways I'm about to drag my district to zone activity and
literally drag them hahah  these Korean's hate sports but ill teach em
:)
Love you mom
Love Elder Meza

Ward Youth

Ipad

Got the Ipad!!

Hey mom running man went way better than expected! The Elders quorm of my branch said they'd make food, so we estimated around maybe 30 people for burgers and what not. 50+ people came! So luckily since we are the Korean branch we had back up raymen in all of our cars and everyone got fed! About 10 people were non members that showed up and they loved it and we are now actually teaching all of them but one so it turned out amazing and the youth had a lot of fun with it and were super appreciative so I was very happy with it.

 

This last week has been the busisest week of my entire mission. Last week I had to finalize everything for running man. My friend Nate was baptized! :) I had to prepare a talk in Korean for the baptism and I have had 2 -  4 hour meetings with the Ipads and only 10 people in the mission know a code that disables and enables certain things on your Ipad and since I'm one of them I have to go through and put the codes in on every single Ipad! Plus I'm still in the middle of training my son. But I like it. I really like having responsibilty I think I work better when I  do.

 

Anyways the I pad are way cool its way weird to use that instead of a planner I'm kinda bummed that I don't get to take a bunch of planner homes anymore.  Also its crazy that our area books are in there to it actually is 10x more convient now. I have another 2 -2hour meetings this week on I pads and training new people so that should be fun.

 

Back ground info real quick on our recent convert: she is a home stay student from Korea and actually lives with members and they are white so they attend the local ward. Her mom actually served an LDS mission so she was pretty familar with the church but her pops is an anti mormon so idk how that relationship works ...but love is love haha)

Anyways it made me gain a huge testimony of the spirit and how he works because one day 차정은 texted us saying she wanted to be baptized and we thought it was the language barrier between her and her home stay family (sister Powers) so we called her and asked and she really just wanted to be baptized it was crazy haha we couldn't believe it! This is where it gets cool. Her mom came to visit from Korea last monday and could only stay for 1 day and so her host family took her and her mom to the church saying there was an activity going on and she escorted her to the baptismal font and told her mom "Mom these missionaries have been teaching me the last 3 weeks (pointing to us) and said I'm getting baptized in 10 minutes" her mom started balling and walked out of the room she was so happy it was the coolest thing I've ever seen! I even gave a talk on the gift of the holy ghost in Korean it was just really awesome!

btw she now is preparing to go serve a mission of her own!!!! Its crazy how the spirit works because we weren't seeing any progression in her at all, and one day we just left the usual commitment to pray about our message and she said she did and she just felt like that would be the right choice so I'm super grateful for the way God works.

I got your packages thank you so much.

Yeah I'll need some money for a new pair of shoes because it is no where to be found.
Thank you mom I love you!
Love Elder Meza!

Baptism!!

  I had an amazing week this week! Oh yeah by the way we are baptizing 차정은 today and I have to speak at her baptism tonight at 730pm  I'm so excited and happy for her.  Anyways I'm at zone activity on my new ipad but I'll email you later today just wanted to tell you about the big news!

Sorry I'm really crunched for time right due to the baptism later today. I force my comps to go to zone activity because none of the Korean Elders like sports so I go every week and they go play piano in the church haha so I'm grateful they are willing to go with me.

But Running man is actually this saturday and it should have a good turn out so I'm really excited I'll send you pictures of it next week.

Yeah I just need more vitamins my other shoes and pants thats it. Thank you mom I'm sorry  I dont have much time but I love you tell Aunt Carrie I'll send pictures next week. Her peanut butter bars were amazing and my AP loved them, haha he came running out of the mission office chasing my car down as I was leaving and he says "hey I was just wondering if I could have another one of those chocolaty goodness!" and then he eats it and yells "WHO MADE THESE?!" haha he says thank you so much he loved them haha

Love you mom 

Love Elder Meza

1 Shoe Down

Hi!!
I got the box thank you mom! I do need more vitamins because my trainee can't really read english so he just thought they were candy and he ate half the bottle while I was in the shower! hahaha  He had a very upset stomach for the rest of that day. haha But those aren't the pants I was talking about haha but thank you because they did have $5 in them that I bought bobba with :) The khaki light tan pants are the ones I can wear!

We got permission to skype but idk if I'm going to because I feel like that is a little irreverent so I'm still deciding on what to do. Yeah I'm sure you would remember Nate we called him Ktuck or Kentucky and he had a super bad southern accent you would always say he was one of your favorites because he was super polite. But I'm super happy for him now its just time to end this drought in the Korean branch! He's getting baptized Feb1st.

Yeah I really like that family we did service for, the old lady Sister Lee and is probably one of my favorites in the ward. Shes so nice and she always gives us free kimchi! :)  I sat with her yesterday at church and Sister Choo turned around and said "why" I said "why what" she said "out of everyone here and those beautiful girls over there why do you sit with Sister Lee" (Sister Choo loves to mess with me because I'm pretty much the only missionary that can take it and I'm the only missionary who will mess with her back. But Sister Lee and Sister Choo are friends, so it's ok.  Shes the person who lets me skype at her house for skype lessons) And I said well because I like Sister Lee and she is just as pretty as the others.(Shes super old like older than grandma so its okay haha) and they both just laughed and AT THE SAME TIME pinched my cheeks and said " Oh poopy puppy" which is just a way of saying someone is cute haha

 

Running man is going good so far I've been pretty stressed about it actually but its all coming together now. every running man episode has a theme and the theme I came up with is "inception" and I'm tying that into Lehi's dream. And theres a bunch of different activities but each team will have a portable dvd player and a usb that plays a little video that gives clues on how to prepare for the next event and that will be there liahona and the person in the video is the Holy ghost and the last game is capture the flag and the team who wins the previous activity will get an extra flag called the flag of liberty and we have these silver spray painted pvc pipes that are going to be the flag poles and there flag has to endure to the end and hold on to the iron rod haha. I tried to make it churchy but secretly haha.

P.s. the mission office just called me and I have now been moved from being a full time regular misisonary to a Korean speaking tech Elder haha. Yeah idk what that even means! But pretty much I have to go to the mission office like everyday now and I'm being trained on the Ipads and how to use them and then I will go train part of our mission on the Ipads. I dont know why I got choosen for training, I 'm tech retarted haha so we will see how this goes!

Yeah I got a letter from Bro. Jenkins and from the youth in our ward. And pretty much I guess we have a bunch of new kids in our ward? Thats pretty cool then. But I really need to write him back I've just been super busy lately but I think I will just send something back through FB. 

We have a golden investigator!!!!! Yeah I'm pretty much super freaking happy about it because it never happens in the Korean culture over here but it just shows me that my prayers aren't going unheard and when I do everything that I need to do and everything I can do God pretty much has no other choice but to bless us with someone to teach. 

I finally was able to have a meeting this week with president about English class and he likes the way I presented it to him and what I would do with the money if I were to be funded and how I would turn english class into a finding method. And so he has to now get okay through salt lake but within the next couple weeks I should able to start an english class and citizenship class and I'm super excited about it. Because here in Irivine trackting is a struggle. Prophets, apostles, my misison president and the scriptures always say to find the poor in spirit. But covering Irvine and Newport everyone is super filthy rich!!! So I've been praying a lot on what to do because when I was in Cerriotos and Anaheim area I loved tracting because its not as wealthy so people are way more willing to listen. Anyways I've been praying like crazy on help and for simply just patience on not to give up or what I should do. And that day I was at Target getting materials for Running Man and this Korean lady about mid 30's in front of me was paying for her stuff and she couldn't understand the cashier and her kids were being roudy and she just started to cry. I asked her if she was korean and ended up translating for her and she asked how come I could speak fluent english and some korean so we talked for a bit and she said she'd pay us to teach english and I told her I already have a small group of people of around 6 that I teach english for free, and right there BINGO haha. Its really awesome because I thought everyone is super rich here the Koreans and chinesse people are probably the most poor in spirit a lot of people have just moved here from korean and don't speak much english if any and they're in a place where they can get by with only speaking Korean but it is still very inconvient at times and also a ton of teens and adults stress so hard about the test and citizenship class so these people are able to see through us helping them that the mormons arent crazy devil worshipers and that we truly care about them. And when these people are learning a new language thats super hard they get frustrated and will sometimes just break down and tell us everything about their life so it then builds this bridge of trust. Yeah so as you can see I'm super happy for this to get started because this is what the viet elders do and last year they had an all time high of 8 baptisms and their goal was 4 and they all came from english class. I've set our district goal at 10 and I think we can reach our goal.

Love you mom, thank you for everything. Tell Brad thank you so much for his letters I appreciate them so much they always make laugh or smile because he always adds in some news from back home or high school sports updates. I just have not a lot of time to hand write back so I feel bad but tell him I'm super appreciative! 

Love Elder Meza

Please send me my khaki pants :) also if you could with the pants send me my other church shoes my penny loafer slip on's. one of my shoes got stolen at a member meal because we take our shoes off outside the house. But seriously 1 shoe! like who does that!? haha. That's not even because they needed a pair of shoes they're just being punks when they take 1 shoe. hahaha