Wow. What a crazy week we’ve had! To start it all off, on Tuesday morning I had new district leader training and it was cool to learn how I can best magnify my new calling. I thought we were going to have a fantastic week from that point on. Au contraire!

After we get home from district leader training, we have lunch and I’m just casually brushing my teeth in the bathroom when somebody fires a gun on the other side of the wall from where I’m standing! They shot at a large window that overlooks the street from the elevator/stairwell landing on the very floor that we live in. President placed us on lock down for a few hours and then he told us to be cautious for the rest of the day.

On Wednesday to our utmost discomfort, our carbon monoxide detector battery begins to die and beeps every minute. On Thursday, the trunk of our car gets broken in to and stuff is stolen from the trunk (Elder Moon’s suit, my organ shoes and sheet music [again!], my MoTab bag was stolen, as well as my hymnbook/turned in to transfer journal, and the zone leader binder with a history of all the work done in the zone for the past at least 6 months, if not longer, was stolen! Then on top of that on Sunday our smoke detector battery begins to die and we have beeping in our apartment every 30 seconds!

Despite that, this week has actually been quite wonderful. It has left the two of us very frustrated at the world for being oh so stupid, but what canst we do?

We were unable to meet with Dean this week and he still hasn’t made it to church. Jason is still stuck at home and unable to come to church for health reasons. Plus, our investigator Michael seems to be be MIA.

Well, that’s about it.

Elder Blodgett
California San Fernando Mission
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

So I’m not sure what God was thinking this week, but he seems to think that I’d make a great district leader, because the Assistants called this week asking me to be the newest district leader in my district. I’m a little nervous about this calling, but I’m sure I’ll do just fine. I guess I have more homework to do now that I have to prepare district meetings.  (A typical district includes 8-12 missionaries, including young Elders, Sisters and/or Senior couples.)

In case you weren’t aware, this week was Christmas. It was a lot of fun as a missionary. We had a giant Devotional/Party as a mission on Christmas Eve Day. We sang carols together and had an ugly Christmas sweater competition, among other things. We then moved on to the chapel where we had a devotional filled with sweet Christmas music of many varieties. There was a choir composed of one of the zones in the mission and I even performed the Hallelujah Chorus. President and Sister Henrie of chorus spoke as well.

On Friday, we went to the Newman’s home to Skype and have Christmas dinner. I got to carve a turkey for the first time! It was a lot of fun and now I just want to bake a turkey and then I feel that I will truly know how to cook. We had a good time together and had a lot of fun playing some card games with them and so on.

We were able to meet with a few of our investigators. Dean still hasn’t been able to get to church, but we’ll keep meeting with him. We also met with Jason and visited with him on Christmas eve and he really enjoyed that. We haven’t been able to meet with our investigator Michael for several weeks, so we won’t be able to get him to baptism by his previously scheduled date.

Both Elder Moon and I were asked to speak in Sacrament meeting, so we did so yesterday. We both spoke about how to do missionary work (surprise, surprise). I also played a quick improvisation on “Called to Serve.” We also had in attendance Elder Gary Wild of the Fifth Quorum of the Seventy.

Elder Blodgett
California San Fernando Mission
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Read the bumper sticker that I read this week. California is a crazy place I must say. I’m not coming home anytime soon, but please don’t move here. There are enough people here.

It’s been a slow week this week for us. Christmas season has left a lot of people busy and we’ve been made busy with other missionary things as a result of it.

On Thursday after we had district meeting, we went Christmas caroling as a district to some people (members & investigators) in one of the Burbank wards for knockout. It was super cool and everyone we met were very touched.

Friday, on request of the assistants, we went up to the mission office to prepare a script for our upcoming mission Christmas party. We’re writing the California San Fernando Mission style of “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas (and all through the mission…).” Because we were unfinished, we also went up to the mission office again on Saturday.

Saturday was a rough day for me. I’m not sure if it was of something I ate or not, but I woke up with a terrible stomach ache and diarrhea. I thought I would be fine at first and ate breakfast, but as I soon found out, it was not at all a good idea. It left my stomach feeling worse and we basically sat around the apartment all day with exception of going to the mission office and having dinner with a member. I felt better on Sunday and am still feeling fine now, but I am still not that hungry right now and do not have much of an appetite for anything.

We were able to meet with our investigator Jason this week. He is still unable to get out of the house as he [supposedly] has a medical condition that prohibits him from leaving his house much. He has interested in coming to church and visiting with people, but is simply not able to. We’re planning to visit him on Christmas day (and maybe Christmas eve, if time permits) so he won’t feel so lonely. Our investigator Dean who had a baptismal date for the 20th of December (yesterday) has not yet made it to church, so we’ve had to push that back for now.

Elder Blodgett
California San Fernando Mission
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Our week started off in a way we could not imagine. We got a call before knockout on Tuesday from the mission president saying that the Elders covering the east side of our area got emergency transferred out and that we would now cover the entire ward (whether this is permanent or not, we know not). This has helped us to feel more busy and has also left us confused as to trying to figure out their area book and so on–a need to have iPads to make our work less about paper work and more about missionary work (I’ll talk more about this in a minute).

So we were able to set two baptismal dates for our investigators. Our fifteen year old investigator, Dean, we have scheduled for Dec 20. We picked up a new investigator on Saturday who is the husband of a new move in to the ward. He has met with missionaries in the past before they moved here to Southern California and now we get to teach him–yay!

There is not much more to report on teaching wise here. Yesterday, we helped with the Nativity Festival in Burbank. It was sweet! It was nice to see so many people come and feel the spirit of Christmas. We had people from many different religions. We even had a group of Nuns come. I will freely admit (please leave this in here) that I make fun of Catholics on occasion, especially using the sign of the cross when I see things I like (technology, geeky items, and things that make me laugh) mainly because it looks so freakishly funny when Christians do it. I doubt that most of them know what it even means. I don’t claim to know what others believe in, but I can say without a shadow of a doubt that we know the Bible more than everybody else combined. We’ve had several bashers before and they tried to beat around the bush about what a scripture meant while it clearly is laid out that it means what it says in the Bible. I know I shouldn’t be so judgmental, but it’s so hard not to.

I’ve kind of learned how to drive manual. In the car we’re in, we have the ability to switch back and forth from manual and automatic while drive. It’s kind of fun and I think I know more about how I ought to be shifting on a bike as well.

So while we were at the Nativity Festival, the Armenian missionaries from the Arcadia mission showed up (I guess they cover our mission, their mission, and the LA mission) and in their hands were iPads. It prompted me to write the following:

Unofficial Declaration 3

1 For I have seen an iPad, I knew it, and I knew that God knew it, and I could not deny it, neither dared I do it.
2 O iPad, where art thou? And where is the box that covereth thy hiding place?
3 How long shall thy screen be stayed, and thine camera, yea thy pure camera, behold from the eternal heavens the wrongs of thy missionaries, and thine microphone be penetrated with their cries?
4 Yea, O iPad, how long shall they suffer these wrongs and unlawful oppressions, before thine processor shall be softened toward them, and thy circuits be moved with compassion toward them?
5 And whosoever has committed iniquity, him have I punished according to the crime which he has committed.
6 Yea, we believe that missionaries must be punished for their own sins, and not for other missionaries’ transgressions.
7 As we have witnessed the expansion of the work of the iPad over the Earth, we have been grateful that missionaries in many missions have responded to the call to share the message of the restored gospel and have joined the army of God in ever increasing numbers.
8 This, in turn, has inspired us with a desire to extend to every worthy missionary all of the privileges and blessings which an iPad affords.
9 Aware of the promises made by general authorizes that at some time, in God’s eternal plan, all missionaries who are worthy may receive an iPad, and witnessing the faithfulness of those from whom an iPad has been withheld, we have pleaded long and earnestly in behalf of these, thy missionaries, spending many hours in the upper room of the Temple, supplicating the Lord for divine guidance.
10 He has heard our prayers, and by revelation has confirmed that the long-promised day has come when every faithful, worthy missionary may receive an iPad, with authority to exercise it’s divine power, that they might share how the restored gospel has blessed them in their lives and see how others will enjoy the gospel in their lives.

Yours truly;
Tommy Monson,
Hal Eyring,
& Silverfox Uchtdorf

Now that I have been able to see the area book for myself and have showed it to other missionaries that were there, we are quite frustrated that we don’t have the blessing of not using iPads, especially having been promised that we would get them. Like I said earlier, to have our area books on our iPads will mean less paper work and more missionary work.

Elder Blodgett
California San Fernando Mission
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Yesterday (Sunday), the Church started this year’s Christmas initiative “A Savior is Born.” It’s beautiful. There are several videos on it that will help you to increase your faith in Jesus Christ. It’s viewable at http://christmas.mormon.org.

This upcoming week is going to be a Nativity Festival in Burbank. We are going to be helping with it in some way that I do not know how. Anyways, Elder Moon and I decided that we would hang up posters for it around our area on telephone poles. We had a very good time getting to know each other and conversing about various topics.

We had a mini zone conference on Wednesday about the new Christmas initiative. Which was really nice and kicked off the Holiday spirit in all of us missionaries.

Thanksgiving as really awesome. We had two dinners (I don’t recommend doing this) with way to much food. It was a fun day though. I feel really fat right now…

That’s all I have for now.  Just remember that spiritual laws have very physical consequences.

Elder Blodgett
California San Fernando Mission
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

It has been a difficult transition into this new companionship. As I mentioned earlier, I knew about transfers before others did. My new companion has some challenges that are forcing me to do a lot more of the work–finding and teaching especially. We are beginning to adjust, but it’s slow though.

It’s another small ward here. I’m surprised by how small the wards are that I’ve seen around here. I know once you get outside of the “Mormon bubble” they aren’t big, but most of the wards I’ve seen in Wisconsin are significantly bigger than around here. Perhaps it’s because of the holiday season though.

We have a few investigators, but we are focusing a lot on building our teaching pool as it’s not much bigger than in Chatsworth. We were able to teach a few of our investigators this week and it was nice to do so.

PS     Oh…so we were out driving today and we see this random car driving around the car and it has a strange tower on the top…turns out it was a street view car! It’s at Laurel Canyon and Strathern.

My new address is 7651 Laurel Canyon Blvd #212, North Hollywood, CA 91605

Wow…this week has been quite a change in the weather. It has gone from decently warm temperatures to the weather I thought I’d laugh at Californians for thinking it was cold. Instead of making fun of Californians wearing jackets at the temperature of 65 degrees, I now am forced to bundle up as well. Speaking of which, would you mind sending me some sweaters?

This week has been kind of slow. We went on exchanges this week with the Korean missionaries. I was in Chatsworth with Elder Miller and Elder Clark went in to Korean work with Elder Ha, our district leader. We had a good time and I’ve learned a few Korean words as well.

This week we had zone training meeting and that was a good learning opportunity. Our mission right now is focusing on goals (goal setting and goal accomplishing). 

Our investigator Brad is coming along quite nicely. He has come to church three times in a row now. We’ve met with him at least once a week the past 4 weeks and he’s even gone to a few church-sponsored firesides on his own. We haven’t been able to set a baptismal date with him yet, but he isn’t ruling baptism out of the picture.

We haven’t been able to meet with the rest of our investigators this past week.

Elder Blodgett
California San Fernando Mission
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

I can’t believe that it’s Monday again. It seems as if preparation day was all of a day ago. That said, it’s once again time to email home.

We were unable to pick up a new investigator this week, but that is fine. We were able to see progress in other areas. One of our new investigators we picked up recently we were able to meet with again this week. He, for some reason or another was confused as to which day of the week it was, so he thought that he had missed church even though he hadn’t. Then when we stopped by yesterday he thought it was Monday. That was a little weird.

Our investigator Brad is coming a long very well. He has come to church twice in a row now and is still willing to meet with us. He has a much stronger desire to learn this time compared to several months ago when we first came in contact with him. We have met with him several times this week and even helped him to put in his new air conditioner into his bedroom window. It also helped to have a member who was willing to come over who knew a few more things than I did about doing those things.

So, for Halloween we had a multi-zone dinner at a nearby church building where the mission paid for pizzas and we watched a personal favorite film of mine, “Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration.” Many missionaries provided other foods and I provided a personal favorite delicacy, chocolate covered bacon! It turned out to be very popular. It was kind of awkward doing knock out on Halloween, especially when everybody thought we were trick or treaters.

On Friday night in to Saturday, we went on exchanges with the zone leaders. I went with Elder Grant to Reseda and Elder Clark stayed in Chatsworth. The only thing of excitement was going to the Reseda ward’s trunk or treat. This area also does trunk or treat and loves to have chili cook offs as part of it. I almost made chili, but when I found out I was going to a different ward on exchanges, I ultimately did not.

SEPARATE EMAIL – SAME DAY
For behold, I hath need of scrip for the acquisition of the healing agent of migraines. I hath had migraines as numerous as the sands of the seas in weeks past. Supplies of the healing agent, Advil, hath run dry, not to mention the fact it hath begun to have little effect on the soul. The nurse in the mission supposes that a new healing agent, Excedrin for Migraines, may be the agent to heal this curse. The merchant mart of Wal supposes that scrip in the form of $20 is sufficient for my needs.

My migraines don’t seem to be affecting the work too much, but it just makes it difficult to stay focused. 

Elder Blodgett
California San Fernando Mission
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints