Turkey day for the homeless

The week started with a lot of ups and went down from there.

To start off, Elder Thiriot and I had to go to the mission home on tuesday. I spent the night monday trying to get us a ride there, turns out practically everyone had already teamed up. I guess I missed the boat. So we biked it! Before leaving tuesday morning I asked around to find out the best route and the quickest way. I found one that I was told would take about 30 minutes on bike. We leave and head off on our journey. After many very hard hills to ride up and an hour later we finally arrive at the mission home, dripping with sweat. We go in and get some good training. Luckily we were able to find a ride home, but it was a nice adventure to begin the week.

We finished that day by dropping the Rodelo family. Turns out she's only letting us in every time because her mom sent us over. She's actually been going to another church and like it better. We asked her to keep reading and call us when she knows it's true. I think some other Elders in a few months may have some better luck with them.

Then for dinner that night we went to visit Noah and his family. Noah is awesome!! He's a recent convert of less then a year and he's the only member of his family. He has the missionary's over for dinner every week in hopes that they can start teaching his family. It seems like this family has been hit with the gospel a lot, so we decided rather try and shove it down their throats we'd rather build a lot of trust first. I don't think it will be that difficult considering they whole family is way into music and especially choir music. I plan to bring some of the new sheet music mom sent to see what they think. Right now they go to a catholic church, I think Noah goes to both so he can keep his family together.

We've had a lot of daily contact with Christian and Jasmine, which has turned out to be really good. They will be having their baptismal interview tomorrow! We had a really good lesson with them on sunday, yesterday, and their mom was there. The mom is still a little anti-baptism. She kept saying they don't know enough to make a big decision. The good thing is that she will still let them be baptized. Well she left it up to them and they said "I'm getting baptized, and I'm proud of it!" Awesome!! They also came to the baptismal service, with their mom! They were all excited showing her all the different rooms where they have class on sunday and everything. I hope the mom will see how the gospel has changed her kids and finally feel that she needs it too.

Thanksgiving was a great day... ish. We started by doing a service project. We made T-shirts, with a 3 nephi reference talking about looking to to christ and enduring to the end. We had that on the front and painted stuff on the back. My three included the following:
"We've got all the answers!"
"Have a blessed day! 'The Mormons'"
"Got Sheep? We do!" John 10:16 3 Nephi 12

Then after making them we handed them out to the Homeless on skidrow. That was pretty fun. I had a homeless guy guess that I was from Salt Lake City Utah. After that we helped a family move out of our area to Elder Amundsens area... thieves! We had to cancel our first dinner appointment though cause the moving took longer then we thought. It's ok, it was only a pitty appointment. We had a second dinner appointment with the Ortega Family and Elder Clark (my DL) and his companion Elder Davis. We had to get special permission to have more then one companionship at the dinner but it was fun. We had Mole that was so good! So kinda a different Turkey day, since I didn't have any turkey. Still very enjoyable.

The rest of the week goes down hill from there. We had to drop a lot of people, Elder Thiriot's back light got stolen on his bike, and we didn't have a single investigator with a baptismal date come to church. Victor was never there for his appointments, we got special permission from the AP to wake up at 2 in the morning to call him and remind him of church. (he gets home from work at that time) He told us he's been studying for a test, so we told him when he's done and has read the Book of Mormon, to give us a call.

Miguel, we had a discussion with Miguel but it was more like with his wife. She finally said she would come to our church... they didn't. Also they stood us up on our appointment, which is like the third time. So we wrote a kind note saying that our time is precious and to call us when they are ready to do the things necesarry.

We also tried to set a date with Guadalupe again but they don't even want to get married til January. We gave them Alma 4 to read, which says don't procrastinate the day of your repentance, and told them we would come back on monday to see how it went. and if they didn't read, we can't come over. Crazy things this week! The thing is Guadalupe was the only one who came to church! It's her husband that doesn't want to get married. She wants it, just doesn't want to go over her husband to get it.

That's it for me, I'm glad to hear you had a great Turkey day! I hope everyone ate a lot of stuffing for me! I'm very happy to hear the result of the BYU game. Word around the mission is that now they play USC? If that's so, the stadium is just south of my area! They had a USC and UCLA game the other day and from what I hear, every street withing 5 blocks were packed!

Christmas season is approaching, and sad to say, I don't have very many Christmas CD's. Just you know, putting that out there, in case you were wondering... yeah....

I love you all! I'm glad to hear all is going well at home. Keep up the prayers. This time we gotta pray for more investigators to teach! Thank you som much!

Love, Elder Groves!