Elder Judd in California

I've had a wonderful week here in Newport Beach and experienced many miracles! On Tuesday we taught a single mother and her two young boys, they are starting to grasp more of what we are teaching them. One of the young boys is so excited to learn about the gospel, but the older one doesn't seem to care as much. We can tell that the mom really wants this for her boys. We also taught a lady who lives in "the gold mine", where most of our investigators are from, and she believes everything we teach her and wants to get baptized, but has no desire to come to church. so we're working on that.  On Thursday  we had zone conference which was awesome and got all of us super excited and inspired to work harder! They set a new goal of 1 baptism per companionship per transfer, and the whole mission is on fire now.  We did a little bit of tracting looking for a new gold mine or "gold mine 2.0" and we didn't find it, but what we did find is a lot of pe...

Holy Cow! I can't believe I'm finally in California! This is where I'm meant to be! My first area is the Newport Beach 1st ward. It's right on the coast, but I haven't seen the ocean yet, just a harbor, which apparently is where they shot the intro to Gilligan's island. It is so beautiful here, and everything smells amazing! The weather is perfect and I dread wearing a suit because it feels so good to wear a short sleeve shirt. My first night was awesome, we got into Orange County super late and had dinner at the Clarks, it was awesome. I also met my trainers  Elder  Lichtenberg (pronounced Lishtenberg) and  Elder  Kema, couldn't have asked for better companions. My first full day was nuts! I sat in a ton of Zone meetings with my companions who are the zone leaders, I didn't understand anything that was being said in the meetings, but it was interesting to learn about what was going on in the mission. Also sat through a few hours of orie...

My last week at the MTC has been fantastic. We finished teaching our PRC investigator Debi and invited her to be baptized. She is awesome. We started teaching our second PRC Rodrigo, he is so cool. He has an amazing desire to learn about the gospel. I feel like I've learned all that I can at the MTC and the rest is gonna come in the field.  Me and my companion are still getting along great. We have really started to become as 1 when were teaching.  Elder  Bennett (in my district) were paired together while learning how to teach the gospel of Christ,  and it was terrible. We couldn't get one word in with out dying of laughter. Or teacher was really trying to help us but we just couldn't do it. It's been like that between me and  Elder  Bennett since than.  I'm so excited to leave the MTC and teach real people. Also to have real food would be great. I love having food prepared for me but my stomach can only handle so much. D&...

My first Pday! It feels like I've been in the mtc my entire life. The first few days were super slow but now they fly by. My teachers brother Dutson and sister linford are amazing, I look forward to their lessons everyday! I love my district,  it feels like an efy group! My companion and I were made zone leaders the second day,  which was pretty overwhelming, but now we're cool with it. We've had a lot of classes about how to use our technology to the best of our ability, and there are so many more things I can do on my mission phone than I thought.  We also had or first PI where we taught or teacher sister linford pretending to be an investigator. She really started to understand the lover God has for her. Our second PI with or other teacher brother Dutson is not going as well. He doesn't seem to grasp why the gospel is so important. We teach our last lesson with him tomorrow so hopefully it goes well.  We also teach PRC which is another fake investigator,...