Elder Judd in California

Wow. I have had the best 2 weeks of my mission so far! Last Tuesday was my birthday, and it was a weird day for sure. A member took us to a fancy dinner and we drove in his new Tesla there. It was a great day, but its hard to celebrate your birthday when you are trying to serve and focus on helping others. Later in the week, I had another birthday dinner at the Clark family's house, probably the most genuine family I've ever met. They always show so much love to the missionaries who serve in that ward, I am really going to miss them. We started teaching a Columbian family that we helped move in and happened to live across the hall from us, talk about God putting people in our path. This family is spectacular. We taught them the restoration, the mom and dad only speak broken English, but were able to understand the majority of the lesson. The mom even read the introduction in Spanish and was blown away. We invited them to an activity right after the lesson and came! The ...

Yep... Im already training. Since my mission is so small they had to call in all the reinforcements to train, so it has much less to do with my skill than the sheer demand for trainers. I am training with Elder Edwards,  he is one of the most kind and meek people I've met here. He is super funny too. I am transferring to the Rancho Santa Margarita zone aka RSM. RSM is practically the opposite of Newport, its mountainous and dry. It's also the location of the holy fire. We are training Elder Loveland who comes in this wednesday. I am so excited to train, but I definitely don't feel ready. There is so much i dont know about being a missionary let alone a trainer. As Troy Bolton might say "I'm nervous but excited"  That's just the quick note to the family. Probably won't have much tome to email today because is transfer day. If i find time I'll write about the great week i had.  Love you all. 

Wow. this week was wonderful.  We had a huge miracle this week. I truly learned the God knows and cares for all of his children. Although there were many uncertainties, Jim & Andrea will in fact be baptized this Saturday.  Let me explain why this is a massive miracle -  Jim was in jail. After a long night of unrest, he asked his cell mate if there was anything to read. his cell mate pointed to a pile of books on the ground. after picking through the books, one of them stood out to him, The Book of Mormon. He picked it up and started to read it. Although he could hardly understand the old English style writings in it, he kept reading. With the help of a ward member, he read the entire thing while in jail. After he was released, he went to church and asked the first person he saw there how he could become a member. Fast forward a month or so, he is taking the missionary discussions. His wife, Andrea, is skeptical. But while giving a member an uber ride, the ...

Another fantastic week in the Newport Beach 1st ward! This week we had a lot of administrative things to do, but we also were able to squeeze in a few times to pound the pavement. I have learned to appreciate the sometimes (always) boring administrative business, so that I can enjoy the times we can really grind and work hard to find new people to teach.  2 Nephi  2:23  having no joy, for they knew no misery We had our interviews with President Clark. I treasure the opportunities to talk and gain wisdom from him. He has a great love for everyone and I can always feel that every time I talk with him. Wednesday we had one of the most fulfilling tracting sessions in a long time. We knocked doors in a humble area in the part of Costa Mesa that is in our ward, most of our people being taught live in Costa Mesa. We found a lady who had just moved in, doing laundry in her garage. She was a devout catholic who shared experiences of when she served a 10 day mission in ...

This week has been wild. The APs started out the week by letting everyone know that the Mission record for most new investigators in a week was 92 and that we are setting a goal for 100 new people to be taught. Everyone in the mission was super excited. The previous goal was set when we had double the missionaries in our mission. Every companionship only needed to find 2 new people each. We went about our week with no success. We had so much administrative stuff to do along with sending Elder Lichtenberg (my father) home. RIP. It was super sad and kinda distracted us for a bit. Then Thursday came along and we went on exchangeds with the APs. Elder Burrows and I were put with Elder Wilkinson. He is a fantastic missionary and gave us a lot of energy for the short time we were with him. We started our day by doing companion study at a small park looking over Lido Island. We have had great contacts there in the past so we knew we had to go there. As we were studying, I saw a guy in the...

Absolutely crazy day. Drove to LAX with the APs and lichtenberg to pick up an apostles family (can't go much more in detail than that), super last minute and crazy but super fun. That took up most of the day so not much time to email. It was weird to get out of the mission. Glad I got to spend time with elder lichtenberg before he leaves Wednesday. Pretty much right after that we went to a stake activity. We did a mini pioneer activity where we walked a mile or so to the beach and had a bonfire. Got to hang out on the beach for the first time. It was awesome.  It was an awesome week. It took me a while to get back into it after being sick. But reading the book of Mormon helped me get excited again. I truly love the book of Mormon.  Gray it this week I'll send a better email next week. This is all the time I have. Love you all.  Here are some pics of this week and day

Not much happened this week. Adjusting to our new companion Elder Burrows. He's awesome.  We haven't been able to do anything because I have been super sick most of the week. In the middle of the night on Friday, I was puking my guts out for hours, but like my real parents would, my companions took care of me. I'm still recovering from it, but i'm almost at 100%. Several others in the mission have been sick too. Earlier this week, we got the chance to move an antique chest from a lady's house. She said that the chest came from the house where the original priesthood meetings of the church took place. There are also several documents inside of it that are of historical significance to the church, and later this week we are going to catalog the contents and show the Lady. If we are nice she might let us keep the chest and start teaching her. This week has been relatively slow so we hope things start picking up this week. It has been hard to be out sick for...

Transfers came and I'm staying here with elder Kema, and we're getting elder burrows, who is awesome, I've gone on short exchanges with him and I'm super glad 'were getting him. Elder Lichtenberg is leaving so were pretty sad about that. He leaves in 2 weeks, but is moving around as a traveling AP. I love elder Lichtenberg and am super sad he's going home, but I know I need to learn from Elder burrows. I have been made district leader too. I definitely don't feel ready for the responsibility but I'm willing to serve.   We had a few good lessons this week and really learned a lot. We taught the grandparents of a service missionary so he could have an opportunity to teach. At first the grandparents were just doing it for him, then they had a change of heart during the lesson and want the gospel for themselves. I t was an awesome experience. Also taught Jim & Andrea, who are our most progressing investigators, and was able to give them a practic...

Had an amazing week!  Tuesday! We taught this guy named mike! He is so prepared! When we asked if he had read the Book of Mormon, he said "I've read a little bit, but I decided to do a little bit of research and watch the movie first" me and my companions looked at each other and thought he was gonna pull out some anti Mormon movie or a recording of the play,  but it was a book of Mormon movie made in the 80s by the church. After he showed us that, he said "I've done my research, and I know it's true. It has more truth than the king James bible" after we asked how he knew that he said "I don't know how, I just do" at that point we went all out! We all got excited and Mike was having a great time! He said more things like "man, I know I gotta read it all" "I wanna be baptized and stand as a witness!" "I wanna help others and stand as a witness!" "I want eternal life man!" Most of what he said was n...

This week was awesome. On Tuesday a member took us and the APs to dinner at Ruby's on the Balboa peninsula pier, and it was awesome. We saw also saw dolphin tails from the top of the restaurant, which was magical to say the least. That is probably the closest ill ever get to the ocean again in my entire mission. Wednesday we got to stop by almost all of our instigators who live at the gold mine and reconnect with them, which really helped us feel out who was still interested. Earlier that day we met a recent convert who has a daughter that just moved here that is super interested in learning more. It was a great day. Thursday was amazing! We were on exchanges with Elder Arner who is an AP and used to be in our area, so he was a huge help to us. We started the day with 2 amazing contacts at a park, one of them has met with missionaries before and we found out that her mom is Mormon too. we left the park, very excited. later we decided to go tracting in our apartment comp...