Elder Gold's Weekly Update - 19 Oct 2009

I saw that BYU beat San Diego State on Saturday. A few of the Westwood 2nd Ward members went down to San Diego for the game and gave us some of the recap info in between classes yesterday. There are two big-time fans in the ward who travel to Provo or other locations throughout the nation to watch the games on a consistent basis and they both said that the BYU secondary got torched against the speed of San Diego State. Hopefully they make some adjustments for when they play TCU next weekend.

Yesterday at church, Michael Raven (investigator) had his baptismal interview with Pres. Turley of the L.A. Mission Presidency to make sure he had fully repented of his "checkered" personal history and to see if he was ready to enter into the covenant of baptism. He passed the hour long interview, meaning he will be baptized next Sunday (Oct 25). We've been teaching him off-and-on for the past 2.5 months and we've had several roadblocks pop up that have caused his baptismal date to be postponed, but he's good to go now. He's kinda "quirky" and a bit on the feministic side, and he attaches to women much more than men, but he has a testimony and that's what really matters.

We had a member referral dropped into our laps last Sunday for Jason Norber and we taught him twice this past week, committing him to baptism for Nov 8. He comes from a Jewish family who hasn't showed too much resistance to his investigation of the Church and they've been surprisingly supportive of his decisions so far. He's 18 years old, graduated from high school in May of this year, and he's "searching for how to feel satisfied with life." His good friend is one of the bishop's sons and we'll be having an appointment with Jason and the bishop's family tonight.

On Friday and Saturday of last week I went on back-to-back splits with a couple Zone Leaders in their areas. Friday was spent in Los Feliz, which is 10-15 minutes northwest of downtown L.A. (without traffic), and Saturday was spent in part of South Central L.A. Both days were spent working with missionaries who are from South American - one from Chile, the other from Ecuador - so I had a chance to speak some Spanish to native speakers and also get some help on some vocab and small grammar questions that I had. It rained all day on Wednesday, but for the two days of splits it was toasty!

Whenever I spend some time in South Central I feel more gratitude for the opportunites I've been given in my life and for the strong family relationships I enjoy. Most of the people living in that part of L.A. come from broken families who struggle to teach high moral standards to their kids. That condition has been steadily moving down from generation to generation and now there's just a big cluster of people in a concentrated area who struggle to understand moral and ethical standards that are consistent with God's teachings. That type of environment causes people to feel complacent with their behavior, which usually results in high levels of vandalism, indecency, crime, children out of wedlock, gang involvement, immorality, and vanity. All of those characteristics are easily seen while spending a day in urban areas of L.A.

The Elder I was on splits with in South Central (Elder Mora) commented to me about how lazy a certain group of people seemed to be who lived in his area. He said that they have no disabilities, yet they still depend on the government to bail them out for their lack of proactivity and assertiveness to find jobs. He also said that this certain group of people struggles to understand most of what the missionaries try to teach them, which he attributes to the low level of education that many of them have. Proactivity is a huge talent and education is a blessing!

Life is moving along very well. Elder Gentry and I will be going on another "zone tour" this week from Wednesday night to Saturday night in the Peninsula Zone, which covers the southern part of the mission near the ocean and rich people in the hills. It should be a good time. We've got to buy some Halloween costumes later today to entertain ourselves on Oct 31, but I'm struggling to find the Buzz Lightyear costume that seems to be a popular choice among the youngsters (only kidding).

Take Care,
Elder Brycen Gold