From the parents

We were able to video Skype with Elder Brett, in the evening on Christmas for him - morning of Dec. 26th for us.  This was by far our best Christmas present of the year.  He sounded great, looked great and was very thankful for all of the Christmas care packages and gifts that he received.  We are thankful for the technology that allowed us to see and speak with him and for his unwavering service to the Lord. We are also thankful to all of you who continue to write encouraging letters, send packages and remember him in your prayers!  It has been a truly blessed Christmas!

Thank you,
Matt & Trish

Dec. 23, 2013

Hello all!

Merry Christmas to you all! Thank you so much for all the cards and gifts. I have been a good Elder, and not opened the gifts yet. I have quite a large pile of them under the little tree that Brooke sent to me. 

On to the week

Monday 12/16: Had a zone activity for pday at the stake center in Hacienda Heights. One of the elders from my MTC district is in the zone so it was fun to hang out with him a bit. Monday night we taught a recent convert named Orion. He is 10 years old, and very smart. We shared the restoration with him, just to make sure he hasn't forgotten too many important things. His family situation is such that he usually doesn't make it to church. Sadness. But, he was glad to see us, and still believes.

Tuesday: Had our morning lesson cancel on us (again). Then we went back to our pad with the Helbergs to pack for the move to the Snyders. We had a good dinner with a sister in the ward who has to work a lot on Sundays during the holidays. She actually got one of her unbaptized sons to come to churchthis Sunday, that was cool. In the evening we taught Jose, a less active convert. He's been a member for almost 20 years, but hasn't been to church consistently for a long time. We are going to be teaching him pretty regularly.

Wednesday: We moved to the Snyder's home in the morning. Then we took a bunch of buses, trying to find people to talk to and to get to the "outer darkness" areas of the ward boundaries. We made really good contact with a less active named Brad, who hasn't been in a church in about a decade. He still has a strong testimony (made me feel the spirit anyways) and his conversion story is pretty cool. He also has really good friends who are still in the ward. So, with the wards help I think we can bring him back before the end of the transfer. 

Thursday: Thursday was kind of nuts. We had zone meeting at the stake center, which was really good. I got to see Elder DeBry, which I greatly enjoyed. He loves to show off the watch that his 'son' got him from China (thanks mom and dad!). Then we had to do some funky exchanges. Elder Ramirez and another elder got called into the office to get fitted for suits that were being gifted to the mission by a member in Glendale. So I went with the zone leaders for the rest of the night. I actually really liked being with the zone leaders, I like them a lot. They're really great missionaries. 

Friday: Friday was a total bummer by the time we were having dinner. One of our really good potentials that we've been trying to teach since before I got to the area is going into full hospice care and will probably pass into eternity by the end of January :( Then the Bates, who were progressing, cancelled our evening appointment and asked us not to stop by without an actual appointment. No idea what happened there. BUT! That evening we found Andre and Lina! They waved Elder Leavitt and I down a few weeks ago and told us that we needed to start teaching them. This was the first time we found them since then. They are still really interested. Andre sang us some David Bowie with his guitar, and I sang some Beatles with him. Not totally missionary appropriate? Maybe. A valid way of building a strong relationship with new investigators? Totally. So that made Friday pretty awesome.

Saturday: We had a correlation with the Sisters and the assistant ward mission leader in the morning. That afternoon we had Lisa cancel on us again (see Tuesday). We had some brief contact with Andre and Lina again, made sure that their ride to church on Sunday was all set. We spent the rest of the day talking to closed doors, a class missionary past time. 

Sunday: So Andre and Lina didn't show up for church. Neither did anyone else we have been teaching. This made me very sad. However, we had some great discussions with Bro Peck (ward mission leader) about how to press on with the work here in Creekside. The Christmas program in Sacrament was very good, several tearjerkers in the musical numbers.

We had dinner at the Helbergs, which made sister Helberg very happy. She calls us her boys, and while she loves having family for the holidays wishes her Elders could be there too. She's a wonderful woman. We spent Sunday evening finding some less actives. We actually made good contact with two and less than good with another. One of the good ones set up an appointment with us, and was very open with us and genuine. That is also a part member family, so hopefully we get some new investigators in that household and eventually bring them to the temple. 

Here is my little Christmas tree!

Merry Christmas!

Dec. 2 to Dec. 9

Hi all!

I don't have a lot of time this week to email, so I'm sorry if I don't get to respond to all of your emails personally. 

Monday- Our only solid appointment cancelled on us, but it was a good opportunity for Elder Leavitt and I to get to know the new assistant ward mission leader, Bro. Kongaika. He is a newlywed and a recent RM. Also, he is AWESOME. He is already doing so much to help us move the work forward here in Walnut. 

Tuesday- Had significant bike problems for most of the day (blown tire and tube, yippee!) But those were resolved by the evening and we had a good dinner with the Christopherson family, and an even better correlation with Bro. Kongaika. We are setting up practice lessons with the ward leadership to work on our teaching skills, then asking them to invite their non member friends to do the same thing for us. Is it too sneaky a way to teach nonmembers? Perhaps. But I think it will be effective. At the very least, I'll get to teach more often and really improve myself there. 

Wednesday- Made some good contact with some less active families. Several were not interested in coming back AT ALL. But one was! So we are going to start working with them, and hopefully we can bring back one of this ward's many lost sheep.

Thursday- We had a pretty good district meeting where we talked about improving our study skills/habits. Especially in personal study. There was a lot I already knew, but needed to be reminded of. As I've implemented the ideas in my study, there has been dramatic improvement. We also taught another lesson with Gary, who we started teaching on Sunday. We taught him at the church, and he actually thought that he was coming to attend a worship service. So that's a pretty good indicator of his commitment, right? We gave him a tour, showed him the font, and taught him the Plan of Salvation. He wants to get baptized, but recognized without us telling him that he will need to quit smoking. How awesome is that?! It's pretty awesome. 

Friday- We had a really great weekly planning session, one of the best I've been in since I got out here. If not the best. We tried to contact a referral, but he wasn't home. After that Rose and Stephan Bates, our only other investigators took us out to Golden Corral for dinner and a lesson. We taught the first few points of the Plan of Salvation, and committed them to come to church on Sunday.

Saturday- We had the ward Christmas brunch in the morning. That was pretty fun, none of our investigators showed up, but we did have quite a few less actives come out of the woodwork. After that we had to go to Covina to help out at their Christmas parade (it was required for the whole zone). I didn't actually see the parade, we just waved VIP cars back to the staging area after they finished the parade route. I did hear several marching bands though, so that was nice for my ears. On the way home we got transfer calls. Elder Leavitt got transferred to Glendale to whitewash and train. I already miss him quite a bit. It seems that as soon as I really hit stride with someone, one of us gets transferred. I'm still in the Creekside ward, and my new companion is Elder Ramirez.

Sunday- We finally had investigators come to church!!!! WHAAAAAAA. You have no idea how happy I was to see the Bates pull up to the building. Gary couldn't make it because he had promised his father that he would help him roof the house or something like that. But the Bates actually came! it's been 30 hours and I'm still bouncing off the walls about it. We and the sisters sang Tyler's song, "Before the Angels" in sacrament meeting. The ward really loved it! Several members asked for recordings, and were very surprised that such a good piece was written by my little brother. But they just don't know Tyler. It made me a very proud brother to help bring some of his music to life, and even more so to receive such high praise for it on his behalf. We are singing it again this Friday at the mission party

Sunday night we went to the mission farewell, which was pretty good. My trainer Elder DeBry is now AP, but I called that weeks ago. He's an amazing elder.

So I'll be in Creekside for the foreseeable future. However, we will be moving to a different members home on the 18th and stay there for 16 days. So mail (packages included) can continue to go to my address at 

403 Beverly Dr

Walnut, CA 91789

BUT if it is going to arrive after then, it will need to go to a different one, which I do not have at this time. I'll get that to people soon. (next week)

Love you all! Go do missionary work! 

Elder Whitney

FYI: New Mission Address

Dear parents of the missionaries in the California Arcadia Mission,

We are writing you to inform you of our change in address. Starting December 2, 2013 our new address will be:

California Arcadia Mission

614 W. Foothill Blvd.

Arcadia, CA 91006

Our phone number will be staying the same. We will still be accepting mail at our old address on Duarte for now, so your missionaries will still receive all letters sent out to them. If you have any question, don’t hesitate to call us.

Thank you so much,

The Mission Office Staff

Nov. 25 to Dec. 2

So I don't have a lot of time this week since I wanted to respond to everyone emails personally, and I need to write president too. 

Monday- Knocked on a lot of doors of less actives. Talked to one, and we are visiting them this week

Tuesday- We finally had correlation! A new assistant ward mission leader got called and he is AWESOME. I love him. And the ward mission leader will be in town for 2 months, which is nuts. And so the next 12 weeks here will be magical! woot.

Wednesday- Taught Virgil, he still isn't getting it and wants to meet less frequently :(

We finally taught Robert too, but his interest has waned since its taken so long to have an actual lesson

Thursday- Thanksgiving morning. Had a fun day. Started with softball with the ward, and then we had district meeting. Which is the last we'll have with our district leaders, since they're getting trainees tomorrow. Which is weird. We had dinner with the flores family, and they're awesome. Love the Flores family. 

Friday- Weekly planning, took forever. Stopped by a bunch of people who weren't interested. Except for one guy, who we taught on Sunday is super interested! 

Saturday- We helped the Bates with some service, and taught them the Restoration. he is really interested, and so is the wife. However, rose has a slightly different viewpoint on it, and it might be a hard thing to overcome. But I'm confident her husband will actually be a big help in that. They're a really awesome family

Sunday- No one showed up to church, but right after church we picked up a new investigator, and he is really excited to keep learning. On thursday we are giving him a tour. 

So things here are really hopping! Of course, this is the last week of the transfer. We'll see what happens come Saturday. Love you all!

Nov. 18 to Nov. 25

Surprise surprise, Pday is Monday and I'm actually emailing on Pday. It's been awhile, but this is supposed to be the norm. 

Tuesday 11/19- Had pday, played some basketball with Elder Leavitt. Bro Chistopherson, in our bishopric, took us to the locally famous Tommy Burger joint.  Spent the evening tracking down HQ referrals, which we had a bunch of. 1 wasn't interested at all, one of them was a 12 year old whose mother we need to talk to before teaching (hopefully we can teach them both!), and the third was very interested but busy. However, we do have an appointment with her tonight, so that should be cool. 

Wednesday- Spent most of Wednesday just trying to find people to preach to, which was made even longer because Cheryl cancelled on us. Long day, with lots of miles put on the bikes. We did finally meet the Spanish Elders whose area overlaps ours. Had a quick roadside correlation type meeting with them, which is very good for us and them. 

Thursday- So the high school and middle school are right by the church building. Close to when school lets out the parking lot is rather full of nonmember types. We decided to take advantage of the easy tour invitation and tried to get people to come inside and see the building. We only got one, and that was just because she didn't believe us when we said we had a full-size basketball court in there. But hey, we got someone inside, and we invited as many people as we could to do so. Not much else we can do without them exercising their agency in favor of salvation. We also taught Virgil again, this time about Church attendance. You might remember that he is paralyzed on one side of his body. Anyways, as were talking, we discovered he's WAY more mobile than one would have guessed. And he committed to coming to church so long as the weather cooperated. He gets really sick when the weather is bad. We also taught Steve, who skipped out on Sacrament early last week. He's really eager to get the Melchizedek priesthood and to go to the temple, so we explained that if he wants that he's got to be at church every Sunday for a while. He also committed to church attendance. 

Friday- Had a lesson with Cheryl, in which she basically dropped us. She just can't let go of herself, which is sad because she honestly doesn't have to change very much about herself to get baptized. Her time will come eventually. It is also a bummer because she was half our teaching pool, and the only one really in a position to get baptized soon. However, the Lord blessed us. That night we went to the house of a woman we contacted last Friday but haven't gotten a hold of since. Her husband answered, let us right in, and we taught him the Restoration. It was cool to watch his face change to actual amazement when we described the First Vision and the Restoration of the priesthood. His wife showed up towards the end and as so often happens to lessons that are going awesome things just sort of fizzled to an end, instead of having a real solid closing which is often essential for them to have understanding. But, they were super nice to us. They kept offering us food, they gave us a ride home, and told us to come back soon. They also said they would be at church Sunday morning. 

Saturday- We contacted a lot of less actives today, which was cool. What was less cool is that most of them declared pretty resolutely that they weren't now members, never were, and never would be. Which is just strange because the church keeps pretty good records of who gets the saving ordinance of baptism. I mean, how else would we know their names, addresses, phone numbers, and birthdays? Which we pointed out to some, who still insisted there was some mistake. It's very sad to see how Satan causes people to forget their baptism with such finality as to render any discussion about coming back useless, because they insist that there is nothing to which they need return. Oh well. Those are the people who will have the most interesting experience in the after life in my opinion. Our dinner on Saturday was really good. We ate with the Twardecki's, who are Polish. Polish food is quite excellent, especially misery soup. 

Sunday- The weather was beautiful, we followed up with everyone on Saturday, and still none of the four who promised to come showed up. I would've been happy with just one less-active, but oh well. Next week. Next week will be better. We went and visited two of the homes with people who didn't come, and after patiently hearing their reasons for failing to keep the sabbath day holy, recommitted them and set up appointments for this week. So we'll see how those go. I do still believe that they have real intent, Elder Leavitt and I just need to build their faith a little more. 

Everyone take care and please continue praying for Becky Powell. She had an allergic reaction to the treatment and has been hospitalized for the last week and a half. Now they have to resort to an older, less effective, more painful mode of treatment. The whole family is in a rough place. 

Elder Whitney

Nov. 12 - Nov. 18

Here is the goings on of God's work in the Creekside ward. 

Tuesday 11/12: The highlight of last Tuesday was picking up a new investigator for the first time with Elder Leavitt. We met with Cheryl, an older woman who came to church the Sunday before and just bawled all the way through Sunday School. She was very happy to see us, and we thought she understood the Restoration pretty well. We met with her a lot this week because she is always home. 

Wednesday: We taught a lot of lessons today, which was awesome. We taught Cheryl the plan of salvation, and she really liked the Resurrection. We talked with Virgil about baptism. Last time we had met with him was quite a while ago, and he raised a pretty big concern with repentance, that ultimately extended from him not quite understanding how it worked. We left an assignment to read Alma 42 and then we would talk about it next time. Although, the Book of Mormon answered his question perfectly! We checked his understanding quickly, just to make sure that he did get it, and he does. So that was cool. He isn't sure that he needs to align himself with any specific church right now though, so he will take some more time. On Wednesday we also met with the Powell family. The Powells are a part member, less active family that just moved here from Montana. We got referred to them by the grandparents who asked to go give a blessing to the daughter. So we went with Bishop Burnett to offer the blessing and found much more than we thought we would. So they moved in September, and in October, the 13 year old daughter Becky was diagnosed with cancer in her bone marrow. Which just sucks. Only her Dad is baptized, and the family doesn't know anything really about how blessings work, or anything like that. So we taught her about those, she was really quiet. Then we gave the blessing, let them know we'd continue to check up on them and that members of the ward would come by, too. I just can't imagine what their situation is like right now. Hopefully we can start actually teaching them soon so that if things go south they've got the ordinances they need. So, that's a good family to keep praying for.  

Thursday: Thursday saw some appointments fall through, but we made some real good contacts. One of them waved us down and asked why we never went by his house. We were like, "Well we'd love to start doing that!" His name is Andre, and we haven't seen him since. But, we know where he lives and where is girlfriend lives, so we'll track him down. He seemed pretty genuine. We also met a woman who kept lamenting that she didn't raise children as committed to their church as we are to ours. We just told her, we'd love to come by and tell you how it's done ma'am. So we've set up an appointment with her this week as well, which will feature the family proclamation. Sister Becerra came to our district meeting this week too, that was pretty cool. The zone leaders were there too. Also, this was Elder Leavitt's Birthday! I sang to wake him up. He threw stuff at me because my morning voice is very, ahem, special. 

Friday: Met with Cheryl again, and taught her the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We tried to set her up with a baptismal date, but she wouldn't commit, which was frustrating. She did say she would pray about it though, which is something. We spent the rest of the day trying to talk to people that wouldn't listen, which is always a bummer, but not discouraging. We're doing what we can to offer them the Gospel. 

Saturday: Had a lesson with Cheryl that wasn't what we planned it to be. The night before we'd planned to watch the Joseph Smith movie with her, but when we got there she tried to drop us. Tried. We talked with her, reassured her that this takes time, and even though we strongly push baptism, it's because the blessings that come with it are so vital that to delay them is just silly. We apologized for moving too quickly for her, and said that we wanted to keep visiting and just work on helping her understand more about Joseph Smith and prophets/authority. So that was a good lesson for us and for her. We also went to a birthday party for one of the youth. She invited us because there would be several nonmembers there. So we went and tried to strike up some conversations with them. They had some questions about what we do and things like that but weren't particularly interested beyond that. However, we did decide that would start working with the family that invited us so that the missionary efforts they are already making can become missionary successes. 

Sunday: Cheryl didn't come to church, but one of the less actives did come to sacrament. By that I mean as soon as we finished passing, he bolted. The elders quorum president tried to run him down but he disappeared real good. We intend to talk to him about that this week and see if we can't get him to stay for at least all of sacrament. Then Elder Leavitt got a gnarly migraine after church and we were forced to retire for the evening. He tried to sleep it off while a did a lot of different stuff. Watched some church videos, read a lot of scriptures and Preach My Gospel, etc. Read a lot out of Jesus the Christ. There is a lot of information in every single sentence of that book. It's crazy. 

Monday 11/18: We had zone conference all day. Which was pretty awesome. We got a lot of instruction from President, the Assistants, and sister Becerra. I wrote down a lot of things that Elder Leavitt and I are going to start doing so that the work can hasten even faster. Did you know that the Brethren are referring to this period as the Hastening, and that they say it is as important as the Restoration of the Gospel? Just think about that and what it implies about us being saved to be on Earth for this. 

That was my week! I hope you all are doing well, are healthy physically and spiritually. The church is true, and no man can slow down the work of God. The only question is, will the work go on with or without us? 

Love you all,

Elder Brett Whitney