Surprise! My P-days are on Tuesday Haha, I'm not dead or anything!
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| Airplane Bathroom Selfie |
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| Elder Brooks with Pres. and Sis. Gimenez |
It's been a crazy week here in San Diego. I'm serving in the Olivenhain Ward near Encinitas, CA. My companion is Elder Doolan. We've been out on our mission, for about the same time, so it's been fun to get to know him.
I'll do this is one big chunk, just because the days are kinda the same and it all seems like one at the same time.
So, since California is getting so bad with COVID, we were placed again into quarantine. We had a whole bunch of service and member visits set up, so we've instead been doing lots of video calls with our members.
(Also, everything is so different here. I have a washing machine, dishwasher, microwave, oven, a pantry, an actual closet, a real mirror, and hot water to name a few, but ironically no A/C)
Elder Doolan and I are both new to the area, so it's been pretty difficult to gain the trust of the members over video calls. This ward has had a brand new set of Elders 5 times in the last 6 transfers, I'm pretty sure. So, when we called a member, he expressed, "are you kidding??? They whitewashed us again???" We had a good laugh about it.
The members here are awesome though. They bring us dinner every night and I can usually eat most of it. Also, I bought a pineapple and ate it on Sunday and then that night, the members gave us pineapple and then last night the members brought us pineapple again, so it's basically paradise.
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| Los Tacos |
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| Pineapple! |
We do lots of filming and video editing for Facebook at the church building, which is right next to our apartment which is super nice. I've already played the piano a whole ton and I have lots of ideas for good Facebook videos in the future.
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| View of the church from their apartment. |
Other than that, we've done a lot of morning devotionals and also fun activities like a virtual Mormon Battalion Tour.
So, things are going great for a first week here in Olivenhain! I love you all and I can read any emails you send me!
Elder Brooks
There were three videos of him making futu in Africa that didn't come through on the blog email last week. You can see them at the bottom of the blog post here: Intermission Update.
Notes from our video calls this week:
He is allowed to call home twice a week right now. Ironically, the connection today was worse than Africa, since he was using a wifi connection from his companion's phone and they were both on video calls.
He was the first missionary to arrive for the mission on 7/7 so he got to ride back to the mission office alone with Pres. and Sis. Gimenez. He was the only missionary on his flight, but there were four that came in on a later flight from Salt Lake. He was in his area later that afternoon. He has a smart phone, but no service or data connection.
His mission president, Pres. Gimenez, is from Chile and is a General Authority Seventy. There was a recent article: Why General Authorities are called as Mission Presidents
His companion, Elder Doolan, is from Mesa and started his mission last August. They live in the same apartment with the three Spanish speaking Elders that cover their stake. They have a mission devotional every morning. He played a musical number for the devotional within a few days of arriving.
Most nights they get dinner from the members through Door Dash.
P-days for his mission are on Tuesdays to allow them to go to the temple when it opens. He can read emails any time you send them, but will only respond on Tuesdays.
He is in an English area for now. There are two French areas and two Swahili areas in the mission. He started learning Swahili before he left. The mission is getting about 30 new missionaries at the beginning of August.
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