Week #47 - Sonoma, California - September 14, 2020

Hey, so with all the insanity of the fires here, the sky turned yellow and was super cool looking. We shouldn't be walking around too much because the smoke can get in our lungs. If we do so, well it wouldn't be too good. 

So I'm still having a good time in Sonoma, Our teaching pool doubled in a short amount of time, and most of them are Hispanics, which is good because we can practice our Spanish all the time (mine's the best in our companionship XD). I'm kidding, but my Spanish is insanely good now. Feeling confident about it. Glad I got moved to another Spanish speaking area on transfers a few weeks ago

My new comps are pretty cool. They are Elder Nicholas and Elder Scott. We're working pretty hard and it's needed cause we have found that Sonoma is a pretty rich and prideful area. Here are some cool pictures from the sky and other things. Yes that's the sun in the first pic. (Sorry, I don't like to write much but I'll do better)

New comps -- Elder Scott (in back) and Elder Nicholas

Elder Scott, Elder Nicholas and Elder Dyal

Wildfire smoke is in the air

Smoke in Sonoma

Smoke and red sky in the evening 

Week #46 - Sonoma, California - September 7, 2020

I'm gonna be really fast cause I dislike writing weekly's. Yeah, so I'm the only one that got yeeted from my district in the last transfer. The only one! I haven't sent any emails in this past transfer but it’s been a few weeks now, so that's cool. Since I've been gone, the Laguna District in Santa Rosa dropped its coolness by like 90%, it was a really sad day. My new area is Sonoma, I'm in a sistrict (lots of sisters), so that's pretty nice. It's also a super rich area here, which is awesome. I love trying to deal with people like this. Gonna be different from my last area. And I’m still in a Spanish speaking area and in a trio of missionaries, Elders Nicholas and Scott.

So me and one of my new comp both have really bad resting faces, if you know what I mean. So during zone conference we both just looked super depressed, and I guess that concerned everyone because the STLs and the Zone leaders and the APs all called us after it was over and asked if we were doing okay. It's just hilarious that everyone always assumes I'm mad or sad or something.

So we have this girl who we are teaching with a baptismal date but we haven't been able to contact her at all the last week. She just wouldn't answer her phone ever. We figured out after speaking with her Grandma that she works at a salon. My hair was getting pretty long, so I had the brilliant idea to go over and get a haircut in the middle of the week. Sure enough, she was there and was pretty taken aback. But she pretended like everything was normal and cut my hair, but in the middle of the cut she asked how I knew where to find her. I didn't know what to say, so I just played dumb and was like: "oH i DiDn'T kNoW yOu wORkeD hEre!" But don't worry, the ‘recon mission’ was successful and we were able to have good contact that day.

-Elder Dyal

Week #44 - Santa Rosa, California - August 24, 2020

 Only have pictures this week... Some are of the California wildfire smoke that hangs heavy in the air over Santa Rosa. Elder Dyal's mission is free of any danger from the current wildfires. This was also his last week in Santa Rosa before transfers.

Week #43 - Santa Rosa, California - August 17, 2020

What’s up? It’s Elder Dyal here. Well, let me just get straight into it. This week we haven’t really done anything because, well I try to do stuff. So, we had exchanges with zone leaders and I was leading the whole area with my group and was super embarrassed because the whole time we haven’t been able to get in contact with anyone… call and noone answered, going by people houses and they weren’t there. So that was fun, we just wasted a bunch of miles. Ummm, so let me think… So this week, this is what they whole week looked like basically. But one think is that our ward mission leader, we noticed he was looking super worn out, super tired and stressed, so we decided to throw him a cute little party where we wrote cute little notes, and snuck into his house and gave him a “heart attack” on his door. And we brought food, and he cried. Probably the best thing I’ve ever seen. But he’s literally the best ward mission leader I’ve ever seen. His name is Hermano Merando. He’s so amazing. Never seen anyone better than that, never seen anyone cuter than him.

But anyway, let me think what else happened this week…. Oh, yesterday on Sunday, we were able to have 7 lessons, which was nice because the rest of the week we had nothing. It was mostly with members because a lot of members don’t have the opportunity to take the sacrament, so we go over and give that to them, so that was nice. Also yesterday, Esperanza and Montserrat, who are the 2 investigators who dropped us after they read the entire Book of Mormon in a month, which was super freaking cool. Never seen anyone cooler than that! But they dropped us after reading about polygamy on the internet and then had a lot of doubts and decided they didn’t want to talk to us anymore. We decided we weren’t going to let her do that, so we made a bunch of brownies and went over to her house, a pretty bold move! We wrote some notes that apologized but that we could talk about it now if she has questions. It was kind of awkward after getting to her house because she opened the door and only had a towel on after getting out of the shower… And she was really caught off guard and freaks out. We were like, “Hey, here’s some brownies,” and we didn’t know what else to say. So we gave her the brownies with the notes and left within 30 seconds! But later she messages us and she’s like, “Hey guys, it was nice to see you. It’s not your fault and you’re always welcome at my house.” So that’s cool! We’re back in, WE’RE BACK IN! That’s nice.

Besides that, I’ve been trying so hard to just get lessons going, but it’s been a struggle. So I guess really, that’s our week. We did take some good pictures. I’ll add them below.

-Elder Dyal

Hermano Morando

Week #42 - Santa Rosa, California - August 10, 2020

Hey everyone,

So, one day on the mission of Elder Alex Dyal, the investigators he was teaching dropped HIM because of questions over polygamy. Depression soon hit because they were super amazing investigators, and that just kinda sucks. But he had the FATtest rebound week EVER.

No seriously, we found the coolest family ever; the mom is an inactive member and the rest of the family is AMAZING and is reading the BOM like crazy. We also found 3 other cholos who are super cool! So in total, we found 7 people to teach this week! 

The biggest tender mercy that lifted the depression of losing our investigators was some guys we met at a gas station. There was this guy on a motorized bicycle wearing a fish net and mobs by us and parks. We go up to him to talk and possibly get a picture with him. His friend comes up to us speaking Arabic but just the same 3 words over and over again. Then he tells us in his OWN words that he speaks: English, Italian, Arabic MEXICAN, Spanish, Hebrew, etc, etc. He asked us what was on the back of the dollar bill, we were like, "What?" He says, "Your mom". And then he paces around the gas station for no reason and comes back to us. Meanwhile his friend is karate chopping a sign and drop kicking cigarettes. We asked if we could get a picture with them and he was like "for 10 dollars." (We took one anyway.) We went back to our car as he mobs off on his bike, but his friend just sits down on our car. We had no idea what to do, but then he went, "I have to go to the bathroom" and he just walks away. (Picture attached)

Honestly, I really needed something that funny this week. Have a good week.

- Elder Dyal

 With the fishnet motorized biker that we talked to 

Week #41 - Santa Rosa, California - August 3, 2020

I'm not going to lie, this week has been super hard. Our people with Baptismal date were looking online and found some anti stuff, and told us they didn't want to talk anymore. It was a huge blow to us, and I've been specifically really depressed over it. I wish I had something good to say about this week to counter the depression, but I don't. It's all cool though, we're still pressing on.

 One thing that was kinda cool is everyone in our house realized that I will chug anything on a dare. So I've just mainly chugging a lot of high-fructose corn syrup crap that they give me, and it usually causes me a lot of physical pain a few hours later. I mean physical pain helps me forget my emotional pain so... it balances straight out.

 If I keep writing it'll be just more depression so I'll stop here. Don't worry though, I always joke about this kind of stuff, I'm not 100% serious.

 -Elder Dyal

Week #40 - Santa Rosa, California - July 27, 2020

Hey all,

So, it's been a busy day, plus I'm bad at weekly's, so I'm going to be be real quick.

The hermanas in our district had a baptism this week, but because the governor of California shut down all our counties again, they weren't able to do the baptism at the church. So we had the baptism at the next best place - one of the beaches in North Cali, but it also happened to be pretty cold that day! And the water was freezing. My comp was asked to baptize her, so we went with the hermanas, and it was actually pretty cool to witness. But my poor comp was shaking in the water, since the water was so cold, but it was a neat experience.

I had a pretty out-of-world experience earlier this week. So there's this lady and her daughter that we've been teaching, I mentioned it in one of my other emails (look at the July 13 post) and they're really awesome to teach! They've practically read the whole BOM and we only gave it to them like a month ago. The mother has already set a baptismal date last week, but the daughter is more hesitant to take that leap. This last Tuesday though, we had a really cool lesson and toward the end, they started telling us about their past. While they were doing this I started to feel really strange. It's very difficult to explain what happened, but my mind just opened, and I feel like could kind of see and feel exactly what they were thinking and why they were thinking it. I've never felt anything like it before. We were asking the daughter about baptism again, and she was still very hesitant, so I decided to tell her the story of a convert that I taught in Peru and how I saw his desire to change, and how it was so powerful to me. She stopped me in the middle of my story and told me: "The way you're talking to me right now, is convincing me. There's like magic in your words or something." We knew she was feeling the spirit and needless to say, my comps and I set a baptismal date for her that day, and we're all super excited for her!

I don't have much else to say, so have a good week. And here's some cute pics...

Elder Dyal

 The daughter of our investigator

 Going to the beach for the baptism

 The Elders and Hermanas

 In our masks

 The ocean baptism

 I am one with the earth!

 On the beach

With the Hermanas

Week #39 - Santa Rosa, California - July 20, 2020

 Something is taller than Elder Dyal!

 Our "Book of Mormon" investigator

 The other roommate 'trio' that lives in the apartment --

Elder Anderson, Elder Tobias, and Elder Smithson

 A way of finding investigators

Cleaning out our mission cars

Our horde of gatorade

Week #38 - Santa Rosa, California - July 13, 2020

Hey guys,

Yo, it's been a while since I sent a weekly, or really responded to emails in general. But yes, I'm alive. There's been a lot happening since I last sent an email. I wasn't able to write last week cause we were really busy. We spent p-day on the beach. Probably the windiest beach I've ever been to. We're not allowed to swim but it was still a lot of fun. We found a washed up jellyfish on the shore so that was cool.

There was this lady who referred herself to the missionaries because she wanted to learn how to pray. We video-called her and told her about the Book of Mormon and dropped it off at her house with a chapter to read in it. It took a while to get back into contact with her because she works all the time and is super busy. But a few days later we went by her house and talked to her in person along with her daughter. She told us she had been reading the Book of Mormon everyday and showed us where she was. She had started from the beginning of the book and was in 1 Nephi 17 or something! She said the book was super great but it was a bit confusing to her, so she reads the chapters multiple times. She told us about Lehi's vision and 100% understood it! She had already accepted the book as the word of God. I've never seen that happen so quickly! But even crazier, we went by her house again a week later because we could never get into contact with her. She let us in her house and apologized, but said she brings the book to her work and reads it during her break. She was in the Book of Jarom. Me and my companions had a hard time responding because we were all visibly astounded! No other investigator has ever read that much in such a short amount of time. She related the book to all the crazy things that were happening today, and her daughter wanted a book in English, so we gave her one as well.

So that’s one thing that happens a lot in this area - The parents only speak to us in Spanish, but they understand English. And the kids speak to us only in English, so it's back and forth, and we all get a little confused sometimes. It hurts my brain!

I went on an exchange to a ‘bike area’, so that was the first time I felt like a REAL missionary as we rode bikes around Santa Rosa. But it was also an English area so I had a really hard time teaching because I wasn’t use to teaching in English. It felt so weird. But we met some guy named Andrew that went on and on about ‘the illuminati’ and other conspiracies. The missionaries I was with told me that’s kind of what they get in this area. Maybe that’s just California, I don't know yet. Haven’t been here long enough.

Today is actually transfers but there weren't any changes with my companions. I am still with Elder Hakanson and Elder Wells. But one of the other Elders that live in our apartment was just called as a 3rd AP, so we're all super excited for him. We have 2 sets of trio missionaries in our apartment. 6 missionaries total! It’s crazy!

I'm gonna be honest, I have a hard time writing emails because I have no idea what to say, so I have a ton of pictures to end it.

Elder Dyal

 Elder Wells and Elder Dyal

 Elder Dyal and Elder Hakanson

 In the church foyer

 Riding a bike on exchanges

 Found a raccoon

 (Alex's spirit animal, LOL!)

 With an investigator

 Riding to the beach on P-day

 California Beach!

 With Elder Hale on the beach
(He was Scott Cherry's companion in the Peru Iquitos Mission)

 Having fun on the beach with the district

 Now, onto a service project

 Whoa! A machete!

 Service project and working hard