Hump Week

Hey fam! This week was cool, but not temperature wise hahahaha.... its freakin hot. CRayyyy I hit a year on friday! Dont worry Ill be back to party soon enough.

Monday we just lazied around and cleaned the house a bunch.

Tuesday was pretty cray, we went into district meeting with perfectly blue skies. and two hours later walked outside to orange skies. pic attached. BLue Cut fire or watever in the end burned 37000 acres so far and 82000 people have been evacuated.  Missionaries who were supposed to be up in the desert were stuck down the hill all week because of the fire. Some missionaries were evacuated as well. Pretty rad. we biked around a bit but nobody was home.

Okay side tangent. In all of my areas thus far I have covered two wardsa at once, so we never really had spare time. Now we are on bike, and we only cover half of a ward. It is a way different atmosphere of missionary work, everything is done differently. Especially planning. Also the metric butt-tonne of smoke in the air probs filled my lungs with ash it was a struggle.

Im giving up on the day-by-day email for today fam, bear with me.
Our ward is pretty awesome. We calculated the average age of our ward. 61. We have an investigator that is the epitome of desert folk. and now a quote from our lesson with Jeremy, Parental Discretion is Advised "How am I not gonna get stoned on Christmas...@$*%! I always get flamed on Christmas."  Haha hes golden. Its a lot of fun teachin these weird white people. 
Hehe 

okay so our ward-mates dont live with us but we eat dinner with them at members homes. And they look super young, like, 14 years old baby face. So we would talk about it with our house-mates all the time and eventually they got called out twice at church, it was funny. Once in gospel doctrine it was said, "I thought you had to be 18 to come out on a mission." then the Bishops wife at dinner that evening, "Okay serve the kids first, which include you two elders because you look 14." haha get WRECKED.  I lost my mind it was hilarious. I dont know how anyone could take them seriously. Ill nab a pic of them at some point.

Well, thats all folks! See you on the flipped flop! 

Elder Ockey

New Address

18887 Yucca Street 

Hesperia California

92345

Week 51

I got transferred. Elder Thelander is staying and training in the Samoan ward and I am now in Hesperia. Specifically the Mojave River Ward. We are on bike, lol workin off all that Samoan food right away. dang its gonna be hot for a few weeks... 😓 

I moved from the second nicest place in the mission to the nicest place. We live in what is called the 'Mojave Mansion' but it aint much to look at really. Still #blessed with washers and dryers. IM gonna miss all those clowns at the Adelanto house though. You have way to much fun living with other missionaries. Elder Olsen, who I went on exchanges with is in the house. Also Elder Water who I replaced in Samoan. #partyhouse

Not much to report on the week. I was pretty stressed about transfers, just because I loved the area so much. We worked up till friday when we got my packing call in the morning and from there we just said goodbye to people and I packed. Jeez you accumulate a ton of garbage when you stay somewhere for so long. I didnt actually know where I was going until last night though.

I took a picture of my face next to the hole in the wall haha. I promise never to do it again we were just being delinquents.

I would send a ton of pics because Im sure at least a hundred were taken yesterday at sacrament meeting but people still need to send them to me. 

I think its sort of a good thing I got moved. Becoming way to casual with everyone haha. Leaving Ontario I was all like "later suckaz!" but leaving Samoan/Adelanto Im all sad because everyone is super cool over there. 😔

But Ill get over it. Im excited. 

Apparently it gets cold soon, just not soon enough.....

Love ya!

Elder Ockey

Gage’s new address

18887 Yucca Street 

Hesperia California

92345

wedel shumway and I are inseperable. but now we are seperated....

Week 50

heyooo! Well now its week six.  (of transfers)  Ive been in the Samoan/Adelanto wards for 6 months now. I am expecting to leave but I have a tiny glimmer of hope.

"If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth." 

Mark 9:23

Haha probs one of the only times I will insert a scripture into my email.

I told you all about Monday.

Tuesday we went up into Adelanto foa little bit. Its the first time in a while I had been up there, we just always happened to have exchanges whenever we went the last few times haha. It was good. Still ghetto up here lol. We saw a good number of people. 

Wednesday was good. Saw another few in Adelanto before heading over to some polys. We taught Levi (the 11 year old we found on sunday) the restoration and it went really well. Headed over to AppleValley and read with the Samasoni's. I get excited about how excited they are to read the Book of Mormon its super cool. I just wish they could get sundays off :(

Thursday morning we saw Jordan, also in AppleValley (goodbye miles) and really got to him, at least in my mind, with the intro to the Book of Mormon. Helped him realize why its important and such. Did the same sorta thing with this ghetto guy in Adelanto. Its funny because he will ask us sometimes just to pray with us because he is "about to do a bad thing" haha

Friday was a failiure on multiple fronts. no one home or anything. But Ill tell you about something siiiick that happened this week but I dont remember what day. So we just got a little impatient with the member missionary work in the Samoan ward, because ya know, we cant tract into Samoans in most cases. We talked to a family who used to own a shop that sold island supplies and got a tonne of refferals! Dont ask why we didnt think about it before, we just assumed that missionaries had asked in the past. Moral of the story. dont assume things

Saturday we saw Levi again, taught the Plan of Salvation which I thought was going to be a little touchy because his parent have both passed away in the past 4 years. It wasnt super touchy but I didnt/dont like the way we taught it. Ug it sucks when you know all the doctrine and you can teach it all but for whatever reason it isnt going the way you want it.

Sunday was super interesting. Went to church. Super packed. The Faalogos showed up with Levi which was awesome. Classes and such yadayada. 

Okay.

No judge zone.

If you gonna judge dont read further.

*sigh*

Okay so we were super bored Sunday night at the house. 4 missionaries aged 19-20, in a house. without supervision. Bored. So we were dumb and for whatever reason we started choking eachother out haha. Super weird to write about. But long story short. I was choked out a little long. Passed out. Smashed a hole in the wall with my face. Awesome. No damage. No concussion. Don't worry mom I'm fine geez. Don't judge me I'm just a stupid young adult. It was so weird though. I totally dreamt for what seemed like a whole night in the period of standing up to falling to the ground so to me right now Sunday seems like two days ago haha.  But now my face is all cut up and there is a hole in our study room.  Ill probably send pics at some point.  Im serious mom dont worry geez I totally know your reaction right now lol

Bye!

Elder Ockey

Week 49

Yoooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! This week was hecka long! but not all in a bad way, just another pretty basic week. Ill get right into it....

Tuesday we saw Lance, we havent been able to see his wife as often because she works a lot during the day but Lance loves to read from the BofM! Its super cool, we go over and he said he wants to start from the beginning so we read a chapter with him then he asked if we could keep reading. Ended up reading 6ish chapters haha its awesome. We had a mini FHE with the Saveas, we were super pressed for time so I felt bad but it went pretty well, cant even remember what we taught. Its gonna be awk cuz tonight we are going over to talk about temples and temple work (mostly baptisms for the dead) specifically because it gets on the AoG pastors nerves haha. Sis Savea told us to do it though so its okay.

Wednesday was pretty basic, a few lessons, a few promises about people coming to church. A few promises about coming to church shattered on Sunday.

Thursday was the same sort of thing, we seem to be getting a lot of progress with our less actives by going through the "Addiction Recovery Program" booklet with them, so thats nice.

Friday: Also

(haha I just sort of referenced the facsimiles in Abraham just then)

SAturday I went on exchanges into Silverlakes with Elder Olsen. TBH I hate exchanges. they suck. But this wasnt too bad. Just basic work.

Highlights: 

Planned service 10-12, actual service 10-2:30 wtheck

Walking around Hook Park and getting shut down in a contacting situation because they wanted to find someone to fight

thats about it..... yea

Sunday was good, we drove around to peoples houses and no one wanted to come to church smh. after church we found a new gator for Samoan ward though! he is the 11 year old nephew of some semi actives in our ward. Long story short, he and his 16 year old sister living there permanently now because of a sensitive situation. The 16 year old has been baptized and the 11 year old wants to be. siiiick!

Today was crazy. I am emailing hecka late because we went to wrightwood and hiked the gold mine again, but this time with pretty much all the missionaries in the zone. So Shumway, Thelander, Wedel and I all went trailblazing/straight-up rock climbing but the mountain. It was intense, almost legit died about 3 times it was hecka fun. Working on getting pictures form everyone right now. Then we went to this random bus graveyard and tried to tow the hood of a bus behind a truck and get pulled #fail

So we went back to the big dirt hill in Adelanto and biffed it super hard on the big Wheel again. idk if I wrote about it before but we have done it before. but this time was better.

Now i'm all scraped up and bloody and tired and dirty. But I had a lot of fun.

Have a good week!

Elder Ockey