Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Lot's of Fires June 27,2016

So many of you have probably heard that there are 6 major fires burning right now in california. The largest one is about 40 minutes from where we are at. It has burned over 30,000 acres, killed two people, and has burned down over 150 structures. There hasnt really been much effect for our area other than smokey skies and it smells like smoke. I am interested to see if we will offer any relief for them. 

This week was pretty good we had a very interesting experience with this one parent. We can talk about that another time. We tracted a lot and it was really hot. Sunscreen and water are our two best friends right now. We are still trying to find new people. We found a couple new individuals this week, dont know how much they will progress though.

This friday President and Sister Wilson leave the mission and President and Sister Layton arrive. They are allowed one hour with each other and then President Layton takes over. I am excited to get to know him briefly. 

This upcoming week we got approval to do a district blitz. We will be as a district working in each others areas. So like everyone will go to one area one day and then the next day a different area. It will be so mch fun. 

But yeah nothing crazy happened this week. 

Hope you have a great week,
-Elder Loertscher

Transfer, Temple Visit, and Most Interesting Sunday Ever June 20,2016

So we got calls for the upcoming transfer on Saturday. I am................ staying. Our whole zone for the most part is staying which is weird. So I will be spending the remainder of my mission in Ridgecrest. This past week was very interesting as a whole and I think interesting is the only word to describe it best. I'll start with yesterday. There was a moth flying around all of sacrament meeting. Then during the sacrament one of the deacons water trays broke and it fell all over the ground. I felt bad for him he was pretty embarrassed. 

This week we got to go the LA temple. It was so much fun. It took forever to get down there though. We left at 7 an got there at 10 and left around 2 and didn't get home until 5:30 so that was pretty much our whole day. LA is a pretty crazy city.

This week we had a pretty cool experience. On Tuesday we had apartment inspections. Those were at 10:15. Well at 10:00 i had a little thought that we should go to a members house to get ice for our waters. As we got outside our apartment, across the street was this lady who was delivering bread. (albertsons alley entrance backs up to the front of our apartment) She somehow was about to drop like 50 crates of bread so we ran across the street to help her and she felt so embarrassed because she had been holding it for like 3 minutes and no one saw her and could help her so she was pretty grateful. Then when we left there and headed to the members house they said as soon as we got there "how did you know we needed you help". We had to help them push a car somewhere because it wouldn't work. Its little promptings like that where they go a long way. It was cool to see it all play out. And we got a perfect 10 on our apartment so all is well. 

We had a few lessons this week but no one super solid towards baptism. 

This week i was reminded of the importance once again of the knowledge of our eternal identity. That we are sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father. In church yesterday someone gave a talk based off of my favorite talk from conference. The talk given by Elder Hallstrom. below is a link to his talk.


also here is a great mormon message. 


Anyways sorry for that tangent. As i was pondering upon this topic i was thinking about classic examples of people who KNEW without a doubt that they were children of our heavenly father. What came to my mind was the story of Moses in the Book of Moses. In chapter one Moses is told 3 times from God that he is his son. Of course then comes along the person who wants to take that image away from us. Lucifer. He tells Moses that he is a son of man and Moses' responses is amazing. Let's look at the story. 

 4 And, behold, thou art my son; wherefore look, and I will show thee the workmanship of mine hands; but not all, for my works are without end, and also my words, for they never cease.

 6 And I have a work for thee, Moses, my son; and thou art in the similitude of mine Only Begotten; and mine Only Begotten is and shall be the Savior, for he is full of grace and truth; but there is no God beside me, and all things are present with me, for I know them all.

7 And now, behold, this one thing I show unto thee, Moses, my son, for thou art in the world, and now I show it unto thee.

12 And it came to pass that when Moses had said these words, behold, Satan came tempting him, saying: Moses, son of man, worship me.

 13 And it came to pass that Moses looked upon Satan and said: Who art thou? For behold, I am a son of God, in the similitude of his Only Begotten; and where is thy glory, that I should worship thee?
 
Moses obviously had a great understanding of his divine potential. As i was pondering this topic the words came to me. "our purpose of coming to the earth is to measure up to our divine potential". The spirit really helped me understand i have a great purpose of coming to this earth and that i am from a noble birthright. 

I hope and pray you all understand that principle as well because it truly does change our perspective. 

I hope you all have a great week. 

-Elder Loertscher

Last Week of this Transfer June 13,2016

We are heading into the last week of the second to last transfer. Next Tuesday will be the start of my last transfer. This upcoming week is going to be awesome. We get to go to the temple. I love the LA temple. We are going on Wednesday. But as far as updates goes for this past week.

We finally found some people. One of them is from San Antonio so of course we had something to talk about. Everyone loves the great state of Texas. We were supposed to teach them with a member later in the week but they went home for our return appointment so hopefully we will get in contact with them this week. 

We are really trying to put an emphasis on part member family work right now because that is where a lot of success is coming from around the mission. So we are going to visit lots of them this week.

This past week the weather cool down a little bit also so that was nice.  

This past week there was an emphasis on humility and gratitude. There were two really good talks on them that you should look up. 





​ The first picture is us "charging" our Tesla. They have these charging stations in some parts of town so we wanted to get a funny picture with them. 

This week it was a sister in our zones birthday so we put about 150 balloons in their car. 

Have a great week. 

-Elder Loertscher

Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Another week down June 6,2016

This week flew by. A lot of cool stuff happened. First the weather is heating up the hottest it got this week was 109 and it is going to here in a few weeks stay in the 112 to 120 range. Let me tell you how hot it is. We looked at the weather. The other day the humidity was at 7%. Back home in Texas it was 81%. I cant take this heat. It is out of this world. It is so dry. But we found an awesome solution to this problem. So members go to Lancaster all the time to go to Costco and they got us these water bottles that are called Takeya. They keep your cold water insulated for 24 hours. So we put ice in it in the morning and it stays in there all day. These things are life savers. Then we took the water bottles to a members house and she put some vinyl on it. They look pretty good. 

This week with it being the first of the month we had our normal stuff. We had Mission Leadership Council on Wednesday down in Tehachapi. It was president and sister Wilson's last one. They leave come July 1st. That will be a sad day. We also had our zone training meeting Friday. This time around everyone was relatively quiet which is always frustrating. 

This week was slower and we are still trying to find new people to teach. We have a few appointments this upcoming week that we can hopefully pick up new investigators. 

At MLC we were taught an amazing principle. One that honestly has impacted me the most on my mission. Our mission president taught it to us from a talk by elder Bednar. The talk is entitled quick to observe. I will put the link below. I would highly recommend reading it. Powerful principles are taught. Hopefully we can all be quick to observe. 


Hope you all have a great week.



​Our zone


-Elder Loertscher

Memorial Day Weekend May 30,2016

Man was today a blast. This morning we went to a park and had the wards annual Memorial Day breakfast. We ate and played, soccer, kickball, and softball. It was a lot of fun. After that we went and got haircuts and then we had a district activity at a members house. We ate bbq and hat a water balloon fight. It was a lot of fun. 

But this past week went a little better. We taught this awesome lady who right after we left read the chapter we left with her and then asked us questions. (on Sunday she texted us saying she did not want to meet anymore so that was a bummer)

We have been tracting a lot lately and this next week we are going to be doing a lot of that as well. Its also going to get into the triple digits this week in temperature. My body needs humidity. This dry heat is going to kill us.

This week we did some service for a member. They had popcorn ceiling so we scraped that all off and sanded it, then put texture on the ceiling and then we are going to paint it. 

Tomorrow is going to be one of the most intimidating days of my mission. Our mission president sent us a text and told us before he comes to our monthly meeting with him and the stake president he wanted to go out and work with us for a few hours. His wife will be going with some sisters in our zone. So that will be interesting to see how that goes. Say your prayers for me haha.

Also this week we have our normal 1st of the month meetings. 

Hope you all have a great week.



District photo after our water balloon/ shaving cream fight today

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