Letters from Gene : Found some people to teach

Hello friends. This week Elder Pilling's parents don't email him, he gets 2 new investigators!!!!!, and received blessings from the heavens.

Yah this was a most busy and crazy week!!! Soo much success and so much going on. Elder McEntire and I have been working and working and working and seeing a lot of blessings from our father in heaven. Just to put this in perspective for you all. 10 weeks ago I came to Moorpark and we had 3 investigators, within the week we dropped 2 and 1 dropped us...so for 5 weeks we didn't have any investigators...then Elder McEntire came and all I could tell him were some of the potentials we were working with. We now have 5 investigators in Moorpark, since they are all new, none of them have qualified as progressing investigators yet, but they're all fantastic and I love them all. Elder McEntire is hilarious and we have a very awesome perspective on missionary work.

We then had a council with Bishop Hodges and our ward mission leader. Oh also we FINALLY got ward missionaries. Anyway so we all met and the Bishop really feels the ward needs to be more involved with us, so we got together with the auxiliaries from the ward and are thinking of 10 families we will teach the 6 discussions over 6 weeks and then re- introducing the Walnut Canyon ward mission plan. So it's exciting and will lead to referrals because they will be thinking of our message. Not only that but it will leave the ward more spiritual than when we started this. So that's exciting to be starting up. Already have set things with some families. On top of the 10 active families the bishopric is going to extend invitations to less actives to take the discussions from us. We have one family that we did this with. Actually a part member family and that is how we got one of our new investigators. She is also hilarious. Nancy from Mexico, she cracks me up we have a lot of fun. She's like 3 feet tall and has a strong accent. But she is so sweet, bought us delicious slices of carrot cake. Like delicious.

Story time!!!!!!

It's probably not that good of a story but I laugh. So we were biking out of a community turning right onto Tierra Rehada and I briefly looked left and saw 2 road cyclists. So my competitive cyclist in me fires up and I just put the hammer down. A few minutes later turned right onto Leta Yancy Moorpark California and I can't even see Elder McEntire...whoops. plus the cyclists didn't even follow us, they must have turned...now I put the roads in there just for kicks and giggles. I know y'alls don't know them but I do. Anyway I really like the bike. Here in Moorpark it's like a bigger version of Waterton, especially when it's past 6:30. A many red lights are run...so it's fun and good and stuff.

Ok so we had dinner with some members, twas delicious! Then we walked over to our potential Elsaes house and she's Hispanic soooooo she fed us again. It was very very good and authentic Mexican but I was like, I need a wheelchair I can't walk. Anyway we ended up talking about the Book of Mormon and a little bit of the restoration. It was great and she seems very curious and interested in this church. We set up a return appointment it was great. Btw she is the lady we helped carry boxes from her garage to her apartment on the 3rd floor a few weeks ago. Anywho we went back and taught more of the restoration. It was great again, we helped her understand that we have prophets and apostles right now. She was interested in that and had never really thought that that could be a thing.

Some other people we found were Michael and Veronica and Richard. Ok Richard is super cool, not an investigator but soon to be. He's converting a ram utility van into a camper van. It's awesome. He was putting down sound detening stuff, same stuff we put on the cruiser, so we talked about that for a bit. Anyway we had a really awesome discussion about God and how he is an understanding and compassionate God. It was very good.

Oh I went on exchanges with our district leader and that was great!! He's great just like me hehehe lol so humble. But I told him all about how I love talking to people about their fruit trees. I then came up with this genius idea!!!

Elder Pilling genius idea:

The great California Ventura Mission gets a farm. This farm has strawberry plants, orange trees, grape vines, avocados, peaches, all the regular fruit bearing trees and then we distribute the food to the missionaries so we can save money. Here's the missionary part. A set of missionaries are placed to work the farm, the farm however is too large to work by themselves so we hire people (probably Mexicans) and teach them as we work. So the missionary farmers would probably be Spanish missionaries. Anyway then we get fresh foods AND teach our employees all at once. I think it is genius:) tell me your thoughts.

I'm getting tired of typing this out, hope you all enjoy the freezing cold weather...it was 26C yesterday and just as warm today. Blessing as it is. Weather is perfect =)

I also picked a lime from a lime tree.

Transfers are the 30th. Pray I stay here. I love it and everything about my mission. Except I do all the cleaning. I feel like Pearl...bonus if you get that joke lol

Oh and it rained very hard this week. Like whoa! We did companion study at McDonald's lol