I'm in Guadalajara!

I am here in Guadalajara. My next p-day isn't until next Monday. So I can't write until next Monday. This has to be really short too. I basically called you anyways so it is all good. I'm safe, freaking out, and I am going to do my best. I love you.

Email sent by his mission president's wife:

"Elder Loveland's companion is Elder Hartman from Las Vegas, Nevada. The area they will be serving in, is a little town called Villa Hidalgo. There is a small branch there, but we have great hopes it will soon be much larger and stronger.

We have already been very impressed with Elder Loveland's enthusiasm, polite manners and sincere desire to serve the Lord. We are thrilled he is finally with us."

Visa came

I got Elder Loveland's weekly email this morning informing us that his visa had arrived.  He'll be heading to Mexico Monday.  Yay!

Let the Spirit speak through you

     It's nice to hear that the trip is going well. I really wished I could go on that trip. It would remind me of my church history trip in a way. I got to drive through Kansas, see chimney rock, see some temples, and have long rides. Enjoy it and have fun! :D

      I’ve been pretty good this week. Nothing out of the ordinary here, besides going on exchanges with a greenie. On Thursday, I went with the greenie(Elder Campbell) in his area for 24 hours. Let's just say that it was pretty interesting. Neither of us are good at Spanish, but I knew a lot more than him still. So I had to do most of the communicating with all the people we visited. I also led everything, and I basically was a senior companion and trainer for the day. It was very new to me, with me being in such a foreign position to me. It’s weird to think that I am getting closer to the point of possibly training and/or becoming district leader. Time flies! We actually also had a lesson with one of their investigators that just moved to the United States like a month ago. So he didn’t know any Spanish... But it went really well and we got through the whole thing no problem. That exchange was definitely a confidence booster. It was also good practice for the future. I learned quite a bit from that exchange.

      I’m also getting a lot better at teaching. Nothing is memorized anymore with missionaries. We are all lead by the spirit now.  I have almost mastered the "pause" technique. After the companion is done speaking, there is a short little pause where you can tell he is done speaking and its not long enough to make it awkward. Then the next companion comes in and says what he wants and is inspired to say. I have it down now, and it feels so great! The key is to just rely on the Spirit. Don't worry about what you want to say. All you have to do is open your mouth and the words will flow, and the spirit will speak through you. It is so neat, and it is amazing to see day to day. All we have to do is take the effort to open our mouth and just begin to speak and the Lord will do his part through the Spirit. It is so amazing. I hope you all can recognize the spirit. I hope now that you will learn how to have the Spirit speak though you. This will be a huge tool on your mission to know how to be able to do that. It takes practice. I want to challenge you all to practice teaching something. All of you have your turns and have a companion in a family home evening, and then I want mom and dad to pick a random topic for the "companionship" and then I want you to try to teach that principle. I learned in the MTC that teaching something will help you learn and retain more than you could any other way. Learn to teach and teach through the Spirit. Practice letting the Spirit speak through you.

      I love you all and I hope you have a fantastic trip. Remember that I love you and pray for you everyday. Stay strong, do good, and learn to rely on the spirit. I love you.

Attitude of gratitude

      How is everything going? Well its going pretty well.

      I too can't believe that I have been out for 6 months!!! That is so crazy! Here I was my whole life, not being able to wait for my mission and I’m already one fourth done! Ahhhhh Time is flying by quickly!

      Something about Ramona and Julian is there aren't many crazy things here like there were in La Mesa. So there haven’t been any psychos. hahahaha Nothing has been thrown at me either.

      We did have a cool experience though this past week, but it will be in the mail.

      I have been enjoying the two branches that we are over. It’s fun to be in English and in Spanish. We get the best of both worlds! We get fed pretty well too, and a lot better than I did in La Mesa. I really am enjoying Julian and Ramona. They are small towns and it is taking time to completely get used to them. I don’t understand more than half the terms they use for like farming and whatnot. haha I have lived in a city my whole life. I love living in the city. But I kind of know the feel for small towns with where my grandparents live. It is different but I enjoy it here.

      Yes, I did email the mission president too on the thing we are supposed to do each week.

      I don’t know when my mormon.org profile will be up. It will probably be another month. I still haven’t been able to get a picture up yet. It can’t be in proselyting clothes so it is hard to find an opportunity to take a picture.

      hmmmmm....I have no idea what to say for a missionary moment. I don’t like this pressure to do this. Communicating with family through email and letters are more important to me than a little message in church. I do come up with a spiritual thought most the time but I want to communicate with you. You are more important than a message. :) Plus nothing super amazing happened this past week. I’m sorry.

     This past week was also pretty good.  We had a super sweet experience.  So Elder Franks and I got Elder Call for missionary training exchanges.  Elder Call is the senior companion of the assistants to the president.  He is like the top missionary.  At first it was pretty intimidating, but the 24 hour exchange, actually went really well.  We had two member lessons and two less active lessons up in Julian.  We went up to Julian during the exchange.  So the Spirit was really strong in all of the lessons that we had.  We actually got both less actives to church.  I was so excited to see them there.  One of the less actives actually hadn’t come to church in over thirty years!  We felt so good when we got him to church.  I really hope that we can get him activated.  It would be the coolest things ever!  It was a miracle.  At the end of exchanges though, Elder Call told us that he “was impressed” and that “Julian is in good hands”.  That made me feel good especially with how it was from an assistant.  We need to keep it up.

      I did notice something though that I do want to say though. I noticed how some people's attitudes weren’t too great towards the family reunion. This might be a reason why I keep coming up with gratitude and being grateful for what you have. You kids, please be grateful. I would have loved to go to the reunion and see family. Please stop the negative attitudes and be grateful for what you have. It shouldn’t take you to lose something to realize what you had. I have a strong urge to talk about prayers now. Why are prayers so important? It is the way we can communicate with our Heavenly Father. We need to give Him thanks for the things we have. We also ask for blessings, and ask questions to Him. Because I feel like there might be a lack of prayers with the kids, I want to challenge all of the kids to make sure they pray when they wake up and before they go to bed. Tell Heavenly Father what you are grateful for, and ask him for things you need. Get the ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE, like Dallin B. brought up a while ago. If you have that attitude then there will be less contention and less negative thoughts and comments. If there is one thing I want you kids to learn right now, it is to be grateful. Give thanks in your prayers. Until there is a change with this, then this topic might keep coming up in my emails. I am challenging you to say your prayers every day, and to come up with a list of 200 things each. I want you to send a copy of those lists to me, so that I can follow up. I truly believe that this will help so much. The Spirit is leading me to say this.

      I love you all and getting that attitude of gratitude WILL make all of the difference.  I promise you. Stay strong, do good, and be grateful. I love you familia.

This is Elder Lovey Dovey

     This is Elder Lovey Dovey! (nickname from one of the Elders here) Things have been going pretty well here. I must say that I really enjoy having a car now. hahaha We have been busy here doing the Lord's work. Something though that has upsetted me though is the disobedience of my companion with the facebook, other non authorized websites, not wearing nametag on pday, ukilele, not dressing up for studies, and sleeping in. I have tried to help him with some but then he will just snap at me. He also likes to argue, and he thinks he is always right no matter what. But I just need to keep being optimistic like I have. I will remain being obedient, and possibly be an instrument in the Lord's hands to help change my companion. Maybe this is why the Lord chose me to be his companion and to stay in the San Diego mission. It amazes me how many reasons the Lord wants me here in San Diego at this time. I keep recognizing different reasons. I am here for a reason.

      Julian is famous for their pies. I will probably try some of their pie sometime while I am here. Julian kind of reminds me of Duck Creek except that it is much more hot and is more deserty. haha It is still a really awesome place though.

      So I’m going to the San Diego temple again today! It will be the second time now. Since it has been a little over three months now, now I am able to go again. I’m pretty excited! The temple is such a wonderful place. It is so beautiful and so sacred. I can’t wait until I can be married in the temple. Every part of the temple is just amazing. Maybe sometime after my mission we should go as a family to the San Diego temple. You would love it!

      Things are going all right here.  I’m basically enjoying everything here except for the disobedience of my companion.  I can at least say that I am doing my best.  I am going to try to change my companion slowly but surely.  I hope that it will go well.  Whenever I try to correct him, (even in a nice way) he still snaps at me.  All I can do is continue on and be an example.  It is just something that disappoints me.

     So the weather here kind of reminds me of home.  It is pretty hot here, and it is a dry heat.  It is a little more moist here, but it is pretty hot.  I am used to it.

     At Abel’s baptism, I was able to see him, members of the La Mesa branch, Daniel, two other investigators, and my old companions.  It was a good reunion.  I was so happy to see everyone.  I got pictures with all of them.  It was also a really neat thing to see Abel get baptized.  I remember when I had first met him in the church building, and he was wanting to meet with us.  So it was an awesome experience seeing him change, and come unto Christ.

     This past week, I also got complimented on my Spanish.  We took a member named Luis, who is nineteen and is going to put his papers in soon, to an appointment that we had.  After the lesson, Luis looked over at me, and said that I had good Spanish.  He also said he felt the Spirit strongly.  It was really nice to hear that.  It really was nice to get that .  It was definitely what I needed at the time.  I have had a hard time being confident with the language, so it really helped out a lot.

     I can’t believe that in a week and a half, I will hit my six month mark.  I will have been one fourth done with my mission.  It is seriously crazy how fast time goes.

     In the last week, we also had the branch president’s wife in the Julian branch, thank us for the work we do in Julian.  She got pretty emotional about it.  Apparently we are doing a lot more there than previous missionaries.  So we are doing our best in both the Spanish and English branches.

    Remember that I love you. Stay strong, do good, and always be worthy of going to the temple. I love you.

I'm in Ramona

     How is everyone doing? Well I got transferred of course. I got transferred to the most northern part of the mission. I cover a Spanish branch in Ramona and an English branch up in Julian. We live in an apartment in Ramona.

     So my area is the most north of the mission. On Thursdays and Fridays we go up to the Julian area. It is up in the mountains. It reminds me of the terrain where Grandpa and Grandma B live along with the canyon there. There is quite a bit of wildlife up here in Ramona and Julian.  I have seen a lot of hawks and turkeys.  Apparently there are also a lot of snakes here.  Thank goodness the only kinds of snakes I have seen are the road kill kind.  It kind of freaks me out but I will be protected.

     There are also a lot of really nice views in the Julian area.

     It is pretty flipping sweet how I cover two languages. I hope you are happy to hear that I actually only have one companion. His name is Elder Franks. I wrote more about him in the letter Im sending home. I will also be talking about the areas a bit more. So it is fun and I am definitely participating a lot more with just being in a normal companionship. My Spanish I feel like just sky rocketed in only a week!!! So I am so happy about that. I can understand a lot more, and I can actually have a pretty good conversation now. Of course I don't understand everything yet, but there has been a TON of improvement with just being in a normal companionship for a week.

Now I want to talk about being grateful. I know I bring this up often but I have truly become more and more grateful for things. There is that one saying that says,"you don't know what you've got until it's gone".  Lots of people don't realize what they have until they lose it, and then it isn't even there anymore. I have one experience with that, that just happened this past week. I absolutely loved La Mesa. I loved the area, the members, my investigators, the branch council, and the missionaries in the area.  Yes I loved that all when I was there in La Mesa, but as soon as I left there, I became that much more grateful for all of that. I didn't see me getting transferred anytime soon. I thought I was going to stay there longer, so I feel like I didn't completely bring in all the gratitude I had for La Mesa. I guess you could say that I didn't know what I had until it was gone. Yes I was grateful when I was there, but there is always room for improvement. So on Sunday, I had the opportunity to go to a mission president's fireside which was held not too far from my last area. I was in the missionary choir and I was up in the stage, and I kept seeing more and more people from my last area come in. I had only been gone a little less than a week and it was super hard seeing people again. At the end of the meeting, I went over to the people and I teared up. I truly came to love everyone that was in that area. Daniel, my old investigator, was there. My recent convert David was there. A few member families from the La Mesa 3rd branch were there too. I had such a strong love for all of them and I gave them hugs and I thanked them for everything that they have done for me. Doing service really is a great way to love people. You love those that you serve.  So I guess I ended up talking about service a bit too, but service and gratitude are big things and will help you to love life and the people around you. I am excited to love the people in my two new branches. I know from personal experience now that what I have said is true...that you love those you serve, and you love everything around you when you have the attitude of gratitude. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

     I am not sure quite yet why I haven’t gotten my VISA.  I believe that the Lord wants me to bless more people in the San Diego mission, and more specifically in Julian and Ramona.  The Lord wants me here.  I’m sure there are other reasons too.  Maybe if I were in Mexico right now, then I would be in danger, and He is protecting me.  We never know.  But the thought and feeling I got this past week was that I felt as if I was meant to come here to bless someone here and to protect me from some type of harm in Mexico.  I truly believe it.

     So we went shopping today at Costco for groceries with my companion’s card.  We got about all the food we need for the month with only sixty two dollars.  It is rockin!  Costco was the greatest place to go.  Now I have like sixty more dollars.  Now that is what I call being thrifty.  I thought you would be proud (pleased with) of me.

    

     I love you all so much, and I appreciate the support! Stay strong and do good. Do things that you would do if the Savior was there beside you. I love you all so much!!!

I'm getting transferred

     Well got a lovely call this morning from the zone leader saying that Elder Higbee and I need to pack our bags because we are getting transferred!!!! Transfer meeting is tomorrow, and I am freaking out right now! I was not expecting this at all!! You can just imagine how mind boggled I am right now... I’m getting new companions, going to a new area, leaving all the people I have grown to love, here in La Mesa, and now going into another foreign place. New everyone!!! I am truly going to miss everyone here..I did not see this coming. But on the bright side, I will get to know more about the San Diego mission and I will get to know more people. I am pretty terrified and nervous for tomorrow, but I will pray that things will go well. Ahhhhhhh!! haha So I don’t know any of the details until tomorrow at like 10:30ish. I will let you know everything next week in the email.

     Oh and my address is still the same no matter where I go in the mission so that is the same.

     I also went to the dentist, who is a member, last week and got a new upper retainer for $50. I had to since my other two retainers broke. I was pretty sad about it. Just another trial and I have got to push through just like with everything else.
     Nothing on visa yet.

     Thank you all for the emails and the support that you have given me. I really do appreciate it a lot. I love you so much, and I pray for you all the time. I love you.

     So my scripture study right now is Helaman 5(Spanish), Isaiah 44, and Alma 31.

     !Hola familia!  ?Como estáis?  Pues, el tiempo aquí en La Mesa está muy bueno.  Está nublado y hace fresco.  Aprendí y hable más español en la semana pasada.  Estoy creciendo mucho.  No sé si vosotros podéis entender astas palabras.  Voy a hablar en ingles.

     So the past weekend…we still didn’t get Daniel to church because he was sick.  I’ll just let you know when he comes to church.  We are pretty upset with him.  Haha

     We did get Hector and Myra to church though!  It was their first time going, and they are a middle aged couple.  They are the ones with the mint plant.  Last Tuesday, I gave them the mint julep recipe.  I hope they can make it right.  We are probably going to get some mint from them tonight at the appointment tonight.  Last week we talked about the Ten Commandments with them, and tonight we are probably going to talk about the law of chastity with them.  Also, we followed up on their reading of the Book of Mormon and Myra basically summarized the first five chapters perfectly.  I was very impressed with how much she knew.  We were all really shocked.  So I thought it would be cool to tell you all of our two new progressing investigators.

     We helped a family in the branch get everything out of their apartment in the past week because they were getting evicted.  They did a terrible job of planning and they stressed out a lot of people in the branch.  I feel bad sort of for the family, but except that they aren’t smart with money.  They haven’t ever owned a car, and they don’t have a priority of getting a car.  They eat out too much and they buy expensive worldly things like clothes, phone, televisions, etc.  People need to learn where the priorities are.  Being smart with money is something I am definitely learning on my mission and it will help me for the rest of my life.

     This past week, we also actually got some dinner appointments.  They were pretty good and one of the appointments was at Fuddruckers.  I got a  2/3 lb. burger which was super good.

     I’ve begun making a mormon.org profile.  It will probably be up in about a month.  Mom and Dad…I want you two to make mormon.org profiles too.  I also want you and the rest of the family to check out the site.  It is a wonderful website to look at and see people’s testimonies and a whole lot of other stuff.  Also, if you familiarize yourselves with the website, then you will be able to shave more confidence to pass out mormon.org cards.  So that will be the challenge for the week.

     Ahhhhhaaaaa!  I can’t believe I’m getting transferred!  I have no idea what is going to happen!  The transfer meeting is tomorrow.

     Anyway, I love you all so much!  Thank you for the prayers and fasts.  I’m feeling them and I appreciate them so much.