Hollywood!

 

 

 

Well Hello Everyone!

 

This week has been alright. other than its been hot, ok well 90 is not too hot, but its been humid.... I don't like humidity. I sweat a whole lot more here than back in mesa. but owell everyone else is complaining too so I'm not the only one. Anyways. Monday we did make it too the Hollywood sign. Basically it took almost an hour to find though. The main trail everyone takes is closed, and has been for a good while. But there was someone there that had a map to get to the other side and hike in. But.... that led us no where and if we could have hiked it would have take 2 hours at least. so we sat there with confused looks at the map and saw another road that leads up there that actually was pretty close to the sign, so it was our only hope, we took it and we found a trail. It was hot, but surprisingly I didn't get sun burned at all. The smog was super bad as usual so we could barely see downtown. Anyways we made it pretty close to the sign. well as close as we could find. We spend like 20 min up there and took some fun pictures (see below) and then hiked back down and then took a 45 min drive through downtown to get back home. Lets just say We might have gotten home a little late. were supposed to be home by 6 but it was almost 7, but we went out and worked for the last 2 hours. Fun stuff. Then the rest of the week was pretty slow until the weekend. we only had 4 other lessons. No one was home at all. Plus it was a holiday weekend. So no one "had time" which meant they were all planning to go and get drunk.... launch fireworks and party it up.... Anyways. it was pretty boring week. Friday we had a training meeting and that only left us about 4 hours to work that day before we had to be in at 6.  so we just street contacted for those 4 hours and even then there were not that many people out. So we made it back in at 6 and then sat inside for a good hour or so. clean up a little bit. and then went outside, hopped on the roof of the parking garage  and watched LA BLOW UP! it was crazy how many fireworks were going off.  And the Getto-er the area was the more fireworks went off. so Torrance is nice so there was not much there. But Gardena and Compton and south LA were just blowing up. it was crazy. after about 30 min we could hardly see anything because the smoke haze was so bad.  

Saturday was Moving day. Our bishop was changing apartments. so we helped him for 2 hours in the morning but... Elder Cranney's dad came into town and he got permission to go eat lunch with him. so we went out to lunch. that was weird. I would advise my family to not do this.... anyways I cant think of a good reason why president would let that happen.... But that was quick then we went out and tried to visit a few other people. But no luck but we knew that Lucy and Abraham were moving too so we went over and helped them pack up some stuff for a good 2 hours. But we think there is some communication problems between Lucy and her husband because she still does not know where she is moving, she doesn't know why they are moving, her husband never showed up with the truck, and then we had to leave to another appointment. so we don't know what happened. We did read the Book of Mormon with them while we were at their house and they were actually reading! super cool. we read the story of the tree of life and tied that into their lives and she really like the story. then after that we went and had a lesson with Sergio Ortiz, kind of and eternigator. almost 5 years now. the only reason he cant/ hasn't gotten baptized is that he needs to get married and his girlfriend does not want too.. she supposedly is not interested but we have faith and part of my fast yesterday was to find a way to get them both together or that Sergio can find a way to get baptized. Anyways he's cool but needless to say. after that we were super tired and hungry and it was a very long day. so Sunday was alright again no one came to church, we called so many people the night before and still no one came, not even members. Owell.

 

It sounds like you all had a fun 4th of July.  It sounds like the cabin was super great! I miss the cabin so much, with the rain and the lightning and camping in a tent. oh fun times but it looks like you all had a great weekend though. A wet one for sure. I'm glad that everything seems to be going well. I just am thankful for all your prayers and for remembering me. Just remember that You are all in my prayers also. I've been learning a lot recently about the grace and love of god. It has been a great testimony builder to me to know that no matter what, God loves us, And that anything absolutely anything is possible through the atonement of God. It has Helped me through the roughest times in my mission. And I always remember that whenever I have a bad day, where it seems like we are failing or not measuring up, that if we look for just the smallest things, we realize that Gods hand is everywhere in even the most simple things. For example we ate lunch with a member yesterday who has been going through some hard times. 2 weeks ago when we last ate with her, we gave her a scripture to read. And I don't know why I picked that scripture, but I did, when we did our follow up on her reading yesterday she told us that this scripture that we gave her really helped her out. That she really could feel that It was speaking to her. That right there helped turn a somewhat hard day at first into a really good powerful day. I'm grateful I can be out here on the mission. I hope you all have a great week!

 

Love 

Elder Hollingshead