District Leader Again

25 June 2015

 

Alan and Marie Hollingshead

 

 

Dear Brother and Sister Hollingshead,

 

Elder Zerin Douglas Hollingshead has once again been appointed as a District Leader in the California Los Angeles Mission.  This assignment comes to him again because he continues to exhibit high qualities of leadership, to demonstrate his excellent teaching skills, and earns and retains the trust of his fellow missionaries. 

 

Sister Weidman joins me in once again extending to you our sincere appreciation for your fine son.  We realize that your example, training, and love have contributed greatly to his success as a missionary.  Thank you for your continued support and for sustaining him through his earlier leadership role.

  

Sincerely,

David N. Weidman, President

California Los Angeles Mission

Families!

Well hello everyone! This week has been good and bad, mostly good. On Tuesday we had a meeting for my companion so we went to the Artesia building and during his meeting we had a training. I was super good.

As missionaries we do lots of role plays, not the most out thing to do, but it's just part of life. So this was a role play inside a role play... Like inception 😊

 It was fun! And it was helping members do their missionary work, basically role playing how to invite their friends and family to hear our message or to check something out. It was fun, and little hard and on top of that it was 10 min long. So yeah Was fun! But as for transfers, nothing changed, we are staying together and I'm going to finish my mission here in hp3. It's a good ward, but I'm actually in the mood for a little change, but that's not up to me so I'm staying.

Yesterday for Father's Day, we went by a members house and we asked him if his family is going to come, he said no... Then halfway through the visit, his family came and then we sat there for a while and talked a lot about our dads,. It was really interesting, needless to say, I felt a little alone, but in a good way, I was the only one there, other than the little kids that grew up in the gospel, but it made me appreciate the gospel and how it blesses families.  It was super cool to get a little closer to these members. Anyways it was a cool Wednesday, first off it was really hot, Andrew were outside for 6 hours just walking around, it was hard but it was all worth it, at

8:30 we went back to the area, and went on one last call for a family.

We went and they were there! It's a family of 8, the dad has some health issues and the family is really close together,  we had actually contacted a daughter first and she is super interested In the Book of Mormon.  We taught them and it was a great lesson. So yeah, it was cool, they got busy with some family things that happened during the weekend, but we will be visiting them tomorrow night! We are super excited and hope everything goes well with them.  We finally caught up with ** and ***. She is not avoiding us, and actually wants to meet with us, but there is some sort of legal thing that is going on and she literally can't meet with us, so we have and appointment with the,  for Sunday hopefully we can help her out and teach her something she needs right now.

 

This week in my studies I ran across this scripture in doctrine and covenants 36:7 "And this commandment shall be given unto the elders of my church, that every man which will embrace it with singleness of heart may be ordained and sent forth, even as I have spoken."  What I got out of it was embrace with singleness of heart.  That hit me, we always hear you cannot serve two masters and this teaches it really well. The gospel is basically the lords heart, is my heart single to his will and his gospel? Am I embracing it will all my heart might mind and strength? It t me and I've thought a lot about it during the week and it's one of my goals for the last 6 weeks is to embrace he gospel with all my heart and do my best!

The *** Family

 

I love you all! I hope you have a great week!

 

Elder Hollingshead

 

Sent from my iPad

I-Pads

Well guess what everyone! I got an iPad this week! So yeah Saturday after i took the act, we went to a training and each missionary got an iPad at the end of it. For those less than 6 months. we have church i pads, 6 weeks from now I will be returning mine to the mission. But yeah so it will be fun being able to use it for a while and get to teach with it, it's still a work in progress, but it's pretty nice.

Little cool things happened this week.

Thursday we were helping a member out and then this lady crossed the street and she was looking at us for a while and we were a little confused, but then she asked us a couple of questions and it comes to that she had lads friends and then her son is going through a hard time and so we stopped by on Sunday and we talked for a while and they as a family became new investigators!  Then we were contacting some people and this man who I guess we contacted, came up to us and was like hey an why didn't you ever call me I was waiting.... That's sometimes super embarrassing especially when you don't recognize them.... But yeah we also had a couple of really good lessons with *** and also ***. They are slowly but surly progressing I think, hopefully we will be able to go to the visitor center this week. This is the last week of the transfer, and I feel like they're is progressing pretty well. Sadly we haven't been able to meet with ** and **, they are MIA, haven't heard from me and haven't seen them in a while. But we are going to have a lesson with M***'s F** tonight! Sunday at church, we had a lesson with M**! She wants to get baptized. She kind of of invited herself to get baptized it was pretty easy, but we can't set a date because she lives outside of the ward, but she thinks next week she might be willing to have us come over and teach her at her house. If that happens she will be baptized super quick! She is just one of those people that is just been super prepared. P*** is doing good, she super smart, but mostly we just need to get an in with the parents, once that happens I think it's going to go great.

 

Thanks you all for your love and support, especially your prayers is week for my test. I really felt at ease with the test, who knows if I passed, but I hope it will go well and be able to start school. I love you all and have a great week!

 

Elder Hollingshead

 

Sent from my iPad

Buenos Dias!

Buenos Dias!

 

well this week has been alright. it was little hot and humid this week, its the start of summer here. Its really not that bad, but it can be sometimes and the worst is that we live 20 mins from the center of our work area so by the time we get there were hot and sweaty, but such is life! we have been on a less active search! I was noticing that we hardly visit any of the members, so I made a list (longer than I expected) of all the members that supposedly live in our area. We have found some, some have moved, a couple have died, some not interested.... its been interesting. but we hope to help a couple people come back and along with that, find some people to get baptized. ** and *** well I hope they are doing alright, we haven't been able to find them. we call and its the home number and luz is never there so we cant find her, but we have talked to *** and he's doing good he's reading and praying.  School got out here in LA this last Thursday so now its where all the trouble happens... teenagers... We found and started teaching a 13 year old. her sister got baptized a long time ago, but now doesn't live there, but p***** is super Cool! she used to go to church along time ago and loves it, but her mom works and her dad is almost deaf, so he they don't like to go to church, anyways she wants to come, hopefully we can slowly but surly help her parents come. Then m** G** didn't come to church, hopefully next week we can get in contact with her, and then *** our investigator, last week she didn't seem super interested anymore. then we came back and taught her and she was a little more willing. we did a lesson purely on coming unto Christ. we read some scriptures from the new testament, watch the #becausehelives video and then tied it all in to what we do as missionaries. she was a little more happy and then we downloaded the app on her phone so she can listen to the book of  Mormon while she's at work! Saturday we went on exchanges again. it was fun, we talked a lot about LA and how crazy it is, and how much the gospel really can bless their lives!  then Sunday there was a bug surprise, Elder(hermano) Low a missionary that left last July came back and visited the ward, he calls it his home because he spent more than a year there and everyone knows him. I think I'm almost as close. except no one can pronounce my name. Any ways. It was fun to see him and talk for a little bit between classes.

 

Well, I just want to let you all know that the mission is the BEST! im so glad to be here, I have learned so much! Each time I study in the morning it brings me so much happiness to know the gospel. I see so much sadness and wickedness that, sometimes it brings me down, but there is a CD mom and dad sent me a while ago about Christ and a bunch of testimonies from apostles and prophets. there is one in there that talks about the light of Christ, it says that even when the darkness of sin and Satan, where we think that the light cannot penetrate, the light of Christ comes and can illuminate any darkness that is there! Its so true! its one by one, that's how the gospel comes to pass, and even thought the problems still come, there is one by one, people entering into this gospel and happiness!

 

I love you all Have a great week!

 

Elder Hollingshead

 

Well Hello Everyone!

Well Hello everyone!,

 

well this week was pretty good. Lets see. Tuesday we had iPad training. It was really good, but no we did not get our ipads yet, we still have to complete some online training today, then later this month we will get one, but the chances of me actually getting one are very slim, seeing I would only use it for about a month. so who knows, we shall see, but the thing about the training was good, it talked a lot about how we need to control how we use technology, and how the safeguards are in really in our hands, we choose how to use it effectively or not effectively. so the principles behind a lot of the things that we taught were good, and really can be taken into after the mission.  so that was good, then yeah, we had a lesson with some new people throughout the week, seeing that some of our investigators are not progressing and we are not visiting them as often. we met with ** and **, they are 2 kids we have been visiting, and we finally taught the mom (grandma) and she was nice, but we not for sure if she really wants to visit with us. We had a fun little story, we were looking for this potential and then this older lady comes out and she was like what do you do, we said we teach about Christ and his restored gospel and then she just goes on about how we are liars and from the devil. she was die hard catholic and she was not very nice, and she asked my companion if he was baptized catholic, he was like "yes, when I was a baby, but I didn't choose that and then some missionaries taught me and now im here" she was very offended by that and she basically told us were going to hell. we kindly said that we respect everyone and we hope other respect us too, and she scowled and us and then here husband was like "keep doing what your doing beasue its really good," then the lady was like "No! they taking people to hell" we just walked away.... it was fun! then we had a lesson with this girl named **, she's Christian and she just wants to learn more. We taught her at her work, and out side of the place they had a taco stand, so it smelled really good the whole time. But it was one of those Spanglish lessons. she grew up here, but speaking both and so both are extremely natural for her, so she would just go in an out of English and Spanish, it was fun! she says she doesn't want to change, but wants to learn, but at the end she was interested in reading and finding out more.

*** came to church again! it was great and she likes it a lot, we taught her the plan of salvation after church, then went to a baptism! she loved both and really likes to learn from them all! The people that got baptized this last weekend I have know for a long time. They had moved into Inglewood ward when I first was there at the beginning of my mission. and I saw him here and there when ever I would switch wards. they could never get baptized because they were living together and already divorced. but they finally got to be able to move out and get baptized, they were super happy!

We had a 2 lessons  with ** and ***  and they both went really well. they are reading and we set a baptismal date with them this week for the 5th of July! it was super fun! there is some sort of family situation, and she doesn't want to talk too much about it, which i'm fine with, but her husband cant come and stay at the house anymore and hes always in the hospital. But he is interested in listening to us!

 Well I hope you all have a great week! and Good beginning of summer! Stay strong everyone and remember what Christ says " If ye will have faith in me ye shall have power to do whatsoever thing is expedient in me." (moroni 7:33) that was a scripture I found that I really liked this week! With faith all things are possible, especially in his work!

I love you all!

 

Elder Hollingshead