Elder Hollingshead - New Trainer

Elder Hollingshead - New Trainer

 

8 September 2014

 

Dear Brother and Sister Hollingshead,

Elder Zerin Douglas Hollingshead has been appointed as a trainer in the California Los Angeles Mission.  No more important position exists than that of training a new missionary.  New missionaries need to be properly taught immediately upon entering the mission field.  Initial experiences truly influence the remainder of one’s mission.  Your son will teach by both precept and example the attributes and skills that his companion will need to become an effective representative of the Lord Jesus Christ.  I am confident that he will, with the help of the Lord, be very successful in his new calling.

 

Sister Weidman joins me in extending to you our sincere appreciation for having a son of such quality and our appreciation for having Elder Hollingshead in our mission.  We know he will receive your continued support in his missionary service.

 

Sincerely yours,

President David N. Weidman

California Los Angeles Mission

Week 1 training... = AWESOME

Week 1 training... = AWESOME

Well hello everyone!

SO this week has been crazy fun! lots of miracles and lots of crazy new things. SO yeah, My Trainee. His name is ELDER EARL. Hes cool. he grew up in Utah and then moved to virgina 4 years ago. Hes cool. hes 19 but just graduated from High school. Hes right in the middle of his family, and he told me today that hes actually really missing home right now.... so yeah.... Its hard but its a stage we all have to go through to progress. Anyways. yeah so Tuesday we got up early to get to artesia. We had a little training and then did a little planning for what we would do. Then we headed back up to our area with our new comp! Hes got super good Spanish for 6 weeks. well he did take 4 years in high school, and was in the intermediate class so yeah that's really good. he loves to talk to everyone in Spanish too. I told him to watch out for that, because los morenitos (blacks) don't like that at all, and on top of that, were in south central... not the safest place. Anyways life has been good here, lots of miracles and fun! So basically all the missionaries around us have greenies. Its great. We are literally the freshest zone! But yeah, so where do we begin. Well we met with ventura a couple of times this week. we taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ to them. they liked it, we focused ont he need to get baptized. then we came back on saterday and taught them. well we read with them from 2 nep 31. again we focused on baptism and that gate we need to enter. we invited them to be baptized and they said yes!

 

Sorry about that, my finger accidently pressed tab and then it sent quickly.....

 anyways continuing. So we kindof sortof, put October 19th as a date for them. We will follow up this week on that. also we set a date for sure with the *** family. That was super good. and it was all by the spirit. that is something ive learned a lot on the mission is to create a lesson plan and then listen hard to the spirit, and it will tell you exactly what you need to say, invite, or teach. So we invited them, and they both said YES! it was awesome! I love it, Inviting people to be baptized is the best, then we set a date for the 12th of October. el hermano, he has a few doubts and the biggest is the book of Mormon. we will be taking them to the visitor center this Saturday so hopefully that will help him see the truth of the message. the problem with them is that they don't come to church, and on top of that, this week is stake conference, so it will be far to get people to church, its all the way in downy.... anyways that's another problem. We met with ** last night and talked about the book of Mormon. he really liked it, and told us he would read it. Luis loves science and so he talked a lot about how this answers the ?s over where the natives came from. he super smart. awesome guy. Then we got 2 new investigators, **+**. they are both super humble and love their family. Lots of cool things happened in the lesson. they were a street contact reffereal. they want to know how they can become a stronger family with god in the middle. so yeah super prepared, the only problem is that they work a lot and are hardly home to visit, so we just told them we would stop by and see how everything is going. Yeah.

 

So yeah now to street contacts. so our goal as a mission now is 20 contacts everyday. in our area theres a lot of people so its not super hard. we have found lots of cool potential. one of them it was this 30 or so year old woman, she had a daughter, and was waiting for the bus. as we were talking to her, she at first didn't not seem interested, but we mentioned living day prophets and she perked up and then as we talked a little more, she started to cry a little. I have no doubt she felt the spirit. she gladly gave us her info. we stopped by late last night, and she was busy, but she told us next sunday. as we looked in. I think she's a single mom of 3 kids. it just looked like things were hard. but she has lots of potential. then there was another we saw waiting for the bus (its always at the bus stops) she was a mom with 2 little kids. we started talking to her, and she really looked at us and then she started talking to us. She lives in north Hollywood (far away) and she is in drug rehab. she was supposed to be released this month, but they told her that, she needs to stay in another 4-5 months. she was super depressed, she took her last 8 hour pass, to spend time with her kids to go shopping with them. She was on her way back to Hollywood when we contacted her, she started balling right there. She told us she really wants to hear our message, life has been hard for her, but at this time she cannot receive any visits. we gave her a Mormon.org card and told her to look it up, and that when she can visit with us. to request missionaries. I just have a feeling that she will someday become a member and know the gospel in her life.

I just want to finish, by saying today, that I know that this is the true gospel. IT HAS POWER,  The lord is preparing people on the left and right of us to hear this message, I saw it multiple times this week. I love you all, I hope you have a great week. Keep up the great work and service

 

Love

Elder Hollingshead

transfers!

Sept. 1

Well this week has been great! more or less... alot of days were just alright but we ended with a good weekend.  It has just been nuts trying to keep up the 2 areas.  So now for the transfers...... drum roll...... I'M STAYING! YAY that’s what I was expecting. They split the areas and me and elder Mansell are training. Yeah yikes but it will be great times. There will be 3 new trainers just in Huntington Park ward. So that will be fun. I'm actually a little nervous to be training, sometimes I still feel like I don't know what I'm doing, but it will be a good learning experience. Lots of fun things will happen. So here's the not so secret part, earlier this transfer, when I had an interview with President, he told me I would be training this transfer, so it wasn't so unexpected. But anyways. That’s the news for today. But the rest of the week just went alright. but there are a couple of miracles that happened for sure.

So first off. We met with *** on Tuesday, and he told us he wills probably getting married in the next couple of weekends!!!! Yeah, that will be great. He says he wants to get married and have his wife and kids get baptized, and then a month or so, he will get baptized. He has a chewing tobacco problem, but he says that when he sees his family get baptized it will give him a little more strength to overcome his addiction. Anyways it was awesome to hear that. He really wants to change, this last year his relationship with his wife/girlfriend has been rough, he wants to change and become more of a family man. He’s awesome. Anyways. After that, nothing much exciting happened until Friday.
So we have an investigator named ***, he’s super cool. He owns a music store and is a professional singer.  He loves music, so we get along. Last week, he told us that he had a friend that wanted to visit with us. So this Friday we showed up and there was this lady name ***. She is super Awesome! She is super prepared, and really wants to come closer to God. So about 9 years ago she used to go to the Mormon Church on Jefferson and Vermont.  but she was a little confused about the book of Mormon, so she went to other churches. Now she still believes in god, but never really joined a church she felt was right. As of like a month ago, her x left her, she has 2 kids and she’s 3 months pregnant. She is super depressed and is really going through a hard time. Because Joshua is an awesome guy and loves helping people out, he gave her a job at his shop for the time being to help her out and get back on her feet. We started talking to her and she loved it, she loved the message of the restoration and she accepted a baptismal date for the 12th of October. The next day we stopped by to give her a book of Mormon and she almost started crying, she promised she would read it. She is so excited to learn and grow her strength again.  Anyways that is a miracle, because most of our investigators right now are kind of so and are not really progressing. She is a new miracle that we will work with a lot! 

 

Anyways it was good. I Love the gospel. Sunday I was asked to give a talk, on missionary work. So my first talk in Spanish for 10min.... yikes I was pretty nervous, but it ended up great I think. After that, we did a musical number, and Man do I miss singing. Since I’m the only one who plays the piano I never get to sing.  So it’s a bummer, but I get to play for the ward and at all the baptisms. So yeah, learning all those hymns was good. But oh I can’t wait until the cooler weather comes. I feel like I’m going to go back to AZ and melt. It gets to like 90 here and it feels so hot, anyways from what I’ve heard, it supposed to cool down after this week. and then stay cooler until we hit fall. Anyways until that point it’s enough to say that we melt in our apartment and that it’s just hot, and I go pee a lot, trying to stay hydrated. But this is defiantly the lord work! I love it, I’ve felt more joy and happiness here on the mission, because I get to see people make the change and to have Christ change them. And I know he can. There are a lot of weaknesses I have, and a lot of things that I need to work on, but I know that if I try my best that we can receive strength! I love you all! Thanks for all your prayers and support. 

 

Love

Elder Hollingshead

Week 3 Trio!

Well Hello Everyone!

 

This week has been pretty good.  Busy! Let me tell you that is one thing I’ve learned about on the mission, especially in this area!  We have been so busy! It’s a great thing, but it gets tiring some days. So yeah. Where to begin.... well Elder Boyd.. I mean Jordan is now at home, sad day but we had a blast together! There are so many fun things we did. But Elder Mansell and I are working good, I feel bad, but Spanish is super hard for him, se cuesta mucho...(there’s a little Spanish for ya) so that's one struggle, but I’ve realized in the last 2 months my Spanish has improved A tons. I don't know what the change was, but it was dramatic,  In may I still really struggled and I could hardly teach a good lesson in Spanish, now in august 3 months later, I feel like I lead out in the Spanish and teach alright. Now I agree with Ryan here, Learning another language will take a life time, And There is no way I could learn it all in 2 years, but At this point, I can say what I want to say, and I can learn at a lot faster at a rate. So that's been good. I Love Spanish! It’s so fun to speak and learn another language. So yeah. Investigator wise, everything's going good. *** got confirmed yesterday and it was good. Then *** finally came to church again, it had been 3 weeks. Technically he’s not progressing, but I think we're close to get him close to progressing, and hopefully baptized before the end of the year. He’s super ready! and loves the church and missionaries. So yeah lots of good things happening. We taught ** again! And we set a baptismal date with him, silly me, we accidently set it on conference weekend so we will have to change it, but other than that everything was good.  He super awesome and loves the message of the restoration! He really wants to know if it’s true. Then josh came to church again, He super awesome but we can hardly ever meet with him because he has a weird schedule that he doesn't know usually until the day of or day before so we can hardly schedule a time to meet with him. We also are teaching another guy named **, He is awesome! He knows a ton and loves everything we teach, the only problem, is that he needs to get divorced to his wife and re marry is other "wife". He says he’s working on it, but that his real wife doesn't want to divorce so she won’t sign the paper/agree to the divorce. So we just have to wait. Then yeah I think that's the only updates that are needed on our investigators.

 

Transfers are next week! Wow way to fast. So next Monday we will see what will happen.... And then this Tuesday I have my Year Training! YIKES! Wow I can’t believe it’s been a year. It goes by way too fast. and everyone says the second year goes by even faster.!!!! I’m scared but over the last few months I've noticed some changes that I like,

First is that my testimony has grown so much, in what we believe and what we KNOW, I love it, I love the Gospel. I love Jesus Christ and I’ve learned to trust him so much.

Second, Missionary work isn't so awkward for me anymore, before I felt super weird talking to people on the street, and being bold with people, but it’s become part of me, I no where near perfect, and there are lots of things I can improve  but overall I have improved over the year.

Third, Leadership, over this transfer, I’ve learned to take the lead a little bit! Between covering 2 areas, having my companion leave and then me having to lead in my area, I've learned a lot!, It’s hard sometimes, but It good to learn these skills.

There are tons of things I’ve learned over the last year, but these are my top three recent ones! I heard one missionary at the end of his mission say, "I may not have become everything I wanted to be on my mission, but I’ve learned how to become" That is super true, We may not learn everything we want to, but we learn how to become what we want to be! I love that thought, so yeah,

I love you all! You are in my thoughts and prayers often!  I enjoy reading and hearing from each and everyone of you! Funny story this week, so Friday is mail day, that is when mail is distributed between everyone. So they handed me 2 letters, one was from Amber, the other was from someone I didn't know.... The only name on the front was Lea Hollingshead.??? I opened it up and realized it was not for me, it was to an Elder Edwards in the mission, but when ever we see each other we say cousin.... because his mom was a Hollingshead! So I don't know where the connection is but yeah there are Hollingshead’s in Utah. So yeah I got to forward that to elder Edwards. anyways. Yeah I love you all and Hope you all have a great week! I hope you don't freeze or drown over there in Arizona, I heard it’s been cooler and with lots of rain!

 

Love

Elder Hollingshead

Baptism!

Baptism!

Sara after her baptism!

Well This week has been absolutely nuts! but Great, no worries at all. Yeah me and elder Mansell just said good bye to Elder Boyd who went to the office today and then will be in AZ tomorrow! Anyways! So we have just been super busy! and on top of that we just keep getting bike flats! it happened 2 times this week, and my back tire still keeps going flat on a daily basis. It’s annoying! but anyways. so Yeah as my subject line says Baptism! yeah so we had an unexpected baptism. So this lady named ***, has been investigating for a while, but she keeps backing out on her baptismal dates, and the 17th was her latest one. We called her on Tuesday to see if she could meet with us, and then she said that she was prepared to get baptized for this Sunday, so we scheduled a date for the interview the next night then yeah so she got baptized on Sunday! Unexpected but great! We also got 11 people to church on Sunday! That is a ton! Granted that it was from 2 areas but there were 11 people at church. Then all of our other investigators are doing just fine,  ***, were still confused on what we need to do with him. I’m thinking about dropping him and letting him come back to us when he wants too, he's not progressing anymore and hasn't come to church in 3 weeks so.... but *** and her family came to church! yeah and it was last minute. She told us she would come on Friday, but Saturday night she told us that she had an unexpected emergency! So we prayed and then like 5 min after church started she called and said she would be there soon! and she made it just in time! It was great, and she brought all 4 kids and her husband. So that was a miracle. Then here is an awesome story!

 

So, in Elder Mansells area they recently found a guy name josh! his wife (?) is a member and he really likes everything so far. So Saturday we go over and tells us he's going to give us hamburgers! so were like sure, then we are now pushed back 40 mins because he had to go to the store. Then he cooks the meat we are having hamburgers and just chilling and then we shared a thought on baptism. And after we talked a little he stops looks at us 3 and then says "so I’ve been thinking about baptism a lot lately, for me and my daughter, and I really want to get baptized, is there any way you can help me with that ?" we all just had mouths open and we all smiled and said absolutely! So we set a baptismal date for the 7th of Sept! He is AWESOME! and then he came to church with his wife and 2 daughters! That is my favorite miracle this week. Also we kind of set a date with an older lady named inda! she is awesome she lives in Elder Mansell’s area and really understands and comes to church every week! so that is cool! and other than that it’s been a normal week.!

 

So we had zone conference this week! and it was all the way back at the Inglewood stake center! yeah far... and we had to take bus. So Wednesday morning, we woke up at 4:45 to catch a bus at 6 and then had to take an hour and 15min bus ride, then walk a mile. So yeah we were super tired that day! but it was fun there were a lot of things I learned and lots of things I’m going to try to change. Overall it was a great zone conference. President was definatly having fun with all the departing missionaries. He kept calling on all of them to answer questions and he always had this smirk on his face, it was funny. But then he asked me to give a talk in front of everyone.... oh well, not that that is any different from any other day. Well that's it! It’s been a crazy fun week and now there is no more trio, just me and Elder Mansell.

 

Love you all!!!!!!

Elder Hollingshead

Elder Mansell, me, Elder Boyd

Our 2 areas are the whole top half!

LA Grafitti

"My Heart of Gold"

Yes, Elder Kimball is really that tall!

Elder Mansell fell asleep during a lesson.

Elder Mansell, me, Elder Boyd




 

Trio?

Hello Everyone!

 

Well this week has been CRAZY!!!!! like nuts, there hasn't been a simple relax day or just a normal day of work. Why? well we are in a TRIO! yeah, so ill get to the story later.  but yeah, Elder Boyd is on his final countdown, and its crazy he had a couple of meetings with president this week and so he's been gone with some other elders and then I get put into another companionship in the ward. One was super cool, it was on Tuesday. I was with Elder Cox he super chill, very quiet but has a great testimony and is a great teacher. we taught a couple of really cool lessons, then on Wednesday we went on exchanges with the zone leaders, who are in a trio also. So I went to their area with 2 of them. It was fun, but the life of a zone leader is a life of fixing problems. and its not super fun. but we had an Awesome lesson with a lady who had already been coming to church, in English, but she switched to Spanish and we taught her lesson 1 and then committed her to get married and baptized! she is awesome and Really loves the church. Then Thursday was crazy.... So I was still with the zone leaders, they had to go to pick up mail at another building then I had a appointment at the office so we went up there and waited for a while, then I wen t back to my area after, About an hour later we get a call from the assistants. And they told us there was an emergency in the mission and another companionship in the ward was going to be moved. and one was going to be put with us! so yeah now we are in a trio, on bike, covering 2 areas. its been crazy. planning is nuts, it takes forever and I feel like  it just never works out evenly. the only thing they said to us is to keep both areas alive, I hope we can do that. then of course as soon as we get put into a trio we start having bike problems. on Friday I popped a tire, not super bad so I make it home on a half flat tire.... but all is well I switched it out in like 5 min because I had a brand new tube for cases like this... Saturday we are riding and then elder Boyd looked back and one of his spokes is broken. so we stopped by and picked up a new spoke and then went to the apartment and replaced it. it has just been crazy.

 

But good thing is. We got a shower curtain. yay! now we can shower, but we are short one bed because we are in a trio so elder Boyd is sleeping on the floor on my blanket. believe it or not, it still gets a  little bit chilly at night if we don't turn the fans off, so I had to pull out my jacket one night.  (I'm such an Arizona boy) Then yeah we have just been busy, trying to set appointments then changed them and try to be most efficient with out time. This is elder Boyd's last week with us, then it will just be me and elder Mansell in both of our areas! The most frustrating part is when we have set appointments and then no one is home. or they cancel at the doorstep. It gets so frustrating. Then  the question after that is what do we do now. we could try this person, but we will be late to our next appointment. so its really hard sometimes. but Fun story so Friday we had a dinner with some family in Elder Mansell's area. so we shared a scriptural thought on how we need to pray for missionary experiences. That is what Elder Ballard wants us to teach to members. so we share the message and then right after they handed us a list of 9family members that were interested in hearing the gospel! none of them were in the mission but we sent the info in and yeah that is the most referrals I've ever seen given at once. So yeah now we love that family! Oh and another thing about being in 2 areas is that we get fed a lot, everyone wants to feed us! its nice but not at the same time. we get stuffed before dinner and then we have to eat dinner. On Friday we had a late lunch, we went and got panda express. Then an hour and a half later a member gave us 2 pupusas, then 1 hour later we had a full dinner.... we were stuffed and I carried a big part of dinner home.... yeah it was bad. so maybe ill gain a little weight :) But overall everything has been going good.

 

So I met with president recently just for a little meeting to see how everything going.  as we were talking he got up and then told me he wanted me to read a book! its called "how to win friends& influence people" by Dale Carnige. Lets just say its a great book, he told me that this book changed his life and helped him be the person he is now. And My mission president is Awesome! he is super successful and extremely organized, and always has good tips on life and how to do things. Well I hope all is going well! Now that school is starting up I feel like everyone is getting busy! I hope all goes well through out this month!  Wow when I come back there will  be 2 new temples that will be fun to go to and see them. Wow its still super weird to think I've been out a year now! time goes by fast, but its good there are so many things I've learned and things I can continue to learn!  I love you all and pray for you often!

Love

Elder Hollingshead

 

mom ps. So I'm good on everything! all my clothes still fit, still have plenty of shirts and everything. just as a side note. president does not want any instruments so ill be sending the uke  home sometime in the future. But here is something that I would like. The camera I have is not focusing at all. it will take 1 or 2 good pictures then after that it just wont focus. I guess I'm wondering if it is at all possible that I could get a new camera. Nothing fancy. just something small with a  decent mega pixel and zoom. other than that I think everything is good out here! Love you Thanks so much!

Hola

Well Hello Everyone!

 

Well this week has been pretty good! we still had a lot of work! always. It was elder Boyd's birthday on Wednesday so we had like 3 birthday celebrations! it was fun. Its been really hot this week, and it has gotten pretty humid too. Biking now is just hot and we come in people houses sweating and just bright red. But we keep riding. Thankfully we are busy actually visiting not riding around all day. The worst part about the heat around here is that there is no real way to escape it unless someone (very few people) has a mini A/C in their house. Other than that we suffer. oh and our apartment is upstairs and there is no curtains and there is a huge window that faces the morning sun so it just heats up and no matter how many fans we have on, it just gets slowly hotter and hotter. Oh and another funny thing that I don't know if I mentioned last week. Our bathroom does not have a shower curtain. So we are down to taking baths every morning... Yeah its pretty horrible. And there is no closet space or cabinet space so everything has too be super organized and put away. Oh and then this week we woke up and the rod in the closet, that holds all our shirts and pants and suits, broke.... well at least the mounting bracket. so now we don't even have a closet. yeah its just a great new apartment!

 

well about the investigators, Nothing much new.... oh wait never mind we found a new family. Super cool family! so they are friends with a member in the ward! Super cool! That day was kind of going bad, well mostly just everything was falling through and it was super hot, but we stopped by and they were super cool and let us in immediately, He is super knowledgeable about Mormons, but never has been taught much, so he knows about the church but not, if ya know what I'm saying. he has 2 teenage kids who were kind of in the lesson but not. Then his wife whos is super young has 2 little kids, she knows nothing and she just wants to have peace. She Is super cool and asks super good questions. The worst part about this week was Sunday at church. we confirmed with 9 investigators that they were all going to come to church! thats 9 PEOPLE at church, but the next morning not one of them showed up. we only had one investigator and she was not expected... so that was a bummer so we went to go and try to visit them and see why they didn't come, but none of them were home! but anyways. the work goes on. 

So I pads... nope not yet, but before December we will for sure have them. I'm still not for sure about having I pads. now that I've been doing it the normal way for 1 year it will be super crazy to have another completely way of teaching the gospel. I'm excited for the change but it will be different. Anyways. And yeah other than that there is no other exciting news... just the same mission work! ya know finding, teaching and baptizing.... It will be fun! This ward is good. there are so many people to teach and work with. 

Well I love you ALL! I'm so glad I'm on a mission! IT's the best! You really learn to see the hand of the lord in everything. Everyday I look back and try to see just one little miracle and one little tender mercy that helps us all move on and remember that we are NEVER ALONE! As I'm reading through the Book of Mormon, There is a point when Mormon and Moroni are alone, no one person believes, not one person wants to repent, so they have no one to rely on but the lord. So we need to take their example and do the same, just go out there and do it, rely on the lord even if no one else will. I love you all and hope you have the best week Ever! just don't melt... in that Arizona heat, that I'm not looking forward to in 1 year from now. You are all in my prayers often and i hope the best for all of you!

 

Love,

Elder Hollingshead