Happy first P day on the field, and Happy 4th of July! Starting off with the flight and I was very fortunate because it's the flight people take to go to Disneyland, so I got 2 hours of little kids crying. Not to mention every single seat on the plane was playing the world cup game.
After making it though, President and Sister Knapp were waiting with a big welcome sign and in the drive from the airport to the temple I saw your dream car. Twice. There are so many super cars here it's insane. Literally every street has Porches, Lamborghinis, McClarens, anything you can think of. And a bunch of palm trees which will take some getting used to. We met our trainers, and I got Elder Maag who is such a chill dude and super social. We jumped right in doing some finding and made 2 new friends in just half an hour which is great.
Then comes my first lesson, proving the doubters wrong. It was a church tour with someone who hasn't met with the missionaries before and we gave a lesson on church and the sacrament. At the end we invited him to be baptized and he said yes! First lesson and we've already got a baptism which is great.
I'm not sure how in depth I should be about the rest of the week, as it was a lot of learning how to find people. I'm starting to do it myself and I'm getting a lot more comfortable with it. There's a shopping center right next the a university where I've already spent countless hours at. We went above and beyond our weekly friend goal which is also great, we had 5 new friends that were going to show up to church but none of them did haha.
We were doing Grey dots, which is when you randomly call people that we stopped teaching a long time ago and it wasn't going well with no one answering. We said we'd do 3 more and give up, but the very next person picked up and said he was actively walking out of an ice detention center when we called. He said that during his time there he wanted to learn more of Christ and grow his fath, and was thinking of contacting “church people” when we called. And wouldn't you know it, he's coming to church next week! Such a miracle.
For the 4th it was a normal finding day, got some pancakes at a church breakfast though which was great. In the evening we grabbed some food and watched fireworks at the church. There were constant fireworks for like 4 hours, literally sounded like we were at war. Good thing we didn't go to the beach though. People were shooting fireworks at each other and 200 people were arrested, with one death. It was super crazy with a battalion of cops on horses with wooden stick swords. Crazy stuff.
Yesterday there was a temple music devotional which was super cool, and they had all the French and Canadian elders sing the national anthem. Probably the best thing I've ever witnessed haha.
Yes I am starting off at Newport, which is the perfect start haha. I'm also in a YSA ward which I've been told is the best.
This week will be great as it's only up from here! Be sure to join my Google photos album if you haven't already, and we'll see yall next week!