August 29, 2016

Hello everyone,

This week has been crazy busy with getting Facebook. We spent probably 20 hrs just getting trained on it. I would ask that if you see me on Facebook to not contact me please. All that will do is distract me from doing the work of the Lord. But I would highly encourage you to comment on anything that I post bearing your testimony. I know that as you do this it will bless the people who read it because of the strength of your testimony.

I got to drive a car for the first time while I am on my mission. It was way fun I got to drive a Ford Fusion 2014. It was way fun driving again. I hope that some day that I will be able to get put into a car area and be able to drive a car because you can be such a more effective missionary if you can drive instead of biking every where.

Last night we had dinner at a members house and he had a friend who was not a member and we taught them like the first 3 discussions because she had so many questions. It was a really cool experience. The spirit was so strong.

We got to do a an other service at a 5K run. That was pretty fun we got to help support a child who is really struggling with a medical condition. Everyone there was so happy to be helping people out. It is so cool to be able to see the charity people have when they come together for a good cause.

Anyways I love you and hope you have a great day.

Love Elder Berry

August 22, 2016

 Hello everyone,

I am still here in the same place that I started. The only difference is now I am in a district with only sisters. We are referred to as the relief society. So that is different but fun. My address is still the same as before. It will not change for my whole mission because that is the mission office. Then they forward the letter or package to where I am living.

I have become know as mr fix it in my zone. Any time some missionaries are having trouble with there bike they call me to come and fix it. This last week I have spent like 3-4 hours on fixing other people bikes.

We had district meeting this week and there was a surprise visitor. President Jardine showed up to make sure that we are all on purpose and doing what we were suppose to do. I have to give like a 10 minute training on safe guards witch was kinda scary because I did not want to get in trouble for any reason. But he didn't say anything so I must have done a okay job.

So we as a Sacramento mission have been blessed with getting Facebook in our mission. We will be 1 of 15 missions who get to have Facebook in the mission out of the 428 total missions. There will be a lot of people watching to make sure that we use it correctly and see if it will be effective. I am way excited for Facebook. This opens up a lot more ways to contact people.

Other than that this will be my last transfer, then I will be done training and will be a normal missionary. I hope that I will be an effective missionary.

We had dinner with a very interesting member the other night. He was telling us his story and he told us how he spent 20 years in jail and how he did not do very good things when he was young. But know he turned his life around and is living the gospel.

I hope you all are having a great day.

Love Elder Berry

August 16, 2016

Zone Training

Hello everyone,


Sorry I didn't email yesterday. It was transfer weeks and on transfer weeks p-day is moved to Tuesday. But any ways 1 transfer down and 17 more to go!!!! But who is counting. I am staying in the same ward for this transfer.

This week has been really good. One of the coolest things have happened on my mission happened on Saturday. We were working on a part member family list that my bishop gave and we went to this house right as this lady was walking out. We met her at the exact time and started to talk to her. Her name is Brenda. She has recently moved to Sacramento and lost her husband like 3 months ago. She was praying and asking for help from Heavenly Father and she said that we were the angels sent to her. We challenged her to go to church, to read the the Book of Mormon, and the plan of salvation pamphlet. She did all of that and stayed for all 3 hours of church. So I am super excited because she is the first person that I have met to where her heart was prepared by the Lord. The was a super cool experience.

Zachary Anderson got in the mission yesterday. He being trained by a couple of zone leaders. I have not been able to see him yet but hopefully I will at zone conference. In his zone there are 6 new missionaries that are being trained at the same time. That is super crazy because that is almost half of our zone. After the next transfer almost all of the leadership will go home and we will have a super young mission with our leadership and all missionaries in general.

Time just goes by too fast. I hit my 2 month mark yesterday. I can't believe that I have been on my mission for 2 months. With the end of the next two transfers I will have been out for 6 months. It's crazy to think about how fast time is going and I am almost done with a quarter of my mission.

We also have two youth that want to get baptized from a part member family. There names are Lucy and Selina. We are going to put them and Brenda on date for the 17 of September. I am super excited because the ward is now really making missionary work a priority and I can see the blessings that are coming from it.

Anyways I hope you all are having a great day


Love, Elder Berry

August 8, 2016

Zone Conference

Hello everyone,

Man this has been an interesting week. I went to a few dinners at some members house. At one members house they were talking and ask were I was from. So I said Southeast Idaho. And they were like oh I am sorry. They did not say that but I could see it on there face. Then my companion says he is from Hawaii and they light up and act super interested and they talk about Hawaii for like 20 minutes. Then there like what's Idaho like and say really cool. I tell them a few things than high schools came up and how I went to a mostly white school. Then asked me if coming to Sacramento was a shock because there are so many international marriages. I said no but was think that they must think that I must be a super racist from being from Idaho. I was blown away that people think that people from Idaho are so closed minded.

Then what worse is a few night later I went to an other dinner and I again said I was from Idaho and the member said oh you must have grown up on a farm. I said no and told her what my parents did for a living. Than later that night she mentioned that I must be really good at farming because I grew up on a farm. So I just went with it because it is not worth fighting what people think I have done in my life.

I finally got my bike tire back from getting fixed from a member. I am glad to have my bike back. I have been using a members bike and it is way to small but I had no other option but to ride it. I am so happy to have my bike back.

I finally memorized the First Vision. I have been working on it for like a week and that's all I really do in my free time. But know when we are in lessons that I can saying it with out messing up. So I get to give it in front of the whole district at our next district meeting on Thursday. Hopefully I will be able to say with out messing up. I am now working on memorizing 3 Nephi 5 13. Hopefully I will learn that fairly quickly.

I got to go on a team up with the assistants this last week. That was fun. We went on the most dangerous part of our area so they could experience my area to the fullest. It was fun I was able to learn a lot from Elder Gammel. He taught me so many things about how to do a street contact and to help people soften there hearts and make them more willing to talk to us.

On Friday we got to talk to a guy who spoke with really big words and knew a lot of big words. I feel that he spent most of the time explaining what he was saying so that we could understand him. He was a really nice guy. I learned words like magnanimous and edifice or something like that. That was very interesting and expounding my thinking on how I can talk to people.

Oh one more thing I was talking to this guy at church. He is a real older guy and knows a lot and he told me several stories about how he followed promptings and said he stopped a guy from killing him self. So my challenge to you ALWAYS FOLLOW YOUR PROMPTINGS. I know that if you do this than you be blessed beyond measure.


Love Elder Berry

Senior missionaries in my district

August 1, 2016

Dear Everyone,

Monday
On Monday we went shopping and bought some food to hold us over until August, when we get some more money. After that we went back to the apartment and took a nap. Then we went to the church so we could email.

I played basketball for about a hour and a half which was fun. We had dinner with the Adairs. Brother Adair was a former bishop of ward. For dinner we had chicken, which was really good. We also had pluots. Those are a mix of apricot a and plums. They are so good. I would recommend if you have a chance to taste some.

Tuesday
Today was probably the most unproductive day yet in my mission. It was super hot today. It was 107 or something. And it was like that the whole day. We tried to bike to the bottom area of our zone but we didn't make it because we had a couple close calls with semi trucks and it was super hot and we got exhausted before we could get down there.

We had kinda of a missionary stalker kind of situation. This guy really wanted to meet with one of the elders in my zone and he was texting every trilingual to set up an appointment but we would not set one up with him. So when we finally stopped replying to his texts he blew up our phone will phone calls and messages that were kinda of scary. I hope he does not know where we live.

We ate dinner at this local restaurant called Stennerals or something. It was really good. We also got to drive past the capital building. It is was big and super nice. I hope that I will be able to go inside and tour it on my mission. We also got to drive past the Sac. Kings new arena. That is a really nice building and hopefully I will get to go to a game here this winter when it is done being built.

Wednesday
Today after study we went to do service at the local bishops store house. When we showed up they were cleaning up and we showed up too late. So they appreciated us coming but we just came on the wrong day so we will go and see if we can of tomorrow and do some service there.

After that we had lunch. I have had the same thing to eat all mission long. Chicken and eggs. I am surprised that I have not gotten sick of it yet. If any ones has good ideas to make a quick lunches that does not take that much time to make will you please let me know so I can vary my diet a little.

Then we went to the church to do some family history work. I was going back down the family tree to see if I could find anyone who had not had their work done. I spent like 40 minutes going back. I did find a lot of people whose work was not done but had already been requested.
So I kept on going. I went so far back that I found my way back to Adam and Eve. That was the first time that I had ever been able to find Adam and Eve. It was pretty cool to be able to go back all that
way.

After we had finished that we rode our bike in 109 degrees to go talk to some people and set up some appointments. It was really hot to ride in that weather. But I was excited because right after dinner we had an appointment with some new investigators that I was pretty excited about.

They ended up cancelling and reschedulugin. So we went to dinner. The members took us out to eat at Carl's Jr. Eating there was so good. I have not eaten at a place like that my whole mission. It was so good. I think that it was inspired that we went there and because our appointment cancelled because we ran into this less active member named Kim. We have been working with him my whole time here. We were able to talk to him and set up an appointment for this Saturday. I was so excited that we went there if we had been like 5 minutes later then we would have missed him.

To finish up the night, we were riding around seeing people that we felt that needed a message. We went to a member’s house and they invited us in. We talked to them and shared a message. The spirit
was so strong and I got remotivated to make sure that I am doing everything possible to help people.

One thing that has really motivated me was a saying from Preach My Gospel. It is "If you don't talk to them then this could be there last chance to receive eternal life." This has really hit me hard to make sure that I am talking with everyone.

Thursday
On Thursday we had district council. It was so good because Elder Carroll my companion is the district leader and he did a lot of thought provoking questions that really made me grow closer to the
Savior.

After that we went back and had lunch. After lunch we went to see some people but we went really slow because it was super hot. It was 117 degrees today. I think that I drank like eight water bottles.

Probably the coolest thing that happened was a few nights ago we had dinner with the Adairs. And they referred us to a member who is having some medical issues. So today we were in his area and ran out of people to go and see so we were going to just stop by and see how he
was doing to see if we could anything for him.

When he got to his house the first thing he said is that he had been praying that we would come by and see him. He said he really wanted a priesthood blessing and we were answers to his prayer by stopping in and giving him a blessing for the healing of the sick. The heat and all of the afflictions that come with being a missionary are all worth it when you have times like this when you are able to answer somebodies prayers. I love being able to see the Lord’s hand in people’s lives.

Friday
Today was pretty chill. We did not get out to preach the word until like 2 because we had do our weekly planning and 12 week training for new missionaries. So after we got done we got to go on a blitz with other Elders. We spent like 3 or 4 hours helping them going through potential investigators.

It was kinda hot a lot of biking. We were picked up by the zone leasers and they were running late to a temple tour. So they dropped us off like 10 miles from our apartment. So we biking for a long time and we were extremely hungry when we got back. But we had no food at the apartment
because it's the end of the month and we don't have any money to get any more food until Monday.

Other than that not much happened today.

Saturday
To day we woke up and went to a 5k to help tell people where to go and which direction to run. So that was a pretty laid back morning. We got T-shirts out of the deal. We were not able to preach the word because we were serving. But if people came to us then we could talk to them about the Gospel.

I got to watch a baptism. It was super spiritual. This old lady named Mika. She bore her testimony and she was so sincere and so meaningful. The spirit was so strong and so special.

Sunday
Today we went to a baptismal interview. The zone leaders came and got us from church and we went to another church building. A sister named Chelsea is getting baptized next Saturday.

We saw an old lady who can't go to church because she is really sickly. We just talked to her and shared a message. She was so happy that we came and saw her. It is so amazing how the spirit is everywhere we go and bring the light of Christ into people’s lives.

Life has been great here. I hope you all are having as much fun as I am!!!!


Love Elder Berry