April 9, 2013

Dear dad and grandma and everyone else, Well we got transfer calls last night. it looks like I'm staying here in Ceres 1st ward with elder vaughan! I'm excited to be here for 6 more weeks and to help our investigator progress towards baptism. I told Elder "V" that we are going to "work more smarter and not harder" and use our time effectively. I still can't believe how much time flies. This week we found new investigators. We taught them about God and about the Book of Mormon. We are going to give them a church tour next week and then invite them to be baptized! Not much else for this week, I enjoyed General Conference as always and loved Elder Holland's talk about faith. It is true, that it's alright to say "I believe...." if you can't say " I know...." Thanks for the funny pictures from brother Downey and of Bruce's puppies. By the way.. for my birthday I would like a puppy. (I will let you ponder about that) Well I got to go. love you all. -Elder DeMarco

April 3, 2013

Well things here are getting better. We still have 3 dates for this april. One of them is solid. President Gelwix and the Assistants gave us GREAT training last week. Every time President talks to us I feel chastised HaHa... but he always lifts us up at the end, he is the best! One of the things that was happening to our mission was that we have "spiritual ADD" meaning we have all these tools for missionary work but we can only focus on them one at a time. We have a district standard and then a zone standard and then a mission standard. So we are doing away with all those things and just focus on baptism! We need to rely more on God and the spirit for answers. I'm really excited the direction we are heading, as humans it's hard to focus on a bunch of stuff at once and not many people can do it. So by just focusing on 1 baptism a month minimum for each companionship then we can see more success......when I was a trainer I went to leadership training and this British business major person named Greg McKeown came in and talked to the mission. He is like a motivational speaker for businesses. He talked about "less, but better" and basically it means focus on the essentials each week and get rid of the things which are wasting time. It was an awesome training I hope to show you one day. I had a nice Easter Sunday and it was nice to see that James is getting skinner haha. love you all.
-Elder DeMarco

March 26,2013

This week had been fan-tast-ic! We set a baptismal date with April 13th. He is 22 yrs old and he has a great family. He came to church last Sunday and it was great to see him. We are seeing him again this Tuesday. During personal study this morning I was reading a talk called the "fourth missionary", which talks about there are 4 types of missionaries and we need to strive and be like the fourth missionary who is willing to give up his heart, mind and will to heavenly father. I was chastised by the spirit when I read that because there are some days I want to do things "my way". I just need to continually change and stop having an inner battle within myself and just do it his way. We are doing this project as a mission called "the Easter project" and we read about 1,000 references about Jesus Christ in the scriptures by August. President Gelwix asked us to do this because he wants us to be exactly obedient because we love Christ . I'm learning a lot from it and I know my love for the savior will increase because of it. Thanks for keeping me updated on how everyone is doing. love you all! -Elder DeMarco

February 18, 2013

So this week we found 7 new investigators and 3 of them are a whole family! We worked hard this week but it was worth it to see the Lord show us these miracles. We taught the "L" family yesterday and it was a spiritual experience. We didn't plan on seeing them but my companion had a thought pop into his head to stop by. When we got there they were home and they let us in. (usually they are busy as a family so it's hard to catch them.) We talked to them about how there week was going and then talked about the Book of Mormon with them. Mr."L" had a lot of good questions and was into the whole lesson. He asked about prayer and we were able to tell him how we receive revelation. The spirit was strong throughout the lesson and they were excited to read the Book of Mormon. We set up another appointment for today and they as a family are prepared by the Lord to receive the gospel.

I realized that not all lessons have to be this big emotional thing, it can be a very nice peace and the holy ghost can be there just as powerful. This week we are going to be busy with a lot of appointments and we are doing great! The more I focus on the people of California the more I feel joy in my life. I'm starting to understand charity and how Heavenly Father feels about us.

Talk to you soon.

love ya bye.

-Elder DeMarco

 

February 11, 2013

This week has been busy but a good busy. We found 2 new investigators. We found them through tracting and we were able to teach them about the gospel of Jesus Christ. We set a return appointment and we will see them this Tuesday. Our investigator "D" is still reading the Book of Mormon and  we try and keep daily contact with him. We are seeing miracles here in the mission with doing a minimum of 3 hours of finding every day.  Last as a mission we found 275 new investigators!!! How great is that! its hard work but worth it.

Also on Friday went on exchanges with Elder "S" (my Australian amigo). He has been out for awhile and gave me a lot of good advice. I always learn something new that I need to improve on. One of them is being diligent. It's hard for me to work for a long time without being distracted so I need to focus harder on my purpose.

So yesterday at church something funny happened. Me and Elder "C" were sitting down because sacrament was about to begin when the 1st counselor came up and asked if we could give a 8 min talk because the members who were going to do it , forgot about it. ( in my head I was thinking, well....this is going to be interesting). With what time we had we prepared as much as we could. I went first and talked about missionary work and how we need to find joy and to make it a natural thing when we talk to people. I read a couple of scriptures and the spirit took care of the rest. When I was looking out into the congregation some of the members were getting emotional but I knew that it wasn't because of me. It was because of the spirit and I am grateful for the chance to speak. It definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone but I was able to do it in the end. My companion Elder "C" spoke on patience and he did a great job. I realized that members know that they need to do missionary work but they need to know how much joy they can bring and that it takes work.

Other than that not much else happened this week. I will write to Aunt Veronica and could I get Uncle Bruce's address?

Hope you and everyone else have a great week! By the way can you send my Elder Gagne and Elder Blanchard's blog....and also did you get my letter?

Love you bye.

-Elder DeMarco

New Location

Well it looks like I’m being transferred, and I’m going to Turlock! My new companion will be Elder “C” and I leave Wednesday which is tomorrow. My trainer Elder “F” is actually coming to my area that I’m now.  How funny is that…. my companion who I’m with now (Elder “H”) is going to Potterville which is the most southern part of our mission.

I’m been saying bye to a lot of families before I leave and I’m going to miss this area. I am excited to go to the new area in Turlock and see how it is. I packed most of my stuff today and I will probably be done tonight.

This week has been really good because we found a new investigator named “A”.  He is Catholic and is trying to turn his life around. We talked with him about God and why bad things happen to good people.  He wanted us to stop by again this week :)

I had a spiritual experience last Saturday night. It was around 8:20 am, we didn’t have any appointments and we had to be in by 9pm. So we were trying to think of people we can go see but no one came to our mind. (As a side note our goal as a zone is to talk to at least 10 people a day). I was thinking and I said we are going to start heading home and see if there is anyone we can talk to on the way. While we were riding I said a little prayer in my heart that heavenly father will place 4 people in our path that we can talk to. And sure enough by the time we got home we talked to 4 people and 2 of them were interested in the church. It was so great to see Heavenly Father provides a way with righteous desires. I definitely had to do my part and made sure I was looking everywhere to see people we can talk too.

I’m glad to see how many people came to Tyler’s baptism! Talk to you soon.

Love,

Elder DeMarco

 

Great Start to the New Year

I'm glad you, Mom, James and Josh enjoyed "forever strong".  There is a lot of interesting facts about that movie that are funny but I will tell you them later. Yesterday for district meeting I gave some training on "thy will be done, not mine" and how we need to let go of your pride and do it heavenly fathers way. Because His way is always better in the end. I shared with the other missionaries the story about you being at the MTC having a hard time with Spanish and then you were given the option to go state side, but you chose not to. How in the end the decision you made was what God wanted you to do and it made all the difference. All the missionaries told me they really enjoyed my training so that was pretty cool. This week has been slow just because a lot people are still coming back from vacation. But on the plus side.. as a mission are goal for this year is a minimum of 1,000 baptisms!!! It's never before been done in the history of this mission, last year we got to 800. So I'm excited to see what we can do this year knowing that we are going to get more missionaries in this mission. Right now we are around 225 but by the end of the year we will be about 270.

 

While biking back home a couple nights ago I bumped into some members I worked with in my last area. They told me how they got a new place to live and have been going to church more. It was great to see them again and knowing that things are improving.

 

We received a couple referrals so go see tomorrow so that means a new investigator hopefully. Right now we are focusing on helping members make a mormon.org profile which is a like a facebook profile. By making a profile members can write a little something about themselves then write ways that the church has helped their lives. Once that's done we give them a pass along card so they can tell their friends and family to check out their profile. People can see that Mormons are normal every day people.

 

Let's see....that's pretty much it for this week. We are going to the temple next week as a zone so that's going to be great! I'll take some more pictures.

love you all.

-Elder DeMarco