Week 3: "Transferred"

Elder Mario

   
Happy Halloween!

So, my week has been a real blur, nothing really stood out. Basically

to sum it up, it's been biking up and down, to and fro, there and

back, visiting members and less actives with a couple potential

investigators in between. But hey, I'm keeping trying to keep

optimistic, so, it's been good.

Yesterday, Sunday, was actually pretty interesting, I got transferred.

So Sunday, we had a special meeting with our ward and two other wards,

and president Smith and his wife showed up. Essentially what happened

was our stake presidency, had called this meeting to create another

ward out of the already existing wards, each with an attendance of

about 300. So, my previous ward, Clover Hill, and the two other wards

above and below us, had boundary changes, and as a result, our

residence, just so happened to be in the middle of the new ward, the

Brandermill ward.

And so, here I am now, opening a new ward as the first junior

missionary in the Brandmill ward, we lost a good chunk of members, but

we gained a good amount as well. The best part being our new bishop,

bishop Gregory, grew up in San Dimas.

(This next bit is his response to something I wrote him about a Relief Society lesson I'm teaching on President Uchtdorf's talk: “O How Great the Plan of Our God”. In it President Uchtdorf encouraged us to remember the great knowledge we have, and not taking it for granted. One of my favorite lines from this talk was “We tread a path covered with diamonds, but we can scarcely distinguish them from ordinary pebbles.”)

About your relief society lesson, I would agree in the fact that it

gets misused, often times the stuff we learn, or the information we

read, gets pushed aside, mistranslated, or just simply forgotten,

usually making all that this life is for, experiences, learning,

bringing ourselves closer to Christ, pointless. Essentially, we are

wasting those diamonds, throwing them back among the pebbles thinking

they are useless.

But, that's about it for my email, the pictures are of the new area,

and the other of me and elder Scott, plus two other elders from our

zone, wearing mustaches.

I love you and everyone else so much, I miss ya, it gets hard

sometimes, but knowing everyone is rooting for me helps me so very,

very much.

Love ya, stay safe! I've already crashed my bike once! No one was hurt!

-Elder Tayler Hagen

old ward boundaries above, new below (with the new ward's area, Brandermill)

The Mustache Gang (love reminders that these are still young kids)