January 6, 2014

Hallo!

Sorry for not writing last week. We had zone olympics that we set up for and I didn't manage my email time very well. I spent too much time chatting back and forth with Elder Hegland and Elder Shiu.

So for zone olympics we had all 31 of the missionaries in the zone get together and do different events. Everything from pushing a car around the oparking lot, to eating saltines while you run, to dropping chocolate dipped marshmellows into a misionary's mouth, to a Preach My Gospel teaching game. We had a good time and every one enjoyed it.

We also went to the temple on Friday. that was very peaceful.

We also had a New Year's Day "Dodgeball Bash!" It was a last and there were 12 teams of 6 and lots of people came to watch. I was a referree and the Laguna beach youth got second to the misisonary team. Elder Schumacher was the captain of the missionary team and they dominated.

I am going to miss Elder Schumacher though, because we are splitting the zone up and I am moving within the stake to Aliso Viejo to start a new zone and be a zone leader by myself. Elder SChumacher is gong to take the other half of the stake and be a zone leader by himself. We will still have missionary companions, but they won't be zone leaders.

We found 6 new investigators the past two weeks. I am actually really sad to leave Laguna Beach, because I am finally starting to like it. I am so excited to go to Aliso Viejo though!

That is exciting to hear about the Beath baby. I hope Jack is doing alright.

I am looking forward to seeing pictures of Harrison and Kennedy's sewing projects. I am sorry that I haven't sent pictures recently or really at all. I am pretty lousy at remembering to take pictures first of all and secondly I just am bad about sending them. I have batteries at home so I will put them in my camera... It has been dead for a while.

We did a lot of service and gardening this week, which always make me feel good and feel at home. I don't get to bike places anymore, so the only way to really do manual labor here is yard work it seems. Most people have their Hispanic helpers.

Well onward and upward.

We are headed to lunch with Bishop Galland and the Sister missionaries in the ward. I am going to miss Bishop Galland too. He is enthusiastic and unstoppable.

I pray that we may be able to have a full and happy new year.

Love, Elder Chandler

December 9, 2013

Good morning Mom!

 

I was going to complain about the weather getting below 50 degrees here, but it sounds like you are getting more chilly up there! And complaining has never helped anyone get anything except for a spanking.

 

We got a new ward mission leader this week and he is British! Name, Mark Dunning. Hobbies, spending time with the family. Where he keeps his spare time, in the boot of the car. We love him.

 

The geese are getting fat somewhere and I think that means that Christmas is coming! Ten of us missionaries are getting together this week with some members of the ward and we are going to go deliver some "live Christmas cards". That means that we are going to knock on some people's doors, sing a Christmas song or two and then ask if we can come in and read the Christmas story with them from the Bible and then sing another song or two and leave them with a prayer. We have 10 families lined up, so I hope we have enough time or enough people to split up and still sound alright!

 

Yesterday I got to accompany the mission choir at a performance that we did. I was on the organ and my Canadian friend helped me a lot by pressing all of the buttons that we needed to to make it sounds good while I pressed the keys.

 

I forget about other highlights... We had a gospel discussion with well over a hundred people this week on the streets and it is interesting to see how the spirit of Christmas has been able to inspire people to turn their thoughts, feeling and actions towards others.

 

Oh yeah, one other thing! Elder Schumacher and I got to dress up as wise men and do a live nativity for the community! The lights were blinding, but some people got pictures. I will ask Sister Richardson to email them to you. just got to get her your email.

 

Well Mom, don't forget to layer and remember that I love you! I am going to send up a sleighful of gifts with one of the members here who is from Oregon. Look for reindeer in two weeks.

December 2, 2013

Happy December!

 

This week with Thanksgiving was quite a trip! Elder Schumacher is my new companion from the NE corner of Colorado in a little town called Peetz! He has got to be one of the calmest, hard working, creative people I have ever met.

 

We got to prepare for Thanksgiving dinner by playing some games with the Bishop's extended family at a local park; mostly just capture the flag with the kids. It felt good to have normal fun! Then we had a delectable dinner with the Hanson family. This morning we went running with Brother Hanson and got up at 5:00 so that we could be back in time. it was a beautiful morning. I don't know what words describe the California skies as the sun rises and sets each day. I suppose that's where the saying "words can't descirbe it" comes from.

 

Other highlights:

We had a baptism this weekend in the ward for Brian Rich! The Sisters have mostly been teaching them, but we got to be involved a little bit. I was blessed to be able to conduct his baptismal interview and I was so inspired by his sincerity and commitment to living the right way and helping his family be more united.

 

The first day that Elder Schumacher and I were together we had to go run a meeting and we had all of the administrative paperwork completed ahead of schedule and we sere just going to make everything run so smoothly. Until I locked the keys in the trunk of the car. So we were about an hour late after the locksmith saved our behinds.

 

President Orgill, our fearless Mission President, gave us permission to organize a regional dodgeball tournament on New Year's Day! We are excited  to work with the youth and hopefully have people throw something besides Mormon myths at us!

 

I am so excited to be here in Laguna Beach as Christmas rolls around. We were studying this morning about understanding "Why" we do things. It is a critical part of having true faith that we learn more about that in which we believe and then strive to adhere more closely to the tenets of whatever we have faith in. As we study out those things that we say we have faith in then we make changes in our lives to make sure we are living how we believe we should. Often the first part of having faith is simply to act on whatever knowledge that we have. Through the experience of living what we believe then we come to know of its truthfulness. The more we live it the more we understand it. Sometimes we want to know everything before we do anything. I believe in Jesus Christ, but I don't know everything. With Christmas making its presence known I am reminded that everything I do is because Jesus Christ was born, lived and died for us. I start to see on a small, yet ever increasing scale, why it is that Jesus Christ makes it possible for us to be happy in this life and happy in the next life. I do my best to act in faith and live according to what I know, but I am grateful for the opportunity that we have to keep trying and to keep learning. This is a happy time to be on the earth!

 

Have a great week!

Love, Elder Chandler   

November 25,2013

Dear Turkeys,

 

Thank you for the email this past week! Thank you for the birthday box and Thank you for being great examples of living the gospel!

 

This week has been pretty darn fun. The bad new first though, Elder Hegland is getting transferred tomorrow and I am going to get a new companion that won't be Elder Hegland. Whoever he is, he will be great. If he is not then I'll whip him into shape! I rebuked some missionaries last night because they didn't meet their contacting goal that they set as a district. I told them I was going to rebuke them and then I asked them how I did at the end, so it turned out to be productive. In district meeting I literally told them if they didn't get the goal then I would call them and rebuke them Sunday night, so they weren't suprized.

 

More good news:

On Tuesday we took some Elders out to an all-you-can-eat sushi place!! We talked about the progress of the Laguna Hills 2nd ward over 200+ rolls of sushi!

More good news:

We got to garden 3 times this week! We dug up bushes, did weeding and resurfaced a driveway! We got to wear jeans!

More good news:

We got Laguna Beach Cross Country T-shirts and sweatshirts from the coach, who is investigating!

More good news:

2 Stories -

This week Elder Hegland was pretty sick, but he fought through it. On Saturday we got a keyboard and hymnbooks from the church and went out onto the Pacific Coast highway in Laguna Beach, cleared out the homeless people and did a little concert. We did some hymns, a little piano arrangement and Hallelujah. Some people stopped and listened, but no real interest in learning aboutwhat we had to share. We had a grand old time though. Later that night we taught Tyler, our investigator, and he had 3 of his friends over so we taught them the first lesson and two of them came to church yesterday! They are considering baptism and so they are going to be fun to work with.

Sunday - We had an early meeting (Elder Hegland woke me up at 5am by banging on my bed and telling me that it was my birthday!) then we made it to church long enough to take the sacrament and then we swung by the local Christian church that we told someone we would go to. Her name was Maddie and she came to our church last week. Then we went back for the end of our church. Then we went out and visited people, had dinner and then went to the Methodist church for an inter-faith Thanksgiving celebration. The mission choir sang. It was fun.

The end.

 

More good news:

Alma 26:37 (I think it is 37...) Anyways there was a great misionary named Ammon and he gave thanks unto God for showing mercy unto all of the people in the world. God knows all of us wherever we are or whoever we are. It has been repeatedly impressed upon me that all of us are spirit children of a loving heavenly Father who knows us and watches over us. It is important for us all to engage in meaningful conversations about the things that matter most, in this life in in the eternities. I used to not like real serious discussions, but my spirit longs for them now. Although, I can't get enough of a good laugh either. I am grateful to be a missionary and grateful that I can serve my brothers and sisters here in Laguna Beach.

 

Love, Elder Chandler

November 18, 2013

Hello Mother!

 

This week has been nice! I have been out of Laguna Beach a few times on exchanges with other missionaries. Some people get homesick, but I get elderheglandsick when I am away for too long. #companionseperationanxiety

 

That hashtag is for K.

 

Armando hasn't been able to get work off until December, so he will be baptized in December. Charles is going to have the choice to accept a baptismal date this week when we meet with him. He is a very curious and spiritual man. Tyler is chugging along and I always appreciate being able to go over there and have some very real conversations with him about our Savior. They should all be at church this week or next.

 

A few highlights(once again I can only really remember a day or two back):

Sunday morning the choir performed again, so Elder Hegland went to the Laguna Beach ward while I went and accompanied the choir in a different ward. It went pretty well. No one got baptized because of it yet, but we are still fine tuning how to make this choir effective as a finding, teaching and baptizing tool for the California, Irvine Mission. We have bi-weekly choir council meetings which I participate in and we don't want this choir to be a time-waster or anything less than the professional quality that should accompany the sacredness of it participant's calling. Basically it needs to be good and it needs to be effective. enough about the choir.

 

This week we talked to a few people and two young women said that they would come to our church and learn more if we would go to their church. So we said absolutely! Then they actually came. I was at the choir performance, but Elder Hegland confirmed that they came, so on my birthday I get to go to another church!

 

Last night we had a lesson with a family that got baptized earlier this year. So there is the single mom and two little girls. They are from Latvia. Think of Gru from Despicable me and that's the accent. Lona is blonde and 5 years old. we met outside. They have 2 fiesty dogs that want to get out of the house and get eaten by coyotes because they don't know better. Lona was in charge of keeping the dogs behind the gate. On accident Lona left the gate open a little bit and the dogs almost got out. Lona quickly shut the gate, turned around and sang: "Who let the dogs out? Hoo! Hoohoo, hoohoo!" We all laughed a lot. That family is one of my all-time favorites!

 

I will close with a thought this week from President Monson: I reread a few conference talks to make sure I am applying the spiritual impressions I had during conference and a line of his stood out to me from one of his talks. He mentioned the idea of the "distorted prism of pessimism". For some reason I really liked that. We can not look at life as something bad, or that is what it will become. We should choose to be happy and hold on to our hope for the eternal lito come even when trials come our way. I am so inspired by this work that I get to participate in and I am saddened when missionaries do not find joy in the work. I blame it on the adversary's use of his "distorted prism of pessimism". Let us use our agency to think good, act good and be good. Pardon my grammar and have a lovely week!

 

Love- Elder Chandler

November 12, 2013

#MoTab

Happy day after Veteran's day, or as the Canadians say "Rememberance Day" eh. We have a Canadian in our zone and he plays the organ for the mission choir so we have fun with him.

Thanks for the email this week. Answer:

the 20 woman breakfast was just a little get together that a member of the ward had with a few members and a lot of non-members who are friends in the community. Nothing formal, jsut a breakfast.

I am sorry to report that I have not taken pictures in 5 weeks. whoops. I will do better this week. There are some sweet sunsets #lagunabeach.

Kennedy put a lot of #hashtags in that family letter. She is a very different young woman then the little girl sister that was at home when I left for college!

Highlights this week.

#1 today Elder Hegland and I had a nice little meeting with the missionaries in the stake and trained on planning and applying the Atonement. Some of the missionaries are getting really down on themselves, so our intent was to lift, instruct, edify and inspire them. I love our missionaries.

#2Sunday night we had our first mission choir performance and I was going to play the organ for our closing number (I have never played the organ before), but lucklily our Canadian friend was prepared with his arrangment for the last song. So it turned out alright.

#3 I gave a talk on Sunday to the ward. There were 17 nonmembers there that we were aware of and I spoke about how the gospel can be real, and should be real in our lives. I talked about how any time I had/have hard feelings the gospel can transform them into love and motivate me to serve and be better.

#4 I forget what happened before Sunday. Sorry. Life goes on. you got 2 days worth of highlights this week. It was a good week.

 

Well we are going to go teach Tyler, and Armando tonight and then Charlestomorrow, so as much as I enjoy typing an email, I would honestly rather be teaching the gospel. Not that I don't love you too....

November 4, 2013

Hello my dear Mother!

 

Thank you for the nice email this week! I love hearing about the happenings of your life. Elder Hegland and I had a great week and we are incredibly happy and busy. I feel like I am just in the zone now and I don't think about much besides missionary work. But I am not bored even though there is only one purpose consuming my life!!!!!

 

I wrote down 5 things that happened this week. so here is your 5 paragraph letter :-)

1) We went on a 6 mile run with our ward mission leader this morning in the mountains. So fun!

2) On Halloween we drove around to each missionary in the zone a doorbell ditched their favorite treat on their doorstep.

3) Saturday we had a breakfast with 20 women and we made them eggs and pancakes.

4) Tyler Fisher (our autistic investigator) bore his testimony on Sunday.

5) We met a woman who referred herself to the church because she saw the great example of members of the church in her life. She accepted to be baptized on November 30! yay, except she texted us this morning and said that she decided over the weekend that "the Mormon path" was not the one for her. Darn Satan.

 

Well, I love life and this work is so great. We have lots going on. Talk to you next week!

 

Love, Elder Chandler