Chapter 9: Rancho Peñasquitos

Alright, I've gotten through the small talk with this new area and have begun the real conversation. It's been a pretty jarring week here following my previous transfer. Rancho Peñasquitos might be the complete reverse of Calexico. The work here is moving pretty slowly with barely a handful of nonmember friends we have to visit (unlike the looming list of well over a hundred potentials in Calexico). There hasn't been a baptism here in years, and last transfer apparently didn't yield a single new person being taught. Pretty tough. So many of the residents are just content with their lives, not believing in or even hoping for anything greater. However, the ward here is big, dedicated, and involved, which has been very refreshing. I bet in this first couple weeks I will have doubled the total member lessons I've had on my mission. Another stark contrast: this area has SUCH nice neighborhoods. With each house that I enter I'm blown away by how blessed the people here are, and so grateful for their charity in welcoming us as missionaries. When I first arrived at our apartment last week I thought "whoa, this is a paradise". Pretty roomy, the tap water is drinkable without a filter, and we even have a gym in our complex! Then when my companion introduced me to one of the families in the ward, the first question they asked was "are you still living in that ghetto apartment?" Heh, guess my first area set a good standard for keeping me grateful.

My new companion is Elder Creasy. He's from Las Vegas, and it's funny hearing him talk about the casinos there (his family would go for the movie theaters and pools and such, not for the gambling XD). A couple other characterizing features:  firstly, he got a record player on the mission and has been building a record collection on the fly. There is something about hearing Christmas music on a record player that just hits different. Secondly, he's a saxophone player and got to bring his saxophone with him, so we periodically set time aside in our schedule for him to practice (extra study time for me! That's been nice).

When I arrived at the mission office for transfers last Tuesday, I happened to run into Elder Welker, my predecessor from this area. As I asked him what to expect, one of the first things he told me was "You'll get to try the Boedy Burger." This intrigued me, but he wouldn't let on any more details. "You'll see", he said. Whatever this Boedy Burger was, it was shrouded in mystery, and it seemed to be the stuff of legend. As the day progressed, even more people made mention of it, building the suspense. Our agenda for that evening mainly consisted of a member meal with the Jack family, and when Elder Creasy and I arrived at the doorstep, I discovered what was on the menu...the Boedy Burger! The Jacks just happened to be the keepers of this hallowed recipe. Not even a day had passed and the honor was already being bestowed upon me. Boedy, turns out, is the Jacks' son (I think about 14--Teacher age), and in the midst of COVID lockdown, in the fires of Mount Doom, he forged, in secret, a master burger to control all others. Into this burger he poured his creativity, his talent, and his will to dominate all missionary meals. One burger to rule them all. He's been perfecting it over the past couple years and makes it for the missionaries every time they come over, asking them for feedback. It's really good too! Featuring bacon, carmelized onions, lettuce, tomato, a special sauce of his creation, and a fried egg. Its one drawback: SUPER messy. But nevertheless. There's actually a paper hung up in our apartment's closet with every past missionary's rating of the Boedy Burger.

The Boedy Burger rating sheet

After my initiation into the Rancho Peñasquitos area via burger, we taught the Jacks the Restoration with a special focus on asking them how it has blessed their lives. There's definitely a power that comes from reciting the first vision in Joseph's words, and I'm glad I committed them to memory (at the airport actually, cause we didn't do that in the MTC). We also had a great discussion with Brother Jack, who has served as bishop twice, about how all things in the church must be done in love. At the end of the lesson, one of the kids gave the closing prayer, during which she, in innocent adolescent fashion, said "Please bless that the Elders...can have a nice time." These words, though I'd usually be inclined to smile at them without taking them altogether seriously, honestly touched me at my very core. Please bless that we can have a nice time on our mission. Feeling connected with others and just learning how to have fun have been so much more challenging than I thought they would be, and it's hard to shake the nagging anxiety that I'm constantly missing out on just enjoying everything that's around me. I carry that same prayer in my heart, especially leading into the holidays when gratitude should be at the forefront of our minds.

I've already written a lot on this one member meal, but I've just got to include this last bit. Last transfer, for whatever reason I had this constant craving for a milkshake. But, all throughout, I refrained suggesting that we stop somewhere for one. Guess what the Jacks made for dessert though?? Milkshakes! Tender mercy if ever I saw one.

On Thursday, the ward held a turkey bowl which was SUPER well attended. They split it into 2 games and each half of the field was still packed. Bit by bit I started to learn the members' names. 

A squirrel at Squirrel Park where we had the turkey bowl.
I didn't catch a picture of this, but there was a huge pack of them
 that kept darting back and forth between congregating in the field and hiding in the bushes.

Later, we had Thanksgiving dinner with Bishop Hilton and his family. They've got 8 kids, so it was a lively household. We got to play Dominion with them and participate in their new tradition of Thanksgiving bingo. We also watched a heartfelt message from President Nelson afterward about the healing power of gratitude, and we got to teach a lesson on that very theme at the end. In our companion prayer that evening, we followed through on the very invitation we gave in that lesson, and said a gratitude prayer, during which we only focused on what we'd been given rather than requesting any blessings. The list was long and the spirit was strong.

In light of Thanksgiving, as a way to give back to the Lord after all He's done for us, the entire mission settled on making Saturday special. We decided that rather than spending any time on studies or scheduled lessons that day, we would spend the whole day, from 9 AM to 9 PM, just finding new friends to teach. This could consist of anything from tracting to playing sacred music in public to social media finding. We started off with a mission-wide devotional at 8:45 AM, met for lunch as zones to share miracles we'd seen so far, and ended off with a devotional at 9 PM. As a part of our lunch break, we went with another companionship to Golden Spoon where we can get frozen yogurt for free as missionaries! It's owned by a member and he's incredibly generous. My companion and I spent most of the time tracting, walking around parks, and visiting members to ask for referrals. Doing this in an area that was still brand new to me was a little rough, and I gotta admit it would have been nice to spend that day in Calexico where I was more familiar with the people and places, but nonetheless Saturday gave me a headstart on learning the area. Tracting isn't the most effective over here, so not a whole lot happened on our end, but we still saw tender mercies, and the mission as a whole shared some pretty incredible stories from that day. The work in the San Diego mission really got a boost.

Most of the work this past week has centered on the ward. We've been doing A LOT of visits to introduce me to everyone, and I've been frantically trying to memorize names. Hopefully I'll be an expert by the end of the transfer. Our goal has been to help the members do missionary work themselves, since they have all the connections with the area. For most of our member lessons, we give them a Book of Mormon at the end and invite them to pray about who they could share it with. Similarly, with a lot of our visits we'll hand them a ward Christmas party flyer and invite them to pass it along to a nonmember friend. On one such visit, Sister Bair invited us in and quickly began giving us a tour of all her elaborate Christmas decorations, featuring a huge nativity collection that blew our minds. The Bairs also have a special display in their living room of bear themed Christmas decorations (har har). Bear nativities, Santa bears, and a bear tapestry. I got strong Brave vibes. Bairs and bears aside, I've been grateful to gain more experience working with members, and we've got service opportunities in the works, so I'm looking forward to that.

The Bairs' nativity collection.

I just finished the Isaiah chapters in my new reading of the Book of Mormon, and while all the name dropping and metaphors are certainly disorienting, I understood more from this readthrough than I have in any of my previous ones! It stands out to me seeing just how much emphasis is put on the scattering and gathering of Israel when the book containing these chapters is instrumental to that very gathering. I've been marking every case where the Book of Mormon prophesies about itself or directly addresses us in these latter days, and it's more common than I thought. Also, I absolutely love 2 Nephi 22 (Isaiah 12) and the confidence in the Lord it conveys. Another highlight was 2 Nephi 20:15, which uses analogies to show us that we must remain humble when doing the Lord's work, and that our successes belong to Him. "Shall the ax boast itself against him that heweth therewith? Shall the saw magnify itself against him that shaketh it? As if the rod should shake itself against them that lift it up, or as if the staff should lift up itself as if it were no wood!"

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! Best of luck with everything!

God be with you,

Elder Tolman