I'm a missionary for Halloween this year, we actually celebrate it everyday, and go trick or treating to everyone we see, but no one gives us candy.

Letter to Caden....He asked if they celebrate Halloween there and told him that he just got an iPhone 7.

We do! I'm a missionary for Halloween this year, we actually celebrate it everyday, and go trick or treating to everyone we see, but no one gives us candy.

I drew a witch in my planner.

Haha I don't even know what an iphone 7+ is haha, and by the way, what is an apple pen? or a pineapple pen? is that big in America?

I had a group of 17 year old girls attack me a couple of days ago and grab my nose!

Letter to Dad...

That's cool! Guess what, Elder Cortez was in the hospital for his nose, so I just sat there and talked to the nurse, Sister Turner for 5 hours and learned a ton of cool stuff!  She served among the Navajos and it is crazy how many of their legends line up with the gospel and Book of Mormon.  There is a tribe that lives above another tribe because of an ancient covenant where the one buried their weapons and the lower one promised to protect them!  It's awesome!

She also said that when she lived in California, Eddie Van Halen was best friends with her oldest son and when they were little, he and Alex would always come over to her house!

One of our progressing investigators told us a cool story this week.  She said that a while ago, she had a dream that she was in a large, beautiful room, wearing white.  She was also surrounded by many people also wearing white and singing hymns.  She said that she felt scared cuz she didn't know anyone in the room and she backed into a corner.  Then, a man came up to her and said "daughter, everything is going to be alright"  Then she woke up and prayed for a long time to know what the dream meant, then the next day, we showed up!  It was awesome! haha

Letter to Mom...

I am terrible at saving money right now, probably one of the worst in the mission haha, I have no emergency fund, so I made a goal this month to be really thrifty like Elder Fawson.  That will be cool, for the 5th ( I told him about the family party we have planned) , we have a couple baptisms scheduled for then too!  

I had one of the craziest things happen to me a couple of days ago.  Elder Cortez and I were sitting in a computer lab, preparing for the state coordination and all of the sudden this lady turned to me and started telling me stories of how she has been raped and many murderers and after her and how she has murdered many people all over the world, then she started naming all the books in the Book of Mormon but said that she was done with Jesus Christ cuz she had "suffered too much for him"  you'll have to remind me when I get home to tell you the whole story cuz it's crazy and I don't have time to type it all.

11 people went to church so that was awesome and a lot of people are progressing in this area, it's cool how Heavenly Father keeps sending them cuz for the last couple of years there always averaged just 2 or 3. I love you mom, you are the best.

I had a lot of cool experiences with prayer this week....

Letter to Dad...

I knew it would be a girl! (We told him we are having a baby girl!) I loved Reva Johnson.  Tell Keith that I said that and I always looked up to him and her.  President Uchtdorf's talk was for them.  The Plan of Salvation is amazing. 

I'm poor right now, but I think I'll be able to live cheaper once I get back home after living here so long haha.  The other day I was thinking of all of the stuff that I have at home and I was amazed.  I have 7 guitars, a watch collection, a gun collection, a car, a dishwasher, a washing machine, a microwave.  All of these things are worth a lot more than the combined possessions of most of my friends here, it made me feel kind of bad.  

I have the coolest ward in the mission, the Bishop stood up and talked about Dallin H. Oaks talk and said that we shouldn't just pray for the missionaries, but we should pray for our own missionary experiences.  And I thought that just to make sure that you guys do this, you should send me a missionary experience each week, even if it's just small.

Right after this I am preparing for the zone meeting tomorrow.  I love you Dad.

Letter to Mom...

Hey Mom, this week was awesome!  It was the fastest week of my mission, I think it was just because I was busy doing zone stuff.  I went to Mission Leaders Council for the first time which is freaking awesome.  All of the zone leaders and sister training leaders get taught by president and discuss the direction of the mission.  Sister Barton and Sister Holzworth were there, and we ate and talked and it felt like the MTC again haha it was cool.

I had a lot of cool experiences with prayer this week.  About last week, my eye started to get blurry, but since we are so busy, I wasn't going to tell the nurse until it went black.  I started feeling like I really needed to text her, but I didn't want to.  Finally I asked Heavenly Father and I felt strongly that I should, so I did and I went to St Luke's.  My eye thing recurred but the cool part was that for the next week, the doctor would have been gone on vacation, so if I would have disobeyed the prayer and waited until my eye went black, I would have been screwed!  I thought it was a cool experience of personal revelation.  

We found a lot of cool new families this week.  One is the Orara family.  The husband is less active and they have 5 kids.  But the coolest thing happened with Lora Bell.  I knew that she was moving to Las Pinas, but before I got transferred, I forgot to get her number off of our phone.  But one day, Elder Fawson was walking in their area and this girl came up to them and said that she was a member and she just moved.  Elder Fawson asked who it was that taught her and she said Elder Zesiger.  Elder Fawson was like "he's my kabahay!"  So I'll go visit her when we go on exchanges!  It's so cool to see how many miracles are connected to her, Heavenly Father really wants her back in the church. haha

I knew it would be a sister haha.

An experience written to Shelby...

On Tuesday, we got punted, which means that no one wanted to hear from us except a couple people.  This happens to missionaries a lot, but not to me.  It was my first time in 6 months and it made me feel sad.  I was getting self conscious and my Tagalog totally died and I was making so many mistakes.  I think Heavenly Father was trying to humble me.  When we got back home, I felt terrible, I knelt down and prayed really hard.  I pleaded with God to give us a good day.  I just felt so bad.  Before we went out of Wednesday, I did practice teaching with Elder Cortez and I still couldn't speak Tagalog, I didn't even want to go out, but I had faith in my prayer.  We ended up having my best day of my mission.  We got 10 new investigators, 12 lessons and like 8 new baptismal dates, my Tagalog was back to normal and we had a cool day.  This week, I've gotten a lot stronger testimony of prayer.

But as I was praying, I felt that right now is my time to be humble, teachable, and learn.

Letter to Mom...

It was very sad saying goodbye to all my friends and converts in Santa Mesa.  I cried a lot hahaha.  As I was leaving the house on Wednesday morning, I was met by all the the single adults who were waiting outside of our apartment to say goodbye, they had all written me letters.  It was cool haha.

Elder Cortez is my new companion and his mannerisms are exactly like Elder Arnejo's haha it's weird!  But he is an amazing teacher!  Elder Fawson is my kabahay (room mate) haha so that's funny, he is training and a district leader, so it is fun to catch up with him.   We have one of the best wards in the mission!  The coordination meeting is crazy!  Everyone comes and gives referrals and works with us everyday! I love it!  Thank you so much for all of the good that you are doing for the mission.  I'm proud to have the best mission mom in the world.  

As I listened to Elder Nattress's talk and I am so grateful to have you as a mom.  Even though we didn't read the Book of Mormon every morning, which we should have done and you should start now hahaha, I will never fall away because of your love, I know that this church is true and I know that our family will be together forever.  I love you.

Elder Zesiger and Elder Fawson.  They were companions in the MTC and are roommates now.  I think Elder Fawson is 7ft tall!

Letter to Dad...

It's pretty fun, I feel like I don't know that much haha, but all of the (conference) talks were about how the Lord qualifies who he calls.  In our zone, there are 19 missionaries and 3 districts.  Elder Fawson is one of our district leaders and my roommate haha, so that's fun.  Elder Cortez is pretty cool, he is actually exactly like Elder Arnejo haha, and it feels weird to be a junior companion again so I guess I need to learn to be more humble again.  I was kind of confused what my purpose was here, whether it was to change everything and make higher goals, because the zone goals are pretty low right now as we are the lowest baptizing zone in the mission at 3 a month haha, which is less than Elder Davis and I averaged in just our companionship.  But as I was praying, I felt that right now is my time to be humble, teachable, and learn, and then when I have a better understanding in a couple of weeks, I can begin building this zone into the best in the mission, but right now I received the answer that my job is to learn from Elder Cortez.

We have some pretty cool investigators here.  What are some ways that you inspired your zone?  I have been trying to get to know everyone personally by getting to know their conversion stories, it is really fun, but many of them have said that they don't think that it is possible to hit the high numbers like 30 lessons a week.  Right now, the high goal in our zone is 20 a week, I think that is one thing I'm going to change, but what is one way that I can help them believe in themselves?

I loved conference, especially Elder Rasband's talk about how we have to remember our spiritual experiences, especially in times of trial.  Sometimes as I read my journal about people being healed and miracles happening I am tempted to think that they were just coincidences, but I am super glad for that talk as an assurance that they are not.  I am super glad for my new calling that it is kind of hard, I was getting kind of comfortable in Santa Mesa, haha although I'll love it forever, it was super sad saying goodbye to the converts. 

I love being a missionary dad, thanks for helping raise me in the church and always being the best example for me.  I know for my self that Jesus Christ is the son of god, our Savior, and our way back to a loving Heavenly Father.

Elder Zesiger

Elder Zesiger is going to miss the Santa Mesa area!

Letter to Dad....
 We had a really fun week,  we had a couple more baptisms and an MTC exchange, but the coolest part was that I saw my MTC teacher, Brother Caling, again for the first time since Dec 1 haha it was awesome!  My new area I will be leading is the Paranaque West Zone, it's the farthest zone from everything in the mission besides Palawan, it borders the Cavite mission.  I'm going to miss Elder Davis though, we ended up getting 12 baptisms in his training which is one a week, so that was fun. 

My MTC teacher Elder Caling 

One cool thing that happened this week was just during studies.  We were watching all of the preach my gospel movies for Elder Davis's training and all of the missionaries were bearing their testimonies on how they knew that everything was true and how they were close to Heavenly Father and I thought to myself that I felt closer to Heavenly Father back when I was having a really hard time and relying on him really hard.  But now that I've just been having success and everything is going good, I didn't feel like I was as close and that made me kind of sad.  I was wondering how I could be close, and have a fun life haha and not have to choose one or the other.  I started reading in my scriptures and found that verse that you sent me a while ago in Due. 31:6, that was pretty cool, so then I ended study with a prayer and when I opened my eyes, I saw my preach my gospel on my desk and I felt a strong prompting that I needed to put it in my bag, I didn't know why because I never bring it with me, but I opened my bag anyway,  when I did I found a referral that we were going to visit but we lost.  As I thought about the experience I realized that if I wasn't close to Heavenly Father, then I wouldn't receive promptings like that.  As I was pondering this, the words popped into my head, "I am with thee".  It was cool, that hasn't happened for awhile.

Letter to Mom....

I'm getting transferred to lead the Paranaque west zone.  It's a pretty rich area.  It'll be fun haha.  I might be roommates with Elder Fawson because I think he's one of my district leaders hahaha.

My cool story for you is about Fernando Cordero and Cocay.  Fernando was less active for a very long time.  He didn't think that he could ever go to church because of his work.  His wife, Rissa, would never go either because he wasn't there.  Exactly 5 weeks ago, Rissa got really sick.  She promised Heavenly Father that if her pain would go away, she would go to church every day for the rest of her life.  The pain immediately went away and she knew she had to go.  Every week since, they have been there, and the miracle happened just in time for Cocay to get baptized right before I transferred.  Their small food table is now very successful and money is not much of a problem.  I know that Heavenly Father knows his children and he knows how to bring them back to church.  Fernando got worthy and it was so amazing to see him baptize Cocay, after teaching him for almost 6 months!  I love being a missionary haha.

The next two days will be sad and a lot of goodbyes haha, I'm still not good at those.