Fall is a-coming.

One way Los-Angelenos know that a change of seasons is coming is that a THICK fog whips up almost every morning. It makes our morning ultimate-frisbee exercises a lot more challenging because it's hard to see the frisbee into all the soup. Of course, we never let that deter us, except in cases of torrential rain, which we will eventually get as the autumn rolls on. Ha ha.

Hi all.

Vitaliy received the holy ghost yesterday and he was pretty thrilled about it. We hope he will be a great addition to the branch. Meanwhile, We WILL have more baptisms rolling in this month. 2 weeks ago, we committed a whole family to baptism next week, and they're REALLY working towards it. The Guzmans have a deaf son named Juan. It's a interesting way HOW we found them. last month, we had a dinner appoint with the Gillespie family from our Branch. Kim Gillespie intended to cook us some dinner but her son spilled the sauce, which made dinner pretty much kaput so she asked us to fetch some pizza which she'll cover. Ok, will do. So we stopped at nearly La Pizza Loco (Home of the enormous 32 incher, by the way) and got some large pizzas. While waiting, we noticed a boy with an cochlear implant (That's Juan) so my companion and I struck up conversation to get his attention. We found that his home is in ASL south's area so we referred him there and they taught Juan. When the ASL program areas was split and re-organized, Juan's family surprisingly fell into OUR area so we took up the teaching. The Guzman family mostly speak Spanish so we had the Zone Leaders (We're tight with them so we pulled in some favors) and sometimes some spanish members from our branch to help out. The whole family totally absorbed everything we taught them and asked many questions. The father, Juan Sr., even gave up coffee BEFORE any missionaries taught him at all. I could call them a "Golden" family but they don't have a car and they have a broken home so that's a challenge.

Well, our branch is s l o w l y becoming a Ward. Yesterday, our Branch president reorganized the sacrament-passing process and also introduced Priesthood opening exercises, as every other ward has. We're pretty excited about it.

Recently, I thought about something. Los Angeles is one grand melting pot of different cultures, with all kind of different languages, especially among the deaf, but American Sign Language is such a wonderful tool of communication that binds all of them together and I guess that's why our small branch is one of the most culturally diverse in the church. We have White, Black, Hispanic, Latino, Hawaiian, Native American, Samoan, Korean, Chinese, and French, to name some, and now we enjoy a Russian among us. Truly, our branch alone is proof of partial fulfillment of the prophecy that the gospel shall be preached to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people.

Bye for now.

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-E.T. {0 ^ 0} __o
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Now things are getting serious!

This transfer came as a HUGE surprise to us last week. Our endless debates with the mission president has finally paid off and the areas in the ASL program here in Los Angeles has been divided and rearranged. As of this point forward, Los Angeles now has SIX missionaries in THREE companionships in THREE areas (ASL South, ASL East and ASL West). We're really excited about this because the ASL program is no longer weak anymore. It has became strong once again and is growing. We hope that in the near future, Salt Lake City can send some more missionaries over to Los Angeles and we can focus on adding ASL North into the mix. Right now, finding more people to teach is our main priority.

Oh, and we want an official ASL District. We just need a District Leader of our own. Hopefully that'll happen next transfer or so. Elder Franson, our current District Leader, is good, but an ASL District Leader is better, at least for us. Maybe we can talk the president into dragging back Elder Cordy, who was our DL before.


In other news, Vitaliy FINALLY got baptized last sunday! The whole week, we ran around like rats getting everything ready for his baptism and we prayed a lot, but everything went smoothly... almost. Vitaliy asked me to baptize him. I was so nervous (plus they turned on the wrong faucet and the baptismal water was FREEZING) I fumbled on the first try and had to do it all over. WHOOPS. But the good thing is that Vitaliy felt the spirit strongly and talked about it all the way home. Cool. I bet he's going to be excited to get the holy ghost next sunday. Vitaliy is an awesome guy and I hope he stays strong from now on!

Well, that's baptism #6.

Anyhoo, right now, Elder Franco and I are getting used to our new area. we plan to get a large-scale map and some tacks soon so we can pinpoint all of our deaf people we're working together. As you can see, this transfer was a HUGE change. In fact, they don't even have another apartment ready yet so 4 of our missionaries had to share one apartment. I must imagine it'd be really cramped having only one bedroom and only one bathroom for everyone to share, plus dish washing and laundry would be a nightmare, let alone the daily morning schedule. Luckily, Elder Franco and I don't have to go through that.

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-E.T. {0 ^ 0} __o
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