California Elders, We're Undeniable!

Elder Budding and I looking gooooood!

So yeah.  I officially exited the CCM on October the 8th and I am now in the California Fresno mission in the area of Modesto!  What is up!  I'm planning on seeing a bunch of UFO's and aliens here!  Let me let you in on a secret.  There are so many sightings of aliens and the like here because there are so many people on meth or pot or something here!  I'm serious!  There are so many homeless people!  It is so sad!  I love it!  I'm gonna help these people out!!  Oh, also something awesome!  Our mission has a goal of 1000 baptisms this year and we are way more than on track to hit that by December 31!  Isn't that awesome!?

I have a problema though.  I thought I was doing pretty good with spanish until I showed up to the mission and went with an Elder Taufa to do the activity open your mouth my first day here.  We went street contacting and I realized something.  I don't know Spanish worth a dang.  I can say just about whatever I want slowly, but I can't understand these good people.  Bleeding !@$@%@&#*^**$#%!!%@#!!! (none of that was a swear word.  I just didn't know how to express my frustration so i took it out on the keyboard.)  Anyways, I'll figure it out.  I CAN DO HARD THINGS! (thanks mom)  Every white elder said it's taken them about 3 months to start to try to understand.  I dislike patience so this will be my first real test in the mission.  Work hard at learning the espanol and then waiting for my brain to catch on that English is dumb now.  Anyways, something funny about my Open Your Mouth experience.  I tried to give some Jehovah's witnesses a Book of Mormon because I didn't know who they were and they about ripped my head off.  I didn't know anything that was going on because it was all in Spanish so I just stared at him while he yelled at me and then turned to Elder Taufa and waited.  Elder Taufa was stifling his laughter and managed to get out that we needed to go or something and we left and then I found out about their religion.  So yeah that was a great first experience.

My trainer is a boss!  Elder Budding, a native Argentine who grew up in Orem Utah from age 6 until now!  He's a real help with the language!  Ha I saw some pictures of him before the mission and he was about as hipster as a person comes!  Long hair on top with super short hair on the sides, skinny jeans, big sweater, complete with the hipster glasses.  He looks real nice now though!  I'm planning on learning so much from him and he's gonna change my life!

Hey you.  Go watch the new movie Meet the Mormons.  The church made it to spread the gospel and the 12 need your help to do that.  Invite your friends!  It's actually a really cool movie!  We watched it right after we got our trainers.  It's made to show the world we are actually super normal people that aren't super weird AND to entertain.  So yeah. Depending on how the movie does the 12 will decide what more to do, so help out!

So Modesto doesn't have a lot of investigators right now so we've been doing a lot of finding.  Not a lot of people like us.  There have been many cuss words, doors slammed, and things thrown and it really flustered me when I started knocking doors!  I'm pretty much over it now, but it makes me sad for them because everyone just looks so beat up here and I know what I have can help them, but they just won't listen! Anyways, this whole week I've kinda just been sitting through the lessons we actually have with people and trying to pick up on words that I know and then when it's my turn to talk just generalize what I say because I don't know where we are in the lesson and I don't want to mess up the good work my companion has done!  It'll come.  Patience.  Patience.  Patience.  BLAAAUUGGGGGGHHHHH!

Sunday I gave the opening prayer.  It was really slow but it sounded nice!  Everybody asked if I was new right after sacrament so I must have given myself away.  Haha.  Our branch is pretty small.  We have about 80 active people and around 250 total.  So our work with the inactives is going to be a big focus right now as well!  We looked at numbers and it turns out around 70% of all of our baptisms come because of inactives!  Isn't that insane!  So we are gonna work with them and hopefully get a bunch of baptisms along the way!

Some of our mission culture you'll find awesome!

-We are required to run for at least 30 minutes each morning and make it at least 3 miles.

-We are required to do at least a 2 minute plank every morning.

-We part our hair because we were made a promise at the beginning of last year in this mission that if we part our hair our baptisms would double.  They have more than doubled this year is what the assistant's said.

-WE BAPTIZE!

-Oh and we don't call it p-day.  We call it preparation day.  We don't call them DL's, we call them distrist leaders, we don't call them ZL's, we call them Zone Leaders, and we don't call them AP's, we call them Assistant's.

I'm gonna look so good when I come home cause I'm running for 2 years and planking!  Ha!

Holy.  I wrote a long letter!  Love you all and I loved reading your letters and emails!  Don't be strangers!

ORAN SIEMPRE!

                               Con Amor de California,

                                                                      Elder Frame

All us new Elder's and our trainers and Pres. and Sis. Clark.