Eleventh Hour

Hey everyone!

It's been the best week ever once again! I only have so many more, so I've gotta make them all count.

Honestly it was actually a pretty slow week until Sunday, but that's okay because a whole week's worth of stuff happened this weekend and it makes up for any slowness in the rest of the week.

We've got a baptism coming up this week! It's a neat thing. We're super excited for Adrian to get baptized and for his family to keep becoming more active. In a couple weeks they're moving to another house in the ward, so doing some service to help them with that will give the ward a good chance to get to know the family better. Things are going really well.

On Sunday we got up super early so we could go to ward council and then make sure Adrian was awake afterwards. While we were at church, a member came to us and said "hey I want to introduce you to my friend" which is the best sentence to hear ever. His friend was actually a member though, but his friend's son is ten and not baptized yet, so we need to teach him the lessons since they're just getting back to church. That was a super cool blessing.

All week we'd been struggling to find new people to teach. People just were not talking to us! And it was discouraging! Until Sunday afternoon, when everyone was super awesome and we picked up a couple new people to teach. We had to wait and work all week so we could get the blessings at the end, and sometimes the mission just is that way. It's great though, it's so satisfying to look back and see God's hand in my life and mission.

Not a super long email this week, but really things are going great here. It's been really cool. I love Monica ward and love serving here in Bakersfield.

Thanks for all your support!
Elder Adams


As for pictures this week: words continue to be unable to describe just how beautiful the world can be at times. It's almost a little symbolic- just like we had go wait all day to see the pretty sunset, we had to wait all week to get some good work done.
1. Shout out to Elder Wright for taking this fresh pic of me taking a fresh pic.
2. Panorama if the sunset. Really the lighting was way crazy because there was a lot of dust in the air.
3. That's not even the sun there, just the sun reflecting off the clouds.
4. Barbed wire and palm tree sunset aesthetic.
5. There were these flowering vines that grew from a wall over onto this palm tree and it was seriously so nice looking.

Spring Weather

Hey everyone!

It's been the best week here in Bakersfield! Nice and warm, with some rain at the end. Not that the weather is the most important part, it's just a nice bonus.

So the best news is that Gina got baptized! I wasn't able to be there for it, but that's okay. Just knowing it happened and that she's getting those blessings is so worth it.

Otherwise, we worked a lot. Pretty normal week that way. It's not bad to work, it's still great to be able to testify to people of the wonderful truths that we have. It just leads to less fun stories for my email when we don't have a lot of crazy experiences. Not every week can be incredibly entertaining, but every week can still indeed be the best. To make it up to y'all though, I made sure to get some pictures this week.

I'm really glad to be able to come to church every Sunday and partake of the sacrament. I feel like I talk about that a lot, but it's because it's really important to me. To have that time every week to renew our covenants with God and come closer to the Savior is a really precious thing. We can feel so much peace at church, with the Spirit teaching and encouraging us. I know it's easy to get wrapped up in our responsibilities there at times, but it's important to make the most of the wonderful gift we've been given and strive to remember Jesus Christ and become more like him.

Thank you for all your support!
Elder Adams


1: some graffiti in our area that I love.
2: a panorama of (mostly) our area. It's actually huge. We cover part of Bakersfield, a couple smaller towns, and a bunch of empty space going way out to the mountains.
3: excellent prop for our photo shoot.

The Most Important Week Ever

Hey everyone!

It's been the best week ever! The week of General Conference is always really cool, especially on the mission. I love getting to hear instructions from the prophets and apostles.

This week was pretty cool for us, we got to teach some really great lessons to our investigators, and set several of them with baptism dates. We retaught the restoration to one guy, and he thought it was so cool. He had heard it before, but understood it a lot better this time. He told us that he was really pumped about the gospel and learning whether the Book of Mormon is true or not.

We got a referral from some Spanish missionaries for a kid in our area who has been taught almost everything, but had been going to the Spanish ward with his grandma. She moved though, and he really only speaks English, so they felt like it would be better for him to come to our ward. We got to sit down and teach him too, and he's so ready! He loves the church, even though he couldn't understand much, and he knows what he's been taught really well. We're super excited to help him make a covenant with God, and hope it'll help get his family more active in the church.

Oh boy, what a conference that was! It was so exciting! I love seeing these kinds of things happen, we might have solidly established doctrine, but changes and advancements in the organization that is the church to help us fulfill our purpose are so cool to see. It's evidence to me that the kingdom of God is really governed by "revelation adapted to the circumstances in which the children of the kingdom are placed." We've got a prophet who cares a lot about us and the church, and loves the Savior and follows His example. Isn't that the neatest thing?

I loved when Elder Uchtdorf talked about what the most important day is,and how for each of us it is the day we commit to follow the Savior and try to repent. Wouldn't it follow that the most important day is also the best day? Even more evidence that every week is the best week ever, because every week I'm trying harder to follow my Redeemer. What a wonderful opportunity! I also really appreciated Bishop Causse's story about his objectives as a stake president. I'd love to have great numerical success. But it's really about individuals. I've come to really learn that on my mission. Related shout-out to Elder Simpson and Elder Coburn, commenting on stuff on Facebook and trying to make me cry because they're so nice. I'm so grateful to have met so many awesome people here, and I hope I've touched their lives a fraction of how they've touched mine.

Thank you for all your support!
Elder Adams