Week 8: Happy Thanksgiving!

November 24, 2014

Well guys, I guess first I should apologize for not writing last week. I was pretty busy and I didn't have much to write about, so sorry!


So, I think I saw the most disturbing thing of my whole mission last Monday. In the evening, after dinner, we were giving a couple Elders a ride to an appointment, and on the side of the road, under a street light (it was already dark outside), there was a man squatting off the back of his bike, without his pants on. I guess there were no public bathrooms nearby, or something. Hahaha, that was a wonderful sight.


On Tuesday, the next day, we went on exchanges! I got to go with a super cool Elder from Orem. He's our District Leader's companion. The DL (District Leader) came to our area with my companion, and I went to their area. They don't have a car, so we walked, and walked, and walked. We talked to some really cool people, and I learned a ton from Elder Jeske about talking to people and how to get people talking back.

That night, when we came back to the apartment, we had a snack, and Elder Jeske was cutting a Habanera pepper up and putting it in his food. For any of you who have never tried a Habanera, they're hot. Like, really, really, really, "my face is on fire and I can’t feel my mouth," hot. Well, later on that night, we had our companionship prayer. At the end of the prayer, he just looked up at me, with his eyes still closed, and said, "You’ll never guess what just happened." He had forgotten to wash his hands, and he touched his eye with Habanera juice! When he opened his eye, tears immediately started streaming down his face and he started yelling, hahaha. It was awful, but also, really, really, funny, hahaha.


So I'm not sure if you've guys noticed yet, but it’s THANKSGIVING SEASON! I've been told that this is the best holiday for missionaries out here, and I believe it! Last Thursday we had our first Thanksgiving dinner! We had some AWESOME turkey. There were potatoes, green beans, mac n cheese, and stuffing. Just like at home :) (Except none of it was as good as mom's!!) I really miss mom's green bean casserole, and au gratin potatoes! Those where the best!


On Friday, the next day, we had our Branch Thanksgiving party! Our branch throws a party basically every single week. They like to get together and eat food, a lot, haha. We had some really good turkey/stuffing sandwiches and some AWESOME Horchata. I loooove all of the Mexican food and drinks we get here! We have a super solid new investigator that we just found this week who showed up as well! When we invited her to the party, we didn't know what time it was at, so we said we'd get back to her. Well, we tried our best, but we just couldn't get a hold of her to tell her! She showed up and told us that she didn't know what time it was at, but had just assumed it would be around 6, and she was right! haha. She also told us that she wouldn't be able to make it to church, but then showed up out of the blue! It's so weird, cause usually it's the exact opposite, where they tell you they'll be there, but then don't show up. I'm not complaining though!! :)

On Saturday morning, we had a training session from the President and his wife, and the tech Elders. They are bringing Facebook back to our mission, so we will be getting on that, probably a little after Christmastime. We also had interviews with the President! My interview was super positive, and just such an awesome experience :) I'm looking forward to only having positive interviews with him, while I'm out here, haha. I also interviewed with his wife, and that was awesome too.

Yesterday was a pretty regular Sunday. Church was about 3 1/2 hours again, so that's cool. After church, one of the counselors in the branch presidency asked Elder Akhmetov and I to speak next week, so that should be fun. It'll only be us two speaking, and he told us to take as much time as we want (I guess that's why we always go over). I asked him what time church was supposed to end, and he said, around 12:30, but that we should just take as long as we want. He said that usually at around 12:45, if it sounds like the speaker is still going on, they ask them to hurry it up a little. So that answers the mystery of why church always goes so long!

I guess that's about it for this week! Hope it makes up for last week! I love you all and hope you have an awesome Thanksgiving!! I'm looking forward to a whole bunch more Thanksgiving dinners this week :)

Love you!
Elder Butterfield

Week 6: Vallejo Loves Service!!!

November 10, 2014

Hey everybody! Hope you all had a great week! I don't have a ton of time to write, like usual, so this one will probably be a little short.

I honestly can't even remember the first half of my week, and I'm sure I've forgotten almost all of the cool things that happened this week, so sorry. On Saturday, just a couple days ago, we had the opportunity to do service for most of the day! Saturday was a big city service day, where differs groups got together to clean up a cemetery! The cemetery that we went to was pretty huge, and there where probably about 100 volunteers. Half of us raked up pine needles and leaves and tied them up in big tarps, and hauled them to a dumpster, while the other half shovel led and spread mulch! We worked from 8 am to 12, then had pizza afterwards as lunch :) it was really fun to do something a little different!

Oh! I can't believe I almost forgot. One of our new members had us over for lunch again! The same ones that gave us pig feet! Well this time we just had some really spicy soup/lentils with unidentifiable meet in it. It was pretty good. But the interesting part happened after the dinner. For the next 2 hours, they told us about all of their experiences with demons in their house. It was pretty freaky what they were telling us. Like, about her being dragged out of her bed and down the hallway at night…Or tons of other worse stuff that I won't write about. Well, we were talking to them and trying to figure out what was causing everything, and finally we found out that one of their family members is practicing candle magic in the garage and performing other satanic rituals. Yeah. Stay away from that stuff, guys. We talked to them about it, and told them to stop, and then we came back and said a prayer, and called on the priesthood to remove the spirits. Man... That was an interesting experience.

On Sunday, yesterday, we had branch council! The stake president was here from Napa, and one of his councilors. For the first hour, the stake president had all of us missionaries come to the front of the class, and asked the members to think of the very hardest questions they could and we would answer them. Yeah, thanks president. Haha, but really, it was a pretty good experience. The questions weren't that hard, and we were able to answer them all. :) In sacrament meeting, I'm not sure exactly what happened, but we went 50 minutes over. That's right. 50 minutes. So our church was from 9:30-1:20. It was awesome ;)

Well, that's all I have for this week! I hope you all have an awesome time, wherever you are! Love you all!

Love,
Elder Butterfield

WEEK 5: Halloween in Vallejo

Halloween in Vallejo

November 3, 2014

This week was about as good as any so far. Every once in a while we will go on exchanges with other Elders. This week, on Tuesday, I went on Exchanges with Elder Blaylock! He is about my same height and weight, and he's only been out for about a month longer than me! Hahaha, we had a blast! We are both greenies and neither of us really have the whole mission thing down yet, so we just went around talking to people and actually ended up teaching 5 lessons that day! We both had a ton of fun and felt like we did really well together! It was such a fun day.

On Thursday, my companion and I went Service tracting for a couple of hours. Service tracting is where we put on our service clothes and we go around a neighborhood knocking on doors looking for yard work or any other service we can do for people. We don't usually find a lot to do, but we do meet and talk to tons of people!

Halloween in Vallejo is kind of a sketchy holiday. We were told not to tract after dinner, but we still had a normal day during the day. We walked a toooon and just basically talked to people and tried to get to know them. After dinner we went back to the church and did our weekly planning. When we finished we got to play basketball, which I was verrry happy about!

I don't really know what to write about, but we did have a pretty exciting dinner on Halloween! We were at a member’s house who fed us some REALLY good squash and zucchini in a cream sauce! They also had some big Habanera peppers and some even hotter green peppers! One Elder was trying to show off and ate the Habanera in one bite. He didn’t say anything for a couple of minutes, and when I looked over, he had tears streaming down his face! Those peppers are brutal. I had a bite of the hotter green pepper, and my entire mouth went numb. I've never really liked spicy things before, but I'm starting to like it more and more!

Sorry this letter is so lame!! I'll try to write a better one next week.

Love, 

Elder Butterfield 

Happy Halloween!!!

P-day Basketball!

WEEK 4: "Special Soup" and My First Baptisms!!!

October 27, 2014

Ok, so to start off, I forgot to write about my crazy dinner experience last week! After we did some service for one of our investigators, she invited us in for dinner! We'd eaten with her once or twice before and personally, I loooove her food. We were with the two zone leaders that day, so there were 4 of us there. When we got inside, she told us that she had made us her "special" soup! When we asked what was in it, she told us that it was a secret! She served us a few pieces of meat out of the soup along with some rice and beans. To make a long, disgusting, story short... They were pig feet. If any of you have ever had pig feet before, you know that there's really no meat on them! It's just bone, cartilage, fat, skin, and ligament. I ate it all! Honestly, I didn't think it was as bad as the others did, but it was pretty bad. After I finished mine, she asked if my comp wanted seconds, and he said no, which I was afraid would offend her, so I accepted seconds. Then after I had finished that, the elder next to me snuck all of his onto my plate, wrapped in a tortilla!! So I finished that too.
Since this wasn't technically our dinner (because we didn't know she was planning on feeding us), we had another dinner scheduled about 10 minutes after we got out of the house. We booked it over there and I honestly thought I was going to die, I was so full.
So yeah, there's the crazy dinner experience :)

So in other news, the World Series is going on! And the Giants are playing! What this means, is that everybody is inside watching and is too busy to talk to us. Also, as far as I know, the Giants are currently down in the series, which means everybody is angry and sad.

Earlier in the week we were knocking on doors, and I guess someone thought we were trying to break into their house, so they called the cops on us. We were walking down the street when 7 cop cars pull up in a line and talked to us. That was fun :)

Last P-day, so a week ago, our Zone Leaders had planned a nice game of glow-in-the-dark soccer for us! Yeah, that probably wasn't the best idea. We played in a gym that was completely black. Each person had a glow stick around there neck, so we could see them. I'm pretty sure everyone got pretty injured. One sister ended up with 2 black eyes. Both of my shins are still recovering from being kicked so hard. It was worth it though!

On Saturday we had two investigators get baptized -- A.R. and C. R., the same ones that gave us the pig feet!! ;) It was such an awesome experience! The day was suuuper stressful for a variety of reasons, but the important part is that everything went smoothly :). I had the honor of baptizing them both. Luckily nobody drowned or hit their head or something. I've heard plenty of baptism horror stories since being out. They were both so excited to be baptized. We had a great Sunday service as well, where they were confirmed and given the Holy Ghost. The Spirit was so strong.

Well, I'm out of time, but I hope you all have a great week!! Love you all!

Love,
Elder Butterfield