Week 77

Even though we did not get any snow, we did have a white Christmas! Kylee Massingill was baptized a member of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints last Thursday and was confirmed and received the gift of the Holy Ghost on Christmas Day! What better gift could she had given the Savior! She will be so blessed! And she loves it already.

We also had Christmas morning presents just like everyone else. And  found my hat in one of those. The Casados family, about 3 weeks prior, held my hat hostage for leaving it at their house and thought it would be funny to give it back for Christmas. They make me laugh 😂. There are a lot of great people here in Poway. We were definitely well taken care of.

One of my favorite things that happened for Christmas was going about 15 mile north to some missionaries in Ramona. Some packages for Christmas came in the day before and we had the privilege of driving up at 6 am in the morning to play the role of Santa and give them some last minute Christmas presents. They were all super tired still but over joyed to see the gifts from loved ones back home. It was sweet!

I will top off this email by talking about Josh and Sara. They are both awesome people and they love the Gospel and everything the church has to offer, they believe it is true and everything. But....... they are scared about getting married. We think it is a  financial thing, something about insurance and dependents. It is a mess but the point is they cannot receive all of the blessings that God, our Heavenly Father has to offer them until they follow all of his commandments, including keeping The Law of Chastity, including getting married if you are living together. Hopefully we can help them overcome that and let God's blessings flow.
😊

~ Elder Joshua Alger

P. S. The four Missionaries in this picture are Elder Wilson, me, Elder Mahoney and Elder Chen. I trained (Elder Wilson and Elder Mahoney, my mission children), and Elder Chen is Elder Mahoney's trainee.

I have my hat back!

Out caroling

Week 76

We have been having a lot of fun here in Poway as of late. We have been going to the Mormon Battalion, caroling, stuffing my companion with milk and cookies and joining the members and their friends for
some Christmas fun! The people here in Poway are so kind! I absolutely love it! The people we have been teaching that are really close to baptism include; Kylee Massingill, who is going to be baptized on Thursday and
confirmed on Christmas, Josh Eyer, who we are inviting to get married and baptized on Christmas Eve, and Chris Shah, who we are going to commit to be baptized be for he new year and get his mom's permission (he has been going to church for 6 years) he just needs the green light from him mom. We also have been working very closely with the Casados family in fellowshipping Kylee. That also are holding my hat hostage. But we are formulating a plan to acquire it. All in all Everything good in San Diego comes from Poway!

Bonus Pictures

These were sent to me, Stephanie, by the sweet people of Josh's area.

Hi Sister Alger, I'm in Elder Alger's Ward and I wanted to let you know how much I adore your missionary! He's a hard worker and his testimony is a light in our home. Thank you for sharing him! I'm including a few photos from Zone Conference Thursday and one from Rubio's a few weeks ago when my husband and I ran into him and Elder Jensen. I have a missionary out serving right now too and I appreciate your sacrifice and his

Oh, can't forget this one! He forgot his hat last night at our house

He's a good boy we are happy to have him here in Poway! 

Week 75

This is Elder Alger's companion. He has been driving us and another companionship around all day and isn't going to have much time to email because of it, so I'm not sure if you'll get one this week. But it's because he is a champ. Anyways, this week he sang again in sacrament meeting with a returning less active and nailed it, and then he found a giant pepper grinder.

Elder Jensen

I have been doing great! My mission has been the best experience of my life. The only trouble I am experiencing is that I am becoming more and more busy. I am so sorry! I really wish I had time to send you super wonderful
juicy emails every week. We were driving in traffic for 4 hours today and I was driving for all of it. Please forgive me!

~ Elder Joshua Alger

Week 74

We started off the week by loosing an elder and gaining Elder Mackey. Elder Mackey's companion had to leave so we ended up being his new companions until President Schmitt found him a new companion. It was
really weird but fun at the same time. Elder Mackey is super sarcastic and loves messing with you. We all got along great.

In the midst of all of this we went over to Josh and Sara's. They had a life changing event happen to them that is very motivating to get them married. So we challenged them to pick a date in December and fast to know if it is right. They chose Christmas Eve. We are ecstatic!

On Saturday we had not one but 2 ward Christmas parties. Elder Jensen and Elder Mackey went to one and I went to the other. Both wards are amazing and I was sad I could not go to both. At the Twin Peaks Christmas party (the one I went to) they had a wonderful Nativity scene. It was so fun and to top things off we had some ward members sing. It was a blast!

At the end of the day on Saturday Elder Maughn joined us and we had to let go of Elder Mackey. Elder Maughn was my zone leader in Chula Vista. He is a great missionary and does not tolerate anything short of what needs to happen. I love him so much.

On Monday we had a super fun Family Home Evening. We went over to a member's home and had a sweet object lesson on how we influence everyone in our lives by what we do. We then gave them 3 minutes to write down the names of every nonmember that they could think of. Afterward, we showed the Christmas video and asked them to think of how they can serve those individuals. They all ended up having 2 people each that we are going to help. It was a great spiritual experience.

Week 73

This week was Thanksgiving so we were not able to meet with very many people but that does not mean we stopped working. We have been meeting a lot with our investigator with a baptismal date for the 22nd. When
we haven't been able to meet with him, we were baking cookies!

Week 72

It is cool here too! It gave a a little drizzle here on Sunday which was super Great! It even inspired my very first Shrinkydink! (I didn't know that was a thing).

Lately we have been visiting the members like nobody's business! It has been loads of fun to try some new things to share the Gospel!  This week we also did something called MTE's (missionary training exchanges). During his exchange Elder Macky joined for a solid day. We taught active members, less-actives and investigators. It makes for a wonderful day. Elder Macky's area in in Penisquitos (PQ) and they have really been grasping for straws in the teaching sector. But luckily in the California San Diego mission we see miracles and Elder Macky's area started teaching 3 new sons and daughters of God!

I have learned this week that the Lord provides but many times it takes us looking at things from a different perspective. Sometimes it doesn't take a change of amount of work in the mission but maybe how you are working in the mission to bring about the miracles you expect. I have learned a lot from Elder Jensen and I hope to maintain it. He is the hardest working Elder I know! He is amazing at balancing having the fun and diligence of missionary life. I could not have asked for a better Zone Leader trainer.

~ Elder Joshua Alger

Week 71

This week has been loads of fun! We had two exchanges! One in Ramona, the wilderness. And one with Elder Balderree our district leader. They both were super fun!

In Ramona we spent half of the day doing service for people in need. The coolest of which was for a super chill wheelchair bound man. We helped him take leaves and dig a trench in his yard. He was so grateful! We then went out in the back woods and searched for people to teach. We finished off the night by running into Andrew. It was at night and really dark and we saw this guy walking by. We caught his attention and started talking to him about the Gospel. He is pretty interested. He got stuck in the wrong crowd and wants to get out. Luckily for him, he lives down the road from the Ramona church. The rest of the week we spent time working with members. We give them an inspiring message and ask who they know who they could share the Gospel with and then we help them make a plan. It is really good because then we get to know a lot of member and we are helping them grow as member and finding people at he same time!

That has been my week. Peace!
~ Elder Joshua Alger

Week 70 On the Up!

This week has been great! Our wards are slowly but surely picking up! We just started teaching Kylee, who texted us on Friday asking if we could teach her about baptism! She is super prepared! She goes to the
dances, seminary and church and she doesn't even have a date for baptism yet! We are super excited! We also started teaching the Reinheart family. They are great! They love he missionaries and are already sharing the Gospel with their friends! They were talking to some of their friends and they had some questions about Mormons and they set them straight on some of the things they have wrong. It is awesome!

I love the area! It reminds me a lot of home. The biggest difference is all of the hills! San Diego is a very hilly place and Poway is one of the hilliest parts! Elder Jensen and I had a neat experience last night. We had dinner at a member's home who was super rich! He owned like 30 different companies and has no need to really do much of any work. At the end of the night both my companion and myself came to the conclusion that we do not want to be rich. It feels too empty. Luckily, it is not always like that. We have super wards who are great at missionary work and very supportive of their elders.

That is the life in Poway!
~ Elder Joshua Alger

Week 69

My new area is super fun! There are lots of great members and nearly all of them are uber missionary minded. We are eating with members every night and even more so when we can get them on the missionary boat. 

To clear up any confussion, when we were biking last week, we were in another missionary's area. We have a car and use it daily. Our apartment is very large but having two companionships in it makes up for the extra space. It is super fun and distracting to be in the same apartment as another companionship of missionaries but I mostly love it. 

My companion is very diligent! He is the best missionary I know. I will likely not be with him very long though so I will cherish every moment. Right now, we are teaching about three households worth of people. Sara and Josh, a returning member and investigator, the Kroepels, Ryan  and Charlie, who are unbaptized children to Todd, a less active, and lastly David, the ❌ to a member with active kids. They are Luke Warm right now but we are trying to get them cookin! 😁

Life is great!

~ Elder Joshua Alger

Week 68

My new area is great! I am in Poway, about as close to Utah as you get in San Diego. Everyone is rich and white. It is pretty much a medium size city amongst large, bouldery hills. My wards, yes plural wards, are really great! Everyone wants to share the Gospel and all they need is a push in the right the direction and this area will work wonders! There is so much potential here. And we are super fed. They call Poway the land of eternal dinners! Lol!  

My new companion is Elder Jensen. I have worked with him before when I was in forth ward, he was my Zone leader. Now we are working together as Zone leaders. Super fun! He is very diligent and great at talking to everyone.

I am sad to leave the wonderful people of Otay Mesa but I am so excited for all of the wonderful work to be done in Poway!  We are currently teaching a few people but we are slowly but surely increasing the quantity and interest of the people we are teaching and at the same time finding new and creative ways to find them!  I am super excited!

Love, 

Elder Alger

We rode our bikes on exchanges in the the first rain in Poway and all of the gross stuff off of the road and onto our white shirts. Yuck!

I made pancakes for the first time ever. Not to shabby if I don't say so myself.

Fun in the apt.

Elder Jensen and I in front of the church after a day of hard work.

Good bye Elder Mahoney! Have a good time with YOUR trainee!

White chocolate tie that I thought was adorable! So I had to take a pic!

My Halloween costume! Lol!

Decorating cupcakes for less Actives!