Week 67

I have had some good times in The Otay Mesa/ Imperial Beach Ward. I am sad to leave all of the good friends I have made but the Lord's will not mine be done. So off I go to Poway in the Lake Poway and Twin Peaks wards!

Week 66

It has been another crazy week in paradise. The San Diego CA Mission has been making a pretty big adjustment using Facebook and other proselytizing technologies. It is such a blessing to connect with
people in ways that simply were not possible. We are working out the kinks. It is pretty cool though. This week was a a wee bit sad. We didn't really have anyone come to church.😔 and one of our more promising investigators lost his baptismal date.

But on the bright side. PUPPIES, 🐶!!!  Yesterday we spent a good part of our evening helping rescued dogs. We had dinner in a park and on this particular evening and just a few feet away was about fifty dogs of all kinds being walked played with and other things to prepare them for there trip up to Colorado. These dogs are rescued stray dogs from the other side of the border. It was fun and they were adorable! We ended up adding the workers on Facebook and hopefully we can get them in touch with their wards in Colorado.

That is life here in Otay Mesa.
Love, 
Elder Alger

Week 65

Life back hur in San Diego is rul nice. 😁 We are living the high life again with next to perfect weather.🌅🏝 Teaching wise we are booked! It is partially because of the meeting we have almost every morning, but we are teaching a lot of people. Our mission has a little slogan or motto and it is "and in the San Diego California Mission we Find Constantly, Teach Repentance, and Baptized converts!" We say it every time we recite our purpose as missionaries with is, "To invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the Restored Gospel through faith and Jesus Christ and His Atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end." I love our mission! We are so excited to get to work and to lift each other up. I am sure your mission will be the same but the San Diego California Mission will always be the best! 😆

This week has been full of meetings. They were all good and uplifting and inspiring but it took a good chunk out of our regular proselytizing time. We did get. Quite a few things done too. We started teaching 3 different youth. All of which are fairly interested in what we have to say. And the most wonderful thing of all this week was getting Carlo to commit himself to be baptized on October 29th! We are so excited for him!🎉🎈

To top of the excitement this week, we were able to hear from our beloved Prophet and Apostles at General Conference! I am preparing me favorite notes from General Conference to share with y'all shortly.
But for now C' Ya! 😁

~Elder J. Alger

Week 64

This week was a week of exchanges. On Wednesday I spent all day with Elder Campbell, who is a very analytical thinker and reminds me a lot of my dad. It was a good time. He is very excited all of the time. And is always ready to get down to it. We had a lot of fun together and shared the Gospel to every creature! 

And then on Friday for exchange number 2 I was with Elder Sully. He is a great Elder. He was pretty fun to be with for that whole day. We taught a lot of good lessons and had a great time!

Update on people being taught. We have William with a baptismal date for October 15. He is a 9 year old kid who is a bit crazy but he has his heart in the right place and really wants to be baptized. We are also working with Juan and Stephanie and their daughter Angelica. The only thing stopping them from being baptized is their marriage! They are so close! We are getting them Closer and Closer to setting a date I have a feeling we will get them married in the next month and Baptized!

And last but not least Carlo! He kidnapped us last night. We started talking to him and then he asked us to get in his car to help him out with something and next thing we knew we were driving half way across the mission for In-N-Out burger. It was quite an adventure. The plan is that now that he is off of vacation he is going to get back to business with meeting with us. He is the best!

And fun fact today it is hotter in San Diego than Phoenix today! So I hope you all enjoy the weather swap while it lasts! 

Love y'all,

~Elder J. Alger

Loving life at the Laundromat!

Rain! I love it so much!

September 19, international talk like a pirate day. I thought I would get into character.

This shows you how close we are to Mexico 

San Diego style Mexican food!

Week 63

This week has been crazy!

Our district is awesome! We are buds and are pretty open with each other. I love it. 

We have made some serious ground in the right direction both in the district and in my companionship. But I won't get to into it too much here.

Second. Missionaries in the California San Diego mission are now authorized to use Facebook! It is very bitter sweet. It is given to us purely for proselyting. So no family and friends keep up,  just members and investigators which is awesome! We are able to share so much more and even live video chat lessons! It is pretty cool.

Now with investigators we just got William with a baptismal date which was pretty fun. We went into the lesson and started talking about baptism. Missionaries in the past have felt that his mother had reservations about him being baptized because he doesn't know enough which makes sense because he is 9. But this time we reassured her and him that we can teach him everything and he will be ready for baptism by October 15 and everyone agreed. It was awesome! We also started teaching Chico Washington, who came to church! We were pretty excited about that. They are a great family and prepared to move forward spiritually!

That's it for today folks!

~Elder J. Alger

Week 62

So I am officially in the brand new Imperial Beach Ward and officially sharing the Ward with another set of Elders. I am District leader over the four of us and both companionships are training. We are having a good time. We have literally spent some portion of each day this week with Elder's Sully and Goeckritz. We are trying to figure out how it is all going to work. We started working with 2 members that we are hoping to have called to be Ward missionaries, brother Harmon and Brother Hooker. Both of them are mid singles and both are really fun to be around. Brother Harmon basically spent his day off with us last week and went into straight missionary mode we even taught someone just off he street with him! It was so fun! And brother Hooker is a convert as of 3 years but just got
the Melchizedek priesthood. He hasn't been to church lately but he is joining us for a lesson this Saturday! And to top things off we taught a fantastic lesson to Kristina Krause and she committed to be baptized on October 8th!

Over all it has been another great week in paradise!

~Elder J. Alger

Week 61

Life is sweet! Our ward got dissolved and all the people got mashed together with half of what used to be Imperial Beach Ward and bada bing bada boom... the NEW Imperial Beach Ward is born!
We now have two sets of missionaries in one ward! Pretty crazy. We also found the most golden family who might text us back.... They have a lot of potential but we hope they stay motivated. We just started teaching Juan the man of the house in Stephanie and Angelica's home which means baptism and MARRIAGE is in sight!

Personally I have been loving life! I just realized that our companionship is too comfortable so we are officially doing to reach out of my comfort zone and become an even great missionary. I will let
you know what next week!

~Elder J. Alger

Sis. Nielsen from my old area met my companion and I at a taco shop, about a mile from Mexico, and bought us lunch!