Sister Ellaina Vernon

Well Sister Fish left for Murrieta this week and Sister Kovach came here to Escondido. Sister Kovach is from Brighton Colorado so pretty close to home. She also was in the cultural celebration for the temple. It rained again this week, but we faired better in it. We still got soaked. The entire time Sister Kovach was so excited to be in the rain and she kept taking pictures. We someone who only speaks German which was a new one. Normally people only speak Spanish if they don't speak English. We also meet a super cute 17 year old girl named Cierra. She was so excited about the Book of Mormon that she said she was going to share it with her friend. When we called her she had shared it with her friend. Our ward had their ward Christmas Party. The theme was a night in Bethlehem. We ended up helping prepare the food which was shiskabobs. We cut up all the vegetables and skewered them. Then everyone dressed up and ate Bethlehem food for the party. A lady we had dinn

 SETTING UP FOR BETHLEHEM WALK  CAUGHT IN THE RAIN  SERVICE BIKING LOTS! We had a day where it rained a lot. We had several appointments and so we ended up biking a lot. We also did service and pulled out an overgrown tomato plant in the rain. We went through three different outfits that all got soaked. We went to a service and it was about ten miles away. . We biked past the San Diego Safari Park to get there. At the service we set up tents for their annual event. They have Missionaries help every year. It was fun, but we were tired when we finished. We also did a service setting up for the Bethlehem Walk. Several of the Churches in Escondido work together to do it. They try to make it just like Bethlehem when Mary and Joseph went there, with a Tax Collector, Inn, and shops. We were building Bethlehem. We got transfer calls and Sister Fish will be going to Las Brisas which is the ward I was in before coming to Bear Valley. Sister Kovach will be my companion. She

November 19, 2018 ELLAINA’S LETTER-ROCKS AND CARS Dear Family, Sister Fish and I were walking down the street and Sister Fish looks across the street and exclaims that this old man walking with a cane is falling down. He had a dramatic fall and we ran a cross the street to help him. We helped him up and walked him most of the way to his home and invited him to our ward Christmas Party. It was cool because if our plans would have work we would not have been walking down that street, but because of a lot of little things that changed in our schedule we were walking by right when that man needed help. We had exchanges this week and Hermana Pierce came with me in Bear Valley. She has never had a day being full time bike before in her mission, but she did really good biking. As we were biking down the street she yelled "Sister Vernon" and apparently she got hit by a car as it was pulling out. Thankfully she was fine and we just kept going with the rest of our day. I was real

We had Zone Conference this week and they announced some big changes. We will no longer eat with members during the week and only eat with them on Saturday and Sunday. We will eat dinner in our apartment from 4 pm-5, work on finding from 5-7 pm, and teach members 7-9 pm.  We did a lot of biking and finding this week. We have found out about a lot of people who moved or are not interested. Their was one guy we meet who when we said we taught about Jesus told us he could probably teach us something about Jesus. We listened to him share his incite on Christ and his feelings towards Christ. We had been standing listening to a while and were tempted to leave without really sharing anything with him. But we taught him about the Book of Mormon and how Christ visited the Americas. He said he will read it.  Danny who we have been teaching came to the first two hours of Church and we had a missionary who is leaving who bore an awesome testimony that was great for him to here.  L

November 5, 2018 There was a Tamale Festival so we got Tamales,  we had dinner with a family and their house had a really good view, we went to the temple!!!! The temple was this week. Sister Fish is 5' 11" ELLAINA’S LETTER We got to go to the temple this week. The member that drove us had not gone in a while and I think she had a good experience going with us. The temple is awesome and it is great to feel the Spirit. We went as a district to the transit station in Escondido to hand out water and talk to people. I was a little skeptical about it before, but it went really good. We ended up handing out a lot of Book of Mormons and having really good conversations with some people. One lady had an experience before and said that we were sent from God to talk to her. We helped a family move that breeds dogs and had like 8 dogs. It was a hard move because they used big boxes for everything and they were really heavy. We helped at a museum about the train

Last Monday I was busy packing and saying goodbye to people. I had a good experience in the Las Brisas ward and I know that I did what the Lord needed me to do there. I went to Escondidio on Tuesday and met up with Sister Fish. We live in a Studio Apartment that is connected to a members house, the William's. They are a young family with four little kids. Their house is at the top of a really big hill that we have to bike everyday. We taught a few people including two little girls who were recently baptized. The one little girl had really funny facial expressions letting us know she was confused. We did a lot of service this week. We organized a shed for a lady. It was a mess, but her stuff should not fall on her anymore. We then pulled weeds for her. We also did service moving mulch for a community thing. It was cool because their was also a Key Club helping and I got to talk to them. My arms were a little sore from moving all the mulch. We went to our ward trunk or t

The big news for this week is that we have transfers. I will be going to Bear Valley in Escondido and I will be with my MTC companion Sister Fish. It is another biking area. We had two of the people we are teaching come to watch a Baptism. Daniel came to one for someone in the YSA ward and Gloria went to one for a family friend. We had Stake Conference this week. We went to the adult session with Daniel and Gillian. One of the speakers talked about how in boxing a lot of novices want to go for the big powerful punch to bring down there opponent. But that the experiences boxer knows that it is the little successive jabs that most effectively bring down your opponent. He compared this to spiritual promptings and answers to prayers. That we sometimes want a big sign, but there are little signs from God that are answers to our prayers. It helped Daniel realize that he is not going to have a huge spiritual experience, but his answers are in the peace and comfort h

We visited a lady in the ward that has the most spoiled dog I have ever seen. We think her dog was a Yorkie. She even had a little puppy piano to play and home cooked meals for her special diet. She has puppy friends the huahua family (Chihuahuas) that are also spoiled. We helped a lady weed and trim her backyard. It was a big hill with a lot of tumbleweeds. The tumble weeds were fun to pull out because they are big bushes with one little stem holding it in the ground so when you pull it out it is pretty easy and then you get a giant bush and you feel good about your weed pulling powers. We had exchanges on Wednesday I was with Sister Bradford in our area. We met this guy named Anthony from Lebanon. We also had a lesson with Daniel and Gillian and Sister Mesa, the young Church service missionary that has been going out with us, came with us. It rained a lot on Saturday and we were out biking. It normally does not rain and no one knows what to do in the rain. A lady in a car dri

October 8, 2018 We watched General Conference and had a Spiritual feast. It is amazing how basically everything that The Prophets and Apostles teach is the same as what we teach as missionaries. I love that the Lord leads The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and that we are a Church of Revelation. Back with Sister Mabunga we met this guy named David as we were walking and we stopped and talked to him about the Gospel. He got excited and told us that he knows President Oaks and had dinner once with President Ballard. He likes to show off how much he knows about the Church. He loves the Church, but does not understand why following the commandments are important. He did not appear to have a desire to change and we did not have a way to contact him again so we finished the conversation and moved on. The other day Sister Miles and I were biking and ran into him again. We had basically the exact same conversation we had before with him, he was saying the same things as bef

We had both District Council and Mission President Interviews on Tuesday so we had a lot of meetings. We did a lot of finding this week. We found a man named that we started to teach. The entire time we were teaching him we thought he was going to start bashing us. He was talking about how he believed that only the Bible is the word of God and that is all we need to study. When we introduced the Book of Mormon and the First Vision he seemed to accept it, even though it is different than what he thought before. Hopefully he continues to recognize the truth that we teach. We helped at the Food Pantry. This time I got to help bag the fruits and vegetables. This was nice because it is something that is more needed than what they normally have us do. We helped Rochelle clean her home again. She needs the peace and comfort that gospel can bring, but she focuses on the challenges she faces and not her blessings. We visited a lady that is 101. She was in the bathroom when we first

Sister Miles first day of biking on her mission. It had been a long time since she had rode a Bike. We saw a really big spider, but you can not really tell from the picture. We had dinner at the top of a hill that overlooks Murrieta. Sister Miles after her first bike ride. Sep 24, 2018 Hello Family, Last Monday I bought a new bike and we also got Sister Miles everything she needs for biking. On her first day biking I thought she was right behind me and then all of a sudden she was way back. I waited a couple of minutes and she came riding along and said she had thrown up. I did not really know what to do for her and we were in a hurry so we just kept biking. Sister Miles was not feeling well on Tuesday so we stayed in almost all day, except for dinner. It was weird not going out, but I got a lot of studies done. We had a big Zone Conference with Elder Bangerter of the Seventy. He knows a lot of scriptures that he can just quote. It was a good meeting and we got

On Monday we did a end of the transfer hike in the morning. I was leading the way and we missed a fork in the trail. We then reached another fork and did not know which way to go. It took a little bit, but we made it to the rock which was our destination. Sister Mabunga said some last minute goodbyes to the people in Las Brisas. She wanted to say goodbye to as many people as possible. On Tuesday we sent her to her new area. I spent the day with Sister Jorgenson while we both waited for our new companions to arrive who were carpooling together. We were also coordinating the details with them and the lady who drove them. It ended up taking a long time for them to get here and Sister Miles did not get to where we are at until about 8 pm when the original plan was around 3 pm. Sister Miles is from Colorado Springs Colorado. I was surprised that they put us together when we are from the same state. It is fun because now when people ask where we are from one of us says, "We are

We got our transfer text on Saturday. Sister Mabunga will be going to Vista and I will stay in Murrieta with Sister Miles. I know that Sister Miles has been out for about 4 1/2 Months and that she has been in Carlsbad YSA before and this will be her second area. We had a good lesson with Daniel and Gillian at one of the Bishopric's home. They called Gillian to be in nursery while we were there. This will be her first calling as an adult and she seems excited. We told them that Daniel likes children and would like to go to nursery, and they must have taken that comment seriously. Daniel still needs to recognize a witness about the truthfulness of the Church, but he is reading his scriptures and praying. So his witness will come. The Bishop and our Ward Mission leader found someone for us to teach. The Raymonds are a Family that have not been coming to Church and they want their 11 year old son to take the lessons and want to come back to Church. They just need to actually do

September 3, 2018 This week we visited Krystal a few times. She is working on getting a temple recommend and the Bishop asked us to teach her the lessons. She has a little one year old around Kate's age named Kathryn. It is easy to teach her because she always testifies about the Gospel. We had a lesson with Daniel and Gillian. Last week Daniel said that he picked September 13 to get Baptized on. We looked into scheduling the Baptismal font then, but the entire building is being used by the stake. Daniel said they talked about it and decided on Sunday would be better than a Thursday. This was a blessing for us, because we were going to have to tell him that the day he picked would not work. Daniel was unable to come to Church though, because he had to work. He has Sundays requested off, but they keep scheduling him. Gillian came though and meet some of the other ladies in the ward in Relief Society. Leann and Ezra had their baby blessed in Sacrament yesterday. They were