McClain Mission

Mon, Jun 28, 2021, 9:01 AM to me Crazy week up here in Delano! Had the chance to go on two exchanges and both were out of the area, so I spent all of Tuesday down in McFarland and then all of Wednesday in Wasco. On Tuesday I was with elder Robison, and we had a Lesson with their friend Alejandro, who speaks some wild spanish so elder Robison was excited to bring me along for that, he said he usually ends up teaching by himself but was excited to have someone that can speak Spanish with him! He told us his whole life story even though I had just barely met him, and long story short he is working so hard to come closer to God, learn more about the book of Mormon, and give his attention to the missionaries because we are working to give our time to God. He had such a pure desire to become better. And we got some El Haurache Loco Fish tacos, absolutely the best. Finished the night off getting a picture next to the store from the movie! Then Wednesday I headed down to Wasco with the z...

Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 6:04 PM to me Hey everyone! Shorter email this week, just wanted to share a thought. Yesterday we sung Lord I would follow thee in our English program, a hymn, and then in Spanish we sang señor te sequiré which has a slightly different meaning. It directly translates to Lord, I will follow thee. Growing up singing this hymn, I always wondered why we say would. We say would because we are presented with various opportunities throughout our life to choose to follow him, but those opportunities are in the future and unknown, hence "would follow thee." However the Spanish version really stuck home with me. We know these opportunities to choose to follow the Lord will come, and we can choose know that we will follow him. So ask yourself, "would I?" Or "will I?" Yesterday we also shared a special musical number - families can be together forever. What an incredible truth. Brought me so much joy! Mission life was a blast this week! Had ...

Mon, Jun 14, 2021, 9:01 AM to me Hey everybody! We had an awesome week to start off the transfer out here in Delano. We also went to some crazy places. Have you ever heard of Alpaugh, California? Neither has anybody else haha. Smallest town I have ever been too. Our area was combined with the Earlimart area last week as missionaries are heading to original assignments and home, so we have about double the area to cover. Earlimart is a super small town in the middle of the fields, and has a few small suburbs that we had to head out to this week, so we got to see a bunch of new things. We went to one lady who had at least 10 dogs, goats, cows, an emu, and a bunch of other animals in her front yard, and that seemed to be on the pretty normal side for Alpaugh. We got a new companion, so elder Shoemake and I are now a trio, with elder Martinez! He is a native spanish speaker which has already been awesome for our learning and for teaching, and has been helping us to have a lot fun out h...

Mon, Jun 7, 2021, 12:35 PM Happy Monday! We had a great last week of the transfer out her in Delano and had a bunch of fun celebrating everything. Some highlights from the week: -went to get tacos as a district after district council on Friday. Still can't eat in restaurants or together, but close enough haha, so we took the tacos back to the apartment. -friday afternoon a member from the ward invited us over and gave us a Spanish rice cooking tutorial. Shared some crazy stories as well and sent us home with enough rice to feed us for a month. -We were walking around one afternoon, and I saw a bunch of people in their garage talking, so from the sidewalk I just said how's it going? And then my comp nudged me and we realized they were having a funeral. Oops -the sister missionaries had a baptism Saturday, so we all got to go to that! Baptisms are the best! -on Saturday night, to celebrate elder braithwaite going home on Wednesday, we all went to a Chinese buffet. Expectati...

Mon, May 31, 2021, 9:00 AM Hey everybody! Happy memorial day! I didn't find out that is was memorial day weekend until Saturday, I had completely forgotten and thats just how it is as a missionary, but we decided we would all take the day off from 8-6 to have a good holiday. That is the exact same time we take off every week on Mondays, but today it will feel a little extra special. Had a really funny experience this week. We recieved a referral for somebody that wanted to learn more that lives way out in the fields, so we drove out and found a small lot with some scrap wood, a largish building in the middle, and a small mobile home in the corner. We knocked the mobile home, and nobody answered, so we went to the building in the middle. It seemed like an office building of sorts, but it had the same address as the house, so we figured we'd knock it as well. We went on the side and found a door, and I knocked, and it came open a little bit, so we yelled out to see if anybody...

Mon, May 17, 2021, 9:01 AM What a week! Skyler was baptized yesterday! Such a great day. I have gotten to know him over the last month or so since I have been in Delano, and it was truly remarkable to see how ready he has been from start to finish to apply the gospel into his life. For him it was just a matter of finding the gospel and learning more. Yesterday we held his baptismal service at the chapel here in Delano, and it was an incredible experience. Elder Shoemake and I made the programs and planned out the whole service, and on top of that each of us gave a talk, Elder Shoemake baptized him, and I confirmed him a member of the church, so we had a lot to do. It was a little bit stressful knowing how much things depended on us, and just hoping everything would run smoothly and ward members would show up, but once things got going we started to relax a little bit. The best part of the service was seeing how excited Skyler was to make the next big step in his life. The spiri...