Missionary work is AMAZING.

Date: July 01, 2013
Area: Simi Valley
Companion: Elder Hall

I love being a missionary.  Thank you everyone for the emails and pictures. OK.  First things first.

Mission Office Address:

Elder Corey David Harper

California Ventura Mission

3301 West Gonzales Road

Oxnard, California 93036

Home Apartment Address (Transfer ends July 30th):

Elder Corey David Harper

1868 Bishop Lane, #3

Simi Valley, California 93063

This week has been fantastic.  My trainer, as I said before, is Elder Hall, he's from West Point, UT and he's 22 years old.  He's really funny and knows a lot about the Gospel.  People think that we really teach well together and some people have asked if we knew each other prior to the mission.  He's been out for 6 months now, and we get along really well.

Simi Valley is a big city, I'm not sure exactly what you would call the exact area we live in, but we cover the Simi Valley Stake, specifically the Santa Susanna 1st Ward (if Alexis knows anything about that).  Google map my address, you'll see exactly where I live.  Simi Valley as a whole is not as wealthy as Ventura.  We actually live in the most ghetto area of town.  The first day I remember so well. We went out tracting in the ghetto of ghettos, and I remember not feeling scared or threatened in any way, and I knew that the Lord was watching out for us.  It's great.  That's true missionary work right there. ;) 

Since I don't watch the news, I guess California officially legalized gay marriage last week or so...we actually ran into a couple of gay guys and they said that they were getting married soon.  We're not very well liked down here, with the whole Proposition 8 thing...they started off really confrontational, but as we started talking to them we explained that although we don't support what they are doing, we don't look down upon them and we still respect them.  Everything worked out OK, it was just a little awkward..

As I said last week, the Ventura mission was split and the Bakersfield mission was formed today.  Like I said, I'm still in Ventura, so phew, all is well.  27 of us came out in my transfer. There's about 250 missionaries in my mission I believe, and 75 were sent from our mission to Bakersfield.  Only one guy who was in my MTC zone was sent there, so I'm grateful I'll still have some friends. My mission president has been out for 2 years, and so I'll have him for a year and the new mission president for a year.  My district has 8 elders in it, and my zone has about 16 elders total I believe.  We don't have any sister missionaries :(  We have bikes!  We ride bikes every day and we usually average about 6-8 miles a day, so it's not too bad.

This week went really well, we committed a guy named Eddy Brown to be baptized on August 31st!  He has some alcohol problems, but we're going to work with him.  He's 71 years old and he served in Vietnam and recently lost his wife.  He's a little crazy, but we love him to death.  We mostly teach white people, but we've ran into a few hispanics.  (They're mostly for the spanish missionaries).  We're working with a lot of less actives in our area too.  Remember Chuck?  He was called to be a ward missionary yesterday.  Awesome.

As far as food goes, I've not had anything too weird.  We eat at a member's house for dinner almost every night, and I think I've gained a few pounds...I'm trying lots of veggies and stuff but nothing too extreme.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed.  I heard something about Indian food tonight and a member's house...dang.

People generally are not very receptive, it breaks my heart to see people that don't listen to the Gospel.

Anyways, time is running short.  Love you!  Til next week!

Elder Harper