Lydia on Date and Easters

Hey everyone! This last week was such a great week. God is being very good to Elder Gull and I. We are seeing tons of miracles and it's just been a good time!

We taught Lydia this last week. She is doing so great! We taught her 3 times last week. We went over the plan of salvation, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and some of the commandments. She set her own baptism date for April 22! But her dad is out of town and wants to be there, so we bumped it to the 29th. Still coming up quick! She is so ready. She loves meeting with us and can see the difference it's made in her life already. We're super excited for her!

Also, Elder Gull broke his finger... He jammed it playing basketball... Satan works in mysterious ways haha! He will be all wrapped up for a good 6 weeks. I'm the lucky guy that gets to help him button up his shirt until then! 

We had a lesson with the Butters. Those of you tuning in for the first time, they are a part member family we have been working with for a while. Janet is the non-member. She is from Nigeria and was raised Catholic and is now Christian. She comes to church often and loves it, but isn't quite ready to join it:) We have a lesson with her tomorrow. 

We had some exchanges last week with Elder Fox and Elder Owens in the Meadowview Ward. They're great guys! We had a lot of fun and learned a lot.

Easter was yesterday and it was a good day! Because of General Conference and Stake Conference we haven't been able to take the sacrament for 3 weeks! I missed it. I could tell what a difference it makes! We had Easter Dinner with the Slussers. They are one of my favorites! 

This next week is transfers. I can't believe they are coming up again already. I am praying Elder Gull and I stay together. He's one of my favorite companions and we are doing good work and getting a lot done! 

I love you all! Have a great week!

Elder Kapp

Lesson with Lydia and Joe

We got to see Elder Phillips! He was one of our AP's and one of my favorite missionaries!

Elder Richards when he was in town with Elder Miles

Elder Gull and I at Freddy's Burgers

Easter dinner at the Slusser's

#MakeTemeculaGreatAgain

HOLY CHICKEN!!!! 

This last week was CRAZY! It feels like we had stuff going on every day! 

We had zone training meeting on Wednesday! All the days leading up to that we were preparing for that and doing visits. It went really well! Sister Thomas came to it and she enjoyed it. Right after we had interviews with President. 

Wednesday night we got a call from some elders asking for a blessing. Elder Gull and I felt like it would be good to take them out for some ice cream and talk for a bit. We felt like Chick-Fil-A was the place to be. It just so happened that Calvary Bible College was doing a fund raiser for a mission they are going on soon. We were a little nervous because sometimes members of Calvary like to bash... And half of Chick-Fil-A was just straight Calvary Students! Everyone was looking at us when we walked in. We sat down in the corner and after a few minutes 2 girls came up and asked us what we believed... WE thought we were about to get bashed. However, we ended up talking to them for a good 30 minutes. I told them to check out the Easter Video and gave them a pass along card with our number on it. The next morning I got a text from one of them asking for a Book of Mormon!!! So we dropped that off to her and she asked if we could meet sometime to answer more of her questions!

Wednesday night we also exchanged with the AP's. I was with Elder Higginson. It was great! We taught Lawrence, a less active recent convert and he opened up with us about some things he's struggling with. We are hoping to meet with him weekly and help him get back on track. We also taught Renn, another LA/RC. She is a senior in high school, but 19 and doesn't go to Young Women's, so she is going to start coming to the YSA.

Friday we had quite the day! We heard tons of sirens and saw there was a car crash, so we decided to check it out. We parked by this complex and walked down this gutter down to the crash. Along the way there was a coyote!! Elder Gull got a  sweet picture with it! We got to the crash and we ended up regretting it... A motorcycle hit a car and the motorcyclist didn't make it... Not a pretty sight... 

Saturday we had adult session of conference and lots of service. We helped the Bowens move a bed. They live in the Chaparral Ward and their 13 year old son is not a member, but they want Elders to teach him. So we've been working with him. 

Sunday we had Stake Conference. We sat by our investigator Lydia. It was her birthday. We gave her a mini statue of Christ and a personal Hymn book. Her fellowshipper got Lydia her own set of scriptures with her name engraven on them! She was so excited about it!!! We have a lesson with her this week. We later found out our mission President talked to her after and he told us that she was excited to get baptized!!!

Sunday night we had dinner at our Bishops. He invited his neighbors across the street! Bri and Garret. He's a marine and she is a volleyball coach. We shared the Easter video and they loved it! We are going to try to stop by again and see how they're doing!

Today for P-Day I went to Pauba District activity. We went to the driving range at the golf course! Later we are making shirts with the Meadowview District. 

Things are really starting to pick up for us! We are super excited!

I love you all! Have a great week and a Happy Easter!!!

Elder Kapp

                                                    Helping Mike with his truck

                                                      Elder Gull and the coyote

                                                         

                                                             Temecula ZTM

                                                       Golfing in Temecula

April General Conference... What a blessing...

Hey everyone! 

This last week was a really slow week. We were anticipating tons going on, but that just wasn't in the cards for us. We did have a great lesson with Lydia though! We saw her on Tuesday. We taught her the restoration and the Spirit was super strong! She told us that she wanted to be baptized and we asked her to pray for a specific day to set as a goal. Our second lesson with her fell through and was rescheduled to tomorrow. She watched conference and I'm sure she loved it!

We went to a lot of meetings this last week. We also had exchanges with Temecula Ward. On Friday we had MLC. That meeting is always so great and spiritual, but holy chicken it's long! We are still trying to figure out what exactly we need to do to find people to teach. We are thinking about pulling out the good ol' iron stallions (pedal bikes) and hitting the pavement. But then I remembered I've been in a car for over a year and I'm probably not good to be as enthusiastic about the idea after a few minutes.

General conference was a blessing. I loved how it talked about the plan of salvation, retaining a testimony, the Book of Mormon, and the importance of families, specifically, the importance of parents raising their children to have good beliefs. On my mission I've seen so many families where the kids are not active because the parents let them choose at a young age if they wanted to go or not or they gave them too much freedom. Honestly, I am blessed my parents didn't give me a choice. It's not because their manipulative or brainwashing. They were raising me in the best way they knew how. Because I stuck with it I was able to see how much it blessed my life and now I am where I am now. The gospel makes me happy. I am glad my parents gave me the chance to be raised in it.

I love you all! Have a great week!

Elder Kapp

                                                      Bass Fishing with the AP's

                                      Elder Gull and I at a leadership meeting we held.

                  Home sweet home! (we stole a selfie stick we found in another apartment)

                                                        Bass fishing this morning.

                                                                March MLC

                                               Elder Gull and I emailing

New Investigators - Lydia @ the Baptism

This last week was a blessed week! We were able to have a ton of fun and see lots of miracles. The missionaries we have in the zone are some of the best in the mission. They are seeing lots of miracles and finding tons of new people to teach. They are working super hard. It's great for us because they are contacting and sending us lots of referrals :) That's always a good thing.

So one of the miracles we saw from this last week was Lydia. She was raised going to church, but was never baptized. Their family stopped going when she was young, but one of our members invited her about a month ago and she has come to church every week. She goes to the activities and expressed her desire to be baptized. We invited her to come to a baptism service with us on Saturday. It was such a good service! After we set up a lesson with her for tomorrow! We are super excited!!

We also got a referral from some elders in Murrieta. They said this girl came up to them at a gas station and said she had Mormon friends and she thought she would like being Mormon, too. Sure enough she lives in our area. We gave her a call and we are going to set up an appointment with her for this week! Not too bad!

I'm excited for conference. I was thinking about scriptures the other day. There are parts in the Book of Mormon where the prophets say they didn't know exactly why they were writing what they were, but they felt like they should (for our day). But honestly, we have a prophet that speaks to us every 6 months and tells us EXACTLY what Heavenly Father needs us to know for RIGHT NOW! We should take every talk seriously! Each talk is scripture for our day. I am super excited!

I love you all! Have a great week!

Elder Kapp

Transfers and Milkshakes with Butterfield Stage

This week was crazy! Transfers were nuts! Every area in our zone had at least one missionary transfer except for one. We had 3 companionships white wash in with greenies, so we had to help them with getting everything figured out. We did a lot of running around and introducing members to Elder Gull. Elder Gull and I are having lots of fun! He's a great guy! 

We had lots of crazy stuff happen. One of our less actives gave us a call and had a bit of a break down. We stopped by his place and he had groceries and stuff all over his yard, but he wasn't home. We haven't heard from him since. I guess that was the welcome Elder Gull got to Temecula.

We weren't able to pick up any new investigators this last week, but the missionaries we have in our zone are incredible! They stacked out zone! Temecula has been on a bit of a struggle for a while, but things are picking up a ton! At zone greet, Elder Gull and I made the theme for the transfer, "Make Temecula Great Again!" We are already seeing miracles left and right!

On Wednesday we were at the ward talent show. For the closing act the Elders quorum was doing a game show type thing where people volunteered to go up to win a plate of cookies. What they were doing is having them draw 3 random ingredients from a hat (it was super nasty stuff! Veggies, cheetos, gravy, hot sauce, chocolate, mustard, etc...), then they made a milkshake out of it and if they drank it they got a plate of cookies. So they were finishing up and Thomas and McKenzie, two YSA aged members in the ward, started chanting "Missionaries! Missionaries!" and everyone joined in. Then Brother Downs stood up and called us out. So we go on the stage and they didn't have us draw out of the bag, which we thought was weird. After a few minutes they bring out these shakes and it smelled NASTY! They had Elder Gull and I race and I started drinking. It turns out they put EVERYTHING in it. I almost threw up after I swallowed it. It was the nastiest thing I've ever tasted. SO BAD! The guy that made them didn't expect us to drink it because it was so bad, let alone drink all of it. But we did it and got our cookies. Best of all members made a video of it and sent it to our parents. 

No pictures this week!

Love you all! Have a great week!

Elder Kapp

Chris Goris and Transfers

Hey everyone!

So transfers are this week!! I am staying here and Elder Gantner is going to Del Mar! Elder Gull will be my next companion. I am super excited for that! He is one of my good friends in the mission and we have a lot of good missionaries coming to the zone.

We got some bad news last Wednesday. We were teaching an older man named Chris Goris in the family ward. He was excommunicated over 40 years ago and recently started coming back to church and expressed to us how he wanted to get baptized again. We taught him the lessons and he was very scared to talk to the bishop. He had a lot of guilt and didn't feel worthy to do so. We encouraged him and after like 3 weeks he finally met with the bishop. Unfortunately that week Chris had a bad fall. We didn't hear back from him and his wife (who is not a member) told us he wasn't doing well. 2 weeks ago we stopped by and dropped off a talk for him. The talk was "His Grace is Sufficient" by Brad Wilcox. His wife said she would read it to him. This last week she called us informing us that Chris had passed away. He died 2 days after she read the talk to him. She expressed how much he appreciated the talk and how much he loved us stopping by and coming to church. We were sad that he was not able to get baptized in this life, but we both felt a feeling of peace knowing that he had all he needed to pass on to the next life. I know he's learning now.

We also had a couple really great stop bys where we shared messages and the families expressed that it was answers to prayers. One of the lessons was with 2 recent converts, Gia and Renn. They are going through a lot right now and were kicked out of their living situation. We shared a message of hope and Renn, the daughter, texted us that day and said she prayed the night before for help and it was answered in the lesson.

I am so grateful for the spirit. We can't take any credit for the miracles we see because it is through that Holy Spirit that miracles have been brought to pass. I know that as we strive to be obedient to the promptings and live worthy of the companionship we can see miracles in our everyday lives. Heavenly Father promises us the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost after we are baptized and keep our covenants.

I love you! Have a great week!

Elder Kapp

                                                        Lunch at the Thompsons

                                                                    Selfie from MLC

French Lesson with African Refugees

Hey everyone! This last week was such a fun time! We had a lot to do! We haven't been teaching any investigators this last week, but we are helping grow and strengthen the ward and branch. We have had a good time too! 

We went on 2 exchanges this last week. I went with Elder Marchand on Tuesday and went with Elder Sharp on Saturday. Both were really great and we were able to stop by and teach some people!

We had a super cool experience on Saturday! We went to teach an active member the lessons and her non member friend was there and we taught her the Plan of Salvation! It was cool! I don't think we will teach her again, but she for sure got a lot of questions answered.

The best part of the week was Saturday night. We got to go down to Carlsbad to teach a French lesson. No, I don't speak French, but I get to go with my companion to teach. We taught two refugees from Africa, Leticia and Rita. The crazy thing is the family that found them and is being the fellowshippers lived in Switzerland a while ago and knew Elder Gantner and his family! The lesson part was incredible. It was amazing that I didn't know the words being said, but I could understand what was going on because the spirit was so incredibly strong. Leticia is so prepared. Rita wasn't really feeling it. I can't even describe the feelings I felt as the First Vision was shared. Leticia started crying. At the end it wasn't even a question. I could tell without knowing what was said that Leticia had just been invited to baptism and accepted. I don't think that's the interpretation of tongues, but the Spirit knew how to speak to me so I knew what was said. It was a special moment.

I love you! Have a great week!

Elder Erik Kapp

                                                                           Pictures from MLC

                        We did visits with Brother Ford and this is the car we took :)

                                                          Leticia, Rita, and the Price Family