Our Mission! California Oakland/SanFrancisco: Numbers

Hello!

I'll share a few numbers as I share our week.

We took a friend to church yesterday. He hasn't been in a church since he was 13. We were able to visit 4 different wards. We don't get to all the meetings but we go to some here and some there, talking to Elder Quorum presidents and Relief Society presidents wherever we go. We love meeting so many people!

We got home at 3:00 and could hear our neighbors had this football game on. We don't have a TV but we determined we ought to tune in to see what all the fuss was about. Elder Jerman kept changing who he cheered for as he really likes the Chiefs but then we are living in the Bay area. . . Hmmm, no fireworks around here. Kansas City “Chiefs” won 25-22 over the San Francisco “9”ers.

This week we finished inspecting 9 missionary apartments, sat in on 2 meetings, spent 4 days at the Employment Center, and helped with English Connect class one evening. Elder Jerman wrote up multiple resumes while Sister Jerman worked at the front desk entering information for our job seekers. We started with 40 job seekers the end of October and have stirred up a lot of interest due to visiting so many wards. Luckily some have landed a job but we are now up to 110 job seekers! Help! We need help!

We enjoyed doing sealings at the Oakland Temple and then serving at the Visitor Center. The Visitor Center is open every day of the year, - yes, every day - every Sunday, and even Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas from 9:00am-9:00pm. This year over 1100 people came through the Visitor Center on Christmas Day. It is much quieter now.

When someone walks into the Visitor Center we greet them and get to know a little about them, then we offer to have them sit by the statue of the Christus and listen to a 90 second sound track of the Savior's words found in the scriptures (available in 32 languages) After, they can watch one of the 130 videos we offer about any topic they might be interested in such as temples, the Book of Mormon, Jesus Christ, living apostles, etc. There are also several interactive activities they can do like listen to Moroni 10:4-5 in 20 different languages when you open each corresponding book. You can see models of ancient temples and then look out the big window to see the Oakland Temple and read about its history. There are also huge windows that look out over the entire Bay area, including the Oakland Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge. We have Book of Mormons in 115 languages to give away. English, Spanish and Mam (a language in Guatemala) go out the fastest. Sometimes a family comes in to open a mission call in the missionary room, or a couple gets engaged outside on the temple grounds. It is all so fabulous!

The California Oakland/San Francisco Mission has missionaries speaking 9 languages - English, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cambodian, Tagalog, Tongan, Fijian, and Samoan.

We served one morning at the Food Bank distribution. Several church and community groups gather to load the food that is divided among them. Then we go to one of the local Methodist churches to help bag up 90-100 sacks of food to give out to those who line up outside. Later we enjoyed time at the Family Search Center doing family history and then a dinner out with a new couple who just arrived.

Saturday we got to go to Folsom and visit Jason, Taya and 2 little granddaughters. It was fun to frost sugar cookies, play "Go Fish" in the sunshine out on the grassy hill, go on a nature walk, and then I got to go to a baby shower with Taya. With 2 girls so far, it was fun to see a lot of blue!

We can hardly believe our eyes as we see the fields turning a bright spring green, tulips and daffodils blooming, and blossoms coming out on the trees. We are loving our winter in California! We are loving our mission!

Love Elder and Sister Jerman

Our funny neighbors