Dear family and everyone else,
     This last weekend was pretty fun. We had our ward Fall Festival. For dinner, we had pulled pork sandwiches, potato salad, and nacho's. It was all pretty good. After dinner, we helped be a part of door-a-treating instead of trunk-or-treating since it was raining that day. I bet it's going to be a wet winter this year here in California. I took a bunch of pictures for the whole event and all the doors that were decorated. We even had a non-member family show up--none other than Monica herself who we helped paint her house. Her husband, and 2+ of her kids showed up. We even took home some of the candy that they gave us to pass out. I was surprised that Monica was going to help us out with the candy to pass out since we are always poor.
     Monday, we had dinner with Sister Cassetta again. This time, we had a non-member at dinner and we were able to do a member home lesson. We mentioned the whole plan of aalvation but didn't go in depth. He thought it was interesting but he wasn't interested yet. He said that he will really think about talking to us more and taking up our discussions.
     Thursday, we accidentally called a member from Ripon ward who we thought was the member that was in our ward. They both have the same last name: Brother Roberts. We had him help us go out into the countryside again to contact some potentials. He was super nice, bald, and had an interesting mission back in his youth. He was called to the French islands of the South Pacific. He was the mission president's main man in keeping the missionaries on task since a lot of them were very lazy and very apostate. He traveled the mission doing some of the President's tasks such as reorganizing branch's, doing missionary/baptism interviews, keeping missionaries in line, and giving council to him of what he thought was the next best thing for the mission to do and become. Overall, he loved his mission. I don't remember the whole story since he talked for  the straight 2 hours. It sure kept us entertained. It's hard finding addresses in the dark in the countryside for sure.
     We had another dinner with Brother Cortez, and sister Cervantes. He gave the pineapple surprise again to all of us, especially to the new elders. Later that night, we taught Sally another one of her new member lessons of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We had a great discussion on faith, hope, repentance, baptism, and enduring to the end within the temple and gaining all the ordinances. That's about it for this week  Love you all.
Sincerely,
Elder White
 

                                The missionaries room at the door a treating

Dear family and everyone else,
     Saturday night was absolutely wonderful. It was a Broadway Musical By Popular Demand. They took the best scenes of some of the favored plays and gave a bunch of shorts. My favorite of all was "Adolpho" on "The Drowsy Chaperone."  In this scene, Adolpho was the man who appeared to be avoiding a lady in the house. They sang about his fame in the name. Fast, slow, high, and low -Adolpho. I think I would love to watch that play when I get home. Next was "Music of the Night" on "The Phantom of the Opera."  Another interesting one I got to learn a little more about was the play called, "Wicked."  The scene: "What is this feeling."  I didn't know much about it, except that it was closely related to Oz the Great and Powerful. Apparently, there is a song called, "Shy" on "Once upon a Mattress." That was somewhat interesting. A song about being shy is slightly weird, but whatever. The grand finale that we had to leave at, because the night was getting late, and we were about to 'turn into pumpkins', was "THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA" on the church organ!!! I thought it was unheard of to play anything that was not a hymn, but it was loud, and the crowd cheered! It certainly got me excited. We tried inviting a bunch of people to go, but none of our investigators or potentials showed up. Oh well, the show must go on.
     We also served at the cemetery again to prepare it for the winter/rainy season. We cut out a lot of grass around different headstones and put in new dirt to fill in the holes. Then we swept them off clean from the dirt. Today, we browsed the Bass Pro Shop as we went shopping. It was tall, and it was huge. They had some cool looking fish and overgrown trout just swimming in big tanks, then there were the artificial rocks, and a giant Sequoia tree in the main entrance. It was just unbelievably breathtaking. That's about it that happened this week. Things are extremely slow right now in teaching people. Love you all.
Sincerely,
Elder White
 

 Dear family and everyone else,
     Here is the news about the new transfer.  Elder Orgill is training Elder Little. Orgill has only been out for a transfer, so he's still learning himself how to be a missionary and learning Spanish too. The Spanish have 6 pairs of missionaries now. Sister Maya is back! She's with Sister Williams. I was playing Monopoly a little bit with Sister Maya. She is still her crazy, perky self, just as I remember her. Elder Silva just got done being trained, so now, he is  training Elder Manley. Sister Anderson has been in the area for a transfer after finishing Sister Talbot's training. She is now training Sister Shaffer--new to the mission as well. Finally, Spanish Elder Nielsen is training  Elder Gifford for his last transfer. They look like a totally awesome nerdy companionship. I totally love Elder Nielsen. It's going to be sad when he goes home at the end of this transfer. He's been a great friend too, so all together, lot's of people training (including me).
     This week, we welcomed Elders Schultz and Perry into the Northland Ward as our 2nd pair of Elders in the ward. We counseled a lot this week about the area. They got a new area book, and to first jump start their area, we gave them a potential investigators list to work on, along with some ward lists. We also coordinated our dinner calendar to see who can and can't feed a pair of 4. We got that figured out with Sister White pretty quick.
     My first District Meeting I conducted went pretty well for my first try. I panicked a lot on how I would keep the conversation going during preparations. The day came, and after we all got to introduce each other to one another, we went into the training. It stretched far enough that I had extra stuff that I didn't get to by the end, so that was a plus. This week I will have to see what I have up my sleeve. Then again, all good inspiration comes from the Spirit according to District Meeting wise. That's about it this week people.
Sincerely,
Elder White
 
                                   Elder White and Elder Beus at Texas Roadhouse!

                                        The new district Tyler is in charge of.

                                        Pumpkin pancakes from a member!

Dear family and everyone else,
     You all know that movie "A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Dy"? Well, I'm going to tell you all the adventure from last night of this transfer. So...President Palmer called me again. This time he said that I will be staying with Elder Beus to finish training him. That's good and all. I was happy about that. Then came "The News". He told me, "The Lord has called you to be a District Leader. Will you do it"? This time, I said that I didn't think that I would be able to do this one. Then his usual reply, "How about you go pray about it and come back?" So I did, and you know the answer I got from ALL Knowing Heavenly Father...He Told me to read Proverbs 3, and some of D&C 121 about Joseph's experience in Liberty Jail. After reading these, and knowing that this will be a small moment, I knew that the Lord's will was for me to truly discover myself as I help serve others by becoming a District Leader, for no master is better than his servant. The Lord served and atoned for us; therefore, I asked myself, why wouldn't I be able to do this small thing? The Lord did so much more beyond our own comprehension. I ask you all back at home, do you accept the calls that your Bishop's assign to you? Truly, these calls are from the Lord. We are all "Called to Serve.  Deny not the revelations of God, and have faith in Christ's Atonement. If we all have that solid testimony, all things are possible unto us. Be not faithless, but believe. Also, our area is being shared with another pair of Elders-Elder Perry and Hayden, so this is going to be really hard to find stuff to do and coordinate our efforts together. I will also need to split our area book and ward list in half so we both have an equal amount of work to do--even though there is no work to do since we have no real active investigators right now, just potentials and back burner people until they get unbusy. I heard that they are getting a nicer apartment than us. I thought ours was the best. They are getting a new apartment over on Button Avenue, so they will be somewhat far from us--about a 20 minute bike ride from our apartment.
     Well, now that I have spelled out my sob story, I will now tell you the excellent opportunities we had to serve this week. Some time this week, we were biking down Powers when we spotted a couple clearing rocks from their front yard. We offered our help.  They accepted, so as we lifted and moved the stepping stones and old river rocks, we talked about religion in general. We then mentioned King Benjamin in the Book of Mormon and what he said about service, "When ye are in the service of your fellow beings, ye are only in the service of your God." The wife loved that quick message, and they wanted to know more, so we set up a follow up visit for this next week as they went on vacation and were finishing up putting in turf/fake grass in the front lawn. They won it at a raffle thing. The city is paying them to convert to desert landscape. It's quite nice having desert landscapes or turf here in dry California. It helps save on water for sure. I can't wait to talk to them again about the full restoration of the gospel. The other opportunity we had was continuing to paint a ladies house again up in Ramus Village. She was referred by Sister Meyer's. Her name is Monica. We gave her a copy of a Book of Mormon, and her 20 year old daughter caught her eye on it on the counter and started reading it. Well, she couldn't put it down since it was so good, so we gave Monica another copy for herself to read along with her daughter. So we may actually teach a whole family for once instead of one person at a time.
     We went to Texas Roadhouse again with the Weeden's. This time, I brought my free appetizer deal for all to enjoy, and we got the cheesy fries option. That was good. We were celebrating Brother Weeden's accident returns. He got loaded and is sitting pretty happy now. We also had dinner at the Stake Center for the birthday's of anyone who is 75 and up. It was a good meal with lots of Chocolate Cake. It's been a relatively good week of service. This weekend, we will be helping out at the Stockton Dental Fair for all low income people that can't afford dental care. We will be assisting people back to their cars. We will pretty much be standing the whole time from 1:00 to about 7:00.
That's about it folks. I love you all.
Sincerely,
Elder White

Dear family and everyone else,
     The first thing I have to say is that I passed my 20th month mark on Tuesday. Now I just have 4 1/2 months left. This is crazy. Time has flown by so fast. Never take time for granted or else it's thrown away like any other old used thing. Then again, time can also be like an hourglass. It can be repeated over and over, but no particle is ever quite the same than when it first went through the glass. New experiences will always await us. We have a lifetime and beyond in the next life to learn until the perfect day. Next week, is transfer calls, so the next experiences will either be shared still with Elder Beus in Northland Ward, or somewhere, or with someone else, butI think I will stay here with Elder Beus and finish training him. After that, who knows, but President and the Lord.
     Tomorrow, we will be having team ups with President Brown, one of the councilors for President Palmer. He knows Elder Beus' family back in Mesa, Arizona. He lives in Tracy right now, so this team up will be very interesting. We plan on teaching Marcia Baker's son, Michael, the discussions. We already shared the restoration with him. I think our next plan will be the plan of salvation. He seems to slowly be changing already. He at least wants to learn from us. Sally's been sick again and been in bed a lot. I bet it has something to do with kidney failure or else diabetes, or both. I feel sorry for her. She has great desires to do the right thing. One day she will be able to go into the temple and do baptisms for the dead, and later other ordinances as well.
     Well, Marianne's back from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was a long month for her, but she's back. She found out what her real condition is. I can't remember the name, but it has something to do with her genetics, and it causes irritable digestive problems. It's not curable since it is genetic, so she has to deal with it the rest of her life. All she can do is treat a few symptoms, so we will be seeing her again soon as well.
     General Conference was pretty good. I liked the Saturday afternoon since it was so bold with it's messages. I don't have much else to say. I still need to review all my notes from Conference to remember it all. Oh yeah one more thing. It's slightly raining right now finally. It's never rained once throughout this summer here in California. Now the air will be clean for at least a day now that there is no more dust. It's been so dry. The soil is like sand here, so it feels like I'm on the beach but no ocean in the Central Valley. It's also quite cool. It gets cold in the evening each time these cold fronts move in. Then it warms back up. By the end of this month, it will never be hot again while I'm in California. This is my last Conference and last winter before I come home. So prepare ye, ye ends of Utah, for your White is drawing nigh. Mu-ah-ah-ha-hah!!!
Yours truly.
Sincerely,
Elder White