Season 14 Episode 4: Water Works (it really does!)

Hello Friends & Family,

This will be super short so I apologize. It felt like a really long week, but all is well. It is perfectly ok to have bad days, or bad weeks and this was one of them. Regardless I have a funny experience to share!

For about 2 weeks the sisters in Orangecrest have asked us to fill up the baptisimal font for a baptism, and we of course said we could! The baptismal font we were using usually took 4-5 hours to fill, and so we planned accordingly to wake up at 6 and fill it up. The day of the baptism rolls around and we had exchanges with the Arlington Heights elders. I was with Elder Lee, we excitedly went to exercise time in the morning and were returning home to shower. 

I checked my phone to see if any messages had come through and found that the Orangecrest sisters had texted us thanking us for filling up the font that morning! The only issue is that we actually hadn't filled it up that morning. We were supposed to start the water 2 hours earlier and had forgotten. I ran outside with Elder Lee, lost one of my flip flops, then ran back into the apartment to get the keys, ran back out, then ran back to get my wallet and we were off!!

Because of our time deficit, I concluded that we had to expedite the process by filling up buckets of water from the kitchen or the janitors closet. We couldn't find any buckets but found some cleaned out trash cans and began our quest! 1 hour and a half later of hauling buckets of water through the church, the baptisimal font was at where it should have been and we were able to meet the latest member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day saints and congratulate him! There is a video of us running and dumping buckets of water somewhere and I'll have to send that later!


That's this weeks happenings!
-Elder Vance

Season 14 Episode 1: Big Boi Riverside Zone

Hello Friends & Family,


This week we have successfully combined the Mission Inn Riverside zones. We have the largest Zone in the entire Mission, with a grand total of 16 companionships and four districts (32 missionaries in total). I made a slight wager of sorts with some sister missionaries at the start of the transfer that I would name the Riverside that " The Big Boi Riverside chat", if I did so they would make me brownies, I thoroughly enjoyed those brownies! (Unfortunately President changed the name after a day, which I agreed with)
Because there are so many missionaries in our Zone, Elder Hallsted and I will be going on quite a few exchanges. The original idea was going on exchanges with each companionship twice (so we could be with both missionaries), after some math was done we found out that if we did so we would be on exchanges 21 days or 3 weeks out of the six weeks of this transfer literally half the transfer would just be exchanges. We decided against that idea, and settled with 1 exchange for each companionship (and 2 if necessary).


We were incredibly excited to see Giselle be 

baptized this last Saturday, 

she has been taught for quite some time,

she grew up in the church but didn't get 

baptized at age eight. 

She had postponed her baptism 

for a little bit but we were 

surprised in early December 

when she called us and told 

us that she wanted to be 

baptized on the 12th of 

December. 

(We postponed one weekso her family could come)

 (She was baptised on the 19th)

 She was incredibly excited for her baptism and so are we!  

At the start of this week because it is the beginning of a new transfer we helped a few missionaries move to their new areas, and we also updated all the Facebook pages so that the editors of each page might be the correct missionaries in each zone.


The new apartment which we moved to is simply put, new! We moved just down the street of our old apartment, and now we live with the tech missionaries. It is a slightly smaller apartment, but everything is new including the floors (which is a strange thing for me to enjoy but they are sooo clean!) I also live near Elder Ottman now and he lets me know that, every single day as he visits us.

"Battle of wits"
- Elder Ottman (sitting next to me as I dictate this letter)

Merry Christmas to all!


-Elder Vance

Elder Vance saying Closing Prayer

Season 13 Episode 6: The short email

Hello Friends & Family,

This is a really short email. We didn't get transferred but we did move apartments. We are now living with the 

Tech Elders down the street. 

Riverside and mission zone are now combined and Elder Hallsted and I have a 16 companionship zone, 

the largest in the mission! 

Settlers of Catan is awesome. That's about all you need to know...

~Elder Vance

Season 13 Episode 5: The Freeze (part 2)

Hello Friends & Family,

There isn't anything to share from this week besides some local news.
California is getting put into another social isolation lockdown. However the Riverside county sheriff has released a video arguing against it and saying that he refuses to enforce it. This causes some strange situations for missionaries, however we will always remain cautious and as of now all of our in person meetings are cancelled.

We will see how this situation progresses...
Catch you all next week!
-Elder Vance

Season 13 Episode 4: Miracle Mayhem

Hello Friends & Family,


There were so many amazing Miracles this week, I will attempt to read a few of them that I remember!


To set the stage we had what was called "Zone accountability". this is a meeting where we set goals for the next calendar month, we got together as his own to discuss what we would do and what plans we are set to try to achieve goals reset and at the end of the meeting we typically have the goal of how many people we think will be baptized in the upcoming month. This is a meeting where we set goals for the next calendar month, we got together as his own to discuss what we would do and what plans we would set to accomplish said goals.

We generally went around the room and asked how many people have a baptismal date for that month, we asked everyone and we only could find one person who had a baptisimal date for the month of December.
During the meeting I had the strong impression to set the goal for 2 people, and one specific name came to mind, Jacky. Jacky is a Deaf girl I started teaching literally one year ago (that is strange to say on your mission) and we had previously invited her to baptism, but her mom didn't give permission for her to be baptised. I shared what I felt about the goal being set at 2, and when asked why I felt that way, I simply said "Jacky will be baptised in December".

Now here is where the miracles begin! We got a call late Sunday night from a person we were formerly teaching named Giselle. Giselle the member of a part number family, we thought it would be awesome if Giselle could help teach Jackie because they both go to the same class at CSDR. we figured we can have them befriend each other along this journey as they are both 9-ish years old, and we could teach them both at the same time. Giselle called us and told us that she wanted to be baptized, because she watched Beatriz's baptism (Which was amazing by the way!!). She told us that she wanted to be baptized on December 12th. Not only were we excited for Giselle, but if she came to Jacky's lesson andand told her that she was being baptized that might motivate Jacky to do the same. Miracle #1

Later that same night we got a call from the hermanas who have been teaching Jacky's sisters. Last week we took a day aside to fast and pray for her sisters to receive an answer when they prayed that they should be baptized. they had told the Hermanas that they had prayed and they received their answer, and not only that but they had received permission from their mom to be baptized, when they told us the day they wanted to be baptized we were shocked it was the same day... December 12th. Jacky's mom had given her sisters permission to be baptized, I believe she will do the same for Jacky. Not only will the excitement of her sisters being baptized help motivate her, but her good friend Giselle will likely be baptized on the same day! Miracle #2

Everything is aligning for Jacky to be baptised in December, and we have a lesson with her tomorrow with Giselle in attendance. Please continue to pray for Jacky to be baptised though! We could always use more prayers!!!

The Last Miracle I will share is that of Beatriz's baptism. All I can say is that it was a very tender and sweet experience, everyone in attendance especially over the resume could see that Beatrice had her happiness increased tenfold. She couldn't help but smile the entirety of the meeting afterward. We are very excited to welcome Beatrice into the Riverside ASL Branch as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints!

One More Story for my weekly email it's kind of a funny one. Elder Brady, the other Zone leader, I was visiting our apartment to be able to teach a lesson over Zoom using our Wi-Fi. I was in the same room as him and heard a familiar voice, it was Elder Tingey who had recently returned home from his mission. I suppose I shall call him Dallin (Brother Tingey) for that is his name now. I poked my head into the camera to say hello to my old friend, when the person they were teaching pointed at me excitedly and said "ELDER VANCE!". she then asked if Elder Cluff or Elder Ericksen were also there. She had instantly recognised me from our ASL page. She then showed us her phone where she had downloaded all of our videos and watched them repeatedly. I felt bad for disrupting the lesson in such a way, and then promised her that Elder Brady was a far better teacher and that she should listen to what he has to say! The crazy part about this, is that Avery (the girl) lives in Myanmar. I honestly have no idea where Myanmar is, but we think it is far away. The fact that she, without hesitation, recognised me and knew the names of every one of the other ASLders was a little frightening, but also exciting to know that our messages had reached so far! Avery will be receiving a shoutout in our next video, hopefully that helps get her excited to attend church


I will hopefully have more miracles to share next week!!
(P.S don't forget to sign up for "Light the World")


-Elder Vance

Season 13 Episode 3: Free at last!!

Hello Friends & Family,

There weren't too many events that happened this week. There is an increasing amount of excitement about the closest holidays! Mainly Christmas, to my dismay. whether or not you agree with me, I will share my opinion. I do enjoy listening to Christmas music before Thanksgiving has occurred. This bothers quite a bit of the missionaries I live around for they all enjoy listening to Christmas music essentially year-round...

I gave our social media training this past Saturday. I was training on how the mission might be able to have better accountability for each of their Facebook posts they put out. Upon counseling with my father, we came up with the idea of using an acronym to help missionaries remember the training and also to make it stand out more. 

We ended up with the acronym, "WITNESS" as missionaries are called to witness of Christ in all things, at all times, and in all places. During the training I happened to mention that I don't particularly enjoy Christmas music early in the season. it seemed the entire mission was out to prove me wrong after that. Including President Watson! Throughout the week present Watson messaged me videos of him putting up a Christmas tree at his house, and also gave me homework to listen to an entire Christmas album everyday for the next 365 days, or until I went home!

We are officially out of social isolation this week, which is Fantastic for our friends we are teaching, for now we can visit them in person which is typically much better than visiting them over the internet. This also means that we can baptize B this Saturday!

If you have not listened to President Nelson's latest address to the world, I would highly recommend you do so now. What he said is universally important, and helps us enjoy this Thanksgiving season in a greater and deeper way. As you might have seen on many social media platforms, there are lots of people who are using #GiveThanks please join with them in this effort, I think it would really cheer up the planet right now!

I'm sure there will be many memorable stories from this upcoming week, we have scheduled another Turkey Bowl and if it is anything like last year's Turkey Bowl it will be an incredible experience!


-Elder Vance

Season 13 Episode 2: Stay Positive

Hello Friends & Family,

A few things happened this week that I will try to talk about, I am using Google Voice Assistant right now to type out my email and if there are any typos that I blame Google.


This week we got a call from the Mission Medical coordinators and they said that I had taken the wrong test for Coronavirus at see if I was positive but I ended up having to take a second test it was a swab test was honestly did not feel like right having a swab down my throat, but after a few days I got a call saying that I had actually tested positive for Coronavirus. This was not a surprise to me because I had experienced pretty much every symptom that is possible to experience while having a coronavirus. I ended up losing around 5 lb because all I ate was carrots and Broccoli.


Medical staff on the other side of the phone recommended that I say quarantine for at least another ten days because I've been experiencing symptoms for about a week now. medical staff on the other side of the phone recommended that I say quarantine for at least another ten days because I've been experiencing symptoms for about a week now.there's actually pretty funny because I got the call when I was teaching ASL class, and so am I entire class heard that I tested positive and everyone started making jokes about it. It seemed the entire Mission knows about now because I'm one of six missionaries that tested positive for the Coronavirus.


On a side note our friend Beatriz was interviewed for baptism this past Saturday by one of our ASL Elders in training other Aamodt. He did excellent job (I assume because I wasn't actually in the interview) and we found out that Beatrice actually passed her interview and was going to be baptized on the 21st however we decided to postpone that because we will still be in quarantine at that point in time so we postponed it to the 28th and all the branch is very excited to see her enter the Waters of baptism and so are we!


There is also a very very exciting thing that happened this week our friend N attend sacrament meeting over Zoom. that morning we had called the branch president to ask if he had anyone in mind who might be able to fellowship with N to be able to be her friend and she makes a new change and attends Church. He didn't have anyone in mind and neither did we so we mutually agreed to come back after a day or two and ponder the subject to see who might be the best help for our new friend. After our worship service on Zoom we got a call from Sister Smith and she explained that she actually knew N from previously at CSDR (the school for the deaf here), she was very excited that N was learning from the missionaries and attended church and actually asked us if she could join in the lessons with.


We called N and told her about the experience which we had with Sister Smith, she also remembered Sister Smith from CSDR. Nitro also explained that she knew a few more members and that she recently had a call with brother Cochran, the elders Quorum president, about meeting with her with him and the missionaries on Friday to study with us. The surprising thing was that we actually didn't even know that she had set up an appointment by herself with a member! N actually ended up scheduling a few appointments with members and we never had to do it, she just wanted to learn herself and so she decided to set everything up herself!


Our A/C unit is broken again, but luckily It isn't too hot outside at night. However our apartment is 80 degrees right now. Oof


We found out that in order to order another video phone we could actually sign up as a business rather than having to prove that we're deaf or hard-of-hearing. This is excellent news because the other Elders as I type out this email or actually signing up and trying to qualify our business or rather the church to get another video phone in California Riverside.


There are a few other positive coronavirus cases in the Riverside Zone and so we are mostly in Social isolation. The few of us had RX showing symptoms however that should end early next week. It's kind of a bummer because nobody is able to get out and do service over it's kind of cramped up in their apartment, but we'll pull through this. There's a quote that President Watson shares very often and it really has given me strength during these times it is "We have Him, and He has us".

We found out that the new youth 2021 album is releasing a few songs early, we really enjoyed one of them the theme song and we've worked and began translating it for our next SL song post which should be coming out hopefully late this week if not early next week we have the translation finished we're now just practicing coordinating our movements which takes up the brunt of our efforts. It's a bit like coordinating a dance but only with your arms and hands and also a lot of your face which I definitely did not enjoy at the start of my vision but it's become so regular to make very large and grandiose facial expressions. We really do try to do our best for these videos, so we hope you all enjoy them!


That is about it for all the news from California Riverside, but I'm very thankful for all of your prayers and all of your emails!!


-Elder Vance