Ask Heavenly Father...

Hello Everyone! This week has been awesome! It went by super fast! Still love being a missionary! Training is going good, we have our differences but things are working out.

Jose! He's been doing awesome. We have decided to change the date back to like the 17th. He’s still doing good but I really want him to develop a testimony about the Church and Joseph Smith before we talked about lesson 4! But he's doing awesome and we've started teaching his 2 older daughters too! They are super awesome and have had some super good questions about the Restoration! 

Yuli! We have been talking with her for a while now! She's been an investigator for quite some time now. We recently invited her to set her own baptismal date! She has been thinking about it a lot and hasn't decided yet but hopefully she will be put on date soon! She makes fun of me because of my spanish hahah! But she corrects me on it so its a win win. She recently just bought a trailer so we went over and helped her clean it! It was a lot of fun and we brought alexi with us and I think that helped strengthen our relationship with him as well! 

Alexi is the guy who's in the part member family. He's literally the best non member member I know. We have been doing super good with him and think we are starting to get to him! We kind of had a little lesson while doing service! We talked about what happens when you are baptized! It was probably the most bold I think I've been! I straight up told him that he's the best non member member I know and just wanted to know why he wasn't baptized and he was actually super chill with it! He was super open and we talked and we invited him to ask Heavenly Father about it! We will see what happens! 

We had TLC (Teaching Like Christ) this week! Its basically where all the people who get trained have to go practice the 4 lessons with the older missionaries and its a great way for them to learn and better their teaching skills! After, we stopped at a park looking for some gators! Didn't see any sadly… Then we went and got some shakes from a place called Jacks! 

That's basically my week! Super excited for General Conference! Kinda weird that it's already here again! Super pumped! Hope you all enjoy it and learn something from it!

His Great Work...

This past three weeks were a lot of fun! Hope you guys all had fun and stayin safe as usual! 

We had some awesome english connect classes that went super well! We also got to play volleyball with the ysa ward! We talked to two brothers there who only speak spanish and they are so funny!! Our branch started playing soccer and we had like no one show up for that lol. We had 3 people there and then like 10 missionaries haha but the people who came were absolutely insane at soccer! It was a lot of fun and we are really gonna try to get more people to come. There’s just not a lot of men in the branch that actually come to church. I can also officially dunk a dodgeball!! It was the first time I just wanted to see what would happen and I dunked it! 

Jose!! The guy we put on date a couple weeks ago, his baptism was supposed to be this week but we felt like we needed to move it back so we decided to move it. He will still get baptized and he is progressing super good! We also had another lesson with him this week.  He started feeling a lot of pain in his back. He went to the doctor and they told him his spine was inflamed. It started to get super bad. So we decided he needed a blessing. So we got permission that night to go over at like 10 and give him a blessing! It was my first time giving one in spanish! It was a super cool experience and the next day he told us that he was feeling a lot better! This for sure strengthened my testimony of the power of the priesthood!   

Update on training: It's very hard but at the same time it’s a lot of fun! I don't understand why I'm training because I literally felt like I got into the mission yesterday! Time is flying by out here! It’s crazy. My trainee is doing awesome! It’s been a grind for the both of us because my spanish isn't the best it should be but it’s getting better and the more I speak the more confident I am! 

We did some service for a member last week and it was a lot of fun. We were basically just destroying walls down of this shed in their backyard.  But towards the end they had two dogs in the back that were chained up. I went over and pet the big one. He was pretty nice. Elder Walker then proceeded to pet the little shaggy medium sized dog. He was kneeled down petting it. He looked away for a split second and it started biting his knee and Elder Walker took one step back then grabbed it with one hand by the neck and it started biting his hand so he grabbed it with his other hand as well and threw the dog the length of the 10-15 foot chain and while in the air it reached the full length of the chain and kind of yanked the dog back. It was very sad but at the same time pretty funny. All the member saw was him throwing her dog. She didn't know that it had started biting him so she was kind of freaking out but everything is all good now! 

We got to go do some service in Winnie!! The promised land of Texas!! We were on a little farm building a fence for some cows and cleaning up some stuff. It was the most fun I've had while doing service! This last week we got to go back to the person’s house with the shed and basically just destroy the whole thing. It was a lot of fun but holy crap we have been doing so much service! Then Elder Winward and I went and helped the other elders help someone whose inside of their house burned down! He was a very humble guy and was extremely nice to us.  They had taken everything from the inside of the house and whatever else burnt down and put it into a massive pile right in front of his house.  So we basically just moved everything to the side of the road.  I thought it was a super cool experience that I needed!

We had a super good zone conference! I got to see a bunch of the past missionaries I’ve served with! I also had to say bye to my dawg elder mataele, he got shipped off to his original assignment in Guam!

Recently in my personal studies I've been focusing on one question and going from there. I was reading a talk by Elder Bednar and there's a part where he shares a scripture that says "Wherefore, go ye and preach my gospel, whether to the north or to the south, to the east or to the west, it mattereth not, for ye cannot go amiss." And then he went on to say "I do not believe that the phrase “it mattereth not” as used by the Lord in this scripture suggests that He does not care where His servants labor. In fact, He cares deeply. But because the work of preaching the gospel is the Lord’s work, He inspires, guides, and directs His authorized servants. As missionaries strive to be ever more worthy and capable instruments in His hands and do their best to fulfill faithfully their duties, then with His help they “cannot go amiss”—wherever they serve." I love this because it does matter where you serve! The Lord is aware of what you need. He is there to help lead and guide us in our lives. It's awesome that we all have an opportunity to help Him in his great work! 

That was basically my last 3 weeks! Hope you all are doing good! Shoot me an email! I'd love to hear from you guys! Might take me a sec to respond but I will!!

God's Marathon...

Hey!! It snowed in texas!! We were trapped inside because of freezing rain. Then it got so cold that it turned into snow and then froze the roads and they were so slick so we had to walk everywhere we went. But hey it was a great time it was like 12 degrees outside and I ain't used to that, my body has  acclimated to the heat! We had transfers and I got a call from pres telling me that I'm TRAINING… I don't know what was going through his head when he had that idea hahahah. My trainee seems like a pretty cool guy! I just don't know enough spanish to be training lol. There were 3 elders that came in this transfer and they are both in a trio training but it’s just me training my comp/greenie and the rest that came in are sisters! His name is elder winward! Sadly I had to say goodbye to two awesome elders... my comp and elder orielly... but it was awesome to serve around them!

The last 3 weeks were super good! It was busy but that's always a plus! We had an awesome EnglishConnect class! Only like 8 people showed up this time but it was sick. There's two kids that are from Mexico that go to the ysa with one of the members but aren't members and don't know english so we get to go play volleyball with the ysa because no one can really talk to them. When they found out we spoke spanish they were surprised and excited! When we started talking to them they immediately used tu form which I hardly use so i was trippin hahah. But anyways they came to the english connect class this week and I got to talk to one of them one on one and it was sick we talked for like 20 minutes and I did a lot better than I thought I would’ve! We had a great convo in spanish and I learned alot about them hahaha. They are both hilarious! There names are Alejandro and Giovanni. They always ask me if there's any cute girls in Utah its so funny how much they love Utah. They are models for some exercise company its pretty hype hahaha.

We've had quite a few lessons these past few weeks but by far my favorite was with our guy José. We went over to his house and finally introduced the Book of Mormon and taught him the Restoration! We could honestly put him on date but we aren’t because he doesn’t understand as much as he should yet but I know if we asked him he would most definitely say yes. It was awesome. The spirit was very strong during the lesson. He wants to come to church next week with his family! He has the cutest little fam. They have a little girl who's like 1 and she’s adorable, always walks up to me and wants me to pick her up but I can't:( But the lesson was awesome and the whole family is starting to progress so we will see what happens!! We had another lesson with him tonight and it was pretty good! As I was bearing my testimony I had the thought to extend a baptismal invitation and I did and he excepted! We set a date for the 20th of this month! 

We walked to the Church to get a change of scenery for our studies and you guys wouldn’t believe what happened… We got there, went to the computer lab and elder orielly had to go to the bathroom so he left and then we heard this yell telling us to come quick! So we ran over to him to see the whole side of the Church flooded.  There was literally like an inch and a half of water everywhere.  It was just pouring out of the ceiling so we were running to go get the keys to get into where we thought the water shut off was. We had shut the door to the computer lab which had those keys and the doors were locked hahaha. It was awful and the moment but funny looking back at it.  We had called our president to ask him where the water shut off would be and he told us outside in one of those green box things. Little did he know the whole thing was full of freezing cold ice water. One of the elders got down, had his whole arm up to his shoulder in it and twisted the shut off and went back in and it was off! We were there for literally 10 hours sucking up water and drying the carpet with shop vacs but hey its all good now!! There was water under the gym floor but we did our best! The snow/ice started to melt then we had another little storm coming so we were told we can hurry and go get groceries and then be back by 4:30 and it was 3:30 at the time.  We were running extremely low on groceries and were booking it to the store.  We stopped cleaning the church and left. We got there and there was no shopping carts so we ran back out and probs grabbed like 15-20 carts and they were gone in seconds so many people were storming us.  It was pretty fun except we got to the store and there was like nothing. We got what we could and left. Then started cleaning again. It was quite an eventful day hahaha. 

This week my studies have been fuego.  I love personal study! I was reading 1 Corinthians 9:24 that says “Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain.” I love that last part. Do it so you can obtain! Study with a real intent. Something I thought of is we are running God’s Marathon.  He is there to guide us in our lives! I know He knows where we need to be and exactly why.  We had a stake conference and an area seventy came to speak and he said it’s not where you serve it’s how you serve. I’ve heard this before but this applies to everyone not just missionaries! Stand for truth and right wherever you are! I know God is all knowing! His plan is perfect, he doesn’t make mistakes. Wherever you are is exactly where you need to be. You may not realize it in the moment but I testify of this.  I did not want to be here in Texas. The first three weeks of my mission were probably the hardest 3 weeks of my life. BUT if you let God change you he will.  I hope you all know that as well!!  Let God prevail in your life!!  

Love you all and have a great week!!

Love you all be safe, stay happy, and have a great week!

Pics

My trainee, me and my trainer/ first comp

Dead dolphin...

Flooded church

Snow

Sanke