Week 36 in Mesquite, Texas

Wow so this week was fun. To start out we started teaching a girl named S. She has a couple friends in the church and she comes almost every week and wants to get baptized. Elder H started teaching her and her husband last transfer but her and her husband work alot. so they never had time to have the lessons, but S. wants to be baptized so bad she wants us to come over and teach her while her husband works because he works forever. the husband wants to be there but he is always working. we taught S. twice this week and the second time we taught her we taught her  the gospel of Jesus Christ and at the end she asked us "so how many more lessons before my baptism?" we told her the lessons she has left and she said "we have time, teach me more." so we went over tithing, word of wisdom and chastity. That took about 5 minutes. After she let us go outside and see her horses and miniature horses and chickens and bunnies.

Next, one of the bishops counselors had a cool story. So while he was at work his Secretary gave him his mail and in the mail was an Ensign and she asked him "I didn't know that you were LDS" and he said yes and asked her how she knows about the church. she replied "my daughter is LDS and so is her husband." she has even fed the missionaries before. her daughter is really less active but we had a lesson with them and they were really exited to come to church again. They couldnt come this week because of work but they said that they will come next week for sure.

Next story. So while we were knocking doors we knock into this lady named C. She answered the door and shouted "oh wow its the missionaries, it is sooooooo good to meet you! I have a friend who is mormon and she served a mission in canada. i love her. Tell me about Joseph Smith. i have heard the story but i dont remember it." WOW. we started to tell her but she cut us off mid sentence and said "thats amazing. i have a friend her name is L. she lives over there and she is 95. lets go over there. she will love you guys!" so we went over and C knocked on the door and L answered and said hi. C introduced us and said that we have a message to share. L said no thank you because she had another guest trying to sell her some electricity plan. C said thats ok we will be quick and pushed us through the door. we sat down and C started to talk to L and C just kept talking and talking. the salesperson decided to come back another time. so an hour later we finally finished a lesson with them and they were not interested. but we had another appointment so we left them with our phone number and left. two days later we were knocking and we started on a street thinking that it was a diffrent street. but lo and behold guess who we found, C. it was the same street. she started talking to us. and then she told us about another person she knows who is mormon who lives down the street and said that we should visit her. she said that she would call them. so we headed over to the house and we knocked. a lady named L answered and we intorduced ourselves. she told us that she was baptized in mexico and she hasnt been to church in a while because of her husband. she then told us that most of her family is inactive except for her brother who lives in "FARMERS BRANCH". i asked her who it was and it turns out it was the cool gospel principles teacher. wow right small world. she was more open after that and we gave her as a refreral to the spanish elders. amazing right.

Another thing we did was help one of the spanish members with her Ice cream  shop that she just opened. we helped her with the Grand opening. brought costumes and gave them to us. and said to stand out front and wave. she had Micky mouse and Mini and Elmo. so we fliped coins to see who would be who. Elder M a 6 foot 5 200 pound Polynesian got Elmo, Elder H got Mickey and I was stuck with Mini. so that was fun. it was about 100 degrees outside and i was drenched afterward. it was fun though. all the little kids were scared of Elmo because he was a giant. it was so funny.

hope you had a great week.

Week 35 in Mesquite, TX

OK, so this week was not quite as exiting as last weeks but there were a couple of things that happened. first off my companion threw me under the bus. At our first ward council meeting last Sunday (my first Sunday here) my companion told the bishop that i would be willing to give a talk if he needed one in the future. Then on Wednesday we had a meeting with the bishop to discuss the ward and the bishop assigned me a talk. He said that i would fill the time for the youth speaker. Then he told me that my talk would be during a farewell for H. H. and there were a ton of people there. So i talked about time and gardening. How the Lord often refers to his work as a garden and how it is hard to tell sometimes if the fruits or vegetables are ready yet. I compared it to a man who was waiting for his tomatoes to grow and how there were no tomatoes growing, but after he started watering it and digging around it he realized that what he thought was a tomato plant was really a potato plant. and he was able to bring forth much fruit, and stuff like that. Then the man was waiting for big red bell peppers on a Jalapeno plant and he was waiting for his watermelons to grow and ripen from their orange color to bright green. and how he was confused and asked the farmer Old-Mc-Farmer-Heavenly Father for help. and how Heavenly Father told that those watermelons were actually pumpkins. So sometimes we think that people are not ready when they really are ready and we just need to ask and invite. I was glad that my talk was first because after was this really great musical number by H. H. family and it had most of the audience in tears and H talk was amazing. He talked about being an example. He did a great job.

Now on the the more funny part of the week. So we are teaching new member lessons to a girl named M. She was baptized about a month and a half ago . But anyway we do a lesson with these small rubber bears with a light inside when you hit it. We do the Gospel of Jesus Christ (faith, repentance, baptism, holy ghost, endure to the end) and we start by saying that you are clean then we draw on him every time he sins. After that we say he meets the missionaries and gets baptized and throw him into the backpack and pull out a new bear and say he is clean. Then we hit him and we say that he has the light of Christ or the holy ghost and then give it to them. What happened that was funny was that M. is a little sensitive and we drew on him and started to tear up. then my companion thought it would be funny to start to cut it up. and he cut an ear and leg off. and M. is now horrified. After we put the bear in the backpack and pulled up the new bear she said" that is not the same bear!" we ignored that and tried to continue with the holy ghost my companion hit the bear and the light didn't glow. We realized that it was broken. Then he said that he needs to get baptized again and put it back into the back pack pulled the light out from the other one and ripped a hole in the new one and shoved the light in there. He pulled it back out and the bear was deflated and the face had sunk in. It looked terrible. But when we hit it it would not turn on. so my companion reaches his hand in the bear and grabs the light and throws it on the ground and it lights up. then he shoves it back in. and M terrified says"your ruining it"  then we finish the lesson. after she wanted to see the other bear and she wanted us to fix it. so we cleaned the dead bear and she made me melt the leg back on. and that didn't turn out to well. i ended up setting it on fire. after i blew it out the leg had melted off the body and now it looks like a burnt amputy. lesson gone terribly wrong.

My last story for the week was that I caught a chicken. We were doing service at a members house by fixing a fence and they had chickens. so naturally i just had to catch one and hold it. it was pretty exiting. i didn't have my camera so i don't have a picture but another missionary took pictures and i will get it from him and send them to you. 

well that is that. i know that the church is true and y'all have a great week.

 

Below are some pictures taken from some amazing people down in Texas and sent to us via text messaging and Facebook:

 

 

Week 34 in Mesquite, TX

Before I forget here is my new address: 2821 Franklin drive, Mesquite Texas 75150.

OK this week was great and I love my new companion and I love my new ward and I love my new apartment. First off, yesterday I got to go see the baptism of another investigator. Her name is F and her daughter J got baptized as well. It was so cool. After the Baptism, F bore her testimony and it was soooooo strong. She was crying and the spirit was sooooooo strong there. It is cool because I got to see the whole teaching process with her. I found her and taught her and got to see her be baptized. It was a great experience.

This area is so great. Last transfer they had 3 baptisms in an english ward!  Crazy right. So right now we are in teaching recent converts and finding mode. We do have one solid investigator named M. her husband is a member and she is Catholic. I have had one lesson with her and we taught the Plan of Salvation. She said that it made sense. Then after the lesson we asked her how she thought that she would recieve an answer to her prayers and she believed that it would come from a sign not from a good feeling. So we thought that it would be a while before she said yes. Then the next day we get a 9 page text from her. Usually that means that they are dropping us, but it said that she got her answer. She said that at 4 am she was going home from work and she had parked her car at the 4 story below ground parking lot and as she was comming up she saw a butterfly land on her windshield and ride with her until it reached freedom outside. As it flew away a picture of Jesus popped into her head and there she knew that the church was true. Awesome Right.

So now I am done with the spiritual side of my week. Let me tell you about the funny stuff. First my new apartment has a washer and a dryer so I dont have to spend money at the laundry mat. Also we found a recliner in the dumpster and we cleaned it up and it looks great and feels great in our apartment. My new companion Elder H is so great. We get along really well. On Friday was free Chick fulay or however you spell it. A member made us cow shirts and we got free chick ful ay.

So we did teach a lesson in Spanish last week and here is what happened. We taught the atonement of Jesus using a couple of pennies and some ketchup. We put the dirty pennies in the catchup and they turn clean. One thing I try to do while speaking spanish is try to change my accent to sound better. Here is what I said in spanish. all you spannish speakers will laugh. I said. vamos a poner estos penes en el catchup. los penes representa nosotros y el catchup representa el sangre de cristo. e el sangre de cristo va a limpiar nuestro penes. so in spanish a penny is penny. and i said pene (pen-A) which is penis. So I said in english that the penis is us and we will put the penis in the catchup or the blood of Christ and our penis will be clean. The Hermana there caught me right there and had to correct me. it was soooooooooooo embarrassing.

 

That is sad that Cookie grandpa died. The kids will all miss him at church. 

 

I am exited for Mikaela at camp I hope that she does well. I know that she will have a blast though. Who is all going that I know? 

That is amazing how good Taylor did coming off of a sickness. 

The bible has a lot of cool stuff in it doesn't it. You just have to know how to interpret it. That is why i am soooooooooooo glad that we have a prophet on the earth. If we didn't have him we would be just as confused as the rest of the world. I am also grateful for the Book of Mormon and how plain it is. I have found that all I need to teach is the Book of Mormon. I have stopped carrying the bible around. People know about the bible, but if you want them to learn the message of the bible you need the Book of Mormon to explain it. If someone is not going to except the Book of Mormon and the Spirit that it brings they won't except our message. But once you have that solid foundation with the Book of Mormon, the Bible makes so much more sense. 

I am glad that you are doing well in your class though. love you so much.

 

That was my week so far. I hope that yours was as great as mine.

Love you all.

Baptism

Free Chick-Fil-A night

Week 33 in Farmers Branch, TX

I AM HEADING BACK TO ENGLISH!!!???!!!!

Yes i got transferred to Mesquite. It was at one point a Spanish mission, but it changed to English. I AM NEVER GOING TO LEARN SPANISH. My new companion is named Elder H.

This is what I am leaving here that is new. We finally got furniture in our apartment and a whiteboard. We printed out a map of our area and put that on the wall. We just got a blender. And I am leaving a golden investigator. Her name is F. She is from Honduras and has only been here 4 months. She has accepted everything and she had already been following all of the laws such as tithing, fasting, and sabbath day (not with our church but that changed as soon as we met her.) We met her 2 weeks ago and she is ready to be baptized this Sunday. We had planned for the baptism to be in three Sundays, but we moved it closer because she is that ready. I will be able to go back Sunday for the baptism

The other exiting thing this week is that I got into an argument with a drunk Mexican. We knocked the door and as he came to it and let out a series of colorful words and then said in English "Well if you are going to teach me, I will teach you." I replied back "We are missionaries and you are drunk, I will give you a card and call us when you are sober." He called me a chicken and I said that I am not going to teach a drunk guy because you won't remember anything. He called me a chicken again and I told him that Jesus can help you with this problem, but you have to sober up first. Then we left with him calling us chicken. He didn't even accept my card. Oh well.  Hopefully my spirit touched him enough to change. 

Here is a selfie of me and some pictures of the cool members in my area. This is the R. Family and this is their dog Susuki. And this is M A. He is the one that baptized F. He works at a supplement factory and makes work out power that is illegal to sell in the US. It is sold in Australia. He gave me a bottle of pre-workout power for free. Don't worry this is the legal stuff, i think.

Oh and i don't know if i have showed this to you yet, but I make planner covers for my planners. Here is mine right now. One more cool thing is that while we were tracting my companion found a 50 dollar bill on the ground and I traded the iPod that elder W left for the 50. With it I bought a better mp3 player, because the one that i had won't let me put music on it. It is just a cheep MP3 but it is smaller than the CD player. 

 One last thing: I have been getting a lot of emails asking me about the weather. I will respond with this. The fires of hell are nothing compared to this. Just kidding. But seriously it is hot here. I have not sweated this much ever in my life. It is a good thing Hispanics are nice and offer you water when they reject you. But I am going to English. So I hope that my area is a car. 

Love you all and have a great week.

Jesse and M.A.

Planner cover

Jesse and Susuki

R. Family

Selfie

Week 32 in Farmer's Branch, TX

This week was kind of like the rest. I did go on exchanges this week, twice. Once with Elder N in my old area and the other was with the zone leaders. I went English and we knocked mansions over in Coppel.  There I noticed that I am only about 10 miles from the Dallas Fort Worth airport from my apartment. So close, but so far away- right. Well over in Coppel one of the members there fed us and it was taco salad. I haven't have had any problems with Mexican food yet until this. I think it is because it is American Mexican food. Anyway on one of the doors we were knocking I accidentally let out a fart.  We were about to leave when the door answered and a lady answered. We told her who we were and asked her if she would be willing. We could tell that the smell didn't hit her at first but as soon as she could smell she backed away. and i felt so embarrassed.

On a more spiritual note we did have an investigator and her family at church yesterday. We had to find them a ride to get there, but she was so exited to be there. A lot of people went and said hi and I know that she will be baptized. I am looking for a second baptism. 

So one bad thing that happened was my good watch broke. The one you gave me. I woke up and the face was cracked and the crack is getting bigger and bigger. Can I repair it?   It is still working but the glass is cracked.

Well I hope that your weeks went good.