Week 41 in Mesquite, Texas

So hi everyone!
How has your week been? I can sum up the week in two words, we tracted. Pretty exciting. Oh and BTW we baptized. Just a little important fact. His name is J O and he had been investigating for 5 years. It was really Neat. One of the first sister missionaries that first taught him came and was able to see him be baptized. He was really excited. The spirit was really strong there. This is what it makes it all worth it.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA coach Barnes. Did you ask him if he was wearing his headlight or did he forget it? You should really get on him about it.

It is too bad about Wayne's mom. It must be really tough for him. I hope all goes well.

I need to write Grandma it has been a while. I have just been a bit busy and stressed.

How big are your pumpkins? The members here have been cooking veggies from their garden. It reminds me a lot of home. We have been offering to help with the gardening. It is sad, I miss gardening. 

Derek just emailed me. He sounds super exited to go. I hope that he does well.  

 

Oh and BTW Page  says hi. She is in my zone now.  

And one more question, can you bombard me with pictures of you guys next week. Like old pictures that you have on the computer. I have a small mp3 and I have all the pictures that you have ever sent me on it and I love looking through it. Thank you.

 

Love y'all lots.
Have a great week.

Week 40 in Mesquite, Texas

This week has been a bit hard. We have basically taught all of our new members the new member lessons. So we are going back into finding mode. More knocking doors. Knocking doors is a bit interesting with Elder M, because even though he can speak English his accent is sometimes very hard to understand for some people. He wants to teach in Spanish but our work is pure English and I can tell it bothers him sometimes. It is also a lot different than Spanish work because you can go a whole day without a single lesson and in Spanish work someone will let you in. He also doesn't speak much when we did have lessons so I have had to step up and take the lead in teaching which is kind of hard sometimes. I still stutter a lot during the lesson, but this transfer will help me improve my teaching.  I get to speak a lot of Spanish to my companion so I will learn to speak better.

Elder M has been in the mission for 7 months. He lived in Jersey all through high school and know English OK. It is hard sometimes for others to understand him. He really wants to be doing Spanish work and he is kind of bummed right now. This might sound funny but I don't know what is faster to do with him, walk everywhere or bike. It frustrates me sometimes but I need to be more patient with him.

J is still set for the 30th. He is so excited for it. Elder H is comeing back for the baptism.

I am glad that Mikaela is getting some practice with her car before mine. and i am glad to hear that she can drive forward. Now all I need to worry about is her getting fender benders in the parking lots backing out, but it won't do as much damage to my car.

So they assigned me to teach the Gospel Doctrine class next week. It is lesson 32. The last lesson I had to do was last week in elders quorum and they told me at 7 the night before just right before transfers. I stumbled so much through the lesson and I spaced out for like 2 min. If it weren't for the elders quorum president I would have ended like 20 min early. I was so embarrassed.

We have begun a hunt to track down all the less actives and unknowns in our ward. It will be a lot of work but hopefully something will come out of it. Other than that not much exciting things have happened other than my companion almost burning the apartment to the ground. He was making some popcorn in a pot and he put oil in the pot. When the popcorn was done he left the pot on and after a while it caught on fire. I ran over and turned the stove off and put a lid on the pot and then Elder M took the pot and was going to pour it in the sink and pour water in it but i stopped him in time. The lid was too big for the pot and it took a couple of seconds before the fire burned out. The worst part was that the apartment was filled with smoke. We had to let it air out for like an hour. It was a good thing it was a planning day. 

Well that was my funny story for the week. Hope your week was great and have a great week.

 

New companion

Transfers

 

 

Week 39 in Mesquite, Texas

So transfer calls happened last saturday and I have sad news, Elder H is leaving me. I will be getting Elder M. He is from Peru. I have served around him in Carrollton. I am exited.

So last saturday we had a baptism, S K. The room was pack full of people. She wanted to be baptized before elder H left and we did it right in time. It was a great experience to see and the spirit was really strong there. This month I will have at least 1 more baptism. His name is J and his date is on the 30th.

 

You will love this one, we have more garbage chairs in our apartment. I forgot to take pictures but I will next time. One is an office chair and one is a small leather chair.

 

This last week not much has happened. We have been working hard on our new map and on our ward directory to get everything planned. I have a few more things that I need to do and then we will start teaching everyone.

I hope everyone had a great week.

love ya.

Baptism

Another dumpster chair.

Week 38 in Mesquite Texas

If there was a hashtag for the week it would be #dumbdecision115.

So this week we had a baptismal interview for a investigator named S. She had been comming to church for a couple of months. Some of her friends are members and they invited her and she has been coming ever since. So last Wednesday we had a lesson with her and it was over lessons 4 and 5 of Preach My Gospel and at the end she asked when can I get baptized?  We told her whenever you want. She asked Elder H when is he going to leave because she wants to get baptized before he leaves. We told her we dont know when he is leaving we get calls the Saturday the 16th and she said that she wants to get baptized on Saturday the 16th. So we needed to have her interviewed on Friday. So we had the interview and SHE PASSED! So my next baptism will be this Saturday. Yay

Also we had a zone meeting on Wednesday and they want us working with the ward members more and spend less time knocking doors. So we are going to start focusing more on that. So that night we had a meeting with the bishop and he wants us going through the ward list and cleaning it out and meeting every member. So we wanted to map out every member on a map and so we made a map. We already had a small map on the wall but we wanted it to be bigger so we went to office max and made the map bigger. Then we cut it in half and made the map even bigger. It is now 36 square feet. Then we got it laminated and put it on our wall and all of the missionaries are jealous of our map. #dumbdecision115 (it ended up costing $115)

 

Tell Mikaela to keep trying hard and she will learn. I am just jealous of how skinny she is. I have gotten kind of chubby here. I weighed myself and I weigh 167! A lot more than I weighed before. I have been working and out and taking protein.  I have more muscle.

Elijah was a cool prophet. I like the story of him with the priests. Did you tell the story of Elisha and the Shebears?

The library here is kind of busy and they wont give more time I will see what I can do, but I need to go.

 Oh, by the way lamination is Expensive. #dumbdecision115

Well I hope that you all had a great week.

#dumbdecision$115

 

Week 37 in Mesquite, TX

Sorry it has taken me so long to write today. It has been a bit busy. We went to a museum in Dallas called the Pro Museum. It was really cool. They had Fossils there and other interactive things. We went with other missionaries who got tickets for free from a member. There was an exibit there where we could do a 100 foot dash with some athletes and some animals. I raced Jarell Barker and lost. sad. I was just piont 10 seconds from him. Then we went to Hard Rock Cafe and ate there and took some pictures with the guitars there. And now we are e-mailing at SMU. It has been a pretty busy day.

Not much has happened this week. No more crazy costumes and animals. The weather has been really nice. We set the record for the second coldest day in July. The sad news is that it is supposed to start getting hotter this week. They say that we will reach 100 by the end of the week.

We  have been knocking alot of doors this week and a lot of our appointments have dropped. Hopefully this week will be busier.

Hope that you guys had a great week.

Dumpster Chairs

Flash!!!

Trip to museum

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: