June 24, 2013

Dear Family,

Wow! Changes are coming in the way we do missionary work! "The Work of Salvation" broadcast yesterday announced changes in how we do missionary work and I am so excited to be a part of them!

This week has been fairly slow but we have been out doing all we can. We were able to get the husband of a part member family to start progressing in the lessons! He believes all that the church teaches and sees that baptism is where his journey needs to lead him but he doesnt want to just do it, look back, and then realize that he left something out. We are working with him to help him dig deeper inside himself and see what he really needs to work on and how we can help. It is so great to get humble people that are willing to accept our help, who know why we are there! I feel like I am actually needed somewhere when we find people like this. I will give you a short history of this family:

    so the wife is has been a member for around 5 years and about 6 or the 8 kids are baptized. The husband is out of work and they have one car. 4 of the children that live at home have jobs, the mother works as well. They are able to get their schedules so that they can have a rotation between who will drive the car and pick people up. They all come to church every week! I have seen from their examples that none of us have any excuses to obey gods commandments. "does the journey seem long" (I think the name of the hymn is). does it matter that the journey is long? would you have it any other way? Elder Pierre-Louis says "if the mission were easy I wouldnt be here". Exactly! If life were easy I wouldnt want to be here!

I have learned so much from this families example and I hope that we all can follow the commandments of god, regardless of our status, position, or posessions.

 

"when we are on the lords errand we are entitled to the lords help."

This week has been another great learning experience for me and I am sorry I havent written that much but I am running our of time!

I love you all!

Love,

Elder John 

June 17, 2013

Dear Family,

This week was a great learning experience!!!

We were able to do exchanges this week with our Zone Leaders and I was able to go with Elder Manning into his area while Elder Pierre-Louis stayed in our area with Elder West. While on exhanges we had dinner with a sister from Hawaii. She is serving as a senior sister missionary and is awesome! She said that she woke up one morning and said 'I do the same things everyday. I wake up. make breakfast. clean the house a little. I want to do somehting different. So she told her bishop that and he said, 'do you want to serve a mission?' she said, 'yes'. 'For how long', he asked. 'for the rest of my mortal life'. She now has no ending period on her service as a misisonary. She is agreat example to me and is so inspiring!

Elder Pierre-Louis and I got to have dinner with an amazing family this week! they came from the philippines (dont know how to spell that)  and he served as a bishop there. he came in and sat down and started talking about all of these spiritual things! he could reherse any scripture and he could apply them to his life and our lives very well. He also showed us his scriptures; five years ago he started to read and to go to every cross reference in the standard works. he is almost done. that is one of my life goals!

He also shared with Elder Pierre-Louis and I that he can feel the spirit with us because sometimes he sees that missionaries done get along but he sees that we fit together like this... (imagine him interlocking his fingers :)

That was a great experience and definitely one that I needed. During the prayer tears were streaming down my face because of the faith of this humble man who is definitely the elect of God.

Yesterday I had the worst headache of my life! (so far...) and I threw up while we were driving making visits! It was so fun!!! I just thought I would share that as some extra words of wisdom... BE SURE NOT TO THINK SO HARD ALL THE TIME!!! haha jk. but seriously :)

 Love you all!

Love,

Elder John

"Trouble has no necessary connection with discouragment- discouragement has a germ of its own, as different from trouble as arthritis is different from a stiff joint" -F. Scott Fitzgerald 

June 10, 2013

Dear Family,

This week was another great one!!! So happy to finally be 20! less than a year left... :(

 It was discouraging because we had 5 lessons lined up for Wednesday but only 2 went through!!! oh I knew it was too good to be true! anyway... President and Sister Black came to our sacrament meeting this week and they gave great talks! Sister Black talked on things we need to do to always have the Holy Ghost. She mentioned that service is one of the things we need to do to have the Holy Ghost. she said, "Service is not service if it is convenient. Service is service when it is needed."

We had 4 investigators at church this week! We had a lesson with alyssa and Zach, two primary age kids, and they havent come to church this whole time I have been here! so we told them that if they want to get baptized they need to come to church! So they came this week! We were so happy!!!

I think thats it for this week... kinda boring.

Well I love you all!!

Love,

Elder John 

June 3, 2013

Dear Family,

This week went really well! We met a new investigator yesterday! A family from the ward brought a young man to church yesterday and we talked with him and he wants to take the lessons!

We had a dinner with a part member family this week and we talked about the non members beliefs. We answered both of their questions and got to know them a bit better. We gave them some sugestions on what they could do together so that they can have the spirit in their lives and to be constantly thinking of the gospel. After we talked the sister told us how much she appraciated us and appreciated our worry for their concerns. I have never felt more appreciated on my mission than that experience!

We had an awesome experience yesterday! (well it wasnt that exciting, but there is no way to put half of an exclamation mark haha) anyway, we were visiting members after church and we decided to visit this one brother that took us to dinner and the beginning of my first transfer here. He is divorced and he gets his son on weekends... but his wife doesnt want him to take him to church. So he cant go to church either. well we drop by his house and he was so excited to see us! he said 'I've never had a drop in visitor'. it was aweosme because he ws so excited! I think he asked us how we were doing like 10 times during the conversation. well as we talked he asked us if we could come over next sunday and teach his son. it was funny because he was like 'I know you are busy and I dont want to take up your time'. uh... THIS IS WHAT WE DO!!! I was so happy that him and his son will be ble to get the spirit in their home this way!

 Yesterday it was 101! starting to get hot!!. since we got a car we dont want to get too soft so we decided that we wont turn the air conditioning up to level 3 until it gets to 103, so we are praying for it to get just a little hotter :)

That is about it for this week! I hope you all have a great week and have a happy last week of school!

Love,

Elder John

"For our light afflictoin, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. "

- 2 Corinthians 4:17-18