Email treinta y ocho

May 1, 2017 

Hey folks! This week was fantastic! An overall update: I am now up around 190 pounds. I don't know if it's muscle from working out everyday or fat from eating a ridiculous amount of food, most likely both. 

Elder Croft sole my iPad while I was asleeep

The good news is that as am physically getting fatter, I feel that I am also spiritually fattening up. Before the mission, studying Gospel material almost felt like a punishment. Now however, it feels more like a privilege. Every time I open the Book of Mormon, Bible, or read from a Conference talk, or read an article on lds.org, I just love it! I feel my knowledge and love of the Gospel growing. One of my favorite things to do at night after a hard day’s work is watch the “I'm a Mormon” videos along with some ice cream. I love hearing ordinary people's stories about who they are and how they live the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I invite all of you to visit Mormon.org and watch some of these videos, they are very inspiring and very well done. 

Tuesday I conducted District Meeting again. I instructed on the Gospel of Jesus Christ and how important covenants are in the Gospel and the conversion process, and I focused specifically on the ordinance of the Sacrament. Basically it goes like this: 

The conversion process begins when an investigator, or when any child of God, feels the Spirit for the first time, which in turns strengthens their faith. That faith then motivates them to make changes that bring their life in closer harmony with the teachings of Jesus Christ, to repent. This gives them the desire to follow the example of Jesus Christ, and to do so by being baptized by someone holding the Priesthood authority of God. After baptism, they receive the gift of the Holy Ghost and receive the promise that if they live worthily, they will always have the Holy Ghost. They then begin to endure to the end by continually repeating the same process. 

They continue strengthening their faith, which leads them to continually repent and be more Christ-like. They renew their baptismal commitment to take Christ's name upon them, always remember Him, and keep the commandments that He has given them each week as they worthily take the Sacrament. As they do that, they have the Lord's promise that they will always have His spirit to be with them, which in turn brings the Holy Ghost more into their lives. Then eventually, as they keep on strengthening their faith and repenting and being more like Christ, they enter into the Temple to make sacred covenants with Heavenly Father, which if they obey there are promised blessings, which allows the Spirit to be in their lives and strengthens their faith. It's all a continual process! Our conversion and our devotion to the Gospel of Jesus Christ is one continual round! 

Weekly partaking of the Sacrament is SO crucially important. It holds everything together. It's the main reason we go to church every Sunday. If we take the bread and water worthily, it has the very same cleansing effects as baptism, it's like being baptized every single week! I invite you all to remember the importance of the Sacrament and to test it with the reverence it deserves. 

Dad emailed me a little bit ago and told about how he has been focusing on the phrase from the Sacrament prayer "always remember him" and how he can be better at always remembering Jesus Christ. Lately I have been thinking about the same thing. It should not be very hard to do, but for some reason we forget what's more important. We worry more about things that don't matter, such as what others think of us, if so-and-so likes us back or not, or what's on our phone screen. One thing I did to help me be better is I changed the password of my iPad to "rememberhim". It has helped, and also shown me that maybe I have gotten too attached to my iPad. I want to "disconnect" so to speak. 

There's a song I like called "Everything Must Go" by Brandon Heath. It's about a man who sells all of his possessions because he decides he needs to simplify his life and make room for love. I've realized that I sometimes am far too obsessed with materialistic things, and I need to focus more on love. My love for my Savior, for my family, my friends, my investigators, my companions, Ward members, and all of God's children! I want to be more full of love for everyone, regardless of whether or not that love is extended towards me. 

On Wednesday we drove down to Little Rock at 6 in the morning with the Jonesboro Zone Leaders to do exchanges with the Spanish Zone Leaders. They had a Mission Leadership Conference, so we hung out with the other Little Rock Spanish Elders, Elder Santiago (from Puerto Rico), and Elder Merrill (from Logan), in the meantime. We got to go to Downtown Little Rock, which was really cool, we even took pictures at the capitol building! Being in Little Rock with Elder Jorgensen was so much fun, he's probably one of my favorite Elders in the mission. Super down to earth, and an awesome missionary! We had a ton of fun together and laughed our heads off. 

I want to leave y'all with my testimony that God lives, Jesus Christ is our Savior, and his church is back on the earth again. The Church is true, the Book is blue, the bread and water can make you feel new! Love y'all!

Email treinta y siete: Jonesboro is on fire!

April 24, 2017

Hey y'all!
Don't have much time so I'll write the highlights. We said goodbye to Elder Barron on Tuesday, so just like Timone and Pumba, our trio's down to two.  It's been good though, Elder Giles and I had a lot of fun this week.

On Thursday we taught CW Jr in his home. We taught him the Restoration, and everything went very well. We invited him to be baptized and he said yes! Just a few minutes before this, his 11 year old son, C III had walked in the room. After inviting his dad to be baptized, C III piped up and said: "I want to be baptized too!" Well we can certainly do that for ya! We set a baptismal date for May 6th with them. Unfortunately they weren't able to make it to church yesterday so that date will have to be pushed back, but they are super awesome and very prepared.

We came back on Friday so we could teach C III the Restoration. We don't think C Jr understands why he needs to be baptized again however. When we invited him to be baptized, he said yes and that he felt he needed a fresh start because it had been so long since he was last baptized. I then said that he needed to be baptized because only our church has the authority to baptize, and he needs to be baptized by that authority. C Jr then responded by basically saying the same thing again, that it has been a long time and he wants a fresh start. So we will continue working with him, we have an appointment at 6 pm with them tonight.

Hey they have the same top Christmas tree
ornament as we do

Saturday night WE FINALLY TAUGHT L THE RESTORATION. We went to her house, but she
came outside and said she didn't want us to teach her inside because her brother was home and he is very against the church. She said we could just teach her under the arch over her front door. It was pretty cold that day, and we weren't feeling like that would be ideal. Luckily, L lives in our neighborhood, and the G family literally lives right across the street. We knocked on the door and asked if Brother G or C, their returned missionary who got home a week ago from Ghana, were home. They weren't, so we were planning on just teaching her outside. As we were walking away, Cameron pulled in. I nearly cried with joy! As soon as he got out of the car, I gave him a big hug. We went inside, and started talking.

A few minutes later Brother G got home. Brother G served his mission in Argentina 35 years ago, so he still knows a little Spanish, which was a total miracle! His Spanish was a little shaky at first, but towards the end he was really contributing to the lesson! L LOVES to talk, so it was really tough to teach her the whole lesson, but we did it. I had to politely ask her to let me continue about 3 times during the lesson, but it all worked out. She wants to be baptized, the only problem is that the Jehovah's Witnesses have also been visiting her, so she is deciding between the true church and them! She went to their church yesterday, and will be coming to ours next Sunday. Hopefully she will notice the difference!

I am so grateful to be a member of the true church. When I was in high school I never truly appreciated how lucky I was! I'm so grateful for the love that my Heavenly Father has for each one of us! Love y'all! The Church is true, the Book is Blue, let the Gospel of Jesus Christ hold your life together like glue!

Email treinta y seis

April 17, 2017 

A disclaimer for this week’s email: if this email is lame, I accidentally deleted my first draft this morning (blonde moment) so I am writing nearly everything all over again. This happens to be the most stressful thing I've gone through all week. Talking to complete strangers about changing their religion is just fine compared to the panic attack I had after I accidentally hit the delete button. So I am on very limited time, but I hope I can still send a decent email.

A quick humorous update on pants. 6 months of doing wall sits every other morning has brought some visible results. It's a very bitter sweet feeling when you can no longer fit into your favorite pair of jeans, especially when they are the only ones you took with you on the mission. Luckily, I found an extra, much wider pair laying around in the Russellville apartment. Also when I sit down while wearing my suit pants, it suddenly feels like I'm wearing leggings. They should be able to withstand at least another 10 pounds though.

 Tuesday was an awesome day. We biked all over Jonesboro, and talked to a bunch of people. We found a Puerto Rican barber named C who is from Mississippi and is way cool. We knocked on his door and he opened up wearing a giant apron. We asked if he was cooking and he said that he was cutting hair and told us to come in. Turns out the whole front part of his apartment is an in home barbershop! We talked to him as he cut this kid's hair for a few minutes. After his customer left, we taught him about the Book of Mormon. He seemed really interested and he wants to know more, he is just a very busy man. He cuts hair at home and also works nights for another job, all while going to cosmetology school so he can get licensed to open up his own barbershop downtown.

While heading back to the apartment, I got to race a train on my bike...and I almost won. Well, I kept up with for about 15 seconds. I have no idea how fast I got up to, but that train was hauling and I was on flat ground, so I consider that an accomplishment. I guess those wall sits are paying off.

Role playing at Zone Conference

Wednesday we had Zone Conference in Searcy, and I learned many things. A funny story is that in
Zone Meetings and Conferences, they always have the District leaders present their District's numbers for the past 6 weeks and talk about them. The thing is that the Zone Leaders are the ones who compile all the numbers and so basically they have us talk about statistics that we had no idea about on the spot. When I went up I felt like saying "Well...I myself, just like the rest of you have never seen this chart before in my life and had no idea what our numbers for the past six weeks were...until about 5 seconds ago...so just take a look and you and I will both learn something new..."

Almost out of time so I'll cut to the chase. Due to an Elder tearing his ACL and going home, Elder Barron is getting emergency transferred to Batesville Arkansas. I had fun serving with him for 3 weeks, and I'll miss him. I don't know what I'll do without my Instagram buddy. Also one of the Sisters in my District went home today for medical reasons, so between that and watching Elder Croft finish out his last transfer, it feels like I'm watching everyone go home...

I want to finish with my testimony that Jesus Christ is our Savior, what a wonderful opportunity we had yesterday to celebrate his triumphant victory over death, in remembrance that through him we all will conquer death. He truly can give us peace in this life and eternal life in the the life to come! I am so grateful for him!

The Church is true, the Book is Blue, our investigator IA is going to be baptized in June!
PS: Mom, Jenn, Abbie, Clara, and Benjamin- thank y'all so much for the Easter basket!