Dear family,
The work has been going alright. We have an investigator named Beth Harper! She is our top investigator! And she is doing great! She loves all the stuff we teach her and she is very open. Once we can get her to church she will be solid I really believe it!
I did hear about the pope, crazy stuff! I am so grateful for our Prophet Thomas S. Monson! He is definitley my favorite prophet and probably my favorite speaker! He just has such a great love for everybody around him. And congrats to Alex on his temple endowment!
So I have an idea of what I want for my birthday!!!! It's an idea I'd really like to try. It's called Insanity! It's a workout DVD that is perfect for a missionary because all you use is your body to do the workouts! http://www.beachbody.com/product/fitness_programs/insanity.do?code=SEMB_GOOGLE_SAN_TBBTESTBB2- here is a link to it but I'm sure you can buy it somewhere else but that is something that I really would like for my birthday! I would love it! =) Let me know what you think.
February 11th - 16th. This is week 4 of this transfer already and since this is a shortened transfer this next week is our last week of this transfer.
11th Monday
Our usual P-day stuff. Did emails laundry and stuff like that. We got fed by a member as well. She took us to a chinese buffet. Those buffets are really popular in the South! Around 6:30 we got ready to go to the Franks for there family home evening. We had a good time there! We did mormon card games, like a trivial game with all the standard works in it! It was way fun. We gave April Franks a blessing after because she was getting her wisdom teeth out in preparation for her mission. We have 2 sisters in the ward preparing to go on missions really soon.
12th Tuesday
It was a really rainy day so we couldn't get much done but we did go see Beth Harper and we taught her The Restoration and watched a Restoration movie with her. It went really well. She made us one of her famous Chocolate cakes and we really enjoyed it. After that we went to dinner with the Marchans. We had cold pizza and boneless wings!
13th Wednesday
District Meeting day. The Zone Leaders were there also. We had a great lesson. Elder Ison and Bisel are the Zone Leaders. We talked about not just doing gospel things but having them become who we are. After that we went to the Simmons to help them with their house. We worked on their piping and it was the first time I used a pickaxe to brake up cement! It was fun and a workout! haha. We got fed by the Schlossers today and they made us Curry Chicken. It was good! We had correlation meeting with Brother Lyle! And then headed back home and called it a night.
14th Thursday
Got our apartments checked today and we got a good grade on that. The Simpsons do that for us, they're a senior couple in Shreveport. We again did service with the Simmons. Didn't have much success seeing people today but we did go have dinner with the Finchers. They fed us Lasagna and Ceaser salad. We played a game of poole with the family and had a good talk with them. Then we headed out!
15th Friday
I met an investigator named Mr. Little today. He is a way funny guy. He's not progressing and won't do much but he lets us in and talks with us. He is a great guy though. We saw the Robinsons who are a recent convert. We tried to get them to pray but they just won't pray in front of us. It's bad! I hope we can help them with that.
16th Saturday
We kinda had a slow day today but we went and tried a few people but no one was home! But we got to see a member Brother Brown. We read The Book of Mormon with him and after we just got to talking. Elder Averett and him really like golf so they got to talking about that and I just listened because I don't know too much about golf. Well, other than hitting them as hard as I can on the range! But I did learn about all the different kinds of clubs they had. I was looking at Brother Browns Pelit Gun. It was broken and so I started taking it apart and I started fiddling around with it and I fixed it! I just had to super glue a piece together so we had to wait for a couple days to put it all together. I really enjoyed trying to fix that thing. I dont know why.
17th Sunday
We had a wonderful Sunday today. I taught Sunday School and it was a good time. I taught Chapter 17 in Gospel Principles, "The Church of Jesus Christ Today". It's always so enjoyable to go to church. Anyway, we had a Ward Council after church and our Bishop talked about this meeting he went to in Baton Rouge. A bunch of other bishops and stakes were there. Elder L. Tom Perry was there with a seventy. They talked a lot about the missionary situation right now. They called like 56 new mission presidents for 56 new missions. And in the future at some time we are not sure when but this mission will probably be split to The Shreveport Louisiana Mission and the Mississippi Jackson Mission. Elder Perry said that Mitt Romney did the best missionary kind of work for this Church that he has seen in a while. He said, "That the world is not ready for a Mormon President right now but he has fullfilled what, I think, he set out to do and that is introduce the church to 50% more people". Some crazy stuff. This was kind of a slow day today as well. Nobody was home who we tried to see. We ended up watching the Joseph Smith movie with The Nielson family and then headed home and called it a night.
February 4th - February 10th
February 4th!
We had Interviews with President McDonough today up in Texarkana. We went up to New Boston to pick up Elders Percival and Poole to head up there because we car share and we had the car during that time. We got some breakfast at this Dounut Shop right next to where we live like 2 places down. Then we headed up to New Boston around 830 and got there around 915. We played some Settlers of Cantan with them. That is very fun board game I think! After that we headed up to Texarkana around 11:30 checked out some cowboy shops and had Lunch at Cici's Pizza! I love Cici's pizza. So after that we headed to the church and met up with all the missionaries. We have a small Zone! Our Zone is about the same size as my District in Monroe. We have a total of 12 missionaries in the Texarkana Zone! We Met with President as a companionship and talked with him about our area. Then He interviewed Elder Averett first then I went in! We talked about goals that I had to become a better missionary and I really enjoyed my time with him. I try to make the best out of it! After We played a little dodge ball with the Zone Leaders and APs hahaha it was a lot of fun. We practiced teaching with the APs and said good bye to everyone and then headed back down to Atlanta because we had a dinner appointment with the Mcquivies (not sure how to spell there name) But we had homemade pizza and had a good time getting to know them. We left a scripture with them. Actually one of my favorite chapters. John 17. Its a great chapter of Christ Praying to the father before he goes to the Garden! I love the New Testament and Im loving the Book of Mormon so far. I am almost done with Alma! So close! Anyways after dinner I got myself a cowboy hat =) then we played some basketball with some members and
after that I burnt my shirt for my 1 year mark!
February 5th
We had a half P-day today because we didnt really have time to do things the day before because of interviews! We got some stuff done then around 4 we got picked up for dinner with the Boyles. They live all the way down in Vivian and that is in Louisiana around 25 minuttes from our place. And that is still our area! Well we had make your own burritoes! They were way good!! I had a lot to eat as well! Anyways we kinda hung out there for a bit. We watched "A Giant Among Men, Gordon B. Hinkley" Movie! Its a good one then we headed back and called it a night.
February 6th
So today instead of doing District Meeting. We went up to Texarkana and did a big Zone Bonfire meeting. Since our Zone is so small we do a big Zone Council for ourselves each month. So we went up to Texarkana. I got my self a Carhart shirt. I love these shirts there good sturdy shirts for service! We got 3 pounds of beef and then headed to the church and everyone made a Hobo dinner and everyone brought supplies for it! While everyone was make some for them. Me and Elder Percival were messing around pretending to be in a action movie hahaha. Anyways after that we headed to a members house and had a big Bon Fire! Made Smores, Roasted Starbursts! Which were really good! some brought drinks and then we were all suppose to bring a piece of paper with a fear that we had that was holding us back as a missionary and mine was "talking with everyone!" We then had a lesson on whats holding us back as missionaries. Then at the end we though those fears in the fire and burnt them away! Then we had our dinners. We had to the leave. So we took them with us and gave the car to New Boston then we got a ride from the Marchans back home and headed to bed.
February 7th
We had kind of a slow day today but also a very beautiful day! Very clear skies and all. It felt like spring. We don't get a lot of those kind of days usually a lot of cloudy days. We got out and saw Beth Harper. She wasn't feeling that great but she still had us come in. She is way interested in the church. She is our top investigator I would say! She is great! She can't come to church due to her immune system being down right now! But she is reading The Book of Mormon. We had a good meeting with her. She is a sweet lady! She is the one we helped with the fence. She is just so impresseed with the Mormon Church. We set a return appointment for next Tuesday at 3:30 and headed out. We went to another investigators house named Matt. but on the way we ran into a lady that needed help with her car window it got stuck. It was at this Church/Food Pantry and we asked if we can come by and help her out with the Food Pantry and so now we have a service day every thursday hopefully! we tried to see if she was interested in learning more about us but she is a talker and then she just said goodbye. So anyways we went to go see Matt he is a football coach/teacher at Atlanta High School. This was the first time meeting him. He is funny guy. He has a date for May 1st! he has a lot of questions but he couldn't meet with us that long. So we said a prayer and headed out! Then we tried a part time family who wasn't home. So we headed to Walmart to be picked up for dinner. Brother Simmons picked us up and brought us dinner from Sister Zylks. Then he dropped us off at our place and we had some good dinner. It got late and we just called it a night.
February 8th
We did weekly Planning today then went down and did some quick emails. When we were at the Library Elder Averett ran into an investigator that he and Elder Whitehead had found like 2 months earlier named Donni. So we talked with him outside at a table. He had a lot of questions about what we do and believe. He had a lot of weird of questions as well. He asked us questions like "What is Jesus?" What is God" I just started naming off charteristics but he didn't seem satisfied with the answer. We tried to talk to him about the Book of Mormon. He said things like you can't trust man because they will fail you, you have to trust God. I'm like right, never take any ones word for it. Pray and ask God! So we talked about reading The Book of Mormon but he was like, "that is a man made thing not from God" and I said "but it is from God and you can know by praying and asking God." Then he said, "that's not what my preacher told me!" And in my head I was just like. WHAT!? You just said like 5 minutes ago that you shouldn't trust man. You got to trust God! This is one of the biggest problems here, I think. People don't really understand prayer! They trust their preacher more then God himself! And I just don't understand how people only believe that The Holy Bible is the only scripture out there! It just isn't so! People don't even understand where we got the Bible. I said to him if there isn't anymore scripture than just the Bible then how do they explain the Dead Sea Scrolls? How do you explain that out of the 4 gospels we read in the Bible, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John that there is more gospels that are not in the Bible! How do you explain that archaeologists have found plates of brass and gold with ancient writings on them. Anyways, we told him that we just want him to do the most simple thing ever that is to read it and pray about it. So we challenged him to at least read the Title Page, Introduction and Testimonies of it and set a return appointment for tomorrow. We tried a few other people not much happened but we finally went and saw the Browns and just read some scriptures with them. We went to Subway for dinner and had one of the best sandwhiches ever and then called it a night!
February 9th
We split wood and did service most the day today for the Boyles! I love doing service. They fed us Chili and then we went back up for out appointment with Donni but it fell through! We then went to Shads house and we had a great discussion with him. We talked more about scripture and a little about the Plan of Salvation. I don't even remember half the stuff we talked about. The Spirit guidied it really well. Then we went to the Browns again that night and he gave us a ride back up to our place and called it a night.
Febuary 10th
Sunday we went to church and had some great meetings. We got a new Ward mission leader Brother Lyle. Talked with him a bit. He is really gung ho, which I'm excited about. Anyways, we did a lot of study today and did some area book stuff then headed to bed.
Well Love you all, miss you all and tell grandma I got her cookies. We loved them. Talk to you later
love your son
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