3/23/20

Hey Family and Friends, this week has had some pretty crazy changes in the mission. 

On Friday we were told by our Mission President to start self isolating. Soo that means that we aren't knocking doors anymore or going and visiting people. We can only leave our Apartment for necessity things like the store or going to the church for better Wi-Fi. We have been starting to do a lot of proseliting on Facebook and sharing our message the best we can. It's been a little difficult because of the abrupt change but it's been pretty fun too.

We have had some really good lessons on video call and my favorite one so far was when we called this family and we read the Book of Mormon with them. We invited them to continue to read and pray and when we followed up with them, they had been, so we were sooo happy. We then sent them the Book of Mormon video for it. 

For dinners with the members we haven’t been able to eat with them, we have to actually go and pick it up and then take it back to the church or our apartment. Being at the church all the time is pretty boring but the cool thing is that it has a piano so I've been practicing like a ton with hymn books. My favorite song to play on the piano right now is “Praise to the Man.”

Well before we got put in isolation we were having a pretty good week of finding. This week we found 5 new people to teach. There was this one person who we basically had found a couple weeks ago but it never really counted because we didn’t have a second lesson with him. But we finally did and it's super sweet.

In my personal study this week I found a couple scriptures that are really cool 

The 1st one is in Doctrine and Covenants 68:5-6

5 Behold, this is the promise of the Lord unto you, O ye my servants.

6 Wherefore, be of good cheer, and do not fear, for I the Lord am with you, and will stand by you; and ye shall bear record of me, even Jesus Christ, that I am the Son of the living God, that I was, that I am, and that I am to come.

I like this one a lot because it says that the Lord is standing right by you and to not be afraid. We can be comforted by that, especially in the time we are in.

The 2nd scripture I wanted to share is actually from Sister Tveten. 

Isaiah 41:10

10 ¶ Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.

So it's just another really cool comforting scripture talking about how Jesus is here with us and will strengthen and help us.

I can promise you all that our Heavenly Father loves us all and he knows what's happening. He is here to comfort us and guide us. If we follow the Prophet and read the scriptures and pray we will be protected. 

I hope you are all having a great week and are safe. Love y’all and will talk y’all again next week.

This week’s pictures:....

1. A sign in Spanish that says to keep calm and wash your hands. 👐

2. We pulled up to the hood and there was this super cool Cadillac with this guy blasting 80s classics.

3. All the members that have been feeding us have been giving us soda but none of the other Elders drink soda except me.

4. They literally put a chain on the doors to our work out room so we have to work out in our apartment.

5. We got super bored in our apartment so we started making a Jesus wall.

6. HEB had a line to go shopping haha. 

7. Blue Bell ice-cream. It’s literally the best ice-cream ever.

8. Me with my hat and Texas shirt.

March 16, 2020

Hey everyone this week was great and pretty weird and different too. First of all like the Corona Virus thing I haven’t heard a bunch but it sounds kinda crazy. Our mission president told us that we can’t shake hands anymore. We've been using a foot tap thing instead of shaking hands and it’s kinda funny.  We went to HEB to get food today and like a lot of stuff is gone. Everyone has been joking about the toilet paper and water and it's pretty funny because it’s true. Our mission president also told everyone last night that we should try and get food stocked up for at least 2 weeks in case of an emergency. Yesterday for church it was pretty different because there was no church. My district decided to have our own sacrament because our bishop gave permission so we ended up doing the sacrament for ourselves which was super cool. And after we had a little “Come Follow Me” study together. Later through the day we went around the ward helping a couple families who needed help with the sacrament also. I know that this virus thing will pass and all we need to have is faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. He will protect us if we do our part and follow him.

Sorry that was long. Now for my week haha.

This week was good, we had zone conference on Thursday which is like the main thing I can remember for this week haha. It was super good. We had trainings on using Facebook and Messager and using them more effectively, and we had one on driving better, we had a cool training video about being more aware in our teaching and finding from mission portal with president Uchtdorf. We had Jason's deli for lunch, mainly because that's president Tvetens first name and he likes it haha.

On Tuesday, for dinner we had Bill Miller's with some members. Bill Miller's is basically the McDonald's of BBQ so it was good at the moment but after, not so much haha. The Family we ate with asked if they could have a blessing of health and comfort so we gave them both one. It was really cool and spiritual. 

On Wednesday we made Prayer Rocks again with this family we are teaching. It was super fun and they loved it. The mom is a less active member and she was really touched by the spirit from us being there and teaching about prayer and she began going off on telling her kids about baptism and how it's their choice and stuff which we were surprised. It was really cool and we have set lessons every Wednesday now. It was really hot also and we had our lesson outside so me and Elder Corry were sweating a ton haha.

On Friday, we had ward council and we were just listening to what the bishop wanted to do about church and the sacrament on Sunday and stuff. We left early and went to a lesson with another family. Our main message was going to be on coming to church and stuff but we had to change that haha. We decided to focus it on prayer and scripture study as a family every day. It was a great lesson and super fun. 

On Saturday we just did a ton of finding. We found 4 new people to teach that day and from this whole week we found a total of 12 new people. So were basically champions at finding haha. 

I hope that everyone is doing great and I hope you all have a great week. I know that our Heavenly Father loves us all and we can find comfort and peace in The Book of Mormon and prayer. I know that our Heavenly Father has a plan for us and we just need to act in faith and follow his commandments. 

See y'all next week!!

,Elder Portlock

Pictures for this week.

1. We found this paper of the Corona Virus and thought it was funny.

2. We got super bored during lunch and decided to organize this pool table ball set.

3. Me and my companion got a plate of fruit from one of the families we were teaching this week. 

4. Me in front of our church sign, like a boss!

5. Our church put this on our church

6. HEB today with like everything empty.

March 9, 2020

Hey everyone I hope y’all had a great week. 

This week has been really good, On Tuesday we spent like 3 hours at this car place waiting for our car to get an alignment and some other stuff done. We were so bored so we just started walking around to all the stores and fast food places nearby. We walked into a couple of different thrift stores. One of the stores is called EZ pawn and it's a pretty cool thrift store. They have a lot of cool stuff that’s pretty cheap. It's definitely one store I’ll always remember.

On Thursday we had a lot of meetings to go to. It was pretty cool because our whole zone was there of about 29 people. We have like one of the biggest zones in our mission. During that meeting we learned a lot about goals and planning. We learned this acronym called (CPR) or Church, Prayer, Read. We all did a couple of role playing and practice on teaching and improving our skills to invite people to do all those things and it was super fun because we were teaching other missionaries and we were also on the side of an investigator. After that we had our district council and interviews with President Tveten. One of the Missionaries in our district named Elder Tudor gave us training on how to contact people. He gave us this super funny acronym called (SLAP). “We need to slap our everyone!" he said something like that haha. SLAP means Set up a return appointment, Leave something behind, get there Address, Phone number. When we do all those things it helps us people make them a person for our area book and so we can begin teaching them. Ever since that training me and Elder Corry are like" okay let's go slap some people!"haha.  After all the meetings that we had that basically took most of the day me and Elder Corry as well as Elder Tudor and Elder Trythall went to this Mexican Restaurant for dinner. It was supposed to be a dinner appointment but the person works at the restaurant and so we got to eat there for free. The restaurant’s name is (Guerrreos). Their food is so good and we were so full after that haha.

On Friday I finally gave my Book of Mormon away with the picture of my family and testimony of my parents inside. We gave it to this mom with 2 little kids and we talked to her for a little and she seemed to be interested a little and was really nice. When I told her about this specific Book of Mormon she wanted me to keep it instead and get a different one haha. We still gave it to her so it would be more special to her and that she might look at it more. I've had that book since my first zone conference at Christmas so it was awesome finally giving it away. 

I can now say that I have eaten cactus haha. For dinner we went to this member’s house and she served us cactus and rice, beans, and tortillas. The cactus was super weird and had a really different texture and is probably one of the weirdest things I’ve eaten on my mission so far. 

On Saturday Me and Elder Corry made some cinnamon rolls to give to an inactive family we are teaching. We are working really hard to get them to come back to church because they haven't been in 5 years. They also have 2 kids who are at the age to decide if they want to be baptized. When we went to drop them off no one was there and we were trying to decide what we should do. We decided to leave the cinnamon rolls on their porch with a note and send a text to the dad letting him know we stopped by. Like 30 minutes later we got another text telling us thank you so much for taking time for our family and thinking of us, we will see you tomorrow. Me and Elder Corry were so excited and happy. Earlier that day we helped some kids get a skateboard out of a water drain. Elder Corry climbed down this man hole which was so funny. I wish I got a picture, but after when he came out with the skateboard his shirt was so dirty haha. We talked to the kids for a minute and they were so grateful and after we went home so Elder Corry could change haha. The sister missionaries told us about this person they were teaching whose son we just baptized a little bit ago accepted an invitation to baptism. It's so cool to see the blessings of the gospel on people's families because it’s changing their lives and they’re so much happier. I'm really excited for them to continue progressing and living on the covenant path.

On Sunday it was a little tough at first because of daylight savings haha. Now we have to get up a whole hour earlier. We still didn't have a lot of success with people coming to church but hopefully next week for sure. We talked to the family that we gave the cinnamon rolls to and they told us it was because of daylight savings that they missed church. After church we had our weekly planning and that took us a couple hours but we got it done. Elder Tudor and Elder Trythall were super sick and asked us to give them blessings. It was super cool because it was the first real time I have given an actual blessing. They were super grateful and are feeling a lot better now. I gave another blessing to this other person we referred to some other missionaries also. 

Also for today, since yesterday night our kitchen light was leaking and had pool of water in the light cover. Elder Corry noticed it so we called the office and they're getting that taken care of now. It was from a refrigerator in the upstairs apartment. 

In my personal studies for this week I found and liked this scripture and wanted to share it with y'all. It's in Omni 1:26. 

26 And now, my beloved brethren, I would that ye should ^acome unto Christ, who is the Holy One of Israel, and partake of his salvation, and the power of his redemption. Yea, come unto him, and ^boffer your whole souls as an ^coffering unto him, and continue in ^dfasting and praying, and endure to the end; and as the Lord liveth ye will be saved. 

I Testify to all of you that our Heavenly Father lives, Our Savior Jesus Christ is our Savior and Redeemer and if we come unto Him and partake of His salvation we can all live forever with our families, in the name of Jesus Christ Amen. 

I hope you all have a great week and I’ll email y’all again next week!

1. Me and Elder Corry from transfers a couple of weeks ago. 

2. Some really cool temples we drew.

3. The menu from the restaurant named (Guerrero's)

4. Our apartment leaking 😊