May 25, 2020

Hey family and friends, 

This week was great and super crazy too. We have finally been able to meet our entire teaching pool which is super good. We’ve been working on trying to call members and get to know the branch a lot this week. It's been pretty tough trying to call people and stuff because we have an area phone that doesn't work that well so we decided to change it to my phone. It's been pretty nice having the chip for the area in my phone but we found ourselves into another problem where we don’t have any of the contacts except for our area books so when we call people we have to ask if it's the right person. Kinda weird but soon it will be back to normal. We had our moving day on Wednesday. It took a couple days but we’re all official and moved into a nice 2 bedroom apartment. By the church there’s this giant beehive in a tree. We definitely won't be messing with that but it was pretty cool to look at. Also these last few nights in Eagle Pass we have had some crazy thunder and lightning storms and yesterday we had a super crazy storm. There was actually a tornado warning so we had to go to the lower level of the church. It got pretty bad and was like a hurricane. Everyone is okay but there was some damage around town. It was pretty cool to experience. We had some members help us take pictures for our Facebook page so we will be able to have some really nice pictures soon. I'm so grateful to be out here serving the lord and helping people. I hope you’re all having a great Memorial day. I will talk to y’all again next week!

Pictures for this week.

1. The Del Rio Elders came to help us move and we had a extra couch so they wanted it and were trying to fit in there van.

2. The tornado storm made these garages fall down.

3. Super sweet park we took pictures at

4. We saw a speed hump sign and thought it was funny. 

5. The giant Beehive we saw. 

 

5/18/2020

Hi everyone, this week was super great and went so fast! 

We had Transfer Day on Thursday and my new area is Eagle Pass which is literally on the border. We are like a mile from Mexico so that's super cool. My new companion is Elder Johnson and he's been out just a little longer than me so we are both still pretty young in the mission field. He's from Utah as well and we found out that we actually were at a scout camp together a couple years ago so that was pretty cool also. We actually got doubled into our area together so we are basically starting from scratch in our area. Our area covers a Spanish branch or in Spanish, 'La Rama de Espanol'. We are so excited to get to work and begin helping people come closer to their Heavenly Father. We moved into a house with 2 other missionaries and basically those are the only missionaries closest to us. The next closest are about an hour away. The house we moved into is actually for sale so we are going to be moving on Wednesday into an apartment. On Friday we had a super big thunder and lightning storm so we all sat under the porch and watched it. At night scorpions are pretty common around here so me and Elder Johnson have been going out to find them. We have a black light so it's super easy to find them because their body is an exoskeleton so it glows to the light. It's pretty cool. It's also a lot hotter and is going to continue to get hotter through the next week. 

Today for going to the store it's going to be super weird because there is a current rule in Eagle Pass where only 1 person in a household can go shopping because of Coronavirus so what we have to do is we have to wear normal clothes without our name tags and be by ourselves while we shop. It's going to be pretty weird not having my companion for a second haha. We asked our Mission president about it and he said that he gives us permission to do this so we are not breaking any rules technically. 

We drove a little around Eagle Pass today and saw the border fence, bridge, and the Rio Grande River that borders Mexico. It's super cool being so close to the border because there are so many people that speak Spanish. I also finally got a haircut from this Spanish called ''Peluqueria Noe''. It feels so good especially because it’s getting hotter. 

Before Transfers me and Elder Corry and Elder Ward went to the Tower of Americas to do some companion study and we found a really cool area with cool water fountains and waterfalls. We also found a spot with angel wings so I got a picture in front of it. 

Some of the Elders from the Border stayed with us the day before Transfers and there was this Elder named Elder Hoffman who fixed my bathroom sink that had been clogged for a long time. We took it apart and it was pretty gross but super cool to fix my sink haha. I also now know how to fix a clogged sink, so that's a cool skill.

That was about it for my week. The work is doing great and I feel so blessed to be here serving and helping others. Even though we are still inside and can't knock doors and stuff we can teach through technology and do amazing things through that. I know the lord loves us all and listens to our prayers. 

I love you all and hope you all have a great week!!!

1. We stopped by the temple right before transfers. 

2. A picture of a scorpion we saw.

3. Elder Hoffman fixing my sink.

4. Me with angel wings.

5. Elder Johnson and I in front of our house.

6. Eagle Pass

7. Me and my companion

8. The Rio Grande river 

9. The bridge and border to Mexico

May 11, 2020

Hey everyone. 

This week was great. We had a little bit of a slow week but the highlight was we got another companion. Elder Ward came from serving in Argentina and we all got put into a trio. It's been pretty fun hearing all of his stories and stuff. 

We’ve been showing him all around our area and so we’ve been to the Alamo, the river walk downtown. It's really fun to see. 

Our mission had a conference quote competition too and everyone got to choose a quote they liked and we all voted to see which one was the coolest. The whole mission was pretty excited for it. 

The quote that won was...

"Having faith allows me to believe that there will be light again. And that light will be even brighter because I have walked through the dark."

We took a trip to Raising Canes Chicken and that was super good too. I love their chicken haha.

We called home on Sunday for Mothers day and that was really cool, 

And I got to see my whole family too. 

We got transfers and I got called to Eagle Pass which is literally on the border. It's going to be really fun and a great opportunity to get better at Spanish. I'll also be in another trio of Elders so that will be pretty fun. 

Sorry this email is pretty small. 

I hope y’all have a great week! 

Pictures of the week:

1. Me, Elder Corry and Ward

2. Me in front of the River walk.

3 My mom and me over hangouts

4. Cool art we saw on the river. 

May 4, 2020

Hi everyone! I hope you all had a great week. 

This week was super great and a lot is happening. 

Tuesday: Today was good. We didn't have a ton of visits with people but we had lots of contact. Me and Elder Corry went to Charities to do service and we just watered the garden and turned the compost pile. It went really quick but it was pretty hot. It's been slowly getting hotter and this week and it got up to a hundred degrees. It's not all bad right now because we're inside the church most of the time but when we go back to doing regular mission work outside and stuff it will really be hot haha. We had a really good lesson with this person named Lydia about faith and hope. We invited her to read Ether 12 because it talks about having faith a lot. She is super nice and loves to hear from us. We got chipotle from one of the members in our ward and it was so good. 

Wednesday: We had our first follow up lesson with Rita since she was baptized last week and it was really amazing to see her. You could just see the light in her life and could just know she was happy. We talked a little about the temple and what we do in the temple and why it's important. She totally agreed and wanted to learn more. She asked us if we could help her learn some English because we do English classes as well. Later this week we taught her how to pray in English and it was really cool. We found out that she works at a hair salon and she told us that if we ever needed haircuts she would do them for free. The only thing is that the place she works at is super far haha. We had a mission call this week and one of the area seventies came and talked to us. Elder Villareal and his wife talked to us for about an hour about what an area seventy is. One of the things that I really liked that he said is that “We aren't Finishing our Mission, The Lord is finishing us". It was a really cool experience to be able to listen to him and we learned a lot from him.

Thursday: For our district council today we got to have a recent convert call in through zoom and we had a little Q&A with him. His name was Anthony and it was really cool to ask him what he thought of missionaries the first time and what testimony is. He has been able to receive the Melchizedek Priesthood and bless his family. He is an amazing person and I'm so happy I was able to meet him. We had a really nice visit with the Avalos family and we shared 3 Nephi 11:7 and talked about different ways we can hear Jesus Christ in our lives. We are having them help us friendship with a person we are teaching and it's just amazing how much a member can help.  For dinner today we got a ton of fried chicken from Church's from the Rosario family. Usually they take us to a restaurant named Luby's but this time we got this haha. We also had our interviews with President Tveten today and that was super awesome. We did it through video call and he told me we could possibly be getting a new missionary into our area because of missionaries being reassigned to missions and stuff. Me and Elder Corry are super excited if we get a missionary. 

Friday: Today we were able to call our families for Come Follow Me and it was really fun. This last week's come follow me was on Mosiah 7,8,9, and 10. One of my favorite scriptures was from chapter 7:19. It talks a lot about putting our trust in the Lord and I really liked that. We had a really cool lesson with this family in Converse named the Gonzalez family, and 2 sister missionaries, as well as a return missionary from Mexico. There were about 8 people on the call and the reason we were there was because the family speaks mostly Spanish and the sisters don't. We were there to help translate and teach with the return missionary. It was really fun to meet the family and they were really nice. We all talked a lot about temples and eternal marriage and the spirit was really strong. 

Saturday: Today we found out that we are going to be getting 2 missionaries in our ward. One will be in our companionship and the other will be in the other Elders. So we will basically have 6 Elders in our ward haha. It's super exciting and we spent some time cleaning our apartments and making room for the new missionary. We don't know where he is coming from or who he is but were excited to have him. We had a really cool discussion with another person we are teaching named Justin about the Atonement of Jesus Christ and a little of our Heavenly Father's plan. It was really cool because he totally agreed with everything we were talking about and the funny thing was that he brought it up to us and asked us if we could meet with him haha. For dinner we got food from a member who owns a restaurant. It was really good Mexican food. 

Sunday: We had another really cool pass of lessons from an area named Bulverde where my trainer Elder Waite is right now. We were teaching a Man named Antonio and he is super great. He is super humble and willing to listen and change and wants to be baptized. We sent him a link to the Gospel Library App so he could download it to his phone. Later today we were calling and setting lessons up with people we are teaching and we sent a text to these recent convert members and then they randomly video called us. We talked to them for a minute and set up another visit for Monday. We also had a mission call and found out that there is going to be about a 100 missionaries coming to our mission. About 15 are coming this next week and they're going to be coming in like waves. It's really exciting and crazy but our mission is going to grow a ton before it gets split into 2 different missions with Austin.

Monday: For today we're going to pick up our new companion at 6 and were going to go shopping with him and help him get settled in. We're spending most of our day at the church and calling and emailing family. We went running a couple miles today. We decided that we were going to go running every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

I hope y'all have a great week. Love y’all lots!! 

Pictures from this week:

1. The 4 of us are eating dinner from the Guerreros restaurant.