June 22, 2020

Hey everyone. Hope your week is doing good. 

The work is doing great and this week we were able to do a lot of service for people. We started painting a part member families fence on Wednesday. It's super fun. It's been pretty hot as well this week and we got some pretty good sun. I took off my watch and noticed a watch tan appearing on my wrist. It's pretty funny. Elder Johnson got a little sunburnt on his neck and it was pretty funny but he's good now. I guess we just need to put more sunscreen on haha. On Thursday there was this giant food distribution operation. We got to help out with that and it was super fun. We got there around 9 and it went until around 1. We were sorting fruit that went bad for about half the time and then we switched and got to hand out masks and direct people. It was super fun and our whole zone was there. We got a really cool video for it and lots of pictures. Later that day we got to be on a zoom call with Elder Anderson. It was super awesome to listen to one of the 12 apostles. He talked to us about strengthening our testimonies and gave us some really cool ideas to do that. One of the ways he told us was to make a list of things that you truly believe to be true. I decided to do that and it was really amazing to see where I am personally in my testimony and belief. 

On Saturday our zone leaders surprised us with mail. I got a new name tag that's English because I thought it would be cool since all I have are Spanish tags haha. Also I got a package from one of my friends with a sweet Brazilian soccer Jersey with my name on it. It's soo cool I love it so much. I'm grateful to have such an awesome friend. 

This week as a whole mission we found over 400 people. That was amazing. We worked so hard because our mission splits this next week. We are going to get transfer news today sometime and we're all excited and anxious to see if we will be in the Tsam or the Tam which are the 2 missions. 

I hope you are having a good week. Can't wait to talk to y’all again next week! Adios. 

June 15, 2020

Hi family and Friends!!!

This week was awesome. I wanted to start out by saying that I'm so grateful for y’all. Thanks for reading my emails and writing back, you’re all so amazing. 

We've been really busy this week and have been teaching a ton. Every day we are packed with things to do and people to reach to and teach. It's amazing and the Spirit is so strong here and I know that I am very blessed to be out here. Were progressing a ton with Magally who is on date for baptism in 2 weeks and were super excited. She loves it when we add members to the video calls we have with her and wants to be active when church comes back. Another cool thing is we are going to come back to church in about 2 weeks as well. Its perfect timing right after she is baptized and she will be able to meet a lot of the ward. We will too haha. 

We went up to Carrizo Springs again this week for district council. We had lunch with the sisters as well as one of the people who is on date for baptism next week. It was super fun to talk and get to know this person and hear how excited he is for when he is baptized. Me and Elder Johnson are doing super great in Eagle Pass. We love teaching the people and getting to know the area better. We are getting some extra help from one of our Branch President Castro's daughters. She is helping us make sweet videos and we made a really cool tik tok video. We’re going to try and get more and it will all go onto our page eventually. We tried to have a scheduled live video for our facebook page where we make it all before hand and then put it live. The funny thing was that it never worked and so we had to manually start it. The live video wasn't even good because it stayed blank for like 6 minutes then started haha. Elder Johnson and I were pretty tired after working on that for a little bit but were working on getting better at that haha. On Sunday we helped the other Elders make cookies and it was super funny because we were trying to cool them off so we were fanning the cookies. It was super funny and doesn't make much sense. 

We decided to make some Book of Mormon drop offs this week for a couple of people who we’re teaching who don't have a Book of Mormon. It was really fun and cool because we were able to meet 2 of the people who were teaching in person and get to know them better. 

Again I'm so grateful for all your support. I hope you all have a super awesome week and I can't wait to talk again to y’all next week!!!

Here is a picture of the other Elders Fanning cookies. 

June 8, 2000

Hi everyone. I hope your week went great!

This week was really good and went pretty quick. 

We have been working on making posts for Facebook with our zone. We have a group on a web site named Canva. We share all the posts we are making for Facebook so we can build off each other’s ideas and use some of them as well. It's pretty cool. Our mission is pretty good at technology; a lot of missionaries are super good at doing stuff online and can do lots of cool things. Me and Elder Johnson have been putting scriptures of the day on our story for Facebook each day and that's been really fun. We get a lot of good feedback from that. We also tried to do a live event on Sunday and basically we just read the living Christ and talked about it. It was pretty fun and we think we might try it again next week. We have been working hard on our Spanish and learning new words each day. I love it when I can have a conversation with someone who doesn't understand any English. It's just super cool. As a zone we are starting our 4:00 stop again because somehow it just slowly stopped. But we are doing that again so the zone will call each day at 4 and we will pray. It's pretty cool. Me and Elder Johnson have been walking around the neighborhood to get out and take a break from being inside. It's a great way to stretch and for us find someone. Soon we will be able to go knock doors again and that's exciting but for now we can only street contact which is only talk to people we see on the side walk etc... We also saw this really cool truck with Christmas lights on it and got a picture with it. It was super cool. 

A spiritual thought for this week that I had was in The Book of Mormon. In The Book of Alma chapter 7 verses 23-24 they say

23 And now I would that ye should be humble, and be submissive and gentle; easy to be entreated; full of patience and long-suffering; being temperate in all things; being diligent in keeping the commandments of God at all times; asking for whatsoever things ye stand in need, both spiritual and temporal; always returning thanks unto God for whatsoever things ye do receive.

24 And see that ye have faith, hope, and charity, and then ye will always abound in good works.

I love these scriptures because it talks about having all these attributes and following the commandments. It says that you can ask Heavenly father things that you need spiritually or temporally. Our heavenly father loves us and wants to hear our prayers. He will always be there even in our hardest troubles. I know that he has been there for me. It also says in the next first to have faith, hope and charity. When we have those 3, we can be so much happier and help others around us feel happy as well. This week I wanted to invite y’all to think of some ways you have seen Heavenly Father in your lives and how he has been there for you. 

I hope y’all are having a great week and can't wait to talk to y’all again soon. Love y’all!

Some members made this for us a couple days ago and it was Sooooo good.

June 1, 2020

Hi Family and Friends, 

This week was really good. 

We had a really good week for finding and teaching so it went really quick. We found an old area book on paper and started calling people that hadn't been contacted in years. It was really awesome too because the first person we called off it answered and we set up a time to call and have a lesson with him. It's been a really good effective way of finding people. Our mission president gave us permission for us to go street contacting again. We can’t go into people's houses yet but we can walk around and talk to people which is awesome. We’re excited to start doing that again. One thing that's kinda weird about it is we’re actually talking to people face to face again. Instead of over the phone. 

We had our Zone Conference this week. It was really good and we learned a lot. We had a couple of trainings for Facebook and making quality post etc... One of the things that stood out to me the most from Zone conference was a training about self reflection. They mentioned something called “The Spot”. Someday I'm going to be in the airport on my way home and I'm going to be looking back at my mission and thinking if I did my best. When I come home I want to know that I did my best and wasn’t lazy or anything. 

This week we were able to extend a baptism invitation to a person we are teaching named Magaly. It was really cool and she has been progressing a lot. She is reading The Book of Mormon a lot and is almost done with it. She is set to be baptized this month on the 27th. We are really excited for her.

We had our first District council in person this week as well. It was really fun because we left Eagle Pass and traveled to Carrizo Springs where the sister missionaries are. It's about 40 minutes from us so we had a bit of a drive.  

We also had a devotional with Sister Becky Craven this week. She is in the young women's presidency. It was really cool because the mission could ask questions. She talked about that this is the Lord's mission and not ours. One of my favorite things she said was "Effort leads to Energy". If we try and are putting in our best effort we are going to be more enthusiastic and bring that energy. 

We got our mid transfer transfer news before the mission splits next month. Me and Elder Johnson are staying together and Elder Gardanier is going to San Antonio. Elder Wadsworh is going to be our new district leader. I'm not really surprised I'm not leaving because I just got here. 

I hope y’all are having a great week. I love y’all and can’t wait to talk to ya’ll again next week.

Sorry I don’t have any pictures for this week.