July 27, 2020

Hey everyone I hope your week was super great.

This week we did a lot of service. On Tuesday we went to this house and we moved a bunch of stuff around and threw stuff away. On Wednesday we helped out with giant food bank distribution. It was super fun but that day was super hot and we were sweating soo much. We drank so much water haha. We helped mow and trim someone's lawn on Thursday and after they made us some really good Mexican sandwiches called a torta. They were super good. They also wanted to cook us dinner so that day we had a couple of dinners.

We had car inspections for our zone on Tuesday as well so everyone in our zone from Del Rio and Cotula and Corrizo came to Eagle Pass. The mission vehicle coordinator Elder Huzzy came down from San Antonio. It was super awesome getting to see our zone and some different people. We got a super cool Jesus picture stand from President Tveten and his wife. We had a mission wide device audit which was pretty cool. The main reason for device audits is to make sure that we’re safe and following the mission rules. They don’t want us texting people we shouldn't or looking up things that is mission appropriate. It also rained in Eagle Pass for the first time in like forever. It was super good and cooled everything down for the day. Now it's all hot again haha. I have a funny story for my watch. We were playing basketball in the morning and my watch strap broke. Later I was trying to find a way to fix it so I got to spaghetti noodles and placed the right size of noodle in the spot hold my strap to the watch. It worked for just about an hour before it broke again haha. We’re going to take it to Walmart to get it fixed today. On Sunday our Branch President had asked us to give talks during church. It was a super awesome cool experience because it was my first time giving a talk in Spanish. It was for about 15 minutes each for me and Elder Johnson and we were asked to talk about missionary work. I related it to the family a little and how the gospel blesses families. I ended up doing super good. We found a baby scorpion in our apartment so we captured it and threw it out of the apartment. Something fun that our zone is doing right now is we’re all making a talent video kind of like Americas got talent and we send it to our zone chat. They're super funny so I'll have to send you all our video and another one that’s hilarious.

I hope you all had a super great week and can’t wait to talk to y’all again.

-Elder Portlock

July 20, 2020

Hey family and friends! 

I hope you all had a really fun and great week. This week has been really good here in Texas. I wanted to start off with sharing a real miracle story. We were calling out of some old area books on an old number list and we called a number and this person picked up. His name is Ernesto and he was taught in the past and had a baptismal date as well. He was super willing to meet with us and start taking lessons from the missionaries again. He told us he was reading in the scriptures before we called. He even told us it was some kind of coincidence that he happened to be at his grandparent’s house when we called. We have a lesson this Tuesday and he said he wanted to download the Book of Mormon app without us even telling him about it. He was even willing to cut our hair some time haha. I really love this story because it goes to show that the work is still going and that there are still people out there looking and who are waiting.  Our Heavenly Father puts people in our path all the time. We just need to be ready to be worthy and have the companionship of the Holy Ghost. I've been reading the Book of Mormon all in Spanish this week and it’s been super fun. I started in Mosiah which is like where it gets super good. I'm learning so much from the scriptures even though it's in Spanish. We had zone conference this week and interviews with President Tveten as well. We had a pretty big zoom call and received some training on how we can be better effective on Facebook. We also learned about having SUPER TRUST with members and why it's important. If we have Super Trust with the members of our ward or branch, they will want to work with us more and be more open to giving us family members or friends that we can teach. Our zone is doing a little activity to keep us all pumped and excited for the mission work. We are all doing an Americas got talent thing. We all have to show off one of our talents or do something cool and we film it and send it to the zone. Me and Elder Johnson are first so were planning on turning all the lights in the church ON in 1 minute. It's going to be super fun haha. Well I hope everything is going well and y’all have a super duper good week! 

- Elder Portlock 

July 13, 2020

Hey Everyone!! Hope your week was super great. This week went super fast and really fun. We got 2 more Elders that moved to Eagle Pass so at the moment we have 6 Elders in our 2 bedroom apartment. Elder Ward is one of the Elders and it's pretty awesome because I was with him in my last area. As a fun thing for the 6 of us we all play basketball for lunch and dinners. The Missionary work is doing super good. We’re finding lots of people over Facebook and it's pretty fun to share quick messages and brighten other people's day. It's super hot right now in Eagle Pass so I'm super happy that were not biking all the time haha. A little funny story for this week was Elder McAvoy found a little baby lizard in his bed haha. He usually pulls out his mattress and sleeps on the ground because he too tall for the bunk bed. But it was so funny because it scared him. We put the lizard in a cup and named him Diego. Also I finished the Book of Mormon for the second time on my mission and it was super amazing. I really love the Book of Mormon and it teaches so many amazing things. My testimony is so much stronger for it and I know it's true. I'm now going to be mainly studying the Book of Mormon in Spanish. I hope you all had a great week, its good talking to y’all!!

-Elder Portlock

Pictures for the week.

1. Diego the lizard. 

2. The 6 of us Elders.

7/6: 

Hey everyone!
Hope your week went great!!!

This week was a little normal. We found 9 new people to teach this week from online referals and things which was awesome. We got to have our first online church on zoom which was really cool. In my personal studys I'm really close to the end of the Book of mormon. I'm in the book of Ether so I only have about 20ish more chapters left. Its been really fun reading and studying The Book of mormon this year and I cant wait to start over again soon. One of the recent chapters that I really liked was the last chapter of mormon in chapter 9. It's so good! If you havent read it recently go and read it. The promises and things that are in it are really amazing.

I don't have a whole lot to write this week but I'll try to write more next week. I hope you all Have a great week!!!

Adios!

6/29/2020

Hey Family and friends.

This week went super great for us. First I wanted to tell ya about some of the miracles we had. Me and Elder Johnson set some goals last week for finding. We set our goal to find 7 people and we ended up reaching that. It was really hard this week to do that but we did accomplish them. It was really awesome. There was a couple times when we called a number and it wasn't the person number we were looking for and we ended up asking them if we could share a message with them and setting a return appointment. It was amazing to see that the Lord was helping us and putting people in our path. We are trying to set up some English classes in our area and we have gotten a couple calls already from people who are really interested. We’re excited to start teaching English jaja. We had our first Baptism in our area on Saturday and that was super amazing. We were trying to plan it all out and it was stressful because you had to follow all these guidelines because of the virus. But everything worked out and it was really cool getting to bring someone closer to our Heavenly Father and onto the path. The members have been giving us lots of food because they want us to be safe and stuff because of the virus. So we always have dinners and extra food at the church jaja. We also helped out with another food distribution this week in Carriszo Springs. It was pretty fun to help out with. I'm getting really close to finishing the Book of Mormon. I'm in 4th Nephi so I'll finish the Book of Mormon in no time. It's all downhill from there and sometimes hard to stop reading jaja. I really love reading and learning from it. It's so amazing and everything it teaches is so true and I have a very strong testimony of it. I hope everyone is having a super great week.

Talk to y’all again later.

Pictures from this week. 

1. Service from this week at the food distribution 

2. Pictures from the Magaly’s Baptism