August 17, 2020

Hey everyone! Its Monday again!

 This week was really good. We had the opportunity to go and help a family named the Rockwell’s with their yard on Tuesday. It was super fun and we were planting trees and helping build a garden. We found that in Texas it can sometimes be pretty tough to dig because you just have clay and rocks haha. After we finished they gave us dinner and they made us cheese enchiladas with rice. It was super good and for desert they cut up a super juicy watermelon. It was the best watermelon I have ever had. I'm pretty sure that they are just better in Texas haha. Brother Rockwell is actually our branch mission leader so we talked about people we are teaching and he really wants to get involved. He is super mission minded which is really awesome. On Wednesday we went to another person's house and did some tree trimming. We made it so that the road didn’t have any tree branches in the way because it's a small country road. It was super fun. We’ve been doing a lot better finding people this week than last week. We found 3 people who are pretty awesome and want to learn more. One of them is Chayo Alvarez and she is super kind. We dropped of a Book of Mormon to her house and she was super excited to get it and start reading. On Thursday we did our Weekly Planning and that went really well. It didn't take too long since we don’t have a whole bunch of people right now to teach. But soon we will because we are getting a about a referral a day of someone who is interested. Our Branch President got us chipotle for dinner which was soo good. He loves feeding us and said that if we ever need anything to let him know. On Friday we basically almost drove to Austin haha. We have a member who lives on the very edge of our mission boundaries in Kyle that we went to pick up dinner. It was a pretty long drive but really fun because we kinda drove all over the place that day Haha. We are having such a fun time calling the members of the branch and getting to know them better. Next week we are going to have our first meeting in person which is so exciting. We are finally going to meet everyone in person and stuff. We went to one of the member’s houses on Sunday and when we were leaving we saw this giant green grasshopper. I'm soo sure now that everything in Texas is bigger haha. We got a picture of it next to one of our hands to compare the size. I really liked the “Come Follow Me” from this week. It was talking about the stripling warriors and how they fought with trust in the Lord and there were 2 verses that I really liked that described them a little. 

 

Alma 53

20 And they were all young men, and they were exceedingly valiant for courage, and also for strength and activity; but behold, this was not all—they were men who were true at all times in whatsoever thing they were entrusted.

21 Yea, they were men of truth and soberness, for they had been taught to keep the commandments of God and to walk uprightly before him.

 

I love those verses because if we follow the example of these stripling warriors we can get through all the tough and hard things. We can be ready for all the challenges that come our way and we will see so many blessings in our lives. 

 

I hope that you all have another wonderful week and I'll see you later!

 

-Elder Portlock