10/26/2020

Hi Everyone! 

 This week was pretty interesting but not much happened. We got in a small car crash with a semi truck. We got struck on the left side by the semi and bounced of it into the barrier of the high way and pulled over. The truck never stopped so we have been trying to figure everything out. We are all okay and no one was hurt. It was a miracle that no one was hurt or anything. Since that happened we have been a biking area and it's been a lot of work. We get some rides but we’re biking a lot from our apartment. We have talked to a couple different people and that's been good. We also got our flu shots this week so now we are all good with that haha. We were also filming a video this week for our facebook page which was pretty fun. Sorry my email isn't that long. I hope you all have a good week!

 -Elder Portlock 

1. Me and Elder Lemke after our flu shots.

2. Us filming our video.

 

 10/19/2020

Hey y'all!!! I'm so sorry I totally forgot to send last week’s email. It was already to go but it slipped my mind. I guess you all get 2 emails this week. 

 Oct 12, 2020

 This next week I'll be hitting my one year mark. I'm so excited and sad at the same time because that means I only have one year left of my mission. It's been so fun living here In Texas, like I'm learned so many things. It's been so fun helping others with service projects and teaching others that time has just gone so fast. It's also my Birthday today so we are celebrating with going bowling.

 This week we found 3 new people to teach. The first one came to church and the really cool thing was that she told us after church that she wants to come here again and feels that this is a good place. We were so happy and excited. We set up a lesson for this next Saturday and we are planning on having the Relief Society president come as well. The next person is actually already a member, she is just less active but that's mainly because of Covid and she moved from Louisiana. She was so excited to talk to us and thankful that we found her. We invited her to the English ward next Sunday. We were actually street contacting and that's how we found her. 

 The 3rd person was someone we had already taught but stopped because we couldn’t get in contact with. But we finally got back in contact with her and she wants to meet with us and everything. It was really cool. We have a lesson with her tomorrow hopefully.

 We did service this week at the Packer family’s house and helped clean and get rid of weeds. It was a lot of fun. 

 Well I hope you all have an amazing week!!!

 Oct 19, 2020

 Okay now for today's email haha. 

 This week was amazing and time flew!!! The lesson with the person we found who was interested in coming to church went super good. She is really awesome and loves meeting with us. We have another lesson tomorrow or this Tuesday. Our other lesson with the person we found went awesome as well and we are going to try and get her fellowshipping with some of the members who live next door. I've been having a ton of success with finding people on Facebook to share the gospel with. We have a couple different lessons with people I just started a small conversation with. We had a technology meeting this last Tuesday as well and we learned how to make videos and edit it all in about an hour’s time. We learned other things about how to be more successful with our Facebook pages and everything. It was a lot of fun and we learned a lot. On Wednesday we did exchanges and with the District leader and I went to an English area. It was so cool being able to actually be in an English area technically for the first time In my mission haha. We taught 2 different families in their houses and that was super fun. We were teaching their kids and they want to be baptized. It was a really cool experience and I didn’t realize it at first but teaching in English is a lot easier than teaching in Spanish haha. I have basically only really taught in Spanish most of my mission so far so it was a really good experience. On Friday it was really cool. We have a reassigned missionary who was a church historian at the sacred grove and Joseph Smith memorials before Covid and she gave the whole mission a virtual tour of it. It was really cool to learn some small stores of Joseph Smith and translating the Golden Plates. It was also really cool just getting a look of what their house might have looked like as well. The other Elders had a Baptism on Saturday and it was really cool. The person who was baptized has such an amazing testimony and is going to speak to the mission tonight. We’re pretty excited for that. I hope you all have had an amazing 2 weeks. I'll talk to y’all again next week!!! 

 -Elder Portlock. 

 Pictures for this week:

 1. Elder Michie was trying to unplug the font.

 2. The 6 of us all in the truck. Don’t worry we all had seatbelts on.

 3. Me and Elder Lemke Street contacting at the park. 

 4. We went bowling for my Birthday

 5. The package from my family for my Birthday.

 

 

 10/5/2020

Hey Everyone I hope you had a super great week. General conference happened and that was amazing. I love listening to the Prophet; he truly has been called of God. For conference for me we all went to the church and set up a TV to watch conference. We all had our snacks and everything so it was super fun. For the Sunday afternoon session we watched it with Rockwell family at their house. It was pretty fun too because we watched it in Spanish. After we had burgers. There was so many good things said and I have several different favorite talks and speakers. One of the quotes from our prophet President Nelson was, “Life without God is a life filled with fear. Life with God is a life filled with peace.” I really liked that because it is so true. I also really liked it when he talked about Israel and "Let God prevail". I really think as well if we let God prevail in our lives we will see the blessings he has for us and feel his move more. 

 

Well for the rest of the week was pretty good as well. We ended up moving back to New Braunfels because of mid transfers. We helped a family move into a new apartment on Wednesday and that was really fun. We dropped off a Book of Mormon to this person we are teaching and it was really cool. She is actually going through a rough time right now. She was recently diagnosed with cancer and has just barely got out of the hospital for other things but one thing that's amazing to see is her faith. She told us that even though she is going through something really hard she isn't going to lose hope. She is going to keep fighting and keep her faith in Christ. She also told us that when she gets better she wants to come to church and even bring her grandchildren. She has family that are members of the church so that was really cool to find out. 

 

Next week is B-day so I'm super excited. I'm also getting close to my first year mark so even more excitement. 

I hope you all had a great week again and I will talk to y’all again soon. 

 

While we were helping move for service the members let us hold their bearded dragon which was sooo cool. Than they gave us pizza haha.

 

 9/28/2020

Hi Yall!

 

This week went pretty fast or in Spanish you could say "Este semana fue muy rápido". I wish y’all knew Spanish, then I would just write all in Spanish haha. Things are going good here in Texas. It has been a pretty hot week in Texas, at least in our Church building. We believe that the air conditioning is not working all the way so its mega hot haha. It sort of works and there was a small fan we found that we put on when we are there, just to get some air flow haha. We are working really good and having a lot of fun though. This last week on Tuesday my companion Elder Lemke and I had the opportunity to go to the temple, well at least Elder Lemke did. I went on an exchange and Elder Lemke went to in to receive his endowment. It was really cool. For the missionaries that were going to get their endowment in the temple, their parents could also come to the mission as well and be a part of it. So many parents were there. One of the missionaries’ parents took four of us out to lunch at this super fancy restaurant. It was a Brazilian steakhouse named Brasão. Their food was really good! I would definitely put that on my list of restaurants to eat at again someday haha. That night we decided to go street contacting and it was super amazing. We found 2 people who were sitting outside in their yard and we starting talking to them. They were super friendly and we shared a small message about families and after we set up a visit for this Friday. On Friday we had a super cool experience with them. We came over around 7 so it was starting to get dark but we met another person who was a friend of the 2 people we met who was over there at the same time. We shared a message about God and his love for us and talked about prayer. We shared a scripture in Alma 37:37 and after the new person we met told us that just about an hour ago he was feeling that he needed some kind of spiritual help or message. By the end of our lesson we were filled with so much love and peace. We set up another visit with them this next Tuesday. It was a really cool miracle that we had this week.

 

On Wednesday we had district council with our new district and that was pretty fun. I was asked to give training about helping our investigators make and keep commitments. I used the “Preach my Gospel” book which has some really great stuff. I love using “Preach my Gospel” because it can help us learn as well. It you have never seen or opened one you definitely need to. It’s awesome. Me and Elder Lemke gave a small dinner message that night and we decided to use the Helaman 5:12 with a can of fruit trick. If you don’t know what I'm talking about I'll make a video for my Facebook page sometime so you can watch it. But basically we read the scripture and talk about how we build our faith and foundation in Christ and then we smash the can on our finger which is placed on a Book of Mormon that represents Christ. Our finger doesn't hurt because we are protected by Christ with a foundation built on him and nothing can hurt us. But anyways during the message Elder Lemke slammed the can down and it shook the table really hard and scared everyone. It was really funny after and everyone couldn’t stop laughing for a minute. 

 

Well those are the highlights of my week. I hope y’all are doing amazing. I miss y’all tons and hope y’all have a super great week!

 

-Elder Portlock