11/23/2020

Hey everyone. I hope that your week went super amazing. It's been so fun with doing the #givethanks posts daily and everything. I hope y'all have been recognizing and feeling the joy of giving thanks as well. We are getting super excited down here for the light the world starting soon we have about one week until it begins and so we have been showing the members of the branch and sharing it lots of people to get them ready for it. 

This week went really quick and I can't believe its Monday again haha. I hit my 13 months in the mission this week and so now I've been in the mission for a year not counting the CCM. It's been such an amazing ride being on the mission. I've learned so much and my testimony has grown so much as well. I'm super excited to continue learning and helping others come unto Christ in The San Antonio Texas Mission (TSAM). 

We had some success this week in street contacting around some of the neighborhoods in our area this week. We found 4 people to teach. We will be able to teach and do more with them as soon as we get our car back. We talked to the people who are working on our car and they told us they would have it done this week so we will see what happens. 

Maria Mancinas is progressing so much on her path towards baptism. We had a couple lessons this week and she has decided to get married as well so that's super exciting. She has an amazing testimony and loves coming to church. She tried to read the Book of Mormon when we give her places to read so it's pretty great. She has been bringing her friend to the lessons as well and she is pretty interested as well so we will see what happens with her. 

On Thursday we had district council and after we went and had a district lunch. We all decided to go to Buffalo Wild Wings and it was awesome. We all loved it a lot. I got this deal they have where on Thursdays if you buy the 10 boneless wings you can get 10 more for free so it was really good. 

That's about all of the highlights of the week. I hope y’all continue being amazing I hope y’all have an amazing week!!!

-Elder Portlock

Here are some pictures from last week and this week.

1&2. The 4 of us traveling to Canyon Lake and a really cool picture spot.

3. We went to go do service this week. I also cut my finger haha

4. A member of the branch got us pizza one night which was awesome. 

 

 

 11/16/2020

Hey everyone! 

 

This week was really good! We are still waiting for our car to get fixed completely so this week me and Elder Lemke did a lot of street contacting. We get rides with the other De Zavala Elders a lot as well. 

We had a lesson with Maria Mancinas this last Wednesday and we invited her to be baptized. It was a really amazing lesson. We had a member there and we taught the restoration again and talked about what our purpose on earth was. Her testimony is building and it's so amazing. She is on date for the 12 of December and it's even cooler because she picked that day and it's her birthday that day as well. We had a lesson on Sunday with her and showed her the baptismal font and it was really cool. She is super excited. 

Funny story time: Me and Elder Lemke were street contacting and saw two people talking in Spanish and we were like "perfect, let's go talk to them" when we got up to the person's yard they saw us and the women said something in Spanish like "oh it's the Mormons"  and didn't look to excited to see us as well as the other person was in a hurry. We weren't too sure that they were interested so we decided to keep going. Than after a couple houses we heard someone yelling from behind us. The lady was yelling for us to come back so we ran back to her house and talked to her. She was actually interested but a little busy so she gave us her number and we gave her a Book of Mormon. Now we are trying to get something set up with her.

We had zone conference this week and that was really fun. We did zoom on Tuesday and went in person on Wednesday and on Friday finished on zoom again. It was super fun getting to see lots of missionaries again and see old Elders and sisters that I'd served with. Sister Fuentes, the mission nurse was there as well and she gave all the District leaders a jar of salsa that she made over the summer for us. 

Me and Elder Lemke switched up our room in our apartment. We got bored a little of our room and decided to switch it up. Basically all we did was we did put the bed where the desks where and the desks where the bed was. Haha what a switch up! 

The weather in Texas has been super nice with mostly clear skies and it always being hot haha. It’s usually only cold in the morning and at night but not like super cold. 

I hope you all have a really great week! Keep being amazing and God loves you! 

-Elder Portlock

 

 

 

 11/9/2020

Hey everyone hope y’all are doing amazing! 

 This week was pretty amazing! We had a couple lessons with Maria this week and she is progressing and learning really good. She brought her friend to church on Sunday and now we are teaching her as well. We did a lot of street contacting this week as well and ended up talking to a lot of interesting people. We have some opportunities to be able to help out with some yard work for service which could be fun. 

We had another really cool lesson with some people we were passing of to the New Braunfels English Elders. We taught them the plan of salvation and they really liked it. It was super awesome. Funny story. Right after the lesson one of the people named Kierra told us she was getting Hungry and I had a granola bar in my backpack so I gave it to her. It was like her favorite kind of granola bar too. 

 I ran district Council for the First time this week and that was super fun. I loved leading it so much. I also gave a training as well so that was really fun. I talked about teaching simple truths or (TST). We did it at a park and the Elders called in because they were running late haha. 

 We also gave talks in sacrament meeting this Last Sunday and that was super awesome. We were supposed to give a talk for about 6 minutes and my talk ended up being 10 minutes haha. It was really cool because even though I was a little nervous to go up and talk, when I got up there I just had  this confidence boost and had no worries and it went super well.

 Well I hope you all have a great week!!!

 -Elder Portlock 

 We got our pictures taken by a professional photographer at landa park haha.

 

 

 

 11/2/2020

Hi everyone! I hope your week was amazing and Happy Halloween! Also Happy 2nd of November! Also happy election week! Also you’re all fantastic!

 Okay so this week was great but not a lot happened. We got our transfer news Monday and I am staying in De Zavala again. Whoooo! I'm so excited. I also found out that I'm going to be District leader for the new De Zavala District. I'm so excited! Plus we are getting more Spanish sisters. We are basically triple covering our area which is basically the whole zone haha. It's awesome! Me and Elder Lemke are still waiting for our car to get out of the shop so we can start getting to work. This week we spent some more time in our apartment because Elder Lemke doesn't have a bike so we either depend on rides from the other Elders or we are walking so yep. From this transfer, Elder Christensen who was Elder Hoffman’s companion, he got transferred to a English area which was sad. Elder Hoffman got his new companion and his name was Elder Loosle and he is really cool. The only thing which we found out shortly was he was actually assigned as an English speaking missionary. So basically they messed up haha. So they had to go back and switch it up again. I was sad to say goodbye to Elder Loosle so soon. Elder Hoffman’s new companion is really amazing. His name is Elder Katoa. He says he’s from Oregon but he is actually Tongan and from Tonga.

 We got a referral for a person named Luis this week and we had set up a lesson and it was awesome. The only thing was shortly 10 minutes into the lesson we found out he was already a member. It was super funny because we thought he was a new person. Turns out that he somehow referred himself but now we are teaching him again tomorrow and he is coming to church this next Sunday so that's pretty cool. This week also got super cold out of nowhere. We woke up on last Monday and it was freezing cold. I ended up breaking out my coat which I hardly use since we are in Texas haha. For Halloween our President told us to be indoors when it gets dark. So we had a district meeting with new district and did some planning and it was really fun and we all brought food. On Sunday we had missionary correlation meeting at the Rockwell’s and then they fed us dinner. It was super good food. Also funny story. We were on the way to church and we were in the De Zavala car. They had the new Braunfels bikes on their bike rack and we were driving, while we were driving we heard a strange zzzip sound and we all looked back at the bikes and one of the bikes had fallen off the bike rack and was flying down the highway. Thankfully no one was behind us haha. We took the bike to Brother Rockwell because he fixes bikes for fun and he told us he will fix it. 

 Maria came to church again for the 4th time this week and we are super happy for her. We also had a really good lesson after church with a member and we have another this Wednesday again. Its super amazing because she loves meeting with us and learning and the members bond with her really well. We can’t wait to see what this next week will bring. Being a missionary is so amazing! It's a tough job and stressful at times but I know I'm helping Heavenly Father’s children and that I'm being blessed for being out here. That's what helps me keep going. I was reading in the scriptures this week in 1 Timothy 6:12 and it talks about fighting the good fight of faith. I know that if we keep fighting the good fight and help others we can be strengthened and we will be able to get through the toughest of times. 

 I hope you all have an amazing week!!!

-Elder Portlock 

 1. The 4 of us De Zavala Elders the night before Transfers. 

 2. Our last District council before Transfers.

 3. Someone threw their chair off their balcony on the top floor. 

 4. One member brought me and Elder Lemke a ton of food!