1/25/21

Hey everyone!!! I hope you all had an amazing week. 

We had transfers on Thursday and I had to say goodbye to the De Zavala area which was so sad. We just barely started to pick up the work before I left. But hey, The Lord needs me in Bulverde so I’m good with that too. This last week on Tuesday me and Elder Knight did service at a little food pantry called the Christian Cupboard. The other missionaries in the district were in quarantine and they asked us if we could go and help since they couldn't. So me and Elder Knight got up early and drove to Seguin and spent our morning doing that. It was super fun and we handed food out to many people. We got to talk to a couple different Spanish speaking people as well. The workers at the Christian Cupboard were super happy that we could speak Spanish so that's why they put us up front to hand out the food. It was really fun and we invited many to English Class. The Rockwell’s were so sad when I told them that I was leaving but so grateful that I had served in De Zavala. Brother Rockwell gave me a Jerry Garcia tie. He actually gives all the missionaries leaving the area a tie and for Sisters the Rockwell’s give them a necklace or earrings. We had a lesson with Maria and her husband on Wednesday. I was so happy that we finally got to meet her husband and have a lesson with him. He actually opened up so much during the lesson and started to have a little more interest. He still has to work every day so he can't come to church but he told us that we could continue having lessons with him and Maria each Wednesday. We were so happy about that. I am so sad though that I will leave now when we have made that progress. I hope that they continue to progress and that Maria will continue to prepare for her baptism. 

Transfer day was so weird. I realized the day before transfers that I have accumulated lots of things during my mission and so getting it all packed was a real challenge. I ended up throwing a lot away and leaving some things in my last apartment. I still have a lot that I need to get rid of so that will be my new project. On transfer day I got to meet my new companion (Elder Merritt). He is amazing and has such a good love for the work. He has only been out for 6 months so he's still pretty new. As soon as we got to our new apartment we did our weekly planning and then I ended up going on a quick exchange with Elder Van Valkenburg. He is our zone leader. We had a Stake leadership meeting and all the District leaders and the zone leaders had to go to it so that's why we did the exchange. It ended up being a cool meeting about mission meeting correlations and how they should run. I got to see Elder Johnson at the meeting as well. He is a district leader like me but for the Spanish area in Canyon Lake. My next day in the area we started street contacting and in this area it's like all gated communities and very few neighborhoods that we are allowed to proselyte in without getting in trouble. It's weird but when we went street contacting we ended up finding a couple people and it was super cool. We talked to a couple people and one of them we invited to be baptized. It was pretty cool and he accepted but didn't want to pick a date yet. He wants to learn more and prepare. His name is Nossa. We set up another visit with them for this next Saturday. But we were pretty excited about that. It was a little weird going to church for the first time in an English ward but it was neat. There are so many more members in the English wards haha but they are so kind and want to help out a lot. I am so excited to begin a new chapter of my mission and to see what the Lord has in store. I hope you all have a really good week and keep being amazing!!

 

 

 

 1/18/21

 

Hey y'all this week was really good. 

We got transfers last night and so I'll be moving to the area called Bulverde. It's an english area so I'm so have mixed feelings about. Like I'm excited to go to an english area for the first time but super sad I won't be working so closely with the spanish community. My new companion is going to be Elder Merritt. 

This last week it was pretty crazy our whole district besides me and Elder Knight got put into quarantine because they came into contact with someone who tested positive for covid. It was sad seeing them all go into quarantine so me and Elder Knight decided to try and cheer them up with some funny videos. Elder knight got these lego missionary figures for Christmas and I had this lego fox figure so we made a funny video with that. It was really goofy but fun. We helped some of the missionaries who are serving in our branch by visiting some of the people they  are teaching and a really funny weird story was me and Elder Knight went to this address for a person named Miguel but it turns out that it was the wrong address. So when we got there we knocked and a person named Angel answered. He didn't know Miguel so we just asked hin if he would be interested in our message. He he said yes and we shared a small scripture and then set up a return appointment. It was really cool because even though we went to the wrong house we still found someone and he was ready to listen at that time. I know that God definitely had to have played a part in that. 

We also had another cool expierience teaching another Person named Jacob. We met him like a couple weeks ago and he has been really struggling with the Book of Mormon and right now he only believes in the Bible. We had a lesson with him yesterday and talked about his concerns and shared some scriptures with him. He was really open to talking and hearing us out. We invited him to pray about if he should read it. Hopefully all goes good.

We tried doing our English class again this week and it was awesome. We had 2 people show up. We did the class at Brother Rockwells house and the people were pretty nervous at first but by the end of the lesson they had opened up a lot and we set up classes for Wednesday's with them as well. Sister Rockwell made us hot chocolate and muffins during the class.

We had a lesson with someone from Cuba. His spanish accent was so fast and I could only understand like 10% of what he was saying plus on top of that it was over the phone. He was really nice but just speaks really fast. We invited him to church and he said he would come so hopefully he does haha. 

That's about for me this week. I hope y'all have an amazing week! And Happy Martin Luther king day! 

Here is one of the videos that we made this week. 

 1/11/2021

Hey everyone I hope your week was super amazing! We had a really good week for finding and missionary work here in De Zavala. 

We found this apartment/trailer park where we could street contact and where there is a higher population of Spanish speaking people so it's been really good for finding and talking to people. We did end up finding 5 new people to start teaching. 

We had two Elders move into our Apartment on Friday so that they could be on the top part of their area. The funny thing is that we cover the zone and so we have everyone's area. 

On Saturday we did exchanges with the zone leaders, so that was Elder Iverson and Elder Bell. We did a lot of street contacting that day and tried to visit some members. The funniest thing I saw from that exchange was that the Zone Leaders’ apartment had 4 couches. It surprised me but it was also pretty cool. 

On Sunday Maria came to church again and we had a lesson with her and talked about her getting married and she wants to do it which is awesome so we are working with her to do that. There are a couple of things we need to do for it so it's all good. 

I hope that y'all have another really good week!

1. We had a late Christmas happen where is snowed for the first time in forever. I literally haven't seen snow for over a year so it was super awesome haha. 

2. Me and Elder Iverson from exchanges. (We were wearing the same sweater haha.)

3. We picked up dinner from and member and decided to take a picture of us and send it to them.

 

 

 

 1/4/2021

This week not much happened. We were put into quarantine last preparation day (Monday) so we haven't done anything really interesting. We do get out of quarantine today so that's awesome and everything. I'm happy for the New Year and for the opportunity we all have to make some goals and resolutions. As a missionary we make lots of goals. Daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly. We learn daily how to plan and make goals so we can be more effective teachers and ministers. I've seen so many blessings of making goals in my life and mission. This last week while we were in quarantine I decided to make a goal to memorize Doctrine & Covenants section 4 in Spanish. I had learned it in English when I was a deacon so I decided to do that instead. I practiced daily and made it a goal to memorize a new part of it by the end of the day and now since a week has gone by, I can say it in Spanish perfectly. I have a testimony of when we put our minds to something and focus on the positive, we will find success. I love you all and I hope you have a really good week.