3/29/2021

Hey everyone! 

I hope you had a really week. This week flew by so fast. There wasn't a whole lot that happened.

On Tuesday we went to Pete's Provisions food center where we did a few hours of service there. We stocked a ton of bread and baked goods. The shelves were like overflowing haha. 

On Wednesday we had District Council and that went super good. I gave a training about why the Book of Mormon is important in teaching and how we can use it to answer questions of the soul. 

On Friday we had exchanges with the Alamo YSA 1st Elders and that was super fun. We had a pretty full day of lessons and I gave a baptismal interview for a person named Bart who is getting baptized this week. We set up so many lessons for the next day too. 

On Sunday night we helped manage the comments for the Easter Hossana live event that our mission was doing. It was super fun to watch and manage. 

Other than that we have been visiting members of the Bulverde Ward and sharing an Easter Message with them. It's been super fun.

I'm reading in the Book of Mormon right now and it's so much fun. I love the stories in 1st Nephi because they can teach us so much. 

Well I hope you all have a super great week! 

 3/15/2021

Hey everyone! 

This week was really good. We had a lot of opportunities to serve the community. I learned how to set up a tea party! 

Yep for service we went to a retirement community called Emerald Oaks and they needed our help to set up the tables for a tea party they were having. You had to set it up a specific way and everything. It was pretty fancy. We also helped take out trash and some other things too. 

We also helped a man who was moving a lot of stuff into a storage unit. He had a moving truck full of things and it was a pretty huge job. We had like 6 of missionaries there to help out. The man was super grateful for our help. 

This week we had a lot of fun visiting with many of the members of the ward who we don't know. We have many who have moved in recently and are trying to meet everyone. I accidentally found someone who lives in Uganda Africa on Facebook. The good news is she is interested in the Gospel. We had a phone call and she wants to meet with the missionaries down there so we are sending her as a referral down there. 

We had a missionary join me and Elder Sherman for a day who is preparing to leave to Chile in South America. He lives in the stake and has been going with the other missionaries to see what missionary work is like. It was super fun being in a trio with him. We were giving him lots of good tips and stuff. I also got to help with his Spanish little haha. He leaves this next Thursday to Chile. 

I also did exchanges with my Zone Leader Elder Dillingham this week. It was super fun going into his area. We had a jam packed day of things to do. We did service moving a BBQ grill upstairs to a patio. We had lots of lessons that day so we were super busy. We didn't stop moving until that night. Elder Dillingham is pretty fun. He was serving in Brazil before Covid and so he speaks a little Portuguese. We also spoke Spanish to each other too. We had a great time serving with each other. 

On Sunday, me and Elder Sherman gave talks about Baptism and the Holy Ghost. It was super fun and easy haha. It was supposed to be 15 minutes each as well. I used a flash light to describe the Holy Ghost in my talk. 

We also met with our stake President Counselor and stake family history consultant this week. They want to work with us on teaching more of the Family History and Temples lesson so this next Thursday we are going to be giving training on this with them to all the family history consultants in the stake. They want us to do a role-play activity to show them how the missionaries and the family history consultants would work together in a lesson. It's going to be super fun and we are really excited about it.

Well that's about it for this week. I hope you all have an amazing week and everything!  

Pictures from service and our Exchange:

 

 

 

 

 3/8/2021

Hi everyone! I hope your week was super good. We had our transfer day on Thursday this week so now I'm with Elder Sherman. Me and Elder Sherman get along super good. He's from Provo Utah so that's super cool. We joke around a lot and like to tell each other riddles and jokes. We have been working super hard these last couple of days and it's been super successful and exhausting which is super good. 

On Tuesday and Wednesday we did a lot of calling and setting up lessons with members for the next week. On Wednesday night we went to our church building to help out with the youth activity days. It was super fun and me and Elder Merritt got to help teach the younger kids about how they can share the Book of Mormon. We also had them glue their testimony or favorite scripture into the it as well so they can give it to a friend. It was super fun. 

On Thursday me and Elder Sherman went street contacting and visited some members. We talked to a person named Brent who was working in his garage. He had a giant boat that took up basically his whole garage and we used that as a way to relate to him as he likes to fish and boat. We had dinner at the Whattcot family. When we got dropped off by the other missionaries we actually got lost and couldn't find their home because the roads are new up there and so maps weren’t super updated. But when we eventually got there they were super nice. They actually got on their golf cart and drove around until they found us and then we got a ride back on their golf cart. It was pretty funny.  They gave us these huge Texas shaped Stakes. They were so good! They had just moved in from Arizona used to be the mission leader for their ward so they were super missionary minded. It was awesome and they gave us a ride to a neighborhood we needed to go to after. 

We also had a really good lesson with a recent convert of a couple years who the missionaries haven't been able to meet with for a while it was super fun and her boyfriend who isn't a member was there. The person we talked to had a super strong testimony of the gospel and especially the plan of salvation. She asked if we could give her a temple tour with her boyfriend sometime in the future and we said yes. We plan to do that sometime. 

On Friday we did some more finding. We had the opportunity to have Elder Soares of the 12 apostles meet with our mission and speak to all the missionaries. It was super cool and we learned a whole lot. He also spoke to all the stakes in San Antonio on Sunday. It was super fun and like a tiny General Conference. We learned allot from the meetings. Elder Soares made a big emphasis on some of President Nelson's invitations to receive personal revelation and have the Holy Ghost in our lives. 

Well that's about it for my week. I hope y'all are okay and have an amazing week!

-Elder Portlock  

Pictures for the week:

1. The Texas Shaped stake we got!

2. Elder Sherman bought a coconut from the store today. It was super funny and we all got to eat some of it.

 

 

 3/1/2021

Hey everyone. I hope your week was super great.

This week went super fast and I'm pretty sad about it because we got our transfer news already. I'll be staying in Bulverde but my companion Elder Merritt will be getting transferred so I only have a few days left with him. I'll be companions with Elder Sherman now. I'm so excited for transfers this Thursday. 

This week we did a lot of finding through Facebook as well as our Areabook. We also had a few opportunities to go and serve in the community. We went to a member’s house and helped move some huge rocks and it was super fun. We spent about 1 hour moving rocks to help someone with their backyard. 

Also I got to go on exchanges with the Elders in Smithson valley and was able to go to service at a food bank called Provisions. 

Not much has changed in our teaching pool but we are having a lot of progress with the people we are teaching. 

I hope that y'all have a super good week and I'll talk to you more next week.