9/6/2021

Hey everyone! Happy Labor Day!

This week went by so fast. We had our zone conferences this week on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. It was a great experience! 

One of the biggest things I learned from zone conference was teaching clearly and testifying briefly and strongly. Our mission President had us do an exercise where we had to teach a topic in 3 sentences. For example you would have to explain what a prophet was in 3 sentences. Than after he had us do the same thing but you have to testify of prophets. He taught us so much about the importance of teaching simply but powerfully and he gave us the invitation to practice our testimonies in the mirror each day. To practice our personal testimony of what we really believe and he promised that if we did so that we would have stronger testimonies and become master teachers. I felt super inspired from that so this past week I've been really focusing on that invitation and so far it’s been amazing. 

On Wednesday right after Zone Conference Elder Larsen and I as well as the other Elders that cover our ward got permission to go to the temple and do baptisms for the dead. There was a member in the ward who had about 59 ancestors who needed to get their work done and so he had originally planned for the ward to help but only a recent convert could come. He asked if we could help him and we replied quickly with a yes. Our mission President approved as well. It was one of the coolest experiences going and doing baptisms in the San Antonio Texas Temple. The spirit was so strong and I am just so grateful for that opportunity. I felt so happy and especially felt that the people we had helped on the other side of the veil were eternally happy and grateful as well. On Sunday the member who had needed our help named Brother Vaughn stood up and bore such a powerful testimony on the temple. The spirit was so strong. My testimony increased and strengthened so much with that experience.

Some other things we have been up to lately have been a lot of reactivation work. We had a dinner on Thursday with a family named the Whitingtons. We had such an inspired lesson on gratitude and spiritual gifts. We did an activity where the family told one spiritual gift about each other person in the family and then we lead that into a discussion of why God gives us spiritual gifts and how we can use those to serve and bless others. It was amazing! The family actually came back to church this Sunday. We have had lots of smaller experiences this week as well. 

We are teaching some; a few people are progressing pretty well too. Jesus and Jennifer are awesome and we are planning to put them on date hopefully this next week when we meet with them again. 

Our friend Jason who I was teaching in Valley Hi is getting baptized this week. I'm so excited! We get to watch his baptism so that's going to be awesome.

Well I hope y'all are doing good. Let me know if I can do anything for you. Have a great week! 

-Elder Portlock  

1. We stopped by the original church building in San Antonio that I mentioned in my last email. It's been turned into a house. Built in 1942.

2. Me at the temple.

3-4. Temple photos.