Abilene Week 8

Elder Moffitt, Kayla, Elder King

Kayla is now a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints! And I was able to confirm her! Pretty exciting, eh? So I have figured out since my two baptisms are of a 17 year old and a 9 year old my average age for baptism is now 13. Hey,” Be ye like a child to inherit the kingdom of God”  right?

Kayla and her grandmother

So at the baptism the ward member who was supposed to give the talk on the Holy Ghost never showed up. He fell asleep by accident and slept through it. So, right there on the spot I gave the talk on the Holy Ghost. It was a really good experience though. I mean, it had to be all by the Spirit since I had no idea what I was going to say. Haha. But baptisms out here in middle of nowhere Texas can be a little sad sometimes. The people at the baptism were Kayla's family, the branch president's family, the ward mission leader's family, and the other missionaries... But it was still a wonderful ceremony. Also, Cristobal was there. Cristobal doesn't speak English at all. The service was all in English. He didn't understand a word, but afterward he said he felt the Spirit the whole time. Pretty awesome.

Sunday really was a big day with Kayla's confirmation at church. Another girl, Alexandria, (would you have guessed that she is also an English speaking grand daughter of a lady in the ward?) was there this Sunday. I could tell she was a little jealous of Kayla. I told her, you know we could baptize you too. She didn't take it jokingly though. She really thought about it. And guess what? We are going to start teaching her this week too. At least that's the plan. Another exciting event of this Sunday was that Cristobal received the Aaronic priesthood! Whoo! 60 year olds getting the priesthood! Ealier in the week we had visited him to see how things were going and talk about the priesthood a little bit since we knew about his coming ordination. Turns out, he didn't really know what the priesthood was. From his definition, it sounded like he thought the priesthood was the atonement. Sooooo, good thing we talked to him about it to clear it up. I hope we did clear it up. In Spanish it was a little difficult.

But speaking of Spanish, I can already tell that mine has improved a lot. This week we took an Elder even fresher than I am with us for a day. After we got out of our visit with Cristobal he looked to us and said, "oh my gosh. I understood nothing." That's exactly how I felt with Cristobal the first time. His accent is difficult and he uses words I don't know all the time. Still, nowadays I usually know what people are talking about. That day the new Elder was with us a few of our plans fell through (just as usual) so we went to our back up back up back up plan. The plan was to stop by this big group of 10 Mexicans we always see hanging around this one house we pass about once a week. We parked the next street over where they couldn't see us and casually started knocking the street making our way to them. Eventually we got over there and Elder King made me take the lead. It was a good time. After talking for about 10 minutes and getting nowhere we left. But it was still a fun experience.

This week we met with Jacob again on Wednedsay. Jacob is officially a non-smoker! After smoking since he was 11 years old he has finally quit at the age of 32! But he has picked up drinking instead.... We were like Jacob! It doesn't work like that. If you want your answer you need to obey ALL of the word of wisdom. So since Wednesday no more drinking either, which is good. The only problem is he expects his answer about the church to be God tapping him on the shoulder and telling him it's true. We've explained how the Holy Ghost works lots of times, but he doesn't seem to understand it. But this Sunday we fasted for him and Nicolas, and also to find some new investigators. It's interesting... Nicolas knows the church is true but he's just being stubborn.  But Jacob doesn't know the church is true and says he will join in a heartbeat if he knows it's true. If we could just combine them both they'd both be baptized!

Juan and Elva. Interesting situation there. Well, all of our situations are interesting, but anyway... We stopped by for our appointment Tuesday and no one was home. They didn't answer out last 3 calls and we had no idea what to do. Last night after church we decided to just stop by and give them one last try. They were there. They let us right in! We read from the Book of Mormon and we felt the Spirit strong (I do have to admit, The Fast and Furious movie was on in the background. Even though the sound was off I couldn't help but catch myself looking over at the TV quite a few times). They had even read the Book of Mormon on their own too. I'll tell you what, fasting works. Juan and Elva came back, and we found a potential investigator at church too. Things are looking up, especially with our newest member of the Spanish branch, Kayla!

Elder Hancock

This is Elder Hancock, who had us over for dinner last night and cooked us some pasta, garlic bread, and breaded chicken. It was quite delicious. Certainly the most high end meal I have seen a missionary cook since I have been out. Notice the apron!

Me out of Nesquick!

Me out of the giant thing of Nesquick I bought when I first got here. It didn't even last 2 months... But the good news is I still have the one you sent me in that first package so life can keep on going.

 Every transfer missionaries get a new planner. Dad knows all about this I am sure. Inside we record how many lessons we have taught and all of our plans for the day and so forth. Well, there is an ongoing tradition here in the Texas Lubbock Mission to decorate your planners. The first picture is of my MTC planner. That is what it normally looks like, as you can see it is very plain.

Well, the second planner was the one I made for my first transfer our here in the field. What a better first planner than Jesus right?

Here is the planner I am currently using. Temples! That's the goal of us missionaries right? Eventually we want everyone to go to the temple. As you can tell, I am doing themes for all of my planners. Pretty exciting I think. And they're not too hard to make. All you have to do is unroll the little binding, put a picture on the planner cover, stick it on with some laminating tape, hole  punch it up and roll the spring back into the book. And there you go!