Abilene week 21

Mama's homemade chocolate chip cookies......YUM!

First, thank you so much for the box. It was greatly appreciated. So was the one from the week before with the cookies and pumpkin seeds. Elder Banks and I enjoyed them. And the tie that you sent me is super legit. It's da best!

Ok, usually we have district pictures the last week of transfers, but Elder Sheffield (the one holding the golden plates) left this week so we had to get a picture while he was still here. He went home 3 weeks early for a family reunion thingy. Good for him, but I don't plan on leaving early. I mean, I only get so much time to be a missionary right?

Saturday night it was Elder Mortensen's birthday, so around 9:30 we had a 15 minute party for him by eating some cake. It was fun.  And I like how weird Elder Smith looks in this picture. I met him my very first day on the mission. Elder Smith is about 9 months further into his mission than me. On my first night in Lubbock, we went knocking together. Now he's my zone leader! Pretty cool. 

Elder Banks doing service for Henry

Well, this week we got a cool new investigator named Henry. We just found him on the street and were really friendly with him. We actually didn't even jump into a gospel discussion, we just talked with him at first. He didn't seem super interested in us as missionaries, but I think we were able to make a connection with him and he invited us back. We continued to work on our friendship when we came back and he opened up to us, sharing some really personal spiritual experiences.  Also, we were able to do a couple hours of service for him this week which opened him up even more. It seems to be slow progress with our 47 year old friend, but we will see what happens this coming week.

Elder Moffitt doing service for Henry

When we were doing service at Henry's house this week we found a ton of salamanders. Pretty legit.

Other news from investigators: Marianna and Noel dropped us. We showed up and they were too scared to talk to us, so they sent their 12 year old daughter out to give us back their copies of the Book of Mormon and tell us not to come by anymore. We also dropped Manuel, who wasn't keeping any committments. Thomas tried to drop us. He told us not to come by anymore. But then in the closing prayer we asked him to pray if Joseph Smith was a prophet, then he said like a 5 minute prayer and the spirit was really strong, and at the end he yelled "Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!" So he felt the Spirit and said we could still stop by sometime if we're in the area. So we'll see with him too.

Last Monday night we got a text from Azriel! He got dropped off in Acuna, Mexico. It's pretty crazy. The border patrol just takes them across the border, unloads them, and basically says good luck with your life. Then they just have to find a way to get back to wherever their home was, or to contact their family. And Azriel's family lives 18 hours away from the border. He told us he was headed to Monterrey for a little while first, so we sent him the address of the church there. We pray that he can find the missionaries down in Mexico :)

Javier and Flo have their baptism re-scheduled for the 23rd of November. After some complications that I won't get into (because we don't even know the full extent of them ourselves) they told us they weren't quite ready. We have been praying hard for the gift of discernment to figure out what their issues may be. After all, we only see the tip of the iceberg. But, they both were at church and still have a desire to be baptized. So, there's the good news.

This week we picked up 2 more super legit investigators, Griselda and Nancy. They are cousins of Yessi, a convert of 1 year in our branch. We just went over to Yessi's house to visit her and ended up meeting her cousins. A few days later we came back and had an amazing lesson with them. Right in the middle of the lesson it felt right, so we committed them to baptism on the 30th before we had even mentioned Joseph Smith's name. They both said yes. Then at the end we asked them to pray and Griselda said, "yes, I'll pray, but I already know these things are true." She told us how she was having a super tough day, but the whole time we were over, everything just got better and she felt so good. And during the whole lesson Nancy was asking MTC style questions. Like we explained how Jesus Christ and the apostles died and she says, "oh my gosh, what happened to the church?" and when we shared the first vision she said, "Well, what did they both tell him?!" It was an awesome lesson! Nancy is 19, and Griselda is 20. And the cool thing about the baptism on the 30th is when we asked them, Griselda is like, "No way! That's my birthday!" Anyway, I thought that was cool. They were both at church on Sunday too.

Here is our fearless ward mission leader cooking some deer ribs of the deer that him and his wife shot last week. It's funny, he calls himself  "The redneck Mexican."

Our branch is pretty good sized. It varies from week to week. This last week we had about 60 people, I think. 30 of them were white, but that's ok. We always have 2 trays of water to pass the sacrament, and this last week we ran out. We had to bless the water twice because we had to get some more because everyone didn't get it. Pretty cool I think. That's the first time that has ever happened to me. 

And cool story of the week. Elder Banks and I killed a bird. It was an accident! But we still inadvertently killed it. We drove into the parking lot and scared it away. It flew straight into the glass door of the church and made a huge bang sound. Then it didn't get up. It laid there twitching for like 5 more minutes until it finally died. Not to sound maniachal (sp) or anything, but it was pretty funny.

Well, I hope you liked my cool and hopefully spiritual stories from this week! I gotta run, but it was fun to hear from you this morning! I love you mom! I love you dad! I love you Meagan! I love you Courtney!