Pampa week 5

Happy Valentine's Day treats from some awesome ward members!

One of the member families had us over for dinner for Valentines, and look at the cute little dessert we got. Friday we went out with the sister missionaries to a Mexican buffet for lunch. Pretty legit. And there you go, I used the word legit again :)

Cute little puppy dog cake from.... Yoana once again. She is the nicest person ever, if you haven't guessed that by this point.

Elder Moffitt and Elder Pahulu

And we got treated to a new shirt, tie, slacks, and candy by Yoana and Ana as our Valentines day present from them. They're sooooooo nice!

Valentines box from the grandparents and you guys!

No baptism this week :( Things didn't quite work out for Elena and Isabella  this week. Always remember, the word of wisdom is very important regarding saving you from  troubles. It's an all around extremely important commandment. I cannot express how many times on my mission I have seen lives and families ruined because of disobedience to this essential commandment. Isabella and Elena still want to meet with us, so we will continue to be helping and teaching them.

James (20s): He is an investigator referred to us by some members. A couple weeks ago we had a lesson at the member's house with James there, and he loved the message of the restoration. Then this week right after we said the opening prayer, he said, "Guys, I've been wanting to tell you something. I gave this lots of thought and prayer, and I really want to be baptized." Oh yeah! The only problem is that he is super busy. So we can only meet with him once a week, and as of now, he has to work on Sundays, so he can't get to church. But, we'll keep working with him too. It's only a matter of time until his schedule frees up and he can get baptized.

We were also able to pick up teaching Diego (15) and Janie (his mom. 40s?). Diego was taught everything before, and had a date, but then the week before decided to not get baptized. But both him and his mom feel it is the right thing to do now. We're starting with ground zero with them. They both came to church on Sunday and really enjoyed it. Elder Pahulu and I gave talks, so there were no worries about some crazy tangent speakers (as a missionary that is always the worry). Then when we had a lesson with them after church and we shared the first vision. Janie started crying and said she knew it was true. My favorite part of any lesson is sharing the first vision. It brings the spirit in so strongly there is no denying it!

Have you ever seen such a FAT dog?

Just normal old contacting people on the street and we found this lady who needed help moving her dog that was so fat it couldn't walk. So, we took it to her car for her. She wouldn't listen to us, but we helped her out anyway and got some funny pictures while we were at it.

I don't know if you can tell from the map, but the area we cover in Pampa is HUGE! We can drive for over and hour and still be in our ward. So, that's what we did one day this week. We decided to visit the less actives in the surrounding towns (basically 99% of the people who do not live in Pampa do not come to church. It's too bad). On one of the country roads we were on, we found some llamas. Of course, we had to stop and take a picture.  

The story behind this picture is that we saw the llama far off, then when we got out of the car it literally started charging us. It sprinted all the way up to the fence. Then I wanted to take a picture right next to it, but it was baring its teeth and making weird noises and I thought it was going to spit on me. I wasn't about to let that happen.

Later while driving down the highway we saw this sweet, giant arrow so we got a picture there too. No big deal.

Groom is another random town we visited outside of Pampa. They have a giant cross there. As you can see from one picture, that is me standing down at the bottom. So, yeah. It's pretty big. Especially with Texas being so flat, you can see that thing for miles and miles outside of town. We had to stop for a couple quick pictures. It's actually a very peaceful place. Surprisingly, it's quite peaceful and you can feel the spirit. Interesting.

Shamrock is a good sized town in our ward that has about 7 families of members, so we had to check it out. Pretty legit that all the street lights have little shamrock banners on them. I bet the people that live there get annoyed with that stuff, but we thought it was hilarious.  

We found some really cool members there too. Most of them just don't come to church because they would have to drive an hour to get there... But we did find 2 part member families that said we could come back and teach them, so that's our plan for this week. And Diego and Janie live in Panhandle, another town about 30 miles out of Pampa. It seems like all our investigators now won't actually be IN Pampa. haha. One of the part member families we went to see was from Hawaii. We knocked on the door and the mom answered kind of angrily and told us we should call before coming over. Then as she was shutting the door and looked at Elder Pahulu and asked him where he was from.  He said Hawaii. Then she let us right in. LOL. Pulling the Hawaii card.

Me cooking a beast omelet the day before all of my eggs expired. 

Elder Moffitt getting his haircut by Elena

Well, family. I hope you enjoyed my tons of pictures from this week. I enjoyed your letters! I usually get them on Saturday. Wow, sister missionaries in the Vienna ward! Sisters get work done, that's for sure. But don't forget about the Elders... that's what seems to happen sometimes when the ward gets split with sisters. I don't think we've been forgotten about though, as you could tell from my pictures this week. I love you mom! I love you dad! I love you Meagan! I love you Courtney!