Last week in Abilene, week 30

I am sure you  want to hear the "transfer doctrine" as we call it. So, for the first time ever in my whole mission, I am moving! Goodbye Abilene! I will miss it. It was a good run. Lots of fun. Lots of miracles. I will be moving on to Pampa, Texas which is in the Panhandle zone. I won't know my address until next week.  But, remember you can always send a letter to the mission office address:

6310 144th st.

Lubbock, TX 79424

If you send the letter there, it will be forwarded to me within just a couple days. It's a little slower, but when in doubt over transfers, that's how you can get things to me! 

Finally made it to Texas Roadhouse!

And last P-day we decided to finally head over to Texas Roadhouse. We called up all the missionaries in Abilene and invited them to come with us as well. Little did they know we were paying for ourselves with a gift card.... hahaha  

As for the area, I know nothing about it. All I know is that the ward/branch I am going to is split with another pair of missionaries. We'll have to wait and see how it is when I get there :)

This last week we had a fun day of exchanges with our fearless district leader, Elder Cragun.

 He came to Abilene with me and Elder Banks went out to Snyder for the day. It was a good time. We went out to a pizza buffet for lunch, and that was an amazingly delicious hour. He went to BYU the year right before I did, and he even knew one of the people I met while I was there. It was fun reflecting back to the college days with him.

Lupe and Genaro were at church as you saw, and they are still on fire. They love the gospel and know it's true. I hope to see in 2 weeks that they are baptized

One last goodbye with Lupe and Genaro as well. I have only been able to know them a few very short weeks, but I already love them. After we had our lesson and said the closing prayer I went to shake Genaro's hand and he pulled me in for a hug. After that Lupe rushed over and gave me a hug too. It was sad to say goodbye to everyone. But I know they'll be in good hands. Elder Banks is staying here and his new companion will be Elder Yorgeson. 

Funny story: Elder Yorgeson is coming here from Pampa. I am going to Pampa. We are literally just switching spots. And my new companion........ Elder Pahulu! I met him almost my very first day coming on the bus down to Abilene. We talked like the whole time. Now he's going to be my companion. He's a sweet guy. He's from Hawaii (I know, the Pleasant Grove streak was ruined. But I'll take that for someone from Hawaii). He also came out at the same time as Elders King and Banks. That's pretty legit too!

Damian was not able to come to church because he had work again. He is so close, but not quite there. We met up with Nicolas this week and for the first time ever he accepted a baptismal date. We went back the next day to talk about quitting smoking and he just isn't ready for it... As for Eliseo, he has been to church the last 3 Sundays in a row and this Sunday he even brought a friend with him. I think it may be time to start teaching him again and see if he is finally ready to give up drinking. That's the main news for all our investigators. Also: we were able to secure the address of Nancy and Gricelda in Mexico and the missionaries have been sent to their house down there! I pray that they will continue to learn the gospel and be baptized soon as well.

Transfer District Photo

As is custom, the last week of the transfer we had to take a district picture.

Here I am by our jeep with the remains of a gigantic tumbleweed that we hit on the drive to district meeting. Seriously, this thing was huge. I was grateful for the talk we heard about running straight through those things in the MTC. Were it not for that talk, we may have swerved and had a bad accident.

Here I am with another one of the families in the branch. She wanted to take a picture with me, so I said of course. How can I pass up the opportunity to capture a great memory of my mission?

Here I am with one of my favorite families ever (Kayla's family, in case you couldn't tell)!

We always stay for about half an hour or so for our branch dinner right after church is over. We got some good pictures there too. I mean, I had to. I can't just up and leave everyone right?

 Then I got a zoomed out picture of everyone that attended sacrament meeting that week at the branch. It was a good show.  

Last night after church we were able to have 2 great lessons. One was with our favorite buddy, Azriel. He is doing great. He has also talked to his family down in Mexico about the church too. Hopefully they'll be getting involved soon enough down there as well.

Good news! Javier got the priesthood this week! And since Azriel got the priesthood last week, this week he passed the sacrament. Exciting things are happening here. And now you get to see Javier and Flo's kids as well, so I thought it was a good picture. I will certainly miss this place. It's been my home for the past 7 months!

Well family, this has been a transfer of miracles. It's really been a whole mission of miracles. Even before I came out to the MTC I saw the Lord helping me to get ready for where I am now. Y'know, sometimes you don't see why things happen at the time they're happening. But looking back now, I am so grateful for everything I learned in preparation to coming on my mission, and thank ya'll for being such an important part of that. I love you mom! I love you dad! I love you Meagan! I love you Courtney!

 

 

Happy New Year! Abilene week 29

Happy New Year from Abilene!

New years eve wasn't too different than a normal day. We had to come in at 6. Unfortunately, we weren't told that until that very morning so we had to cancel 2 appointments that night. But we were able to reschedule with those people, and we ended up having a fun night. In preparation for New Years Eve on p day we had bought some Martenellis (although we couldn´t find any for real, so we bought Welch).

And we also purchased pretzels, caramel and chocolate. We had a good time melting up some chocolate and caramel and covering some pretzels with real delicousness.

This week we had some pretty crazy stuff go down. I´ll start with Nancy and Gricelda. We had a baptismal date set with Nancy and then on Tuesday we had planned to set one with Gricelda as well when we went over for our lesson on Wednesday. When we showed up at the members house they are living at, he came out and told us that the day before they had packed up and moved to Mexico. They said it was a completely spur of the moment thing. They just came in, packed their bags and left. Their parents live in Mexico. They called them up and said they found jobs for them down there, so they left right away. Wow. We lost our most legit investigators to Mexico once again...

This week was still a good one despite our many setbacks that we faced. I got a picture of Lupe and Genaro after one of our lessons this week. Sorry it´s a little blurry. Btw, the other Elder there is Elder Banegas. He is fresh from the MTC in Mexico. The zone leaders are training him, but he came with us a couple days this week. This week was a huge one with Lupe and Genaro. After they loved the restoration they asked us, "What are some of the dos and don´ts?" Well, we gave them the Word of Wisdom. Lupe drank tea and Genaro drank coffee. But, we just laid it all out on the table. Lupe said, "Ahhhhhhhhhh. Tea? Well, I love tea, but I love God more!" They both are now living the word of wisdom 100%! They know it´s all true! They both came to church this week. Afterward, we were talking to Genaro and he said, "I like it. My wife liked it. We´ll be back next week. I just felt really good. Relaxed. Peacful." We told him that was the Spirit he was feeling. and he said, "It is?" I believe that we have been guided in all our words during our lessons with them. It turns out, our ward mission leader used to go fishing with Genaro back in the 80s, so that was a really cool coincidence. I tell ya, all the hispanics know each other one way or another. Basically, if you haven´t already garnered this from what I have said, Lupe and Genaro are super awesome. We set a baptismal date with them for the 25th of January, but we are going to try and move it up to the 18th this week.

Damian and Sofia: They were not able to make it to church yesterday. Damian had to work aaaaaallllll day. We drove by his house just before 7 to see if we could meet with him last night, and he was still at work. So the good news is that he´s not coming because he is working, not because he doesn´t want to. We were able to have a really good lesson with them this week. And hopefully this coming week we can reset a baptismal date with the both of them.

We picked up a new investigator up in Anson (a city about 20 miles out of Abilene) this week. My whole time here I have never been to the outlying cities, but we decided to go this week. There were supposedly a few members and former investigators that lived up there. We went to where a member was supposed to live. She didn´t live there. But a guy who spoke Spanish lived there and he let us right in. His name is Cipriano and he loved the restoration too! He said he wanted to be baptized. We haven´t seen him since that one lesson mid week. But this week we plan on going up there at least once to follow up.

No news with any other investigators this week. Church attendance was in the 30s I would say. Just for your information, about half of our lessons are actually in Spanish. Nancy and Gricelda were always English. Lupe and Genaro are a mix. Damian and Sofia are pure Spanish. We teach a good mix of both English and Spanish. But I prefer Spanish :)

Well, I want to tell you a couple funny short stories this week: Yesterday we went up to knock a door and found a Jehovah´s Witness card on someone´s door. Before we knocked I took it down. We knocked. No one answered. Then we put up one of our own pass along cards on the door! I thought it was funny. The other story has to do with our pass along cards too. We knocked on a door. A guy answers and tells us that he is Catholic pointing to a picture of the Pope on his door. I said, oh I didn´t know. I pointed to the picture of Jesus Christ that was a pass along card from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and told him it was from our church. He was pretty flabbergasted after that one. Anyway, I hope those stories were entertaining. I love you mom! I love you dad! I love you Meagan! I love you Courtney!