Happy Mothers Day!
What a wonderful week I have had and the best opportunity to be able to talk with my family and my mom!!! I hope that y'all had a wonderful week and here is how my week went!!
Week May 2-8 2016
Monday:
Wow, today I just realized how fast time has been flying as I realize I will be calling my family again this next week!! I can hardly believe that it is here again, and I would say it scares me just a little bit! So today was a wonderful day!! We were able to go and shop and then have a wonderful zone activity at the church because of some rain, where we had about 5 baptist guys come and play basketball with us and stuff, however, usually the Zone Leaders say they are always bashing our church! We got along great and it just shows that we are all children of God, and some are lost more that others! It reminded me a lot of the story of the sons of Mosiah when they persecute the church, but I think it was amazing that they became changed!! So why couldn't they!? So after our wonderful pday we had family home evening and it was a blast!! We learned about Testimonies and then how important covenants are with God!! And I was so impressed with what these little kids know!! I love to listen to how they word the gospel!!! So today was a wonderful day! I do have to say that one of my favorite parts of the whole day now is Daily planning at 9 o'clock!! When the rest of the world is wide awake, or dead asleep, we are planning for the next day!! I love being able to call people and remind them about appointments and just create a spiritual plan!!! One thing that happened this past week was a friend of mine, Charlie Sefita, passed away from some heart troubles! I feel so bad for the family, but so glad to know he still lives! And I know this because of the plan of salvation!! I will be praying for that family!
Tuesday:
It is crazy to me how you can plan out a day like crazy, then you can get going through the day and God seems to rearrange your schedule when you try to visit with people!! So today we had 3 appointments that were set and none of them happened when we had planned! To start off the day however, we went to the community garden with Elder Taylor and Lewis, who are from Utah, and we helped clean out a garden plot for a older lady who has cancer!! It was a lot of fun and the weather was so perfect! So we had to take a picture of the beautiful day and 4 handsome guys! so for lunch we had a Cousin lunch with Sam Strasser, because last week we figured out that Elder Wardle and I are 5th cousins! None removed, and it is through the same grandpa in which Sam is related to me! Grandpa Dudley Leavitt!!! We seem to all come from different wives of his! So Sam had us over for a lunch to be closer to each other! It worked miracles! After our fun morning of service and studies, we went to teach a young 18 year old couple who had a baby of 7 months already, but as we arrived and saw them on the front porch, we watched all of them run to hide from us, so it made a feel like we were horrible people and the rest of the day seemed to be a little harder after that! So the other lessons we had planned all canceled on us, so we had the impression to go and give out a few of our Mother's Day activity invitations and we went to Janet's house first! As we knocked, Janet was there and also Ruben her boyfriend and we were able to sit down and she shared pretty much her doubts with us! So we taught to her needs and she is excited for us to go and teach her tomorrow and also excited to go to the activity on Friday to take a video of us singing!! She wants to send it to my mom!! It made me feel good to hear she wanted to do that! So after that lesson we went and talked to another potential and shared a Book of Mormon with her, and she said she would read it!! Everyone does.... But it really hope she does! She is a single mom and needs Gods help more than a lot of people! Also we passed by Kevin Garcia's house this evening and were able to just visit and set up a lesson for the following day and invite his family to the Mother's Day activity as well!!! He is one awesome Convert!
Wednesday:
What a crazy cool day!! So today I had the wonderful chance to go to the church with the district and practice a mothers day program song, and it was a wonderful time!!
After practicing for our song we will sing in our ward party, we started an exchange with Elder Lakey and Escobar and I got to go with elder Lakey for the 24 hours!! So to start off our exchange we went to the Hurst building where we had a wonderful training on how to contact and use the family history with everyone we meet!!! It was super amazing! And it was funny, because President Koffman, president Ames counselor said in front of everyone, "It is so good to see all of you here! You all look so nice and dressed up, even Elder Spendlove over here!" And everyone began to laugh. He has decided that I am pretty fun to mess around with, and I a, okay with it, because he is one that speaks Spanish and French with English, so we always have our jokes back and forth!! So after our awesome time there, Elder Lakey and I had dinner with Hna. Evans and had a good lesson where we did a role play with her and then she practiced right there in the church with a non member, and it worked out so well!! She is such a wonderful missionary already!! So this evening we went and had a wonderful dinner later with Javier, a member, and his wife Jonna, a non member, but pretty much a member. Some people call them dry Mormons!! So she made us some amazing ribs and then we had a wonderful lesson on the Millenium, because Javier wanted to know about it more! It was an okay lesson, but we just feel like she is so ready and we don't know what is holding her back! So as we got home and began to talk, elder Lakey served in my birth area right after I left and he was able to talk,to a lot of my recently contacted potentials, and he told me of a family by the name Ernesto and Graselda Favela that we had taught 2 simple lessons too! It was so cool when he told me that the only investigators progressing when he left was them! I never thought they would have progressed, and so when I heard that I was so happy I could barely believe it and stay quiet!!! What a wonderful day!!
Thursday:
Oh have I got a story to write about today! So today we started off by switching back companionships and I was so excited to have Elder Wardle back!! I had such a blast with Elder Lakey, but there is just some feeling of peace and friendship that we feel when we are together!! And once we left the apartment the first thing we did give each other a hug because of the stress we had!! So as we got home we had just enough time to go and plan for the following week, and it seemed to flow very smoothly and we finished quite fast!! Sadly we don't have any progressing investigators right now, but we are working on it and we are getting close with a few different people and hope to be able to find quite a lot more people! So today after dinner we went and taught a RCLA lesson, meaning a Recent convert or less active member lesson with a less active member named Jesus Gloria! It was a very simple lesson and to the point on the revelation we receive through the Holy Ghost. We invite him to pray tonight and ask God what he wanted him to do and he said he would! We left very quick from his house to be able to go over and be picked up by the Zone Leaders, Elder Farr and Elder Bird. Then we headed for a service called, Denton Interfaith National Day of Prayer, sat the Trinity Presbyterian Church, where we sat and listened to many different faiths stand up and pray in front of everyone to ask for Gods help in Denton and in the world we live in. There was a Counselor of the Stake Presidency who prayed and during his prayer he said, "By the Holy Melchizedek Priesthood that I hold, I pronounce a blessing upon all of you," and immediately I felt such a powerful feeling overtake me and I knew without any doubt that our church was the true church and only true church! During the service they had candles that people we able to go and light in front of everyone, and all four of us Elders went up separately to make sure that people saw we were normal and that we had a great love of God, and it was such an amazing first experience to just stand up for my beliefs and faith! After the service, many different Preachers came up and talked with us and it was so nice to see them not wanting to bash like normal, but just to show their love that we each have a belief in God.
So after that service we wondered a little in the church and found a room that had what was called a Labyrinth (a sheet on the ground that has Archetypal patterns of Wholeness and journey that are found across the globe in many different cultures and times, that you walk on and meditate and let God speak to you.) So all 4 of us had the chance to go and take our socks off to show respect and that it is sacred and then we entered this Labyrinth and walked until we got to the center, meditated and then walked out!! All together it took about 15 minutes and was quite different. However, I didn't feel to much peace of God speaking to me, all I could think about was how trapped I felt and how badly I wanted to just go sit in the Temple and think and ponder! Because of my experiences tonight, I can with assurity say that I know the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the only true and living church on the face of the earth!! And I know this because the Spirit Testified of that! My first time in a different faiths church and I don't know if I ever want to go back?!
Friday:
What a simply planned day, but also what a crazy day! So today we had the opportunity to be able to study for our full time for the first time in forever, and it was actually quite enjoyable!! We had really good discussions on how we could improve our teaching and how we could connect better with those that we teach, and it really hope that we are able to use what we found because I can see so much potential in the ideas! So after our studies we went and helped some English sisters do a yard cleaning service for some members in their ward, and it was quite enjoyable! We were able to mow the lawn, rake the leaves and even build a flat rock fire pit in the back corner of the lot!! It made me feel like old times at home with my bother Skyler, making his fire pit and just laying stones down in his back yard!! The service was very appreciated and we were able to finish all of it and really make the family happy!! So for the rest of the night we were able to go and give a service for the ward at the ward party where we had a Mother's Day fiesta!! All of the men in the ward cooked the food for the mothers and kids, and all the missionaries went and helped deliver it to all of the mothers and kids!! It was super fun to go and see the moms so happy to be able to relax! And then we were able to sing a Mother's Day song for our moms back home and for the mother in our ward! It was a super fun to sing as a missionary district and a lot of the moms thanked us for our song! At the very end of the party we began to pick up the chairs and tables when the whole ward began to dance the chacha and a lot of other super fun songs, and it about killed me to hear that music and not be able to dance with everyone, but I know it is for my own good and that when I get home God will give me more dancing abilities for holding it all in the whole time! Haha Tonight really was an enjoyable night and super fun to get to know new people!!
Saturday:
It is amazing how even the most difficult days can teach you the most! I feel like every day this week has been some type of national day for something, and I would say today felt like the national Mormon Bashing day! So after some amazing studies we had a wonderful time in our DLC meeting where we learned so many wonderful things really straight from God through our mission president. One of the things I learned a lot from was what Elder Farr said. He said, "When Christ teaches us to come unto him and follow him in the bible, the Book of Mormon teaches us the How!" I thought that was such an interesting way to show people the way the two books go together!! So today after our amazing meeting , we decided to go out and contact a few potential investigators, and it was a bit of a mess! The first door we knocked I thought the door was closing on the guy, so I tried to grab it and hold it from closing and he flipped out on me! He looked at me like he wanted to just hurt me and screamed, don't you touch my door! Then he slammed the door... It was pretty rough, and then we went to another guys house and he just tried the whole time to explain how we were wrong and how his church was right through all these other books that he has read that aren't scripture, and we just laughed because he clearly didn't understand what scripture truly meant and how you can't just read anything and believe it in these days! So after a little time and getting out of there, we went to dinner at Texas Road House with Hna. Chavez, a sweet older lady who is divorced and loves the missionaries so much!! She shared her testimony and it was such an amazing testimony on how real the Book of Mormon is truly of God! To end the evening out, we went on an exchange with Hno. Arteaga and were able to go and teach Kevin Garcia his first lesson as a recent convert, and he was amazed to still be able to learn new things even though he had already had the lesson! It was wonderful and we are excited that he is doing so good! Today really was a good day in and of itself!
It is amazing to me how time flies in the mission field!! So today was Mother's Day and it was a wonderful day at church being able to visit and see all of the wonderful members who I have grown to love so much!! One Hermana came up to me today and told me that she had the chance to go through the temple yesterday with her husband and she had the biggest smile on her face and so did her husband!! Next week they plan on going and being sealed as a whole family and they can not wait! So after church today we had a wonderful time to go and visit with Hno. Hildreth at his house and even meet his wife to give her some mothers day flowers! Then we were able to call home and visit with our families for an hour a piece and it was the most wonderful time ever!! I love my mission, and would never change it for anything, but it is one of the best feelings to be able to talk with your families and make sure they are doing good, see that they are happy and also share your wonderful experiences!! I know without any doubt that my family is and always will be one of the most important things to me, being the Lord first! I have gained such a strong love for my family while serving and can not wait to express it fully when I get home! But while I am out, I want to cherish every moment and make sure I make ever moment worth it!!
So after our phone call and speaking to all my brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews, we were able to go and have dinner with the Monzon family and get to know them better!! It was a wonderful dinner and the rest of the night no one wanted to listen to what we had because it was Mother's Day, but not to worry we were able to get some good planning in!! What a wonderful day and only 7 months until it happens again!
I hope that y'all have a wonderful week and I love you so much!!!
Con Amor,
Elder Spendlove
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