Elder Kyson Spendlove: 12 Books of Mormons a few fleas, and a Fathers Day later!

Dear Family and Friends,

I am so grateful for this amazing opportunity u have to serve the Lord, and also I am so grateful for my many examples in life! One being my Father! Yesterday I of course was not able to tell my father happy Father's Day, or recognize him, but today I can! I have the most wonderful father who pushed me to be the best, who wanted me to succeed and who loved me more than I know!! And it is my turn to tell him that he is my hero and that I love him! Thank you dad, and I love you!

Here is how my week went!!

June 13-19 2016

Monday:

Today was such a successful day for us! So today for P-Day I was able to get my hair cut and also we were able clean up the apparent a lot to maybe prevent the bugs to come in! No I love my apartment, even tho our neighbors upstairs always smoke and make so much noise, and our apartment smells like smoke all the time! However, it is home like and wonderful! So today we got together as a zone and played frisbee and just had a really fun time together! And something awesome was that we went and had dinner with a family named the Rivas family, and they were awesome!! We got a lot of new people to work with! And then the rest of the evening we were able to go and contact some people and we got to know 4 new people! It was wonderful to talk to me and share what I believe! And then we were able to place 2 Books of Mormon and it was just really cool! I really just love p-days!!!

Tuesday:

Today was such a fun day for me!! I was blessed to be able to go on an exchange with Elder Rarotoga in his area which is in Burleson and English!! It was so wonderful! Our first lesson this morning was with an investigator of theirs named Darla, who was so sweet!! We taught her an hour long lesson because she had no where to go with her broken foot, and then we set a soft baptismal date with her for July 15th! She was very for it and Said she felt she needed to do it! Also we had a wonderful time contacting and just learning from one another!! So one cool experience about today was passing by some guys talking, so we went and tried to give them a card and they played he we don't speak English card, and wow I jumped in so fast being so excited!! They could deny the card and it was so awesome!! I love Spanish so much!!!The last thing that caught my attention was when we went by and knocked on a door and had a wonderful lesson with some less active members and they were so wonderful!! We taught them about the blessings of God and how sometimes we don't see them, but when we put our umbrellas down and realize what blessings we have we become happy and others see that and what that as well! It was such a powerful lesson!!

Wednesday:

I have come to learn that meetings are what keep me going! They give me excitement and a boost to always stay positive for the experiences I can have with my investigators! So today was quite the wonderful day for us! We were able to finish our exchange at the stake center after we had a wonderful district meeting focused on the Atonement and the Baptismal invite, and it was such a cool district meeting that really pumped me up for the work!! So today we gave the training for the Baptismal invites and then did the role play as well, and it was such a cool feeling of trying the three different ones!! Here they are!

1. Really soft.... As you come to know these things are true we will ask you to be baptized.

2. Soft..... As you come to know these things are true will you be baptized?

3. Hard..... Will you follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized by someone holding the priesthood authority of God?

With these different questions I learned so much!! Okay so after he meeting we finished our exchange with Elder Rarotoga and Kochan and as we closed with a pray I began to laugh because Elder Rarotoga blessed us all not to have bad looking wives and that they will have patience with us! Haha it was wonderful!!

Then the rest of the evening we went on visits with the Elders Quorum, consisting of us and 2 Hnos. As of now.... But we are working on it!!

So for the past couple of weeks we have been struggling with having solid investigators, and I always tell my companion, "the lord with help us! I know there is someone here ready to change!" And tonight Elder Lewis found this one while with Jhonny visiting families!! It was the mom of a member who is less active, and she had been taught everything, but wanted to start coming back to church! So the member Jhonny became her Fellow Shipper right away!! I wish I could help everyone understand the importance of a fellow shipper!! I believe today was wonderful because my meeting really gave me confidence and happiness! Also as I came home today I received a package from my trainee, Elder Wardles, parents!! They are the sweetest and thanked me for training him and sent me cookies!! If they only knew how very grateful I was for their son!!

Thursday:

I really enjoy days of contacting, especially when the plans you make seem to workout perfectly! For instance, today after we had our weekly planning session we went and contacted a referral and it was the first time I have seen an iPad referral that was actually interested in our message, he just was super busy, so we scheduled a day to go back and share our message with him! Then we had a wonderful dinner with Hna. Viera, who always feeds us on Thursdays and she always ends up giving us something to cook at home on our way out the door, she is a sweetheart, and her kids are very cute as well! So we went straight to work contacting some potential and other investigators, and while we were doing that we decided to talk to anyone that was outside, and we were able to find 2 people and give them Books of Mormon! With one of them, we had found him a few days before, but he was drunk then, and this time we asked him if he remembered our visit, but he couldn't remember any of it! So now that he was sober we were able to give him a Book of Mormon and invite him to read it, and he accepted it! It was awesome, until we realized we forgot about our lesson with a less active member and his two sons who are above 8 but not baptized, and so we ran over, and they let us teach them a small message about the sacrament and I caught something from a sweet prayer of Christopher, the son. He said, "God please help us to get baptized!" And it made me so happy that he knew our purpose!! We connect with them really well, and we hope that we can get them to come to church!! Today was an enjoyable day where I was lost in the work!

Friday:

The fight of the fleas!

Wow what a crazy day we had today and how amazing it was to have the success that we had! So today we started the morning off by helping our Ward Mission Leader by cleaning the chapel, and so we were able to clean the whole chapel all morning! I can definitely say I have never seen it so clean, especially because we decided to deep clean some parts that were very necessary!! As we finished we were very tired, but we could not stop! We had lesson after lesson, and it was such a fun day!! We were able to go on an exchange with Jairo Tapia for the evening and had such success!! We went by a sweet older lady that we met that is really interested in coming to church and to activities, and we had a wonderful lesson with her. However, while we were sitting there we saw something that scared us a lot!! There was a little dog that came in and sat down with spots al over him, and he wouldn't stop scratching, and as I got close to the lady to show her a video, I realized what the spots were, they were thousands of fleas jumping all over this dog and the poor thing could not do anything!! So as we left we all felt very itchy and wanted to go home and shower, but we instead went to one more lesson with Hna. Vanessa De la Cruz and it was wonderful! Jairo bore his testimony and we planted our fake flag of the temple for her goal and she was crying she was so excited about this idea!! We hope she will be this emotionally excited as we keep coming!!!

Saturday:

Holy cow today just flew by! It was so much fun and oh so hot!! Also I think sleeping is just getting over rated for me! Today we woke up at 5:30 so that we could go and help with Sister Conde's seminary class that went from 7 to 9 and we were able to bare our testimonies about how seminary had changed our lives, and in that moment I really came to realize how much Seminary changed my life!! I could never find the words to thank my teachers for always helping me to become better and to understand gods words that are especially for me!! I have found a love of the scriptures and I can't stay away from any of them!! So after the seminary class we set up for the ward party and then headed out to visit with a few families!! The one we were able to go and visit was Sonny Moreno, who has been sick and not doing well at all! So we had a wonderful visit with him and even were able to help him with a few projects and share a small lesson with him! He learned a lot about the priesthood and we learned that we have to really let him know when we have to leave, because he could keep talking for over 4 hours if we let him!!! The rest of the day we were going by some people, but not having success finding them, so we saw some guys working and contacted them and gave them a Book of Mormon, and it was really an amazing day in all! Because we finished the evening with a ward Father's Day Party, and it was lots of fun!! We had good food and lots of funny entertainment and people to visit with! I love Hispanic Parties too, they are so fun and Hispanics are just very sociable!!

Sunday:

A day of rest for missionary never happens in the mission, but more like after the mission! So what I mean by this is that today was so very crazy!! Today we had meetings and church from 7:30 to 2, and during church I was translating for an English couple who the wife plays the piano and organ for us and the husband is a ward assistant to support his wife. So while I was translating Elder Lewis was planning for a Gospel principles lesson that was given to us during sacrament meeting, so we stayed plenty busy all through church, and then after church it got even crazier!! We were outside all day going around to lessons we had planned and some others that were not planned but that came to our mind that lived close, so we went by and had wonderful lessons with them as well! Also just this evening we have been receiving so many blessings in our area! We received 2 referrals and were able to contact both of them, and a less active member called because he moved, and he wanted to know how he could get missionaries to go and visit him and his wife and if we could give a blessing to a friend of his! It was so wonderful, and when I say busy, I mean it! Out of the 5 open hours we had, we were able to have 4 of those hours filled with lessons and the last one filled with driving and contacting the Referrals! There is nothing better than a crazy busy day, because they go so fast and are enjoyable!