Dear Family and Friends,
This week has been such a wonderful week! I hope that y'all had a good week as well!
Also how crazy that Jaden is leaving this week! Best of luck Jaden, or should I say Elder Stone! I am so excited for you!:)
Week August 15 - 21 2016
Monday:
Wow today was a super fun day for us as missionaries! We were able to go and get the other elders, elder Williams and Wolfert on bikes, to take them shopping and then we just headed right over to the church to be able to do our emails and then everyone form the zone showed up to play sports with us! We had so much fun getting to know each other better! So something that I wanted to share was a scripture I read this morning in Alma 41. It talks about the importance of being active in he gospel even if you can't be active in the church. At least that is the way I looked at it! I hope that as you read this scripture you realize that no one can hold you back from worshipping God, because he always has a way! And he will free us from the bands bynwhich we are bound and lift our loads so they feel light, but it is a team effort! He comes in really as a back up to push you to the very end! So after P-Day we went to the house of Hna. Lugo, where we shared the talk Come and see by Elder Bednar, and it was super powerful to read and learn that we as missionaries are here to aide the members in the work of souls, now how can we get the members to understand this concept and to jump on it and get their friends interested as well so that we can teach Them?
As we finished the lesson Hna. Lugo asked us if we had visited her grandson that got baptized, because she has another that could be baptized as well, we just had to get him ready, so that is exactly what we want to do, so this evening we pasted by to get to know them, but sadly they were not home! However, today was a wonderful day!
Tuesday:
What an amazing day to really be able to be Edified as a Zone and fed by our Mission President and his Wife. Today I can say I feel has been the first day that I have taken good serious notes, and it has been so uplifting and helping for me in my position in which I am right now! First off I started with wonderful personal study where I learned really what the Gospel of Christ is, and I also learned that it is literally a commandment to be baptized. I felt the spirit so strong as I studied and it was,cool to see it carried over to our Zone Conference! So come to find out, it was the first Zone Conference the President and Sister Whitney have had, and it was so amazing! So I want to share one spiritual thing that happened to me in Zone Conference today. We were doing Role Plays, which are seriously my favorite, and I was the investigator Rey, that we are having troubles with. As Elder Lopez invited me to be baptized I said no, and that is when he shared a scripture that hit me so hard with the spirit that I began to cry. I know that doesn't show my manly side, but it was a beautiful blessing that God gave us to find that scripture, and from that we know God wants us to share that with him, and we can not wait to share that with him! I know that Role Plays are important for every member or missionary! So as we were finishing our conference, we had a leadership meeting for the wards, and it was wonderful to see how much power and love President has with the members. He gets emotional so easy, but to me it shows his love more than anything, and it makes me love him even more!
So this evening I have learned patience and how to control my attitude! We called AP Elder Bird to make sure our exchanges we good for tomorrow, because we were going to catch a ride with them because of our lack of miles, and the informed us that they had something come up,and they were not going to be able too. It got to me, because they didn't tell us until night and now we have to stay up to figure out how to fix it. However, Elder Lopez helped me understand that if we think negative then others will see us and we can't lead like that! He really helped me see I need to always have a positive attitude!
Wednesday:
Holy cow today was such a wonderful day! So today we were going to have an exchange, but we had to change it, because the APs had an emergency that they had to take care of, so it didn't work out. However, our day was still amazing and jam packed of lessons! So today we went out finding people to teach and really focusing on talking to everyone we saw, and as we passed by one Hispanic we asked if we could give her a card, we began to talk with her, and then she shared that she has talked with missionaries in Mexico before and loved their message, so we gave her a Book of Mormon and set a return appointment for next week, and we are super happy we decided to stop and talk with Everyone! Also today we had a wonderful and last lesson, or so we thought, with Isaac Sanchez, who has his baptism coming up on the 27th of this month. We were able to teach him the rest of the lessons and even talk about the Priesthood and what that means, and it was all new to him. Just the bible itself he doesn't know, because he has never read the whole thing. He only knows some of the stories from Jesus' life. So we are excited for him! Then after that lesson we headed over to dinner with the Carreon Family, where after the lesson they taught us the Plan of Salvation and we were the investigators! They did a really good job, and just need to work on asking questions instead of making it feel like a one way class!
After that we headed straight to Rey Castillo's house, where we actually had our lesson outside on a super nice patio where the weather was just perfect in between rain and we had a nice breeze. We got there and he asked us a few really good questions, and then we shared the importance of the Sabbath day even more, and right away he knew what we Meant and decided to work on getting the day off or pushed to the evening so he could be to church, and it was just a powerful lesson with lots of Testimony, and he took it super well! We are excited for him, because we set a goal of October 8th for baptism, and he is willing to change that on the time it takes to get Sunday's off and make it to church as well! We are so excited for him, and we finished the night off by meeting up with the Parrajons to have dinner at a Chinese restaurant, and then we headed home. I have to say that Hna. Parrajons is one hoot, who has a lot of attitude, but it is hilarious! So we got home to get some planning done for tomorrow, when we received a call from Isaac Sanchez, who had a question about Matthew 3 that he was reading, so we got on FaceTime and we read the chapter together and explained it verse by verse, and it was very successful! He understood it well, and it was just a wonderful lesson. As we got off the FaceTime it was 10:40 and we were rushing to get to bed, with no time to write in our journals or anything, but we both agree that it was the best way to end the night off, by helping him understand what God wants him to do!
Thursday:
They Sa that the busier you are the faster time goes, and I can testify of that! So today we had the opportunity for a Young Man named David Ayala to go on an exchange with us for the whole day and it was a huge success! We taught lessons and contacted people on the street, and it was so cool to see that he just receiving his mission call to Argentina is not scared of talking with anyone and that he just worked his hardest to share a simple card with everyone. For instance, we watched a guy walk by our truck, and we asked if he wanted to give him a card, and he said yes. So we asked if he wanted our help, and he said no and began to run after this guy! So with his help we had a few wonderful contacts that we are excited to go back and check on! Then today we were able to have a lesson with Jose Valencia's girlfriend, who should be wife, because they have been together for years and have a son! She is a member, and has been less active for years, but after our lesson focused on the Atonement and the importance of attending church she said I won't try to be there, but I will be there this Sunday! So we know that she felt the spirit and that she is going to try her hardest to be there! So a cool experience that we had was being invited to eat dinner at David's house with his family as an ex missionary came over to talk about his mission in Argentina. The accent that he had, and the amazing vocabulary that he had just got me excited to study the language even more, and I am so pumped to get better at my Spanish! So we had a wonderful time, and then ended the evening blessing the house of a newer family in the ward, the Parrajon family, who have 4 crazy kids and both have bipolar problems I think, because one second they are screaming and the next they are laughing!? But screaming of laughing we know that they are just having some fun with us! The blessing on the home was wonderful and it brought so much peace to the home that I didn't feel before. Things like these just give me a testimony of the small and simple things that are done through priesthood power, and I realized the importance of a supportive wife when holding the priesthood as I saw it in the husband and wife in their home!
Friday:
I have just loved the exchange I have been on today! So today can be explained by this scripture right here. 2 Corinthians 5:7 "I will walk by faith even when I can not see!"
So today was a great example of that! Today I had the chance to pick up Elder Thompson, a brand new Spanish missionary, from Lewisville, while Elder Lopez stayed there with Elder Reveli! And apparently I was his first exchange in Fort Worth, from what he was telling me! So last night I was a little nervous for today, because I have only been here for a week, and don't know anyone. However as we came back and got busy it was amazing how God literally helped us the whole day! We were able to enjoy a good amount of rain, meaning we got soaked a few times, but it was all worth it, because we had a lesson with the Maria and Nicolas Valdez, less actives, who have lost their testimony in the Book of Mormon, but that simple visit sparked their interest again, and we are hoping to help them be faithful again to being at church! Then as we left there running through the rain just laughing we drove and got ahold of a less active member named Hno. Bautista, and had a wonderful visit with him. He told us his life story and conversion story and then we shared 3 Nephi 13 with him more focused on the end part talking about where your treasure is there will be your heart also, and he loved it. He looked at us and said, I am going to talk with my wife and we are going to make another better commitment to God! So we feel like even though we didn't teach a lot that we helped them feel the invitation was from God and not just us! Elder Thompson taught me to look for new scriptures, and to not be scared to just speak what he knows! I am glad I got to know him, and he is definitely the richest missionary in the mission, because of his blood disorder, because it doesn't clot good, so he has this medicine that is super important and he is just an awesome Missionary that actually knows a lot for only a week! Today was definitely walked by faith with the people we found at the right time!
Saturday:
Today was such a wonderful day! I think the quote for today is Never Judge Yourself by looking at Others. I say this, because this past week I feel I have been judging myself when with my companion. And I feel that the whole reason is because he is a native and speaks fluently. To start the day off I went driving back with Elder Thompson back to Lewisville, and there was so much traffic and rain. On our way home we took a wrong turn and came up upon a Ticket Checkpoint for the airport, and we thought we were going to have to pay lots of money, and at the last sencond we found a way out, and it was a blessing from God! So today as we went and had one of our appointments with a recently moved in member, I realized that it was something I was doing, and that I needed to change! So Hno. Stafford is from Texas and went on a mission to Peru 6 years ago, and now is married to a Peru lady he met in his mission, and speaks Spanish to his kids and goes to a Spanish ward, and we just connected super well. It helped me realize that it doesn't matter how good you speak Spanish, but that you try! I think the other thing that effected me so much was our lesson this evening that we had with Rey Castillo. So he has decided that he wants to meet with us two times a week, and he is so amazing! As we get there he always gives us a hug and has questions for us, and we taught him the rest of lesson 4 and he only has parts of lesson 5 left, and he set his own baptismal date for October 15th, but we know that as he gets Sunday's off that he will be wanting to be baptized sooner! So before we left he bore his testimony of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith by talking about a scripture that he learned about in the Book of Mormon found in 2 Nephi 3. He testified that he knows the Book of Mormon is true because he was able to understand this so clearly, and then we were both in shock, because we try to teach people that scripture and they just are not ready to understand it. Also he has almost finished with 2 Nephi, and he is in love with the Book of Mormon. We had asked him if he had the chance to read today, and he got all sad and said no, because he had been cleaning his house since he got home from work, and then he said, I have been listening to it on the app while I clean though, but that isn't good enough! Haha it was a wonderful lesson, and it is so cool to see how ready he is!! We just had a wonderful day!
Sunday:
I can never say how much I love Sunday's! Today was such a wonderful day! We were able to go to church and have such a good time with all of the members, but I wanted to focus on something that happened later on in my day that really hit me today! So we were able to go to a fireside put on by our ward about Patriarchal Blessings, and it just hit me so hard! So the past few months I have really started to just have questions in my mind on who I am, my purpose in life and again if God knows me as well as I think he does, and today was another day of awakening for me. Today the patriarch for the stake came and spoke to us about the importance of getting and having patriarchal blessings, and it hit me, I haven't read mine in quite some time, and mine has the instructions for my mission and life, and I have done nothing to even study it! To all of you I invite, read your patriarchal blessings, and if you don't have one please do! The patriarch said, "to understand the importance of the patriarchal blessing I want you to think about the Premortal existence. Do you think God had a plan for you when you decided to follow him? This blessing is his plan for you if you stay faithful!" This evening I realized just how important the blessing was to me, but more I realized that God was answering my prayers and thoughts from a while back, and it made me think a lot, and I know that God loves me!
This week has been such a wonderful week! I hope that y'all had a good week as well!
Also how crazy that Jaden is leaving this week! Best of luck Jaden, or should I say Elder Stone! I am so excited for you!:)
Week August 15 - 21 2016
Monday:
Wow today was a super fun day for us as missionaries! We were able to go and get the other elders, elder Williams and Wolfert on bikes, to take them shopping and then we just headed right over to the church to be able to do our emails and then everyone form the zone showed up to play sports with us! We had so much fun getting to know each other better! So something that I wanted to share was a scripture I read this morning in Alma 41. It talks about the importance of being active in he gospel even if you can't be active in the church. At least that is the way I looked at it! I hope that as you read this scripture you realize that no one can hold you back from worshipping God, because he always has a way! And he will free us from the bands bynwhich we are bound and lift our loads so they feel light, but it is a team effort! He comes in really as a back up to push you to the very end! So after P-Day we went to the house of Hna. Lugo, where we shared the talk Come and see by Elder Bednar, and it was super powerful to read and learn that we as missionaries are here to aide the members in the work of souls, now how can we get the members to understand this concept and to jump on it and get their friends interested as well so that we can teach Them?
As we finished the lesson Hna. Lugo asked us if we had visited her grandson that got baptized, because she has another that could be baptized as well, we just had to get him ready, so that is exactly what we want to do, so this evening we pasted by to get to know them, but sadly they were not home! However, today was a wonderful day!
Tuesday:
What an amazing day to really be able to be Edified as a Zone and fed by our Mission President and his Wife. Today I can say I feel has been the first day that I have taken good serious notes, and it has been so uplifting and helping for me in my position in which I am right now! First off I started with wonderful personal study where I learned really what the Gospel of Christ is, and I also learned that it is literally a commandment to be baptized. I felt the spirit so strong as I studied and it was,cool to see it carried over to our Zone Conference! So come to find out, it was the first Zone Conference the President and Sister Whitney have had, and it was so amazing! So I want to share one spiritual thing that happened to me in Zone Conference today. We were doing Role Plays, which are seriously my favorite, and I was the investigator Rey, that we are having troubles with. As Elder Lopez invited me to be baptized I said no, and that is when he shared a scripture that hit me so hard with the spirit that I began to cry. I know that doesn't show my manly side, but it was a beautiful blessing that God gave us to find that scripture, and from that we know God wants us to share that with him, and we can not wait to share that with him! I know that Role Plays are important for every member or missionary! So as we were finishing our conference, we had a leadership meeting for the wards, and it was wonderful to see how much power and love President has with the members. He gets emotional so easy, but to me it shows his love more than anything, and it makes me love him even more!
So this evening I have learned patience and how to control my attitude! We called AP Elder Bird to make sure our exchanges we good for tomorrow, because we were going to catch a ride with them because of our lack of miles, and the informed us that they had something come up,and they were not going to be able too. It got to me, because they didn't tell us until night and now we have to stay up to figure out how to fix it. However, Elder Lopez helped me understand that if we think negative then others will see us and we can't lead like that! He really helped me see I need to always have a positive attitude!
Wednesday:
Holy cow today was such a wonderful day! So today we were going to have an exchange, but we had to change it, because the APs had an emergency that they had to take care of, so it didn't work out. However, our day was still amazing and jam packed of lessons! So today we went out finding people to teach and really focusing on talking to everyone we saw, and as we passed by one Hispanic we asked if we could give her a card, we began to talk with her, and then she shared that she has talked with missionaries in Mexico before and loved their message, so we gave her a Book of Mormon and set a return appointment for next week, and we are super happy we decided to stop and talk with Everyone! Also today we had a wonderful and last lesson, or so we thought, with Isaac Sanchez, who has his baptism coming up on the 27th of this month. We were able to teach him the rest of the lessons and even talk about the Priesthood and what that means, and it was all new to him. Just the bible itself he doesn't know, because he has never read the whole thing. He only knows some of the stories from Jesus' life. So we are excited for him! Then after that lesson we headed over to dinner with the Carreon Family, where after the lesson they taught us the Plan of Salvation and we were the investigators! They did a really good job, and just need to work on asking questions instead of making it feel like a one way class!
After that we headed straight to Rey Castillo's house, where we actually had our lesson outside on a super nice patio where the weather was just perfect in between rain and we had a nice breeze. We got there and he asked us a few really good questions, and then we shared the importance of the Sabbath day even more, and right away he knew what we Meant and decided to work on getting the day off or pushed to the evening so he could be to church, and it was just a powerful lesson with lots of Testimony, and he took it super well! We are excited for him, because we set a goal of October 8th for baptism, and he is willing to change that on the time it takes to get Sunday's off and make it to church as well! We are so excited for him, and we finished the night off by meeting up with the Parrajons to have dinner at a Chinese restaurant, and then we headed home. I have to say that Hna. Parrajons is one hoot, who has a lot of attitude, but it is hilarious! So we got home to get some planning done for tomorrow, when we received a call from Isaac Sanchez, who had a question about Matthew 3 that he was reading, so we got on FaceTime and we read the chapter together and explained it verse by verse, and it was very successful! He understood it well, and it was just a wonderful lesson. As we got off the FaceTime it was 10:40 and we were rushing to get to bed, with no time to write in our journals or anything, but we both agree that it was the best way to end the night off, by helping him understand what God wants him to do!
Thursday:
They Sa that the busier you are the faster time goes, and I can testify of that! So today we had the opportunity for a Young Man named David Ayala to go on an exchange with us for the whole day and it was a huge success! We taught lessons and contacted people on the street, and it was so cool to see that he just receiving his mission call to Argentina is not scared of talking with anyone and that he just worked his hardest to share a simple card with everyone. For instance, we watched a guy walk by our truck, and we asked if he wanted to give him a card, and he said yes. So we asked if he wanted our help, and he said no and began to run after this guy! So with his help we had a few wonderful contacts that we are excited to go back and check on! Then today we were able to have a lesson with Jose Valencia's girlfriend, who should be wife, because they have been together for years and have a son! She is a member, and has been less active for years, but after our lesson focused on the Atonement and the importance of attending church she said I won't try to be there, but I will be there this Sunday! So we know that she felt the spirit and that she is going to try her hardest to be there! So a cool experience that we had was being invited to eat dinner at David's house with his family as an ex missionary came over to talk about his mission in Argentina. The accent that he had, and the amazing vocabulary that he had just got me excited to study the language even more, and I am so pumped to get better at my Spanish! So we had a wonderful time, and then ended the evening blessing the house of a newer family in the ward, the Parrajon family, who have 4 crazy kids and both have bipolar problems I think, because one second they are screaming and the next they are laughing!? But screaming of laughing we know that they are just having some fun with us! The blessing on the home was wonderful and it brought so much peace to the home that I didn't feel before. Things like these just give me a testimony of the small and simple things that are done through priesthood power, and I realized the importance of a supportive wife when holding the priesthood as I saw it in the husband and wife in their home!
Friday:
I have just loved the exchange I have been on today! So today can be explained by this scripture right here. 2 Corinthians 5:7 "I will walk by faith even when I can not see!"
So today was a great example of that! Today I had the chance to pick up Elder Thompson, a brand new Spanish missionary, from Lewisville, while Elder Lopez stayed there with Elder Reveli! And apparently I was his first exchange in Fort Worth, from what he was telling me! So last night I was a little nervous for today, because I have only been here for a week, and don't know anyone. However as we came back and got busy it was amazing how God literally helped us the whole day! We were able to enjoy a good amount of rain, meaning we got soaked a few times, but it was all worth it, because we had a lesson with the Maria and Nicolas Valdez, less actives, who have lost their testimony in the Book of Mormon, but that simple visit sparked their interest again, and we are hoping to help them be faithful again to being at church! Then as we left there running through the rain just laughing we drove and got ahold of a less active member named Hno. Bautista, and had a wonderful visit with him. He told us his life story and conversion story and then we shared 3 Nephi 13 with him more focused on the end part talking about where your treasure is there will be your heart also, and he loved it. He looked at us and said, I am going to talk with my wife and we are going to make another better commitment to God! So we feel like even though we didn't teach a lot that we helped them feel the invitation was from God and not just us! Elder Thompson taught me to look for new scriptures, and to not be scared to just speak what he knows! I am glad I got to know him, and he is definitely the richest missionary in the mission, because of his blood disorder, because it doesn't clot good, so he has this medicine that is super important and he is just an awesome Missionary that actually knows a lot for only a week! Today was definitely walked by faith with the people we found at the right time!
Saturday:
Today was such a wonderful day! I think the quote for today is Never Judge Yourself by looking at Others. I say this, because this past week I feel I have been judging myself when with my companion. And I feel that the whole reason is because he is a native and speaks fluently. To start the day off I went driving back with Elder Thompson back to Lewisville, and there was so much traffic and rain. On our way home we took a wrong turn and came up upon a Ticket Checkpoint for the airport, and we thought we were going to have to pay lots of money, and at the last sencond we found a way out, and it was a blessing from God! So today as we went and had one of our appointments with a recently moved in member, I realized that it was something I was doing, and that I needed to change! So Hno. Stafford is from Texas and went on a mission to Peru 6 years ago, and now is married to a Peru lady he met in his mission, and speaks Spanish to his kids and goes to a Spanish ward, and we just connected super well. It helped me realize that it doesn't matter how good you speak Spanish, but that you try! I think the other thing that effected me so much was our lesson this evening that we had with Rey Castillo. So he has decided that he wants to meet with us two times a week, and he is so amazing! As we get there he always gives us a hug and has questions for us, and we taught him the rest of lesson 4 and he only has parts of lesson 5 left, and he set his own baptismal date for October 15th, but we know that as he gets Sunday's off that he will be wanting to be baptized sooner! So before we left he bore his testimony of the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith by talking about a scripture that he learned about in the Book of Mormon found in 2 Nephi 3. He testified that he knows the Book of Mormon is true because he was able to understand this so clearly, and then we were both in shock, because we try to teach people that scripture and they just are not ready to understand it. Also he has almost finished with 2 Nephi, and he is in love with the Book of Mormon. We had asked him if he had the chance to read today, and he got all sad and said no, because he had been cleaning his house since he got home from work, and then he said, I have been listening to it on the app while I clean though, but that isn't good enough! Haha it was a wonderful lesson, and it is so cool to see how ready he is!! We just had a wonderful day!
Sunday:
I can never say how much I love Sunday's! Today was such a wonderful day! We were able to go to church and have such a good time with all of the members, but I wanted to focus on something that happened later on in my day that really hit me today! So we were able to go to a fireside put on by our ward about Patriarchal Blessings, and it just hit me so hard! So the past few months I have really started to just have questions in my mind on who I am, my purpose in life and again if God knows me as well as I think he does, and today was another day of awakening for me. Today the patriarch for the stake came and spoke to us about the importance of getting and having patriarchal blessings, and it hit me, I haven't read mine in quite some time, and mine has the instructions for my mission and life, and I have done nothing to even study it! To all of you I invite, read your patriarchal blessings, and if you don't have one please do! The patriarch said, "to understand the importance of the patriarchal blessing I want you to think about the Premortal existence. Do you think God had a plan for you when you decided to follow him? This blessing is his plan for you if you stay faithful!" This evening I realized just how important the blessing was to me, but more I realized that God was answering my prayers and thoughts from a while back, and it made me think a lot, and I know that God loves me!
Thank you for all your love and support in this journey, and I pray every day for your safety and success as you work and share your love of the gospel with all those around you!
Con Amor,
Elder Spendlove
De la Misión de Texas Fort Worth
I was doing, and that I needed to change!
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