¡Feliz Halloween!

Dear Family and Friends,

I hope that y'all have had a great week and that you enjoy your day today! My week was great and I am so grateful for another week in the mission! Have a wonderful day and I hope you know I love and pray for you!

Week October 24th - October 30th 2016

Monday:

I always say that every Monday seems to be the same, but there was something that made this Monday so much better, and that was the amazing new of Kyler Blackmore being baptized! My mom emailed me that 'this morning, and I was just in shock and in tears thinking that he did! He was someone I always was thinking about and trying to figure out how to help him. He even emailed me today and thanked me for inviting him to go to church with me! I really don't know how to express the feelings I have other than joy! He even is preparing to serve a mission, and will be a great missionary! He is a great example to me! So today I was able to get me a little Texas gear and winter gear so I would be ready for the upcoming months, and it was fun!  Then as pray came to an end, I said my goodbyes to David Ayala, the young man we always went on exchanges with, as he is leaving tomorrow for his mission in Argentina! He is going to be a wonderful missionary as well, and is a little nervous! This gospel is true! However, this evening is where I enjoyed a lot as well! We went and taught the Zuniga family with AG and Samira, and had a wonderful time with them, and then went and had a lesson with the Gonzalez family in our ward! As we finished the lesson, Hna. Gonzalez made a drink called Atole, which is like a vanilla drink that was to die for! So that is something I have now fell in love with! I have found a great passion for this Spanish speakers and am so grateful that they except me in their ward family and culture! Today has just been amazing!

Tuesday:

The experiences that I had today were so very sacred to me! Recently I feel like God has just been blessing me to know what to say to investigators, and what scriptures would help them in their trials. And best of all is Rey came to family home evening and they got him started on Family Search! He still is nervous and not himself around the ward as much as he is with us, but he is getting better and loves to be apart! So today he showed up, and as we went about to the other side of the chapel he stopped us and thanked us for everything we do, and said, "you always do so much that I wanted to give you both your own Olive Garden card so that you have some place to eat." He gave each of us a 30 dollar gift card for Olive Garden. Who knows how long he worked to make that, but that he looks up to us that much is so sweet! So after a good time with him, we went over to the Soto/Martinez home and had a wonderful visit. The whole visit was good until we found coffee sweetener and a Corona Beer cap under the table. However, that isn't the important part. The important part was that the Hno. feels like it is to hard to stop. We shared some really good scriptures with them about being an example to all. And then we committed him and the family to do something more in this week and to quite something. He agreed to work on not drinking coffee or beer. He was a little twitchy about giving it up, but knows it is necessary. It was just amazing to see how the spirit was working on him! I am so grateful for the Holy Ghost and how it does all the teaching, we are just tools and helpers in the conversion process! Also David left today! Craziest thought ever to think he is starting the same journey that I am more than half way done with! I am happy for him too!

Wednesday:

Today was such a fun day for the both of us. It is so crazy to think that next week at this time I will be with a completely different companion! I am ready for change to be able to grow even more, but I am not ready to let Elder Lopez go! He has taught me a lot, but I know that what he has taught me I will use to keep progressing as a missionary! So today we had the opportunity of being to our Second District Meeting in this transfer, and I loved it so much! There was a wonderful training by Hna. Tibbets on how to enjoy weekly planning, and I was able to learn so much. The thing that stuck with me most is how to have "deep" blue lessons in our schedule, and it come by really thinking about the people we are going to teach instead of just setting appointments for the number! As we finished our District meeting Hna. Eyestone told me the coolest thing! She said, "recently I have been thinking about God and how he prompts us to talk to people. I have come to understand that those promptings are his referrals to us, and if we don't contact every single one, why would he give us more promptings?" That really was a cool thought to me and it made me think. We must also gain Gods trust by working hard and asking for ways that we can do more! So today our evening was full of lessons, and we focused on mostly less actives and part members families. As we taught them they showed more interest than I have seen in a while, and most of the less actives are not quite sure why they stopped going to church. As we visited it came to the point that they were just setting up their own barriers in their head of things that might happen if they go. While on my Mission I have learned that Hispanic people can either be the happiest people, or the most negative and pessimistic people! However, as I have served them I realize that all of them have that happy and loving side if you just show respect and love! To end the day we had a wonderful lesson with a part member family where the husband has been less active for many years and his wife is a non member who wants to learn more. As we taught her it was crazy to see that they had no historic background on Bible study and didn't even know what a prophet really was. But as we taught and testified the Hno. began to remember and he began to teach his wife too! It was a way fun day!

Thursday:

Today was a very busy day for the both of us. Not anything out of the ordinary happened, but we literally didn't eve have time to even do our weekly planning, so that kind of shows how busy we have been! So today we were able to go and help re Parajon family move almost completely out of their home, and it is just crazy their situation where they are struggling financially to be able to afford moving, by the lady they have rented from is super crazy, so they really have no choice! So after we finished helping her move we got super busy right into a lunch lesson and lessons after that. And the funny thing was we ate at every lesson! Our members think we never eat, so they always prepare something, and I am literally so tired of eating I am starting a 40 day fast!;) haha. So we were able to go and visit with Hector Payro, a member who is learning to read and he his learning because we read with him. And he doesn't understand a whole lot, because he can not study without being really able to read. However, he is a member who loves going to church. Is there every Sunday if he gets a ride, and he is always aware of our needs and messes with us a whole lot! As we finished a short visit at his house we were able to go and teach a family for the first time, and we were very focused on the son who is 9. He loves to watch movies and be on his phone, and every time we tell him we are going to do something he gets protective and tells us not to tell him what to do. So I went into uncle mode and just said, "well that's alright you don't have to sing, but I will sing louder than you and my muscles are stronger than yours!" Saying that fired him up and he listened to our whole lesson and participated more that I was expecting, and the best part was that his 14 year old sister taught him as much as we did and he actually said he wanted to be baptized!  The last appointment we had tonight was with the Nickel Family. They are a returning family who wasn't able to go a lot because of their recently born baby who was always sick or crying. Reminded me of Berkley! However, this baby got through it and is a very big chunk! So we talked to the about their missions and they shared their mission set of scriptures with us and they both met each other in their mission in California. To end our time there we taught them a really cool scripture in D&C 128:22-23. And then we invited them to present the family mission plan they had been working on. We were so impressed with what they are going to do, but they said to give them more time, because they hadn't set goals with the things yet! So I thought that we were going to get home on time tonight until we got a call from the office Elders and they asked us if we would go and help them set up for the New Leadership meeting tomorrow, and it took us until 10:30 to finish, so our nightly planning session wasn't the best, but we will get it in in the morning!

Friday:

So today we had the wonderful opportunity to give service with the Zone Leaders in our Zone, Elder Taylor and Elder Barber, loading trash into the back of our truck from our members house and taking it to the dump for them! It helped her a lot and she was so happy that she tried to make us food and everything! However, we got her to make us Agua de Piña, pineapple water, and it was so good! It would say this is probably my most favorite drink now! So today after our service we had the chance to be apart of a mission office meeting for our transfer review and talking about everything coming up, and it was a lot of fun! We were able to have a good visit and I love how powerful and directing President Whitney is! He does no short cuts, but takes the best and shortest routes! So I guess I can just say that my new companion will be a Elder Graham, the last elder I went on Exchange with! He is going to be a great companion, and I love being around him! He is funny and loves to Council! So we will have a good time here, and who knows how long we will be together! So this evening we stayed very busy with visits, however, we were also able to do our visits with an awesome member who returned 3 years ago from his mission, Hno. Giles! He served his mission in Honduras and loved it! So we had an awesome lesson with the Lopez family in our ward after a good dinner, and then the lesson I wanted to talk about was with Manuel Valdez! So we went by and had an okay lesson, and he said he felt that January would be a good time to get baptized as we kept talking and asking him what he feels he needs to know to be baptized I realized he felt he had to have a perfect knowledge and be able to defend his religion. I thought that was admirable, but all you need is that desire. Not once in the interview questions does it say do you know! So I talked to him about that and we invited him to be baptized on the 19 of November, and he accepted it! So now we are going to keep working with him for this day! I pray everything goes as planned for him!

Saturday:

Well today was a big crazy mess of a day, but it seemed to work out actually pretty good! So today we had a few service projects with members lined up, and every single one of them fell through and se we went and helped a member get ready for her Halloween party, and it was actually really fun! Hna. Lebron is such a sweet mom in the ward that always takes us in! So we helped her decorate for her party and then we went and had a few really good lessons that I want to share about! So this evening we were able to teach both Rey and another guy. As we pulled up to Rey's Apartment we noticed he was just getting off work and that he was just arriving, walking from work. He was so happy to see us and we had a great lesson on the plan of Salvation, and he had really good questions and answers that included some of his favorite scriptures found in theBook of Mormon! He is working on finding a new job and we hope he can do that every Sunday is off for him, because he will not be to church tomorrow, because no one would switch him shifts. So he is struggling with his job! As we finished there we went and contacted a man we were supposed to teach yesterday, but he never responded to our message, so we didn't go by. And as we knocked he opened ad let us in. He said he was waiting for us yesterday and was sad we didn't show up. He had been reading and we shared shortly what we believed more in depth and invited him to read another part of the Book of Mormon and he was excited for it. His name is Henry Hernandez, and we feel very good about him! The rest of the evening we went to a Halloween party of the Lebrons to get to know their friends, and it was a good turn out, but not the best opportunity to just sit and talk, however, it was super fun! Today was a really great day!

Sunday:

So today we were blessed with the opportunity to once again partake of the sacrament, and it was such a wonderful relief and peaceful day. So today was kind of a good bye day for elder Lopez, so there isn't much to say, but we were able to go and teach the Nickels one last time with elder Lopez, and then we ended our night off with teaching Maria and Johanna, recent convert mother and daughter, and they we so sad to see him go! We taught them the Restoration and then hey surprised Elder Lopez with Cake and A new Tie! It was so wonderful to see he didn't want to go! I love my area and today was a wonderful day!:)

Love y'all!

Con Amor,

Elder Spendlove

De la Misión de Texas Fort Worth