Semana 5

Hola,

Tiempo es muy rapido en la mission. Mi primero transfer es casi fin.

So this week has had lots of things going on which makes time go by way to fast, Elder Brixton Call emailed me and he let me know that I’m already 11% done with my mission... estoy muy triste porque de este.

Anyways this week started out on a high note since there was an elderly couple that has been inactive for over 10 years that came to church! It was awesome and they agreed to let us over this last week and it was the first time they have let missionaries come over for the full time they were inactive. And not only did they invite over, but they actually invited some other less actives, investigators, and new members for a huge FHE. It was so spiritual and awesome! They are definitely reactivated and are jumping right into member missionary work which will help them and others so much!

We also had exchanges with a assistant to the president one day this week so we were in a tripanionship for a little while. It was pretty entertaining since the AP was a English missionary, so in the lessons me and Elder Barron had to translate what was going on for him and then translate what he said too. It was fun to have someone there that knew less Spanish than I did and it really showed me how far I’ve come in the last 11 weeks since I knew no Spanish before the mission.

Also alumni of Davis High, did any of you know a kid with the last name of Glissmyer? Because there is an elder in the mission who has been out for about 8 months that said he graduated from Davis in 2015.

Also this most recent Sunday was awesome too, we had the Palmas family come again and we had a family of investigators come that had never been before! It was awesome because usually we have to pull teeth to get people to church for the first time but this family came without us reminding them, and on the first time we challenged them to come! Oh, and btw this family is the family of Andy our miracle investigator from a few weeks ago. It was super awesome!

Love you all,

Giant Snail shell-haven't found a living giant snail yet

Painting about the history of Louisiana

la cosas de este semana

Hola mi familia y amigos,

So I’m going to jump right into it about one of the blessings in disguise that happened this week. So Elder Barron and I have decided recently to bike some days, even though we have a car in the mission, so one day we were biking to the church from an investigators house so we could teach English class to help the sisters out, and both of us got a flat tire. Luckily we were fairly close to home, but it was still a 30 minute walk, so we would miss the English class. We call the sisters and they say that they are fine without us, so there wasn't any problems there. Once we got home we weren't sure where we should go next, so we prayed about it and Elder Barron had the prompting to go and talk to a man that he hadn't seen since before I got to the mission who lived right by the investigator we were at just before. So we drive over there and knock on his door but no one answered. And at this point we were both tired and a little irritated with our situation since we had been prompted to come here, but it seemed like there was no reason for us to be there. We decided to go and talk to the neighbors since they will know where this guy is probably and while we are talking to the mom her son who is 24 sees a Book of Mormon we are holding and asks if we are missionaries from the Catholic church; we tell him no but we are from the Mormon church. He then comes outside and talks to us for about an hour about how he has been looking for a way to grow closer to God and to change his life since he is trying to get over drugs, alcohol and some other crazy stuff. So we share Ether 12:27 and he loves it and tells us he knows he has been waiting for us, it was a super awesome. (his name is Andie by the way). And to make things even better we visited him yesterday and now his whole family is interested in what we have to say. It was an awesome experience.

The other major thing I want to tell y’all is about our investigator Carla. She is an 18 year
old girl from Guatemala who has been investigating the church for around 4 months now and we have been trying to get her to commit to baptism since she has done everything she needs to to be ready for it. So we had a lesson with her in a member’s home yesterday to see if the experiences of the Cubas family could help her in her decision, and it was one of the most amazing lessons I’ve ever had. Sister Cubas shared her conversion story and it was almost exactly like Carla’s story. Sister Cubas bore her testimony about how the church has changed and blessed her life and then Brother Cubas and the kids did the same thing. It was so awesome to see their testimonies, and at the end of the lesson Carla said she would be baptized in December because she wanted some of her family that don't live in Louisiana to come to the baptism. It was super awesome.

I also want all of you to know how you all can affect the people around you to bring them to Christ. I know it is scary and hard to do, but trust me when I tell you that even in this short month in the field I have seen more things happen because of the testimonies of members and friends than I have seen happen anywhere else. Sometimes us missionaries teach and bear testimony till we are blue in the face, but what is needed is a friend’s testimony to truly convert a person. So my challenge for you all today is to share your testimony with a friend who may be struggling and I promise it will help them.

I love you all and hope you have an awesome week

Fin con un medio de primero transfer

Hola!

Este semana fue bien loco pero Dios bendico nos con mucho tambien! So to start out our investigator Miguel who we were going to have baptized this last Saturday had to change the date of his baptism since his dad decided to go crazy controlling and not let any of their family out of the house to go and do anything! It was crazy, but Miguel thinks this next week we can do the baptism; so keep him in your prayers that everything will work out for him! Also pray that his father’s heart will be softened because he is currently the only thing in the way of Miguel getting what he wants and getting the blessings that come with baptism. 

The second crazy thing that happened this week is that my companion had to leave me to fend for myself with another greenie. The story is that my comp and Elder Clifford’s (the other greenie) comp are the zone leaders for my zone; but they had to be split up so they could both train which usually doesn’t happen. So they both had to go to a meeting with the Mission president before zone conference. So me and Elder Clifford had to go on splits. It was super hard since neither of us know Spanish super well yet. And to make things worse all our appointments fell through, so we had to just go tracting with our limited Spanish. We actually had some success though because one of the doors we knocked on opened and the Hispanic family let us in to teach a lesson. They though it was pretty cool and a little funny that these two white boys were trying to learn and speak Spanish so they listened to what we had to say. It was super rough since Elder Clifford had stage fright and forgot all his Spanish; so it was me trying to carry this lesson about the restoration by myself in Spanish. I managed to stumble through it which was a blessing and the family invited us to come back and teach another lesson.

One super huge blessing this week is that we were teaching an investigator named Sylviano for the third time and we decided to teach about the plan of salvation this time. It was an amazing lesson and he was drinking it up and loved what we said. Then at the end we asked him to commit to being baptized on November 5th and he said yes. And to make it even better I was prompted to ask his daughter Cielo, who had sat in on two of the three lessons but would never talk to us or say anything at all really, if she would like to commit to the same thing and she agreed as well. So now we have three investigators committed to a date which is awesome! It goes to show that the spirit does prepare people to receive the gospel and that when you teach with the spirit amazing things can happen!

The last story for the week is actually about the two pictures I put on this email. I had been needing a haircut for a long time but we had never found a member to do it or time to go and get it done, so last Monday I decided to take matters into my own hands and try to do it myself. At that point it was almost time for bed so the first picture is how I looked after the first little bit of cutting it. I looked like someone had taken a machete to my hair and I was thinking, "I hope that I can get this looking presentable in the morning cuz as of now I may need to shave my head." And miracles happened, with my comps help on the back of my head we got the hair looking at least somewhat presentable. The lesson from this is don’t try to cut your own hair after ten o’clock at night after a hard day of work.

I love you all and love hearing how y’alls lives are going. Some of you have some pretty crazy stories that happened the last two months that are super entertaining.

Love,

Elder Porter

Hair cut - machete style :)

Fixed hair cut :)