Uno translado mas

Hey everyone,

This last week we had transfers again and I am staying in Metairie.  At the end of this transfer I will most likely be moving to another place in Louisiana.

This week we had some fun with service; we got a call from a lady we do some service for, and I thought I heard her say that she wanted us to come over and cut down her banana trees. I was surprised but said we would come over the next day and do it. Then we show up and she did want us to cut them down. Just so you know, banana trees are like giant, and I mean giant pieces of celery. Every time that we have come to her house to do service we talked about how flimsy they were and how fun it would be to cut one down. And now we did. We got her machetes and then destroyed! Best service ever! It was so fun.

Then the spiritual highlight of the week was teaching a lesson to our investigator Axel. We went to his house last Friday and talked to his mom about the restoration and he was able to jump in and help out a bit since we already taught him it. It was awesome. We asked him if he had the opportunity to read the Book of Mormon; and he told us yes. Apparently the youth are having a challenge to see who can read the BOM all the way through first, and since axel has come a few times he decided to do it. He is flying through it. It was and is a super big blessing.

I love y’all and hope you have a great week!

God is testing us

Hey everyone!

How are y’all doing? This week has been an interesting one and as one of the English Elders, Elder Lesser says whenever things don't go our way God is testing us. It was a pretty slow week and a lot of things didn't work out how we would have liked them to.  But that is mission life, some weeks you are busy and have things to do, and other weeks you have to wing it and try to make the best you can because appointments fall through. This week was one of those weeks, we had lots of stuff planned, but a lot of it didn't end up happening because investigators were busy and/or out of town.

We did get to have a good couple lessons with Miguel this week. We got to help him remember God’s plan for us, which is to live with our families for eternity after this life. We came one day to his house and he started asking us about hell, and how he saw a video about a girl, who said she died for a hour and that Jesus showed her hell.  There were rooms for sins that people had committed in their lives, many of which were a little interesting. For example there was a room for kids that watched too much tv, one for people who put on too much perfume, and one for people who liked Michael Jackson’s songs. And all of these people were being punished according to these things. It was a super crazy thing. We had to explain to him that this isn't how it will be. And we had to tell him that people do have out of body experiences, but there will be some that are not true. We asked how he felt when he watched this video and he said he felt dark and bad.  We had to teach him that God doesn't work through these feelings, we told him that that video is not true and people won’t got to hell for watching tv or anything like that. Then we got into how God loves us so much that he has prepared places for all of his kids where they will be happy; even if they aren't living with him in the highest degree of glory. It ended up being a pretty good lesson.

I love y’all and hope that you have a great week.

Elder Porter

Una semana mas hasta translados

Hola mi familia y amigos,

Como siempre este semana fue llenado con bendiciones y historias. I’m going to switch things up just a little bit and tell about some of the things missionaries do when there is a little bit of spare time. Haha this week in that bit of time I was privileged to see the battle of the century, the battle between two champions, the battle to gain all the honor and prestige in Louisiana... the battle of the Pancake. Yep for lunch one day we decided to go to Denny’s and get the all you can eat pancakes. My comp Elder McCormies and Elder Tuttle went head to head to see who could eat the most. Before I get into the battle real quick: Elder McCormies is the 5'10" 175 pound pancake champion of Thacher Arizona, who challenged the 6'4" 225 pound Elder Tuttle who destroyed everyone in Orangeville Utah by eating a surprising 20 pancakes at a family reunion. Haha, my comp had no idea what he was getting himself into.  They battled for ten pancakes and once Elder McCormies started to turn green and stopped Elder Tuttle ate one more just to prove his dominance. And there we go, the battle of the century. Haha.  In other missionary life news we had a great match of mattress wrestling and nerf wars in the apartment. So there you have it, missionary life when the work is done for the day.

Now let us get into the rest of the week; the highlight of the week this week was when we visited our investigators J and A, they are both from Honduras and have 3 super cute kids. We taught them about the restoration and prayer this last week and it went super well.  They agreed with us about how prophets are still needed to day, and that it is super important to pray to God for knowledge. Then we invited them to pray about what we had taught them and to say the final prayer of the lesson. That was when they admitted that although they knew about the importance of prayer, they weren't sure how to go about doing it.  So we taught them and both A and their 7 year old son said a prayer; it was a super awesome and sweet to see their first prayers and you could definitely feel the spirit when they did them. I love that part of this work, teaching people a simple truth, and feeling the spirit confirm it to them when they put it into action.

I love you all and hope you have an awesome week!

MLK Parade

MLK Parade