J & J

Hey everyone,

We had another pretty good week this week, it was a little slower than the last two but it was  still good.

We were able to have a good lesson with J this week. We went over and visited him and his wife, and he started talking to us about how he thinks the things we are teaching are true and made the statement, "If I didn’t think what you were teaching was true, I would not be listening to you anymore." After that we started teaching him about the Book of Mormon, and he seems super excited to read it and wanted us to bring him a copy as soon as possible since we didn’t have an English one. We gave it to him on Saturday and so we hope he gets to begin reading and praying about it. 

We also have some exciting news about J (the 12 year old from the last emails) he has chosen March 25th as the day that he wants to be baptized so that is exciting! 

 I hope y’all have an awesome week!

Transferring area book to phones

Like Unto a Little Child

Hey everyone! How's it going?

I hear that it is like a blizzard up there in Utah right now! I hope everyone was safe traveling in the storm! Haha the while the weather in Utah is getting colder down here in Louisiana it is getting hotter and hotter.  If anyone is missing warm climates they should just move down here, aha.

This week was a pretty good week, we got to see a lot of people and we even got blessed for going around on bikes to save miles! We had to bike a of days this week since we were short on miles and every single appointment we had set for those days came through; which almost never happens, especially on 2 or 3 consecutive days! God was for sure looking out for us on those days. And so we were able to get a few good lessons in with some investigators and then at the end of the day when we were planning on tracting a bit, some of the kids of one of our investigators named W decided to help us out. We were knocking in their neighborhood trying to find more Spanish people to teach and they came up to us and started telling us were all the Spanish houses were. Then they would wait while we knocked and if no one was home they would take us to the next home. Because of them we were able to find two really cool Honduran men that were talking at the end of the neighborhood. One of them was named M and the other was named J. We were able to share a good restoration with them and we found out that J used to listen to the missionaries and actually helped do maintenance on some of the chapels down in Honduras, haha pretty much the whole time we were teaching he seemed to bare his own testimony to M about how everything we were saying was true and that Joseph Smith was a true prophet. It was a very cool experience. We have two little kids to thank for helping lead us to them. 

We also have had the opportunity to go and teach the 12 year old son of family in our ward who is not baptized and he is now getting ready to make that decision, so we are teaching him the lessons so that he can be baptized and become an official member of the church, we for sure have been blessed this last week.

I hope you all have an awesome week!! Have fun in the snow!

Bill, Brian, Referrals

Hey y’all,

This week has been a pretty good one. I was sad to lose Elder Johnson but I’m having a good time with Elder Magee. We have been able to have a lot of lessons with investigators this week, which is always nice because sometimes it is hard to meet with some of them due to their schedules. 

Two of the top lessons this week were with Brian and Bill. 

In Brian’s lesson we went over the restoration of the gospel and explained to him the importance of the Priesthood authority. He is a really smart kid, and even though he doesn’t have much of a background in religion, he seems to catch on really fast to what we say; even though at times he doesn’t remember the big words such as atonement, Priesthood, and repentance, he always remembers the principles once we give the definition to these words. He told us that he likes listening to us and he knows that one day he will join the church, and that was before we even had talked about him coming to church or being baptized!   So it was awesome!

In the lesson with B and his girlfriend T, we went over and read 1 Nephi chapter 1 with them. In the Book of Mormon we gave him, a previous missionary had written about how he gained his testimony of the Book of Mormon when he was 14 years old. Bill had read this testimony and he thought it was awesome that people were following the principles we had taught him when they were that young. And as we read the chapter and had everyone explain what they learned from it, he began asking us again about our experiences and feelings with the Book of Mormon.  After we shared some of those with him, he said that he was going to pray that night about what he had learned because he wanted to feel those feelings of peace and love that we had had. I’m very excited to see what happened during his prayer.

The last awesome thing from this week was actually during sacrament meeting. We had our bishop stand up and tell everyone in the ward to invite the missionaries into their homes to hear the lessons so that they could feel more comfortable with us, give us referrals, as well as know what they should say to friends if they ever are asked about the Gospel. Then immediately after the sacrament meeting a Sister came up to us and invited us to come and teach her 12 year old son the lessons, because he was in need of being baptized. And then after that people came up to us again and referred us to a less active member of the church that had a wife and kids that were not members. It was awesome to see how these people responded to what the bishop said, and I hope that the work here continues to progress like it has.

I love y’all, I hope you have an awesome week!

The Mardi Gras parade

The Lafayette Crew

Elder Magee with all the beads we caught