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

Decir adios apesta

Hola famila y amigos mios,

Espero que tuvieron una buena semana. So to start out this week I guess is should explain why saying goodbye sucks is the title of this email:  First of all it was the first thing that popped in my head in Spanish and so obviously I had to use it; secondly just last night I had to say goodbye to Amerita and Alex because they are going back to Honduras. These two are our investigator Andy's mom and nephew who are super awesome so it was sad to say goodbye to them. Hopefully they have a safe trip back home and remember the things they have learned.

Well that is the only reason for this title.  Actually this week has been pretty awesome.  We have had the opportunity to do a lot of service for people and teach quite a few people as well. But my favorite two things this week didn't even happen in lessons, they happened in passing over text and right after saying goodbye to Andy’s family. The first one happened this last Tuesday. I was texting our investigator Miguel (if y’all don't remember him he was the 13 year old with the crazy dad) and he told us that we couldn't come over since his dad was home and he didn't know when he was going to leave. We were sad about this but I still wanted to see how he was doing, so we texted for a little while and I found out that he hasn't done any drugs since that day that we went hard on him to stop doing them over a month ago!!! It is super awesome and a great blessing.

The other experience was yesterday when we are saying goodbye to Andy’s family. His mom told me after it was all said and done that Andy has changed a lot since we started seeing him and that he hasn't drunk any alcohol or done any crazy things he used to do for a long time. She even gave this credit to the right place, because she said that after we taught him he started praying more and doing things that God wanted him to do; and that as he grew closer to God he began to change. It was super awesome because not only did this super awesome guy change his bad habits through Christ, but he also realized that there is another step in the gospel-more than just two guys coming and telling him he needs to do something. He realized that he had to take responsibility for his own salvation and act on what he learned. It was an awesome night!

I love you all and hope that you have an awesome week and fun in school!

Elder Porter

 

Biking in the rain and mud is a blast!

Feliz Nuevo Ano

Hey everyone!

I hope you all had awesome New Year’s and are making awesome goals for this next year... hopefully they will last for more than one week - ha ha. Out here it was super fun on New Year’s, people were setting off fireworks all day and are still doing it sometimes. 

This week was an interesting week since my companion got sick and that made it so that we couldn’t do as much especially since we have to bike a couple miles just to get to our area, it was a weird feeling not being able to do as much as we had before. But he is feeling better now and so we will be going hard this week to make up for the last week.

But even with this obstacle this week we have had some super awesome experiences. We have gotten back into contact with some people that have been AWOL for a little while and they are the ones that invited us to come back; which is always a good feeling because you know that they are searching for the truth when they are the ones that tell you to come and visit. 

One experience I loved this week was when we went out tracting on Tuesday. We walked up to a house and knocked on it as usual (hard to tract any way else) and the family let us in almost right away. We then had to get into our stride with Spanish and teaching so we stumbled over the first part of the Restoration lesson. They were super nice and once we hit the stride it became a super good lesson, at the end they told us that we could stop by anytime and share more which was awesome. Then they even gave us some tamales to have for dinner. It is amazing how much people end up trusting missionaries, even if they have never seen one before. It is definitely one of the blessings of the Holy Ghost, that they feel comfortable enough to let us in and receive what the Lord has prepared for them.

I love you all and hope that you recognize the blessings the Lord puts in your lives this new year.