Es casi el tiempo loco de Louisiana

Hola famila y amigos,

So almost to Mardi Gras season. The craziest time of the year there is here in Lousiana, and I’m in New Orleans-the capital of crazy Mardi Gras parties. We will see how the next couple weeks ("the weeks of sin" as the missionaries call them) are before Lent.

Everything out here is going awesome. This last week we had a lot of fun times in lessons. One of the things that I love the most about a mission is when we get to become friends to our investigators not just preachers. Because that is when they begin to listen to you just a little bit more because they know you are a real person not just a robot sent to teach them the Gospel. It’s fun to see people progressing, and we have one or two people that the next time we see them we will be trying to set a baptismal date, so that is exciting!

A crazy story from this week was just this last Saturday. Elder McCormies and I were walking up to a investigators house that lives in a weird apartment type set up, where there is a little courtyard right outside of his house, with other houses all around it. So we walk to the court yard and we see these two guys dressed completely in black with their hoods up messing around with two pit bulls. Now that might sound a little creepy and scary, and that's because it was. But the reaction that we both had was pretty great. We both pause for a split second, stare just long enough to have, "Oh shoot those are pit bulls,” go through our heads. Then just take a slow step back and keep walking like nothing happened. I bet if someone had watched us it would have looked pretty fantastic. Luckily the worst thing that happened was that one of the pit bulls stared at us, and then ran away.

Love y’all and hope you have a great week!

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