May 23, 2016

Well this week was absolutely insane!!!!!!!!!

We achieved standards this week!!!! We worked really hard and were
able to get it. We had some pretty incredible lessons and things are
really looking up,for the area.

Marcos is a 72 year old man that we're teaching. He is absolutely
solid!!!! Everything we give him he reads. Sometimes when he's not
home we leave things for him to read on his car windshield. He always
reads everything we leave him. Right now he is praying that his family
will let him be baptized. He wants this so much. We will keep working
with him and especially his family to help him be baptized soon.

Aurora and Liz are 2 new investigators that we picked up and they are
both solid!!!! We had brother and sister Valero with us and they ended
up being the perfect people to bring with us. Brother Valero used to
be a catholic priest when he was converted. So he was able to answer a
lot of Aurora's questions because she is still a Catholic. Also sister
Valero has a heart of gold and will do anything for anyone. They
invited the both of them over to dinner where we taught them again and
also brother and sister Valero picked them up for church. Aurora has a
baptism date for the 25th of June and she really wants to be baptized.
We are very excited to see what happens this week.

Anyways transfer news. So one of our zone leaders that we share the
Ward with, Elder Kelley, was called to be an assistant to the
president and left Sunday night. Elder Stout and I stayed with Elder
Lyons Sunday night and awaited for transfer calls the next day. During
studies this morning we received a call from the APs and they told
Elder Stout that he is a zone leader. I found out that Elder Lyons and
Elder Stout will be companions and I will be staying!!!!!! I will be
companions with Elder Jimenez who is from Ecuador. I will be talking
in Spanish all transfer. I should get much better at Spanish.

So yeah that happened. I'll still be seeing Elder Stout almost every
day because we share the Ward together. So I'm happy that we're all
sticking together. This transfer should be really good. I'm very
excited to see what happens.

I hope everyone has a wonderful week!

Elder Austin

May 16, 2016

So I see some people write the week number when they write their
emails back home and to friends. I just realized that I have no idea
what my week number is. I feel like I just got here yesterday. So
we'll go with week 1. 

This week we had our ups and downs. First I want to start with the
ups. Last week we found many new investigators. This week we had the
opportunity to teach them again! Rey and Sergio are still amazing are
both are really cool guys! They'll wake up early and play basketball
with you during exercise, the feed you carne asada out of the blue,
and they'll even listen to you talk about the gospel. Rey immediately
accepted a date to be baptized once again when we taught him Wednesday
but Sergio said that they want to wait a little bit longer. Both
promised to come to church with us however. 

Mike is a guy we've been teaching off and on. He has no belief in a
God or a higher power. However the last lesson we had with him was
absolutely perfect! We were in exchanges and I had Elder Fehoko in my
area with me. Elder Fehoko is from the Kingdom of Tonga where 75% of
the population is Mormon and the other 25% is Methodist. Elder Fehoko
told Mike his story of how for 9 years he rebelled against the church
and God and how he came to repent and know the truth. He was the
perfect person to have there. We had Mike promise us to pray later
that night. He told us that he would try. We'll see what happens.

Francisco Regalado is a very crazy man. He is absolutely insane. He is
completely open to having missionaries over but once you sit down he
will talk your ear off over everything. Literally this guy can talk
hours on just about any subject. It's extremely hard to keep the
lesson on tract and even harder to have him keep commitments. The
missionaries have been teaching him for about 6 months now and he has
progressed only a little. One of the major things I have seen is that
when we met him he would schedule lessons 2 weeks ahead. Now we're
meeting with him twice a week. He also promised to come to church and
we hoped that meeting the members would help him start to be more
interested. 

The last person I want to talk about is a 73 year old man named
Marcos. He is completely amazing!!! We talk a lot about the Book of
Mormon with him because out of everything we have in the gospel, the
Book of Mormon is what he is most interested in. In our last lesson we
taught him how to pray and he gave the closing prayer. Afterwards he
cried and said that that was the most amazing he has ever felt in a
very long time. He won't commit to any major commitments yet but he
will commit to reading more of the Book of Mormon. When he does I know
he will come around. He also told us that he would try to make it to
church. 

Okay now for the downs, we had only one person come to church. It was
Fransisco. It was hard for us that no one else made it and we even
went by some of their homes before church to make sure that they would
come. But Fransisco came all on his own and loved it. He has his
parents coming in town this week and they are very Catholic but he
said that he's going to invite them to come next Sunday. We hope that
this is finally his time to accept the gospel. 

That's all that happened this week. I hope everything is going great back home. 

Elder Austin

May 9, 2015

Well this week was crazy! I feel like I say that every week...... 

Well I had one of the wonderful opportunities to see one of the best
missionaries in our mission teach the restoration. We were at a
baptism for someone in our Ward and Elder Mason taught the
restoration. What makes Elder Mason so good is that he was an AP not
too long ago. And usually that doesn't mean too much but being an AP
in a mission located within the valley of the prophet and apostles is
something else. He's met almost every apostle and has participated in
a training given to all of the first quorum of the 70. He's learned a
lot and watching him reach the restoration in Spanish taught me a lot
as well. 

I learned something that reminded me of our last zone
training meeting. And that is the power behind your authority.

During the last zone training meeting we talked a lot about where the
power of our words come from and how to access it. As missionaries we
are given power to testify just as powerfully as an apostle however
being 18 and up its a little hard to figure out how to use your power
and authority without all of the knowledge and experience that the
apostles have. But at the last training meeting we talked about how
every time we give our credibility as representatives of Jesus Christ
we are using our authority. The more we use and rely on this authority
the more power our words will have. This power comes from the spirit.
As I watched Elder Mason teach I saw the way he used his title as an
Elder and how the people reacted. It's incredible how much power his
words had and you could see it in the eyes of everyone their.

And so I've been studying a lot on this stuff. The more I learn the
better I get at teaching and also allowing the spirit to teach. Me and
my companion have been working on letting the spirit teach rather than
us and we've seen some pretty amazing miracles from it. 

First off we
found 8 new investigators last week. I have never seen anyone finding
that many in one week before. It's incredible how the more sincere our
testimonies get the more the people we talk to can feel the spirit.
Every one that has allowed us to talk to them has accepted the Book of
Mormon and also the baptism invitation. Now getting them to stay on
the path towards baptism is the tricky part but we're working on it.

Right now we have 15 investigators and 2 of them are getting ready to
be baptized. We are very excited to see what happens these next two
weeks.

In other news I just went on one of the hardest hikes of my life. 6
miles total up and down a mountain. Here are some of the pictures.

Also last Saturday we had a Mother's Day activity and we decided to contribute a little something.

Fried Oreos!!!!! Bringing the south to Utah!!!!!!! 




Also the highlight of this week was being able to talk to my family last Sunday. It has been too long!!! Everyone looks so different! But it was really nice talking to everyone. I forgot how funny my dad is haha!!!!!! I love all of them to death. 

That's everything that's happened. Hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Austin

May 5, 2016

Well this week was absolutely amazing!!!!!! 

This last Tuesday I had the opportunity to go to the temple with
Abidam and Hena (2 recent converts from my last area) and I was also
able to see Elder Montgomery. Elder Montgomery forgot,to call ahead
and schedule a time so there were a lot of people doing baptisms and
confirmations already and Abidan and Hena had to wait for a while
before it was their turn. However as we were waiting we were pulled
aside and asked if we could help do some confirmations. And so for
about 30 minutes I was confirming people and it was an amazing
experience. The spirit is palpable in the temple. I absolutely love
going there. Seeing Abidam and Hena baptized for their ancestors was
also a wonderful experience. They loved every second of it. 

Elder
Montgomery is going home after this transfer so that was probably the
last time I was able to see him. I'll miss him. He's an amazing Elder.

Also Ezequiel and Jeisi were able to go with us to visit the Salt Lake
Temple this last Saturday. When we got there we were in the north
visitors center and I was teaching about the life of Christ with the
pictures they have there. There was a man who was listening in on us
and I honestly thought he was a returned missionary just listening to
see how our Spanish was. I was expecting him to come up at any time
and say "you're Spanish is excellent elders great job!" But that's not
what he said. When we finished talking about the live of Christ we
started talking about his visit to the Americas and that's when he
came up and asked "when was he in the Americas?" We asked him if he's
ever heard of the Book of Mormon before and he said no. Then without a
moments hesitation me and Elder Stout taught this man the restoration
of the Church of Jesus Christ and gave him a Book of Mormon in
Spanish. He joined our group and stayed with us for the rest of the
time we were there. We then watched the family videos they have at the
temple and then challenged Ezequiel and Jeisi to keep the commandment
by being married and baptized. They said yes and we're going to have a
lesson with out marriage specialist on Tuesday. I can only think of
how confused our new friend was this entire time. But as we were
teaching Ezequiel and Jeisi one of us would also teach this other man.
We also had a member with us who would talk a lot with him as well. We
ended with talking pictures by the temple and then went back home. It
was a really cool experience and it just taught me that you never know
when you're going to have to teach the gospel like that. Also we saw
Elder Moreno from the district 2 taking a picture of himself at temple
square which was pretty unexpected.

I hope everyone has a wonderful week! 

 Elder Austin