October 24, 2016

It was a crazy week and the next week will be even crazier. But we had
some fantastic miracles!

One miracle is that we found 8 new investigators! They're all amazing
and we're going to do everything to make sure hat they progress into
the gospel!

We had many lessons this week but at the moment we don't have anyone
on date. However we worked hard and the Lord rewarded us with
blessings! Sunday after church we received a text from the Portuguese
Elders that said "hey Elders do you want an extra baptism in your
area?" They then told us of a man that can to their Ward who's Spanish
speaking and who asked them how he could be baptized. It was a
Miracle! We received his number and we' pie texted and called a couple
times. We're hoping to meet with him this week.

Also the Assistants to the President called us and promised us that if
we work hard, then we will have a miracle baptism this Saturday. So if
everyone can pray that we'll be rewarded for our diligence with a
baptism this Saturday then I know it will happen.

Something that Elder Sewell and I have been focusing on is turning
heavenward and trusting in the Lord more in our work. We're going to
be focusing on that greatly this next week. Something amazing that I
learned was a principle taught in a talk that I'm going to attach to
this email. I hope everyone likes it and takes something away from it
as I did.

I hope everyone has a great week!\

Elder Kallin James Austin
Utah SLC South Mission

October 17, 2016

I wasn't able to get an email out last week because of a hiking trip that we went on in Bell's canyon. It was an amazing hike and I would do it over again in a heartbeat. However the weather has changed and I won't be able to another until spring comes back around. Here are some picture from the hike: 

We were able to find many new people to teach and we also had some miracles. This week we went on exchanges with Elder Craig and Elder Pineda. I was with Elder Pineda in my area. Elder Pineda is from Costa Rica and is a really good missionary. We were walking down the street just after we taught a great lessons and a white truck passed us. Then immediately this truck stopped and honked at us. We went to talk to them. The truck was full of people but the man driving was the one who talked to us. He was a large man with a huge beard and he looked pretty scary. He asked "are you missionaries?" We said of course. Then he said "here is our address. Come back any day after 6:00." I asked if we could help them with anything because I was really confused. He said "you talk to people right? We want you to talk to us." And so we took the address and we're going to visit them tonight. Hopefully everything goes well.

Later that day we were in an apartment complex and we just decide to knock on this random door. We had already knocked on about 4 or 5 with no one answering but when we knocked on this door, a man with another beard answered (this state is a bearded state). He introduced himself and he was very kind and polite. He then told us that he was a less active member but was thinking about coming back to church. We congratulated him and then we asked what helped him to come back. He told us that his wife (who speaks spanish) has been asking about the church and she wants Elders to come visit her. So we're going to visit her today as well.

This week is looking like one of the best weeks yet. We have many lessons scheduled and a lot of new people to meet. Another great miracle that happened was with a young man named Felix. He was just walking to his car in an apartment complex and we stoped him to talk to him. He was kind of apprehensive at first but then he opened up to us. He recently had a lot of his friends die from freak accidents and it has been really rough on him. He asked us a lot of questions about where to we go after this life and why are we here in the first place. We were able to have a great discussion about the plan of salvation which lead into the gospel of Jesus Christ and baptism. In that parking lot, Felix accepted to be baptized on the 12th of November. Unfortunately he doesn't live in that apartment complex but lives outside of the area. And the mission.... but the Lord is trusting us enough to send His prepared to us to talk to them. This means that things will start to pick up in our area. 

Well I'm super excited for this week and we are praying that we will be able to find at least 3 people in our area who can be baptized in October so we can help the zone achieve the goal of 20 baptisms. We feel really good about it. 

We hope everyone has a great week!!!

Oct 3, 2016

Well family and friends there is now a Spanish Zone. It's the very first Spanish Zone in the mission and all of the Spanish units are a part of this zone. It's absolutely huge in fact it's bigger than the entire mission. 

It's really cool and today we had one of the largest soccer matches that this mission has ever seen. I'll attach a picture. 

Some good news is that we were able to have some pretty amazing lessons. One was with a man named Rogelio. Rogelio is an older man who is one of the most interested people I have ever met. We taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ and it was a great lesson! He accepted the date of 22 of October. We are super excited for him. However he might be moving tomorrow so we're really hoping that he won't and that he'll stay. 

Well I hope everyone liked General Conference because I loved it!!!! I loved especially the talks on the Gospel of Jesus Christ and in Repentance. I also loved hearing from the prophet. They weren't long messages but you can tell that he meant every word that he said. I was able to go to the Priesthood session and it was amazing! I'll attach some pictures. 

This week is a very exciting week because we have a lot of things happening. We have interviews with the mission president on Tuesday, a zone training meeting on Wednesday, a specialized Spanish training on Thursday, call-ins on Friday, and something on Saturday that I can't remember but I'm sure that it's important. 

I hope that everyone has a great week!! 

Elder Kallin James Austin

Utah SLC South Mission 

September 26, 2016

Baptism!!!
This week has been an amazing last week of the transfer!!!!!! We had a baptism of an amazing young man named Joseph Sanchez! Here is a picture! 

Joseph has been taking lessons from the missionaries for almost a year now. He has never wanted to learn about the gospel until after a couple times that his girlfriend invited him to sit down with the missionaries. He eventually agreed and that's where it all started. For many months he never wanted to keep a commitment. He just doesn't like doing things that other people tell him. He was taught for many months when I arrived in the area with Elder Mason and he was still the same. After I received Elder Rojas we decided to do something a little different. We decided to set everything up through his girlfriend. Every lesson, every leader assignment, every prayer, we would do it through her. She was amazing! She would even call him and read and pray with him over the phone. Eventually he felt something really wrong and wanted to meet with us immediately. We did and we taught him the restoration. At the end we told him that he could receive and answer right then and there and we invited him to kneel with us and pray for that answer. He did and we stayed silent afterwards. It was about 5 minutes of silence and the Spirit was extremely strong. Many people were crying by the time he broke the silence. He said that he felt completely at peace and all the things that worried him didn't worry him anymore. I then invited him to be baptized. He said "I think it's finally time." We set a date and the rest is history! He was confirmed yesterday by one of his friends and we were able to give him tickets for general conference for him and his girlfriend. He's very excited. 

Also I got transferred. I will be going back to the Mountain View 4th Ward tomorrow and I will be with an Elder Sewell. They did something that they've never done before which was create a Spanish zone. Now every Spanish missionary in the mission with be in one zone all together. I'm super excited for this change and I hope that it will bring about the purposes of the Lord. 

I bore my testimony yesterday and when I did that the last time in my last area I was transferred so I guess I saw that coming. It was so nice being able to train Elder Rojas and I will miss him greatly. But I made sure that he had a good start and now he'll have a great mission! 

This will be my last night in Westland 5th and I plan on working my heart out!!!! I hope to find many people who have been prepared by the Lord before I leave so the missionaries coming will have a lot of work to do. 

Also just as a description of the other pictures, one is of me and Elder Cunningham making a zone email where we invited the zone to smile more. The other is us at a zone activity together. The last one is our district's final day together. 

September 19, 2016

Miracles!
This week we had many miracles happen to us.

Some exciting news is that we will have a baptism this Saturday! His
name is Joseph Sanchez and it's been a long time coming. He has been
taught now for about 6 or 7 months and last week we had the lesson
that changed everything. It was the first lesson that Joseph has had
in a while and we decided to teach the restoration. He was at the home
of a member family and the setting was perfect. By the end of the
lesson we had him say a prayer to ask God is everything we just told
him is true. He did so and after we finished we gave him some time to
feel the Spirit. We all stayed quiet and many people started crying at
this point. When he was ready I asked him to describe how he felt. He
said that he felt really good and very peaceful. We told him that it
was God that gave him those feelings. I then invited him to be
baptized and he said "I finally think it's time to do it." He chose
the date of this Saturday and we're really excited for him. All of his
friends have been invited and his family is going to attend.

In other news we have been teaching a man named José for a while now
and he's gone through some pretty rough things in his life. But now
he's doing much better and actually said that he wants to be baptized
in the last lesson we had with him. We're going to stop by later today
and invite him to be baptized and give him a date to work on. We're
really excited for him as well and he'll probably be the second person
baptized after Joseph. If everyone can pray for José he really needs
it.

The weather is finally cooling down and things are picking up in the
area. Everything is going well with Elder Rojas and I and we're
working like crazy! This will be the last week of the transfer so it
will be exciting to see where I go after this. I'm hoping that I can
stay but you never know.

Anyways here's some pictures of us with the Toro family. They're a
wonderful family and I cooked dinner for them this day.

I hope everyone has a great week!

September 12, 2016

This week was great! A lot of things have happened and we've seen much success.

This past Monday the entire mission did a temple to temple run. We
started at the Oquirrh Mountain Temple and we ran to the Jordan River
Temple. It was a crazy run and I was able to do it in a good time.
Elder Rojas and I made shirts for the event and the talked to as many
people as we could. We were hoping to find someone who wasn't a member
but all we found were members. However we had some wonderful
opportunities to bear our testimonies and show Salt Lake City that
there are representatives of Christ in West Jordan!

August 29, 2016

The craziest Sunday ever...
Well training is proving to be very hard. I've been so used to
following my other companion but now that I'm in charge I'm having to
stay on my toes and work hard. It's really different being in charge
and it's not as fun as someone might think. I'm keeping diligent
though. We're working hard and making sure that we're not wasting one
second. We've found some new people and two of hem accepted baptism
dates in the first lesson so things are starting to pick up. My goal
is that Elder Rojas will be able to have a baptism this transfer and
this week is the last week to find people so I could use all the
prayers you're willing to offer.

Anyways the title suggests that this past Sunday was absolutely insane
which it was. After companionship study in the morning, while we're
getting ready to go to Ward council, we get a phone call from the
Elders Quorum President asking me if I can teach the class today. Of
course I say yes and he tells me that it's on the talk "to the rescue,
we can do it!" by Elder Arnold. This talk is one of my favorites and
so I get really scared to teach the class. After the morning meetings
and visits we're sitting in the Sacrament meeting room and I'm about
to start planning the lesson when someone asks me to help them find a
song they're looking for in the hymn book. So I find it and then I'm
asked by the bishop to play the piano for sacrament meeting. I tell
him that the hymns they chose were too hard for me so what we did was
we connected my I-pad to the speakers in the chapel through an
auxiliary cable and listened to the hymns through the iPad. It was
weird but it was the only option we had. During the opening hymn I
noticed that there was only one priest at the sacrament table so I
joined him. It was my first time blessing the sacrament in Spanish and
it was a wonderful experience. After sacrament meeting they asked us
to teach gospel principles and so we did. The lesson in Elders quorum
went well and everything ended on time. But I've never had to do so
many things at church before. I was completely exhausted afterwards!!!
But we had in total 4 investigators at church so it was really good.

Elder Rojas is getting much better at teaching and taught in gospel
principles really well. He's becoming more bold and a much better
missionary. This week I'm going to really help him learn the lessons
in preach my gospel. I'm hoping that this will help him follow along
in lessons more. But he's a great missionary and I love him to death!

Elder Mason sent me an email. He's already started school and has
already taught many of his peers the restoration. They call him "the
Mormon" already. But he's doing great. Here's a picture he sent me: