Monday, December 12, 2016

Mesa December - Week 18

Hi! 
How’s the Christmas season? Good I hope! All has been awesome here in Arizona. It was super nice here, I think it was like 60-70 degrees all week and ☀😎 I went on three exchanges this week and it was tiring, I'm so glad it's p-day.

( I asked him if he cooks anything) I think the only thing that I love to cook here is my homemade breakfast sandwiches. I just buy English muffins, sausage, cheese, and eggs. It’s super simple and it is delicious! Love it! I did get your packages also! Thanks so much! Man holy cow the mission office is going bezerk with all of the Christmas packages coming in. Like seriously there was a whole room just full of packages. But I got mine just before the chaos:) 


What's with wards doing Christmas parties in the mornings now? It’s way better at night😂 With the 30th ward we had it at night and ate Jalepeno bucks:) sooooo good. Then the 60th ward was in the morning,  and they did like a story book theme which was cool and then had cinnamon rolls after. And you want to hear something funny? I honestly feel like the 30th ward is bigger than our ward back home, it is HUGE! And I shared my testimony last week to all of those people and it was scary😝

This week we had an awesome zone conference. President Gavarett of the seventy came and shared his thoughts and experiences on missionary work. He is such a spiritual person and a phenomenal teacher! He is from Spain and had an awesome accent. We talked a lot about our mission statement and our purpose as representatives of Jesus Christ. I don't remember if I told you our mission statement but here it is:

Behold I am a disciple of Jesus Christ
I have been called of Him to declare His word among
His people that they might have everlasting life.
We teach repentance and baptized converts.
📕We are a preach my gospel mission📕
We live by consecration, we sow exact obedience🌰,
we grow mighty faith🌱, we harvest precious souls
🙏We expect and facilitate daily miracles 🙏
We talk with everyone, we find with faith,
we teach with power💪💥, we baptized monthly
We are happy, dignified and hard working
❤We love God and show charity for all his children ❤
We are Arizona Mesa Missionaries🌅

Me and Elder Parra and Elder Gull put in all the emojis but it is what we live by in the Mesa Mission. One thing that I learned and thought was cool from Elder Gavarett was that he told us to express our testimony in our prayers. I never thought to do that before so I am definitely trying to implement that idea into my daily prayers. We got out of the meeting at 4 so it was really long. Since Elder Eaton is district leader he has to go on exchanges with everyone in our district which means that I get to go on 7 exchanges this transfer! Whooo! I'm not a very big fan of them yet but I'm sure I will be. So anyways I was on exchanges with Elder Bischoff and we then had dinner with the walkers, they are missionary couple and we had a good time. They are from West Haven and they came out about the same time as I did. After that we went straight to our ward Christmas party and ate more food! I'm pretty sure we had 5 or 6 meals on Friday because during the meeting they fed us a bunch. But the ward party was great. I kid you not though, the 30th ward here is bigger than our ward back home and we live in Utah! I'm serious when I say that it is HUGE! We visited one of our investigators named Torrey. He is a super nice person and his wife too, she is a member. They are struggling a little and if they can't pay rent then they will have to move. That would be a bummer because we just got him on date for baptism and it would have to be postponed. So we are praying for him and hope everything works out!

I had the chance to go to the Visitors Center twice on Saturday! I was still with Elder Bischoff at the time and we had an investigator coming named Billy. We were going to be watching the Joseph Smith movie. She called us like 10-15 min before saying that she was on her way so we were super excited! We got to the VC and she never showed up:( super sad, it would have been so good for her but I guess next time! Later we exchanged back so I was with Elder Eaton again and we got to go to the VC again! Man I love that place, we watched the Joseph Smith movie with the Tapia family. They loved it! After it was over and we were all leaving a Brother pulled us aside and asked us for a blessing. He has been having some struggles in his life. He broke down emotionally while we were talking to him and just felt lost and didn't know what to do. Right then and there I just felt the spirit really strong and when I say that I mean my love for him and his family went up like crazy. I felt like I was talking to myself when I was talking to him because there have been times in my life when I have felt lost, helpless, and didn't know what to do. I just felt a connection with him and then I was able to give him a blessing. It was a tender mercy that I will never forget. That's why it is so important to be a ready worthy priesthood holder of God. You never know when someone is going to reach out their hand asking for help.

Sunday Sunday Sunday. The most tiring day of the week. We had two investigators come to church! It’s the best feeling when you see your investigators keeping commitments! It makes you hyped😂we had the awesome opportunity to teach Gospel Principles class on eternal families. I love teaching because you are able to help someone learn and grow and by doing that you learn from yourself and grow as well. I learned so much by teaching about families! It just reminded me how much I love you guys! You are more than everything to me, I always tell people there is no way I would be on my mission if it wasn't for my family. Everything I do out here is for my Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, and my family. The three most important things in my life! Since Elder Eaton is district leader every Sunday night he gets the numbers from our district members for the week and sees how they are doing. I just chill with elder Quist and Watmough, they are funny guys haha! 

Well this next coming week I get to do four more exchanges! They are good but I'm glad to be almost done with them so we can focus on our area more:) I hope everyone has the best week back at home! Remember the true meaning of Christmas! Without our Savior we would have nothing! I can't tell you how excited I am to talk to you guys on Christmas! LOVE YOU!
Arizona Mesa missionaries at the twinkie fun run on Thanksgiving

Eating dinner with a great family! They had us wear aprons so we wouldn't mess up our shirts...haha!
A member had some snow from Utah so I got a taste of it!

First time on my mission to chill in my hammock for a minute :)


Our tree...Merry Christmas!