1st Week in TEXAS!!

September 17, 2012

Yeah, so basically Texas is the Bomb.com.

All right, this is going to be a lot of information probably not very organized, but I'm just going to write it as it comes to me.

 

My companion is named Elder Galvez. He's been on his mission 9 months and he is a native Spanish speaker!! He's from Peru, but his family has been living in Orem for 3 years! So I'm really blessed to have him as my companion so I can improve my Spanish a ton!!!

 

Texas has been pretty mellow as far as weather goes. It was a lot cooler on Tuesday and Wednesday, and the rest of the week/weekend it was raining!!

 

Okay, changed my mind. I just erased a bunch of stuff that was super random and all over the place. I'm going to start at the very beginning: (a very good place to start).

 

Tuesday. On the flight to Texas I sat next to this guy that was going to Florida where his winter home is. He has known a lot of Mormons before and has read parts of the Book of Mormon before. He believes that everyone in the world should just get along, but he doesn't consider himself as part of a religion. It was really interesting talking to him. He has really thought about what he believes. Hermana Sanchez (the Hermana in our district in the MTC) and I told him a little bit about missionaries and about the LDS church. We also gave him one of those littlle pass-along cards to go to mormon.org to learn more. I don't know if anything really came of it, but he had a bad experience before with missionaries that were too much like salesmen. If nothing else, this gave him a better experience with the missionaries, and maybe provoked a few questions.

 

We had lunch at the Mission Home and met President and Sister Sagers. They are really nice and super spiritual. I was a little worried that what they were going to tell us differed a little bit from what I learned in the MTC about how to go about doing missionary work, but they fell right in line. We had training with the Assistants to the President and President and his wife all day long.

 

There were nineteen of us that came in from the MTC, so we couldn't all stay at the mission home. That night we slept with most of us in the Assistants' apartment, some at the Senior Couples' houses.

 

Wednesday. We got to meet our new companions this day!!! It was super exciting!!! As I already said, I am serving with Elder Galvez, and we are serving in the Lewisville Spanish Branch. It's kind of weird because our mission borders on the Dallas Mission, so we have to be careful not to cross the mission boundaries, but we get to cross the border to go to church because half of the Spanish branch is in the Dallas Mission.

 

We knocked some doors and I got to have my first opportunity to contact on Wednesday. I got to participate in my first-ever lesson with Florencia, a recent convert.

 

I don't have much time, so I'm going to go through the highlights of the rest of the week:

 

1. Thursday: a lesson with four investigators: Jeoval, Priscilla, Alex and Luis. It was really good, Priscilla seems really interested in what we're teaching. I practiced listening to Spanish a lot today. (I really have to focus to understand.)

 

2. Friday: we went on exchange. I got to ride bikes because I was in the smaller English area with Elder Bingham. I felt the spirit working through me today. Preach My Gospel says that is one of the signs of success!!!

 

3. Saturday: We taught a lot of lessons. There was also a ward activity that a lot of people went to!!

 

4. Sunday: We taught Juan Trujillo, who knows what he has to do to receive an answer about whether or not the church is true, but he has to do those things!!! (go to church, read and pray daily) It was a really good lesson, and we had three members there!!! Church was really good and everyone kept complimenting me on my Spanish!!!

God Bless Texas! I am Elder Black. Thus I end mine epistle.

(We have Elder Black's new address!  If you want to write to him, send me an email at gerbdonna@gmail.com and I'll send it to you.)