Week 84

     Hey Mom! Glad dad's b-day went well, that sounds nice for him to finally eat sugar and stuff, but that stinks that he got sick from it! There's no going back haha. This week was really great, Tuesday morning especially, because we prepped our apartment to get new elders (cleaning) and we split our area, made their whiteboard with all the members they'd have, wrote the info about their investigators and erased our whiteboard, and then I texted some of the missionaries that went down to McAllen to transfers who are the new elders in our district? Annddd.... turns out we are not getting any new elders or anything haha... false alarm. Pretty awesome huh? Haha me and Stewart just laughed/cried because we had spent like 3 hours doing all of that for nothing and had erased our own whiteboard, which takes a ton of time to re-do. But we did it anyway and yeah, what a great learning opportunity. 

      We have a new family that is coming to our ward now, the son just moved in and reactivated his mom, they're from Brazil! Haha it's so awesome, their English is terrible! It's so fun. And they're super into doing missionary work so we're working with them quite a bit and they've already fed us twice, they're super good cooks too. They speak Portuguese to eachother and we can kind of understand what they are saying because Spanish and Portuguese are pretty similar. It's really funny, if they don't understand us in English we'll say it in Spanish and they'll understand. And there is another son who is not a member who is very spiritually lost and looking for answers, he's awesome. So we're working with him now, but he got sick this Sunday and didn't come :(. And a few days later we went and played volleyball with them, it was fun.

     We had yet another new family come to church. Well, a father and his young daughter. He's cool, has a few doubts about Joseph Smith and stuff, but that'll fix itself. The talks were really great, the Staley's actually were the speakers. But our ward is so loud, because there is like a 3-1 ratio of children to adults, and they sat in the very back and couldn't hear much. So we've made new plans that we'll always have investigators sit up front.

    The other day we were biking and I biked way ahead of Elder Stewart and I turned the corner and I guess he lost me or something because he was taking forever, so Iooped around to see if he was coming and he came around the corner super slow. And he said, "well you missed a good one" And told me about how he was looking for me and didn't see a big dip in the road infront of him and he hit it and flipped over the handlebars. Haha I felt super bad. Best part is that he did it infront of the weird 5 way intersection in our area, so there were plenty of people to witness it. He's fine, just a little scrape on his lil knee is all.

    We checked the mail for the first time since I've been here! Which was great because my home card had expired and it stunk, but you sent me one, so that's cool! And also I got a bunch of letters from the stake youth in Nebraska, which is nice, I got a few email addresses from people which is exciting. And a ton of stuff for missionaries who haven't been here in a long time, so I guess we're not the only ones who haven't checked the mail in a while.

       It was a good week over all. Thanks for writing me! I love you, have a great week!

   

Here's a few pics from last week when we went to the ocean.

Week 83

Hey Mom! 

     Yeah this was an interesting week for us too, it was the last week of the transfer and we were running around everywhere. We found a family the prior week and they really like us but they live 30mins away so couldn't come to church last week. Then they let us know Saturday night that they had no gas to take their car to church on Sunday morning. Of course right? So we had some fun stressing over how they were going to get to church on Sunday. Sunday morning came around, and nobody had responded. Oh also, we only have like 3 active members where they live and 2/3 of them were going to car pool to church that morning. Also, its a family of 7. And so that was a huge bummer, and then the member driving the carpool called us and told us that he'd take two cars so that they could fit the family. It was awesome, so we called our investigators to let them know and.... their phone was off! So we called the other member there that was going to be going in the car pool and asked her to run over to their house and wake them up so they'd come. And she said she'd try. We didn't really hear that much after that from them until they just showed up like 2 mins before church started! It was such a huge miracle haha. Our members are awesome. 

     The family is really nice, we think the mom has some kind of learning disability, because when we ask her a question, she kind of gives us a blank look. Also her kids don't really know what they should do in church as far as behavior so it was a little hectic. They would talk as loud as they wanted and I would try to hush them. And of course the mom did absolutely nothing. The kids kept telling me, "Hey! She's out in the hall!" and tattling on their siblings to me. I kinda just sat there and thought... wait these aren't my kids, why are they looking to me to take care of them? haha I have a new found respect for parents. And I only had to deal with it for a few hours. The family really loves us though, they call us everyday to ask us how we are and tell us random stuff that happened. It's nice, but we don't always have all the time in the world to talk to them haha.

     And then we are having transfers this Tuesday.. and Elder Stewart and I... are staying together!!! Haha it's so awesome! There are something like 30 missionaries coming into the mission, which is a lot. So they are opening old areas that have been closed down for a while, which means that my district will grow from a 4 man district with 2 companionships into an 8 man district with 4 companionships. So that'll be interesting. I'll have to be more organized at least. I'm actually excited because that means that district activities will be more fun and we'll be able to ball as a district. Speaking of which, my knee is doing a lot better, not quite better yet, still a little swelled and feels like it's bruised, but it'll be okay. I just need to focus on keeping it strong so this stops happening.

  Oh! Elder Stewart went to visit a member that lives pretty far away, and lives right next to the beach. So we paid it a visit for fun. It was pretty cool, it was just a small gulf I guess, but we knew in our minds it was the ocean so it seemed cooler than that. It didn't smell nearly as bad as the Atlantic, so that was good. We saw a bunch of fish jumping everywhere, some of em were pretty big. Then there was this like 10ft pole and I thought it would be cool to do the karate kid thing on it, so I climbed up there first, super scary. I thought I was gonna die, especially standing on one foot. Then I got Stew to climb up there, I may or may not have held his hand to make him feel more safe, and he wouldn't do the one foot thing, he said his body froze and he couldn't haha. But it was fun.

         It was a great week and I'm excited for this next transfer with Elder Stewart. I'm glad Nate's doing okay! have a great week mom! I love you!

        

 My computer isn't letting me sent pictures, I'll send em next week.

Week 82

   Good week, haha also last week was good too, I haven't gone into a depression or anything. This week has gone pretty well, we have found lots of less actives and knocked on lots of doors where members used to be and met some new people. Door contacting is always really fun, you never know how someone is going to react. Sometimes they'll open and say, "Oh no thanks, we're Catholic" and close the door, or sometimes, "Don't even waste your time guys" Sometimes we'll get the uncomfortable teenager that just has no idea what to say to other humans. And sometimes we'll knock some random door and get a guy that doesn't even let us get a word in, he'll just talk the whole time. It's super fun. Also it's interesting to see how spiritual stereotypes are true. We'll meet a woman and share something with her at the door and she'll feel the spirit and invite us back the next day, come back the next day, husband answers and tells us to get lost. Men... pshh..

      On Saturday we were going to go out to one part of our area and help a member paint their house and then afterwards there was a birthday of one of the children of an investigator family. So we just wore our P-day clothes, turned out they finished painting before we got there. We went to the b-day party and it was their little family and then us. Nobody else. The family is really poor, a single mother with 6 kids. And they let us in and we ate cake, and the kids smeared frosting all over my face. For some reason the family just loves us, we've only gone over and talked to them like twice, but the kids are always so happy to see us. Then after cake we went and had a water balloon fight, which I went with the intention of not getting wet, but apparently when there are six kids and two missionaries it's everyone against the missionaries. Also their back yard turned out to only be like 20x20ft. So there was nowhere to go... Needless to say, Elder Stewart and I got drenched. Most of the time itPreview attachment IMG_0144.JPGIMG_0144.JPG4.6 MB was more of a grab a bucket and dump it on someone war, but there were a few water balloons here and there. Also, when Stewart was filling up waterballoons one of the kids said, "I can tell that you're wearing tighty whities." And it was super awkward and then later one of the kids looked at me and yelled, "You're wearing a muscle shirt!" Haha very observant little people... We just tried to change the subject as fast as we could. It was really fun and we built a good relationship with them. Then we had a member stop by to guide them to the church on Sunday morning, but they couldn't go because the windshield wipers don't work on their car and it was raining pretty good. They live 30mins outside of the city so it'd be bad. So that was a big bummer. 

      Two weeks ago we were asked to go to visit a less active with a member and we said yes and our appointment before that appointment went a little over time and we ended up being like 30mins late! So we felt bad and apologized, the guy who went with us was actually pretty upset, and then our EQ president told us to not do that again. Haha we felt like garbage and we had already fixed our relationship with the other dude, but yeah, so we got jacked by a member. Then the member that was with us at that appointment that made us late to the next one, came up and complimented us on how great the lesson went and everything. Haha it was kind of like a cut us down, raise us up thing I guess. Which stinks because I take pride in being a punctual missionary. That was like one of two appointments we've been late to.. everything will catch up to you sometime. 

      I thought this was interesting, in 

Southern Texas I'm not sure if I've told you about it, but some people tend to have their priorities backwards. Spiritually and temporally. They will have a 65" flat screen but live in a trailer that's falling apart, or in this instance, drive a new Dodge Challenger, but their house will be falling apart.

     Also, up in the northern parts of our mission, the cotton crop is pretty abundant. So I felt the need to pick some, so that I could say that I've done so. "That's stealing!" Nah I'm sure the farmer would just see that I was curious.

        Annnddd... I got bored one day and was wondering what the top of my hair looked like, it's super crazy, like a cinnamon roll or something.  

 That's about it for this week, pretty exciting stuff.. Hope you guys have a great week, I love you!

Week 81

    Haha! I love Devon, he is the Mexican version of me. I've heard about people naming pets after missionaries and I always thought it'd be cool. I miss that family, Cyndi is going to the temple in January! That's awesome!

        This week was a pretty good week, started off on Monday at the P-day activity, we played some bball. We have a pretty athletic zone so it's really fun. This one time I was running down the court with the ball and Elder Puga, my ex comp to mess around pretended to trip me and I stepped wrong and twisted my knee again. That's awesome because it hasn't happened in like almost a year. Exciting to still have that problem. So this week I've been trying to recover from that, the limp is about gone haha. We've seen so many people with terrible limps this week and everytime we see one, Elder Stewart says, "oh look it's you!" Haha he's such a punk. It's ok though, it doesn't bother me too much, just sad when someone wants to play ball on the side of the road and I can't. 

        We've been having some hard time getting people in our area to commit to church. We went to one of our investigators' house and talked about their progression and about receiving an answer. We talked about the sacrifice that God requires in order to bless us with that knowledge and that it requires dedication. We read Ether 12:6, you receive no witness until after the trail of your faith, and talked about how a trial is supposed to be hard. We talked about the consequences if this is the true church and they fail to put forth the effort of finding out, and all these different things. We had an awesome member with us and she testified of how we have to put our faith in God and trust him, and shared personal experiences of herself and her own family. It was a super great lesson and the investigator even told us how much he felt the Spirit. But then all in all, he didn't commit to church and was not there yesterday. It was pretty disappointing but my purpose is just to invite right?

    Lately in the mission, we've changed a lot of things. The last few months we've done pretty poorly as a mission and so our new mission president is making lots of changes. He's changed our work schedule, weekly planning and other things. Einstein's definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. So trying to work in a different way, even though it's kind of scary sometimes. It's pretty cool and we're learning a lot. He shared with us this thing about circus elephants and I can't remember if I already told you about it. When they are young they chain them to a stake and nail the stake into the ground, like a lead for a dog. So they only have about a 15ft radius from the stake. As a young, small elephant they are not strong enough to pull this stake from the ground, so they walk around only in their 15ft radius. As they grow and mature they are much much stronger, obviously. BUT an elephant has such a good memory of not being able to pull up the stake, it doesn't even try. So even when an elephant weighs a ton, it is held down by this little stake and chain. Which is what we've essentially done as a mission. We are holding ourselves back mentally from having success. So we are changing the way we think, focusing on teaching families, not individuals and other things. I think its a cool concept and we can all apply it to different things we go through in life.

     This was definitely a strange week though. We made plans and did different things to be more obedient and for focus and diligence, and it seemed to work really well, we felt like we were doing better. But came Saturday and we had only found one new investigator the whole week and had nobody committed to church. It was discouraging and we were kind of just wandering trying to think of the most productive thing we could do. We said a prayer and drove to a street where we had a few referrals. We talked to this guy outside who had been drinking a little bit and working on his car. We figured we might as well schedule a return appointment. So we talked with him a little, invited him to church, and set a return appointment. So we called him before church Sunday morning and he answered and said he was getting ready. We drove to his house, he followed us in his truck and it was the weirdest thing. That's the second time we've had a drunk guy we talk to Saturday come to church the next day. Maybe we have a gift for talking with drunk people... haha. I guess it was some kind of miracle, not at all what we were expecting but, a miracle nonetheless. 

    After church we drove out to visit our recent convert and his granddaughter, solved a few of her doubts and ate with them. Then we went to talk to a few potential investigators and we found a family of 7! A singe mom with six kids! If anyone could use the Lord's help right? Two of them are under baptismal age but still, it was another miracle. The kids love us and are one of the first families to be able to remember the name Birrell. I think that means they're something special. 

      Elder Young, a former district leader of mine came to visit the mission yesterday and I got to meet his family and see him again, it was pretty cool. He is a good guy, and he has a younger brother that leaves on a mission in like 2 weeks. Haha his poor parents, just got one back and another one leaves. I think that'd be sad, maybe it'd be nice cause it would kinda equal out haha. 

     Glad to know you're all doing good, I love you! TTYL!

Week 80

Hey Mom! Wow, that's a lot of visitors! I don't know why, but everytime we had visitors over it was nice but then at the same time it likes stresses you out for some reason you know? I don't know, maybe I'm just weird.  

     This week was pretty cool. We took a less active youth with us for a day. We drove to visit our recent convert Fortunato Peralta and another family that lives near him. They both speak spanish, but Stephan, the kid that came out with us, doesn't. It was super funny. They would try to talk to him and his eyes would get really big and we'd just laugh and tell them he doesn't speak spanish. One time Bro. Peralta was talking straight to him for like 5mins (He's an old man that likes to preach his wisdom). It was a cool experience for him I guess, then we went and played basketball at a park according with his request. 

     I went on an exchange this week with Elder Messinger, he's in my district. We had a good day, met some awesome people. Then we decided to call a member and ask for pizza, we did that the last time Messi and I went on an exchange. But we realized that we didn't have any ranch at the apartment so we had to make a trip to HEB. In HEB we met some cool people and we were feeling like talking to strangers, so we talked to a few people and took pictures with them at the store haha. A few muslim dudes and this guy with crazy dreads, he told us he's been growing it for 7 years! It was fun, Elder Messinger is a good guy. 

    We had a zone conference, our mission President talked about "Concupiscencias" translated to english is like concupisence.. I know right that doesnt help at all.. Then we found out it means like carnal desires. Which when one thinks of things that are carnal, almost everyone just thinks of sexual things. He shared lots of scriptures from the bible about it and it talks lots about being selfish and angry and lazy. I like to think of Mosiah 3:19 the natural man, basically that is what a carnal desire is. And he taught us a lot about it, it was really cool and the spirit told me lots of ways that I can improve.

    This Sunday I gave 2 talks! It was great haha. I spoke in Sacrament meeting about Priesthood Ordinances and then I gave a talk about the Holy Ghost for a ward baptism. It was really cool. Ward baptisms are so much more put together than missionary baptisms. We've had some where there isn't even a program, we just write it on a piece of paper for the one directing to read off. Our third hour of church was a combined meeting, it being the 5th week, and it was about hurricane preparedness. Which basically just became a huge game of who could make the most sarcastic joke about being prepared. This week was a disappointing week for investigators in church, we had 0 investigators come. We are starting to teach about 5 families though, and were hoping a few would come. But I feel on Sundays like these that it might have been a good thing they didn't come, because there was no spirit in the third hour class. I guess God knows what's going on.

     We went over to Peralta's again after church, and he wasn't there. His granddaughter was there and she asked us, didn't he come to church this morning? He didn't come to church. Our minds instantly starting thinking about all that could have happened to this 79 year old man that drove 40 miles to church Sunday morning all by himself with no phone. We just kind of stood there not knowing what to say and then he came home. We were relieved, turns out he just went to a friend's house instead of church.. cool man.

     Fun week, glad yours was too, thanks for keeping in touch, I love you! Have a great week!

Week 79

 This was a cool week. So I went on a few exchanges, the first one was with one of our zone leaders. His name is Elder Stone, he is super cool and actually taller than I am, which is kind of weird for down here. He's like 6'5 I think. It was pretty fun, I expected it to be like okay, I'm you're leader and I'm going to teach you what you're doing wrong and what to change and stuff, but nope. We just hung out and had a regular day of work. It was fun though, he's a great missionary. We had a lesson in spanish, we met a new guy who is now our investigator, his name is Jose. He's from Mexico, which is pretty exciting up here in the North, I love teaching in spanish, it's not like easier or anything, but more satisfying? The spirit is the same but I just feel cool or something idk. I realized how much I've been lacking on my spanish study. There is a spanish study program that the mission does and there are three parts to it, and I haven't focused very much on it during my mission. So I'm trying to repent for that and work harder on completing it. Hopefully it will improve my grammar. Grammar is the hardest part of any language I'd say. I don't even know how English grammar haha.

      Then I went on a second exchange! Two in one week! But both of them were in my area so it's not that much different. I went on the second exchange with Elder Horne, one of my sheepies. He's a sweet little guy, from a small town in New Hampshire. Pretty cool, he's like your neighbor. He's super different haha, he likes to clean, currently patches the walls in his apartment, likes to listen to Mormon Tabernacle Choir, sings hymns at random times of the day and is overall very happy and bubbly. But if he feels the spirit or gets upset he is very quick to tears. It's interesting. So that was a fun exchange. I was expecting all these things I'd heard about him to make the exchange be really hard for me, because I'm prideful like that and still quick to judge. I learned a lot on the exchange from him, it was actually really nice. He does those things because he loves to have the spirit, he taught me lots about having a good attitude. It turned out to be lots of fun and we had more in common than I'd thought. What a nice opportunity to get corrected by the spirit for thinking poorly about someone.

     I learned how to play cricket! There are lots of people in Kingsville from India because of the University here. Honestly, there are so many. Right now I'm in the campus library and everyone around me except for like 4 people are from India, and one of them is Elder Stewart. They're super nice, they all speak english, although with their accent sometimes I can't understand them. And they're super polite, they call me sir and are pretty willing to talk to us and answer all of my dumb and sometimes probably racist questions. So next to our apartment we have a tennis court and they like to play cricket there so you dont have to chase the ball, they just hit it low so it doesnt go out. And we went and played with them. It was pretty fun. I got to pitch, we played with this almost like a tennis ball kinda deal, but a little heavier. And so I thought I'd show em the fire and throw it really hard. And I was striking them out and they were all laughing and stuff and so I was all thinking I was doing good. Until finally someone asked me to not throw it so hard because the area we were in was too small for that kind of pitching. They said they throw it lightly and try to strike them out by putting spin on the ball, since you have to bounce the ball on the ground and then they hit it. I was again, humbled and felt really dumb. But it was fun and they all invited us back, stupid white kid. 

     Yesterday was pioneer day, don't know if you guys knew that. I didn't know that was really a thing, apparently like only Utah and California and Missouri celebrate it or soemthing. Church was pretty interesting, we were asked to do sharing time in primary, which of course we didn't prepare at all. It was on temples so we just talked about how cool it is with lots of enthusiasm and the kids paid attention. Then the next hour, the teaches came and found us again and asked, did they ask you to do the older kids sharing time too? We said, "Uhhh.. no" and then we found out that we were supposed to do both. So we went back in and talked about the temple with the older primary kids. It was pretty fun. We read some of the promise in D&C 109 and got them all pumped about being "surrounded by the glory of God" and "armed with power". It was really fun. Also crazy how deep the doctrine is in primary, all the kids knew what the ordinances were that are done in the temple, they knew what a covenant was and everything. I was blown away. 

      We had a family of investigators show up to church this Sunday. We met them on Saturday, they ranted to us about basically their whole lives and then after they were about done telling us their life story they asked us, well aren't you gonna preach to me or something? We just laughed and said we prefer not to preach, but to have discussions and help people improve their relationshilp with God, and he asked if we ahd a church and we said yes, wrote it down for him and he gave us his word he'd be there. I had high hopes, but at the same time I doubted he'd show up with his family. I've heard that a million times, I'll be there, you have my word. But then before church started, they all showed up, dressed nice and big smiles on their faces. I was excited and nervous, because I didn't know the topic of the talks. Then it was announced that it was pioneer day, i was crushed, I thought, well.. they're doomed, they wont understand anything and will think we're crazy. The first speaker was a youth, so she talked about the dates and read off her paper and sat down, the second a sister so she talked about her family and her geneology, and the last her husband. He noticed we were siting by a family he hadn't seen and our faces in our hands and being a returned missionary I guess saw what was going on. So he taught about the start of the church, leading up to the pioneers and related their sacrifices to us in our lives, and it was really great. And it made the other two talks make sense to someone who'd never heard about the church before. After sacrament meeting they had to go but were all smiling and the dad told us, you might just see us here next week, I really liked it. And shook our hands. I didn't know what to say. I feel bad doubting that they'd feel the Spirit in the Lord's house.

       Sorry there are no pictures, I left my backpack with all my stuff in Alice the beginning of the week, so I have been biking around with nothing and borrowing my companions scriptures and stuff, it feels wrong without a backpack. 

   Thanks for all your support mom, to me, and nathan and dad and scott and everyone, you're awesome. Have a great week! I love you!

Week 78

  Hey! So this week has been really great! Elder Puga was transferred, and my new companion is Elder Stewart. I'm not sure if I wrote about him earlier, but we served together in Weslaco, we lived in the same apartment and served in the same branch. He's awesome! He's on his 6th transfer now, and I'm on my 13th!!! 13/16... That's scary. We get along really well and he's even an inch taller than me, so we are two tall white skinny kids.. It's pretty fun. It's nice because now we don't have to go through the first awkward week or so of getting comfortable around each other. 

   Elder Messinger, the elder in my district who has stayed for 6 months, is staying again! Haha super funny! But we have an elder in the mission that is on his 7th transfer in the same area. And the area is very small in the middle of nowhere, so Messinger isn't that upset. 7 transfers.. that's almost half of his whole mission! Anyways, Elder Messinger has a new companion. So Elder Messinger is tall, good looking, really athletic, sociable and has a hard time being 100% missionary mode, like most of us. And his new companion is Elder Horne, about 5'5', glasses, emotional, loves working really hard. And another cool thing, he LOVES cleanliness. He was excited to find out that we don't have huge activities here on P-days so now he can spend about 6 hours cleaning their apartment. Haha so there is lots of learning to do on both sides.

   This week has been really great, although I miss Elder Puga and the funny stuff he used to do, I love elder Stewart too. The other day we had a funny experience. We went to visit a less active, and she came out and met with us for about 5 mins and so we walked out of her gated yard and this little old guy smoking a cigarette waved us into his house. So we went in and his father in law walked in. An even older, smaller hispanic man with "hearing problems" he got mad at his son in law for letting us in because he is strictly catholic. I don't know if he thought we couldn't speak spanish because he kept asking the other guy why he let us in in  spanish. So that was interesting.. he just turned on the tv and paid us no mind. So we talked with the other guy that let us in, it didn't really go very far but we invited him to church and gave him the address and our number. Then we walked around and talked to another less active in the area and contacted some referrals. Then we walked back by that house and the really old dude that didn't like us was trying to park his car. He was just trying to parallel park by the curb, and his vision wasn't too good so he would pull forward a few feet, then back up a few feet, and continued to do that for about 7mins. Literally 7 mins, we waited and watched the whole time. It was so funny, there would be long pauses inbetween so we thought he'd just parked but then his reverse lights would come on and we'd be like "aww so close!". He finally gave up, turned off the car, went inside, then came back out and did it again for another 5 mins, but actually parked it this time. It was pretty strange.

    We had a cool lesson. We taught a recent investigator we found named David. He's from a neighboring town and actually is moving back in a few days. But we went over to teach his brother and his family, David was staying with them for a few weeks. The first contact we had with him we handed him a restoration pamphlet and then some weird pastor dude came out of his house and starting talking to everyone, just trying to distract them from our message I guess. It was really weird. Then he went around to all the neighbors and talked with them, just incase we had "corrupted" them I guess. But David didn't pay any attention to him, he read the whole pamphlet while the other dude was talking. And after the pastor left he told us he wants to learn more about this Joseph Smith guy and if we really do have 12 apostles he would like to know who they are too. So we looked at eachother and nodded our heads like, "Yeah we can do that!" We talked about joseph smith and a little about the BOM. Then we went over yesterday and taught him about the BOM and about how Christ came to the Americas. He found that hard to believe and said he thought that history doesnt really match up with that. It was pretty interesting, I had never really talked with anyone about it, so I explained the little that I know about the historical evidence supporting that claim. He also thought the BOM was redundant and pointless and so we read with him a few verses from 2 Nephi 29. He kind of shut up and said yeah okay that makes sense, and we talked about how you cannot understand the mysteries of God through logic, only through the spirit. Which is something I recently learned from Elder Bruce R McConkie, I have some of his talks. He agreed a lot with it and we invited him to pray and search the scriptures for his answers instead of just drawing conclusions. The spirit was really strong, and we gave him his own copy of the BOM and left. We might not see him again because he is going back to Corpus Christi and then moving up towards Houston. But we told him missionaries would help him move and he said that'd be cool. I feel pretty good about the seed we planted. I feel that sometime in the future he will be prompted to read the BOM and when he does will be baptized. Lots of times we teach lessons like these and I have this similar feeling, although it's not as great as teaching the lessons and seeing them progress, I still feel like that experience will be one they can draw back on, and it's cool. 

    Also there are cotton fields next to a church in our zone, super weird.

         Thanks for writing me, glad to hear that you guys are all doing well,  I love you! Have a great week!