Letter # 11 - Rollercoaster of Emotion

¡Buenas Tardes y Feliz Pascua!

I would just like to start with a comment. I did not realize how big of an issue Racism is in the south. The African-American population here definitely do not like it when to white boys knock on their door. Then they get even madder when we try to talk to them about Christ. It is insane. But, I just choose to love them with all my heart and afterward I feel sorry for them. I feel sorry that they cannot open their hearts to the love of Christ. God doesn't just love his white children. He also doesn't just love his black children. He loves all of us.

Anyways, that is my rant for the week. Let us jump in!

Monday: after P-Day ended, we went and visited Giovanna. We haven't heard from her in awhile. She hasn't been responding to our texts or calls. We chatted with her on her doorstep and we talked about how she was feeling... she said that she has lost a lot of the desire to learn more. She isn't reading anymore and she isn't even praying anymore. Very sad day for me. She was one of my first investigators here... and she made a ton of progress. But now she cannot see how having God in her life can help her now. Now we had to consider if we should stop teaching her or not... It was a sad evening.

Tuesday: Two down days in a row. On Tuesday Lucero told us that she was not ready to be baptized. She told us she has too many things in her life that she is not willing to give up yet (Drinking, clubbing, etc)... that hit Elder Judd and me hard. She knows better than that... I saw so much more peace and joy in her life. I knew it was changing her.

Wednesday: Elder Judd and I went out east to marshall to go on splits with Elder Wankier and Elder Teague. I went with Elder Wankier! He is our district leader. We walked for most of the day to save car miles. We only get a certain amount per month. I love splits. It breaks your routine and you get to see how other missionaries work. I have been going on a lot of splits lately with Elders who are almost done! Elder Cox has one more transfer, Elder Crockett had 10 days left and now he leaves tomorrow, Elder Wankier has 22 months, and on Thursday I went on splits with Elder Buford who has 23 months. It is crazy! I have learned a lot from them all. Elder Wankier and I taught a lady named DD. She had a lot of questions about Joseph Smith. Every time I testify and bare witness of Joseph Smith, the spirit hits me so strongly. Each time I share my testimony of him, my testimony of him grows even more. I love it so much.

Thursday: we woke up in Marshall and drove 3 hours west to Dallas for a combined zone conference with half of the mission. President Taylor wanted to tell us the story of him getting called and set apart as a member of the Quorum of the Seventy! Sadly, I will not share the story with you all. He said it was something very sacred and asked that we do not post his story, so in respect to him, I will not share. However, I know that Christ lives and directs this church. President Taylor was called of God. He is an incredible man. After the meeting, we drove 2 and a half hours back to Longview, where like I said, we went on exchanges with Elder Nixon and Elder Buford. I went with Elder Buford and had an amazing time. He told me that I was doing great things and that he could see a lot of great things coming for me. He is the man. Transfers are tomorrow (the 18th). Sadly, Elder Nixon is leaving... but Elder Buford is staying.

Friday: we were still on splits for the first half of the day. At noon, the four of us ate lunch with a member named brother Ball. He is awesome. After lunch, he drove Elder Judd and me to his house. He is a chiropractor and offered to fix our backs up for free. So he did. It felt great!

Saturday: Ramon took us out to lunch at Cici's. It was good! I have not eaten there for a long time. After that, all we did was try and find new investigators. We were trying to clean up our area book a little bit, so a lot of calling and knocking doors. Saturday night we had an amazing lesson with Lucero. We taught about eternal families and temples. We all drew out our life goals. All had one thing in common. We all wanted to have families! Lucero told us that she wanted a husband who loved God and would teach her children about God. After she said that, Elder Judd and I paused for a minute. After a second or two, Elder Judd said in the most loving voice, "Well, you aren't going to find him in the Club." That hit Lucero deep. She sent us a message later that night and told us how bad she felt. She told us that ever since she started meeting with us, she felt something beautiful inside of herself that she can't explain. That is the spirit. I know so. I am so excited for her. She has had a Rollercoaster of a week. We almost thought she was going to stop meeting with us, then she came back. She has felt alone, sad, lost, happy, and peaceful all in one week.

Sunday: Happy Easter! church was great, but Latinos don't show up to church. We had 25 people in our congregation. Lucero came though! Besides that, we didn't do much. More cleaning of our area book.

Today: we found out that Elder Nixon AND my companion Elder Judd are being transferred. We still don't know where or who will be my new companion, but for now, I am staying in Longview. Sad to see him go, but he has taught me a lot. He was a great trainer!

That is all! Love you guys!
Elder Bullough

Here are a few pictures! Sorry, there are not more! Elder Judd and I found some Bunny ears in our closet from past missionaries, so we put them on and took a picture. We all get shirts when we arrive in the mission, so I got mine in the mail this week! Also, I already have the famous collar tan line...

Elder Brandon Benjamin Bullough

Letter # 10 - Pure Happiness

¡Buenas tardes!

Well, this transfer flew by! We are just starting week 6 of this transfer. Crazy. I love it here in Longview and would not mind staying here for another transfer or two. The people are amazing here.

Let's jump in.

Monday: we went and raked some leaves for a less active family in our ward. That was fun! Then later that night we split into trios in our district. There are only 6 of us in our district. So Elder Judd and I took our district leader Elder Wankier with us to give Rodrigo his baptismal interview. It was fun having him with us. All three of us then went to dinner at Lucero's house! We had these really good enchiladas in salsa verde. They were really good. Her sister Yaneth left right as we got there and said she was going to the library, but came back with a tres leches cake for us. It was really nice. When she was slicing the cake, she gave me like a fourth of the entire thing.... in all honesty, I didn't mind. It was really good cake.

Tuesday: As always, you have a ton of things planned and they all fall through... it was a rough day haha. But it was great at the same time! We had dinner with a less active member named Silvia and her "husband". Her "husband" isn't a member but wants to get baptized. All he has to do is file a divorce with a different girl that he is legally married to, and then get legally married to Silvia. They want to start coming back to church and he says he is ready to fill out the papers and be baptized so we will see what happens there. After dinner, we took Manuel Alba out teaching with us. He is an older member of our branch, but his conversion story is powerful. He used to be a catholic bishop. But he discovered the Book of Mormon, read it, and KNEW it was true. So he left the Catholic church. He is an awesome guy and has this really deep awesome voice.

Wednesday: we had a video lesson with our top investigator Lucero. It did not go as planned, but we basically talked about the importance of repentance.

Thursday: we had dinner with President Johnston and his wife. Afterward


, we took Hermano Herrera out teaching with us. It was a fun night.

Friday: Friday was an interesting day... we woke up and drove an hour west over to Tyler. This whole week we have been doing "sacrifices" to help the work here in Texas and to help missionaries get baptismal dates for our goal of 200 this month. So our district decided to sacrifice a full day of work and get permission from President to go help a different area. So he approved and sent us to Tyler because they were struggling to find baptismal dates. So we helped in the Spanish branch in Tyler. Elder Judd went with Elder H. all day, and I went with Elder C. Elder C is on his last transfer. He goes home next week. It was awesome getting to work with him, but their pace is really slow... I guess I didn't realize how hard Elder Judd and I work every day. It is weird going into another area and just feeling like you're being dragged. It was kind of a long day, but it was nice learning some tips from someone who has been out for forever. Plus, Elder C. is a piano master.

Saturday: the morning was extremely slow... however, we had the baptism of Rodrigo! (Picture below.) It was an awesome experience. When he came out of the water, there was nothing but pure happiness on his face. It made me want to go baptize the world. After the baptism, while they were changing, we were going to share a video, but the tv wasn't working! So I had to bare my testimony to a group of people who did not know a ton of English. So in Spanish, I talked about the life ofJesuss Christ and that I know He lives. I talked about how each day we invite people to come unto Christ. I talked about the importance of baptism and that I was very thankful to be serving my mission. It was interesting. It went better than I thought it was going to. After the Service, they fed everyone tamales. They were so good. Pretty spicy, but good. Fun fact, The Latinos out here love grape soda.

Sunday: Church was great! No investigators though... Lucero had family commitments elsewhere. However, we ate dinner with Ramon and his family and then went to go visit her with Ramon! Elder Judd and I made this Sweet Book of Mormon reading challenge for her. It is a daily challenge thing. She texts us each night the answer to the day's questions too! She loved the idea and it really made her realize how much we care for her and want to help her out on this new journey. The lesson went really well. Ramon helped calm a lot of the worries she had about being baptized.

Well, not a whole lot else to say... Spanish is coming along. Estoy muy agradecido por la oportunidad que tengo para aprender Español. Here are a couple of pictures. We found this giant Book of Mormon in the Church building, so naturally, I took a picture with it standing in the middle of the road. We also were tracting one day and came across a house with 7 signs about no trespassing or beware of dog. The other picture is a picture of Rodrigo and his family. His dad baptized him.

Love you all!
Brandon

Letter #9 - Seventy

Hey Everyone!

What a crazy and adventure filled week I had!

Monday: we finished writing our letters home and then drove south to Henderson where we met up with some other missionaries so that we could get a ride from a member with a 15 seat van to dallas. It was a 3 hour drive in a van with 8 missionaries. It was fun. Once we got to a church building in dallas and met up with the rest of our zone, we just messed around in the gym until 6pm. At 6, we all split up between the Assistants to the president. So Elder Judd and I, and Elders Nixon and Buford (our zone leaders) went with Elder Maxwell who is an AP. He drove us to an apartment complex in Dallas where we invited people to go to general conference which was this past weekend. Elder Maxwell and I contacted this guy in spanish. I started explaining the book of mormon and prophets and he started laughing hysterically half way through. I thought i had messed up my spanish or something... I looked at elder Maxwell and he just looked confused. We think that he was high or drunk of something. It was interesting haha. We spent the night as a zone in the APs apartment.

Tuesday: we woke up at like 5 so that everyone could shower. My zone has two districts. That is a total of 14 missionaries. We went to the Dallas temple! It is so big and beautiful. I included some pictures below. It is kinda an awkward temple to get good pictures of... it was such an awesome experience. Afterwards we went to the church building for interviews with President Taylor. He is such an incredible man. It was awesome talking with him. After that, we drove back to Longview. We had a lesson with Lucero that night. It was a good lesson. Later that night at 10pm, Elder Walkins and Elder Cox came into town. They are both assistants to the president. Elder Walkins is one of the Elders that picked me up from the airport my first day! Anyways, Elder Walkins stayed with the zone leaders and Elder Cox stayed with us.

Wednesday: Elder Cox worked with us the whole day. He is a machine. He works so fast! He basically runs door to door. He runs people down on the street. He parks the car at red lights and gets out of the car to hand pass along cards to the other people stopped at the light. He is insanely good at contacting people. We gained so many new investigators that day because of him. Contacting is basically all we did wednesday, but it was fun watching Elder cox work. He stayed the night again.

Thursday: crazy day. We drove down to Henderson for a zone conference. It was a great meeting and called all of us to repentance. Elder Tippetts and Elder Summers had their car towed, so we had to drive them to go pick it up. After dinner, we passed this park and decided to stop and contact people there. We talked to this lady who wasn't very interested. She said that nobody is ready to hear her problems. We asked her if there was anything we could do for her and she just said pray for her. We asked her if we could pray with her right then and there. We prayed for her safety and health basically. Afterwards i felt prompted to discuss the atonement with her. I asked her why she felt that no one was ready to hear what she was dealing with. She said that it is just a whole lot of pain and heartache. I then asked her if she believed in Jesus Christ and his atonement. She said of course. I then proceeded to say that the beautiful thing about the Atonement is that Christ knows everything that we have felt. He suffered it for us. I told her that no matter how bad we think we have it, and however much we think that no one understands how we feel, He does. CHRIST does. We encouraged her to pray and ask for the comfort of the spirit. She seemed a lot happier after that and thanked us for talking with her.

Friday: it was the last day of march, and we were over our limited miles for our car... so we walked two amd a half hours south to a lesson we had with our investigator Gelacio! It was a long hot walk... when we got there, his wife told us he was called into work... so we turned around and walked an hour north to a McDonalds where we somehow convinced the zone leaders to pick us up and take us to the church building haha. But while we were waiting for the zone leaders, we decided to just eat lunch at McDonalds. While i was ordering, a random man came up and gave the cashier a 20 dollar bill and said he would be paying for Elder Judd and me. It was so nice! After I ordered, we went and talked to him. He was very quite, not a member, and not interested... so we just sat down and ate. While Elder Judd and I were eating, he got up and left. He came back in and gave us a receipt and quickly left again. On the receipt he had written, "Please pray for my grandson, (insert name here)" we quickly got up and chased after him. He still wasn't interested in talking to us, but he had a tear in his eye... we felt really bad and sorry for him. After we got a ride back up to the church, we had a video lesson with Lucero. She hasn't been reading the Book of Mormon... We THREW DOWN. we totally taught with a double edged sword. We told her that if she is curious about why she is still nervous for baptism, it is because she isn'




t reading the Book of Mormon. We told her that the comfort comes AFTER we show God our faith.

Saturday: the first day of General Conference. Guess what happened? My mission president, Brian K Taylor was called as a member of the quorum of the Seventy. He is such an incredible man. He gets released as my president in July. It is interesting watching conference as a missionary. You catch all of the simple doctrine within the talks. You catch how simple they explain things. It is awesome. Basically all we did that day was watch conference.

Sunday: second day of general Conference. Lucero AND her sister Yaneth came! Afterwards, Yaneth was asking SO many questions. That is awesome.

Well, thats about it. I love all of you so much. Have a good week,
Elder Bullough

Here are some pictures! The one of us in front of the gray wall is from our 2 and a half hour long walk. It was fun. The one of the 5 missionaries is when we were with Elder Maxwell. That is one of his current investigators. The other three pictures are of the temple.

Elder Brandon Benjamin Bullough

Letter #8 - Noche de Hogar

¡Buenos Dias mi familia!

I would just like to start by saying that I LOVE mission work. I have learned so much here. I have grown to appreciate the way I was raised so much more. I appreciate the standards that I was raised on. All we do here is talk to people who do not have a purpose... They wake up, go to work, come home, sleep, wake up, and do it all over again. They live sad lives. I love the fact that the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ gives us a purpose. Members of this church are some of the happiest people you will ever meet.

Alright, let's jump into my week!

Monday: After Pday finished, we went knocking doors. It is funny because we are Spanish missionaries, so we have to pick the spanish houses. You can really tell a latino lives their by the outside of their houses. They will usually have the following: christmas lights, kids toys on the lawn, any statues or pictures of butterflies and frogs, aloe plants, brooms, mops, mustangs, cars parked on the lawn, and Virgin Mary statues. So we always knock doors that have some of those, and we are always right. We did not have much luck getting new investigators though...

Tuesday: we gave out 3 copies of the Book of Mormon! It was a good day.

Wednesday: it was a very long day. We had a ton scheduled, but we would show up and nobody would answer. All of our appointments fell through... it was rough. Brother Ball from one of the English wards took us out to lunch at Applebees. He is a writer and encouraged us to write books about our mission experiences because of the personal revelation we can receive. It was pretty cool.

Thursday: we went to a less active family's house and raked their leaves! It was fun. That was the biggest pile of leaves I have ever seen though. Thursday night we had a noche de hogar (family home evening) with Hermana Cadenas and our investigator Lucero! It was incredible. Hermana Cadenas told Lucero that when she was baptized, she was unsure about her decision right up until the moment she came out of the water. That really helped Lucero out a lot. She felt a lot of relief. At the end of the family home evening, I bore the longest testimony I ever have in Spanish. I told Lucero the importance of reading the Book of Mormon and the importance of prophets in my life. She will be watching General Conference with us next week.

Friday: Friday marked 2 months on my mission! I feel like it is flying by, and that kind of scares me... but I do love the work here. We had a rough conversation about Joseph Smith with some Baptists in English.... they kept calling him a self declared prophet. Those comments really hurt me deep. Joseph Smith has done more for the salvation of mankind than any other man who has lived on the earth other than Jesus Christ. It makes me really sad that people do not realize how great of a man Joseph Smith really was. I want to defend him with all my heart, might, mind, and strength. We went to go teach a lesson to a potential investigator and her husband that night. They both are showing so much more interest. Elder Judd says that they ask too many questions to NOT be baptized. I thought that was funny.

Saturday: Things in the mission never go as planned. You set appointments, they fall through, and you improvise! We got a solid new investigator Saturday! Her name is Crystal. She is catholic, but she loved the idea of the Book of Mormon. She committed to reading Alma Chapter 5 this week! This Baptist man told us that he has seen Jesus Saturday night... it was... interesting. We had dinner with sister Rubio. She asked if I took Spanish before my mission. I said that I had only taken a little bit. She told me that she thought I had taken a lot because my first week here when I gave that talk in sacrament meeting, my accent was really good and my sentence flow was good. It made me feel more confident about my Spanish.

Sunday: no investigators came to church :( after church we ate with Ramon and his family. It was his birthday! He is 37. Afterwards, he came with us out east to Marshall to teach this member Maria and her Catholic friend. It was good, but Ramon served a mission before Preach my Gospel was released, so he teaches lessons instead of adjusting to the needs of the individual... he was kind of just throwing out knowledge instead of focusing on what they needed at the moment. It is n

ot a bad thing, it is just that the lessons go better when you slow down and adjust your lesson plan to fit their lives.

Today: i am writing right now from Henderson. We are here for a little and then we are driving to dallas in a van with 14 missionaries! We get to go to the temple tomorrow, but because we are so far east, we are driving there today.

Here are a few pictures... sorry, not a whole lot this week. We were pretty busy. Also, side note, I love pickled jalapeños.

Love y'all,
Elder Bullough

Letter # 7 - Uno, Dos, Tres

¡Hola la Mejor Familia en el mundo!

This is an incredible time to be in the Dallas Texas Mission! The work is accelerating like none other. President and Sister Taylor our sprinting to the finish line when they get released in a few months. On tuesday night, we had a mission wide conference call. President Taylor is doing insane things. The goal is for our mission to have 200 baptisms and 25,000 non members in church in the month of April! We have a challenge in every single ward in this mission for members to invite 1 friend to church on April 30th. There is a Mission Wide fast the week before for EVERYONE in the mission including members. The fast is to help members know who to invite. Crazy, crazy, crazy goals, but it is most definitely possible in this mission. I am so thrilled to be a part of the Lord's work in this area of His vineyard.

Monday: for Pday, another set of elders helped clean out this lady's shed and they found this mini tabletop pool table. The lady gave it to them! So we had a little tournament in pool. It was pretty fun! Once Pday ended, we went to la casa de la familia Rivas. They are an inactive family. We went over to try and see what we could do to get them back to church. We tried just baring our testimonies, but he stopped us and told us that he knew the church was true. He said he has always known it(he was born a member). He just said that he is the only one standing in his way. So we do not really know what is going on there... we do not know if there is more going on behind the scenes that we are unaware of.

Tuesday: I have had probably the most successful first couple of weeks in the field as it gets. We got the Lucero Baptismal date last week, and on Tuesday we got Giovanna a Baptismal date! It is so cool! She is 18 and has a little 1 year old baby girl, so i was entertaining the baby while Elder Judd taught so that Giovanna could better feel the Spirit. I guess it worked, because now she is getting baptized! It is such an awesome experience to see people's faces when they hear that they can have a fresh start. Her Baptism will be the day before Easter.

Wednesday: in the morning on our way out the door, a man stopped in his car and rolled down his window and asked where we were heading that day. We told him to Kilgore. He then expressed that he admires what we do everyday and told us to keep "preaching that word". Everyone says that out here. "I gotta get me some word!" It is so funny. "And then I found the Hooooly Ghost!" Its pretty humorous. We went to go to a potential investigators house to talk about the BoM, but as we were driving there, we saw her walking on the road! So we parked our car and literally ran her down! She wasnt interested, but it was pretty hilarious sprinting up to her haha.

Thursday: we had one of the worst lessons i have ever had. It was one of those lessons where someone trusts more what they think than what they feel. The whole lesson got nowhere and her mind was denying her of feeling the spirit. The lesson wore us out and all we wanted to do was sleep. It is a sad story. Thursday night however, we had two skype lessons with Lucero and Giovanna! Lucero is just a golden investigator. She is growing so fast and really wants to join the church. We taught her about faith. She told me my spanish is getting so much better, so that made me feel good. Giovanna however is a little more shy, so it is hard to truly know what she is thinking or feeling. We taught her about the law of chastity. Afterwards we asked her to say the closing prayer, and that was the MOST heartfelt and sweet prayer i have ever heard. She thanked God for her missionaries and for the law of chastity! She asked for help in keeping the law of chastity, AND she asked to help her prepare for her baptism! It was such an awesome prayer.

Friday: longest day of my mission to this point haha. The morning was just really slow. I finally finished setting up my facebook! So I made my first post and went on my way. All of our appointments fell through, so we went and knocked doors. Knocking doors is SO ineffective. We got no where. Just two and a half hours of straight door knocking with mosquitos biting us. Everyone that would talk with us just wanted to bible bash. Which by the way, if anyone is interested, go look for the talk "why 1820" by Hyrum W Smith. He goes through each religion and talks about why it is false and where it originated. Then he talks about why the gospel had to be restored in 1820. Not earlier or later. It is a cool talk. He really throws down.

Saturday: we placed 5 copies of the Book of Mormon! It was a very successful day. We had lessons with Giovanna and Lucero, both of which are just accelerating towards the baptismal font. We also contacted this guy named Sean in english. He was a little drunk, but alcohol brings out the deepest parts of people. He talked to us about how his sister was hit by a truck and died. We taught him more about the Book of Mormon and how we can see are families again in the afterlife and he accepted to see the missionaries again. So we referred him over to the English missionaries. Guess what happened on Saturday night? Rodrigo got a baptismal date. Rodrigo is a 9 year old boy in a semi-active family. His parents have been super flakey about baptism for Rodrigo and would not set a date, but we finally got one out of them. That means that in my first two weeks as a missionary, i have 3 baptismal dates! That is unheard of. LUCERO, GIOVANNA, AND RODRIGO. Uno, dos, tres.

Elder Bullough on Elder Street

Sunday: Sunday was cool. Lucero came to church and brought her younger sister Yeanette! Lucero is going to be such a strong member. After church we went down south to Henderson to give a blessing to a boy in the branch who got in a bike accident and broke his arm and dislocated his shoulder. Pretty sad story. After the blessing we went and taught a lesson to a potential investigator named Hector. He said his family is having some health issues right now, but that he would come to church in a couple of weeks! It is super exciting.

Well, that was my week. I love it out here in East Texas. It is beautiful. Food is pretty good. I eat lots of rice and tortillas. I love agua de Melón so much. It is cantaloupe water. My companion and I get along great. We are working hard. Our zone has 27 baptismal dates. That is crazy. We are really loving just Preaching that Word.

Here are some pictures! We have this member who has neighbors with a Virgin Mary shrine outside their house. Weirdest thing to me haha. They also have a black Santa Claus that I found funny. I also took a picture with the street sign for Elder St. And then I posted the "I believe" picture on facebook, but here are mine and my companion's.

I love you all,
Elder Bullough