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