Letter # 14 - Cassandra

Buenas Tardes mis amigos!

What a long week. Being a missionary is definitely not easy, it is extremely hard and taxing, but I love it.

Before you get your hopes up... no, Cassandra is not a new investigator.

Monday: we had a video lesson with Lucero about the Anti-Nephi-Lehis and how they buried their "weapons of rebellion." We talked about how in order to more fully




follow Christ, we need to bury our weapons of rebellion towards Him. We invited her to be baptized again, but still a no. It is hard for me to watch her fall off the trail to forgiveness and complete happiness in her life. I mean, our purpose as missionaries is to help people increase their faith, and she definitely is way closer to Christ than she was when we first started talking to her...

Tuesday: we had a district meeting with the Assistants Elder Maxwell and Elder Walkins. We talked about the power behind teaching with the words of Christ. We talked about how using the words of Christ straight from the bible in conversations cuts straight to the heart of the individual. It is powerful. After district meeting, we went on our transfer exchanges with the District leader. This time i was with Elder Teague! He is awesome. We had an... interesting... day. We were knocking some doors and came across a door that was open. So we knocked on the door. No one came. We knocked again louder. No one came. We called out, "hello!" No one came. We took a closer look and it seemed like the door had been kicked in. The door frame was broken and the lock was broken on the door. We decided we felt more comfortable just calling 911... they showed up. We watched them put on their bullet proof vests, draw their guns, and clear the house. It was pretty cool! They told us that it was vacant and that it has been vacant for years. We still felt more comfortable calling than doing nothing. Later that night we went by the house of this mentally insane man named Michael. He lives in this old civil war house. He and his dad are trying to renovate it. Michael gave me a book he bought called, "All the prayers in the bible" by Lockyer. I can't read it on my mission, but still cool!

Wednesday: It poured. I have never felt wetter in my life.

Thursday: we woke up and drove to Dallas! We were getting a new car! It took all day. They had to install a bunch of programming and stuff into the cars. There were 11 new cars, so 22 other missionaries were at the mission office with us! I got to see Elder Toone! He is such a good guy. Elders Toone, Twitchel, Blanthorn, Judd and I were all talking about the church and its doctrines. Elder Toone stopped us and said, "Guys, look. What other 18, 19, or 20-year-old boys would be sitting here on a Thursday at 2:30 talking about Christ? If that doesn't prove that the church is true, i don't know what to say." It was funny and true. Our car finally got finished! It is a really nice new Chevy Malibu. It is a really nice car. It is bullet grey. We named it Cassandra. On our way home, we had to go get gas. The gas pump wasn't accepting our mission gas card, so we had to go inside. For the mission cars you have to imput a driver number and the odometer number. We had forgotten the odometer number, so we told the lady we would be right back. We ran out and came back in. We typed in "92" for the odometer. The lady saw it and said, "That car has 92 miles on it?" We said, "yup! It is brand new!" She then said, "What do you guys do...?" It was so hilarious! We had to explain that we were missionaries and it wasn't our car haha.

Friday: not a lot happened. Lots of studies and planning and calling people in attempt to clean up our area book. We had an interesting lesson with Lucero... she told us she didn't have faith in Christ anymore. We had a long lesson with her. We read Alma 32 and talked about what Christ CAN do, and what he CANNOT do. In the end, she said she felt better and that she would be at church on sunday.

Saturday: we had a volleyball game that all the youth could invite their friends to! Only two friends came, but it was pretty fun! After the game, Elder Judd and i went to deliver a cake to a less active family in our branch. They weren't there, so we left it on his truck and sent him a text. But on our way back to our car, we saw his neighbor outside. We had talked to him before and his sister is a member. His name is Jeremy. He waved to us, so we went and talked to him. He spent a good while just venting to us about everything going wrong in his life... we then asked him if there was anything we could do to help him. He said, you guys already helped just by being here. He told us he wants to start studying the Bible with us twice a month! It was pretty cool.

Sunday: Testimony meeting was powerful. Lucero and her sister Yaneth came. I felt like every single testimony was directed towards Lucero. It was really cool. Afterwards, she even told us that she felt like each testimony was meant for her personally.

That is it for this week! I have lots of pictures... I hope they all send.

Love,
Brandon