Letter #20 - Off Roading

¡Hola mi familia!

Happy Father's Day to all you fathers out there! This week was a good week. It is weird thinking that this is most likely my last transfer in Longview, TX. Longview has treated me well.

Let's just jump right in!

Monday - PDay went well! That night, we had a lesson with Dewond Robinson. He is a perspective Elder. He works at Sams Club and can't come to church on Sundays. We had a really great lesson about the Sabbath day and he committed to talking to his boss about getting Sundays off!

Tuesday - we had our last interviews with President Taylor... it was really sad. He offered me some great advice. He also gave every missionary a blessing at the end of the interview. His blessing was incredible. It motivated me in my mission more than anything has up to this point. President Taylor is an incredible man. That night, we drove down to Henderson for a lesson with a man named Eduardo. He is really nice. He just likes talking so much that it is hard to get in lessons. He agrees with everything we believe. Including apostles and prophets.

Wednesday - in the morning we did the usual weekly yard work for La Familia Cadenas. I took a picture this time. Their yard takes so long to cut. We then had our weekly planning session. I have never seen so much love come from one person before in my life. As Elder Callister and I shared our goals and each other's strong suits, the love i felt from him was incredible. He has so much going on back home, and yet here he is, loving me and wanting to help me and seeing the most incredible things in me that no one has said about me before. It truly was amazing. He is a great guy.

Thursday - Something that President Taylor does is he assigns a few missionaries as Special Assignment missionaries. Their job is to just go around doing splits with missionaries and making sure they are motivated and know how to do things properly. On Thursday, they were out with Elder Callister on splits. Elder Belnap and Elder Nixon. Elder Nixon was here in Longview my first transfer here. He was with me all day. We spent the day doing work in Kilgore. We wrote a letter to Lucero and left it on her door. It basically was telling her how much effort and time we spent on her and then told her that when she is ready to be baptized, call us. It was awesome. We even called up elder Judd! It was great talking with him.

Friday - Because Elder Callister is District Leader, he has to go on splits with everyone in our district, so on Friday, we were on splits with Elder Del Angel and Elder Mortensen. I went with Elder Del Angel. We mostly just hunted down former investigators who had baptismal dates in the past. We then went and picked up some flan that Brother Green from the English ward made us. He is awesome. He makes great Flan too.

Saturday - the English missionaries had a baptism. We knew the two kids that were being baptized, so we went to support them. We ate at Wingstop with Hermano Ovalle for dinner. After that, we went around to a lot of part member inactive families with very little success.

Sunday - Happy Father's Day! It was a high counselor Sunday in our branch. The talks were both very well done. One spoke his in Spanish, and the other spoke his in English and our branch president translated for him. That is definitely a hard skill to master. That night, we got permission to leave our area and visit a family who lives in a different area. They live in an area that only has English wards, so we got permission to go and see them. Sadly, they weren't there. That was all our night consisted of.

That is about it for my week. One fun fact about my area is that ALL of the police cars are SUVs. I have not seen a single police car that was smaller. Kind of an interesting fact.

I know that this work is the work of God. I have more faith and hope than I have ever had. I know God sends His angels to accompany us in this work. I know that miracles have not ceased. The Power of God is REAL. Pray about it.

I love you all,
Brandon

Pictures!

1 - Elder Callister and me after our service.

2 - Elder Del Angel and me on our exchange.

3 - Me, Elder Nixon, Elder Belnap, and Elder Callister after our exchange.

4 - This horrible road we had to drive on to get to an investigator's house.

5 - Elder Mortensen, Elder Del Angel, Elder Callister, and Me at their baptism.