WEEK 24 WYOMING (WEEK 60 OF MISSION)

not a ton of time today everyone!! another wonderful week! darrell is working towards receiving the priesthood and hannah and jontae are doing great!

sad news. im getting transferred tomorrow. happy news. the church is still  true where i am going. im moving to south lansing to serve with my best buddy elder elwood!! i am gonna miss wyoming like crazy, but i am ready to give south lansing all i got. it totally bites saying goodbye to everyone... especially at church yesterday. ugh. the worst. so sad. but, i will be back for baptisms and i will come back and visit these people who i love so much!

 

Parker drives a truck now!
Elder Derricott, who was his Comp in the MTC

obedience to the gospel is the most important thing in life. it is nice to have nice things. it is great to have a big house. it is wonderful to have talents and nice cars and nice clothes. nothing is wrong with that. but the most important thing in this world (and, i might add, in the world to come) is whether or not you are obedient to the Gospel and to the laws of God. For he who is not able to abide the law of a celestial kingdom cannot abide a celestial glory. it is the most simple idea in the world. if we are not willing to live the way God lives in this life, then we will not be allowed to live the way God lives in the next life. Here is the great part: even when we mess up with the simple laws He has given us to live, there is hope. there is hope through His Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. So, to quote elder holland, if you have made covenants, keep them. if you haven't made them, make them. if you have made them and broken them, repent and repair them. it is God's good pleasure to give us the kingdom. All He asks is that we prepare to receive it. Look forward. Repent every day. Read the scriptures, go to church, pray, so you can have the Spirit with you to change your heart and prepare you to live the life our Father lives.

love you all, have a great week!

WEEK 23 WYOMING (WEEK 59 OF MISSION)

hey everyone! maybe  a shorter email today cuz i think i just contracted carpel tunnel syndrome about 15 minutes ago! no idea why but it is killing! haha

awesome week! darrell smith was baptized and it was an awesome service. his entire conversion has been an absolute miracle. what a blessing! Heavenly Father has been so good to us and I will talk a little about why later in the letter. but this past week at church I had an incredible experience! I had the awesome opportunity to, all in the same day, bless Henry (Hannah's 4 year old son) in sacrament meeting, confirm darrell and give him the Holy Ghost, and also stand in on Jontae Young's ordination to the Melchizedek Priesthood. Once in a lifetime experience. These converts are doing so well and they are each incredible for their own reasons. WOW!!

Elder Pena, Elder Williams, Darrell, and Parker

Our Heavenly Father works according to our faith. We best show our faith by our actions. early in my mission, i displayed enough faith when we door knocked for long periods of time. so I was blessed with investigators. now, that isnt gonna cut it. when we do that, we find receptive people, but we have found so many new investigators lately by talking to EVERYONE we meet. we dont have much time to find because we teach a lot here, so in between appointments, we see someone taking out their trash or standing by their car, we get over their quick and talk to them. This is showing more faith than door knocking right now because we could say, "well we need to leave for our appointment, and they look busy lets just go." but when we talk to them, miracles happen. we found so many awesome people this week who came to church all because we had a little more faith. i encourage each of you, if you want to see God's hand in your life, move to a place you have never ventured before. Do something different. work harder, pray more focused prayers, seek more diligently, and you will receive. belief is a choice, and our belief becomes our reality. make the conscious choice to believe God answers prayers and then work accordingly and you will see what you have been waiting for and promised. There is a reason the scriptures say to EXERCISE faith. it is to be used, not spoken of or had passively.

love you all! have a great week!

WEEK 22 WYOMING (WEEK 58 OF MISSION)

hi everyone! another great week in wyoming!! the weeks are going by so fast and it is really scary. we played basketball this morning with jontae and his twin brother and it was a blast.

this week was really good! darrell is getting baptized on saturday and it will be awesome!! i just feel like if you dont write down everything that happens to you each day you can forget everything that happened during the past week! haha it is crazy. we taught a lot, found a lot and had a great time. i love door knocking. after my mission, i think i will just go do it anyway cuz it is that fun haha. i love talking to people and asking them questions and having them think and then allowing us to share something so true with them! dont have a lot of time this week, so here is the thought.

worldy sorrow is different than godly sorrow. godly sorrow makes you feel bad for your sins and want to repent. it makes you feel hopeful and ready to change. worldy sorrow is satan's trap. it makes you feel hopeless and like there is no redemption from what you have done. it makes you feel like God does not love you and like Christ's Atonement is not good enough. It makes you think that you were actually happier when you were sinning because it wasn't so hard that way. Satan only has one good quality and that is that he never gives up. he will keep drilling you. your whole life. so we have to be just as persistent. Thoughts or feelings that God does not love you or that you cannot come back from a certain trial or mistake are not of God. Why would a Heavenly Father, who loves you infinitely, ask you to never try to come back to Him? HE WOULDN'T.

We completely accidentally door knocked into two members of the church who hadn't been active for double-digit years each. it was soo crazy and soo cool!! cuz both of them were so random and serendipitous that it had to be God's Hand. some of the pictures are from one of their houses. the husband (not a member) and owner of the house is a big game hunter. so yeah. thats what's up with all the crazy photos.

also ps there have been some GIANT storms here the past few weeks. it is SO cool!! giant thunder and lightning and it is awesome! one of the nights there was a tornado!! i have some video of the damage, but idk if i can send it cuz it is so big! anyway, have a good week everyone!

love you all! have a great week!

WEEK 21 WYOMING (WEEK 57 OF MISSION)

(We were out of town and so this letter should have last week's date on it but I don't see any way to change it on the blog.)

hey everyone! another awesome week here in wyoming! 

not a ton of time because it is my comps bday so we have stuff to do! haha hope everyone is doing well. we had a great week this week. we have so many people to teach right now and we teach so much, but there are a few people who are not progressing right now. we are trying to thin out our teaching pool and find people who are ready to accept the fullness of the gospel right now. we have done a lot of finding and have had some great success thanks to our Heavenly Father. sorry for all the typos this week, this keyboard is not the greatest. darrell is excited to be baptized on the 19th and he is doing aweosme. he, dannell, and mikayla all came to church this week. darrell reads the book of mormon like crazy!! he is awesome!!

about a month ago i challenged jontae to a BoM reading competition. we made a bet about who could finish it first and what the rewards would be. if i won, i got to take pictures of me dunking a basketball on him, and if he won i would take him to this one restaurant for dinner. well, i read to 1 ne 3 the first day, and he read to mosiah 15, and i gave up right then haha but i didnt tell him. i have been leading him on telling him i may have already finished it. but i am gonna tell him tomorrow he won. can you believe that? a recent convert just read the BoM in about a month!! that is awesome! he is doing well and so is Hannah. Hannah is incredible even though everyone around her is struggling, she is stalwart and awesome. 

what is God's purpose? why did He put us all here? when we talk to people on the streets, that is one of my favorite questions to ask. the answer is a restored truth. it is the most important restored truth. it is the answer to the grandest question of them all. Why? Was God bored so He created all this to see what would happen? is it part of a grand experiment? I will not be answering these questions. they are for you to find answers to. The answers are in the restored Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. without the answer to that question, it is hard to understand why we are here and what God expects of us. The answer is plain and simple. it is true. The peace that comes through knowing God's purpose, our purpose, and then doing our best to keep the commandments is not to be found in any other way. The peace the gospel brings is lasting. I want everyone to have it. The sad truth is, not everyone wants it. at least not now. The scriptures are true. if you want to learn, read the scriptures. they can teach you endless amounts of Godly intelligence. If you want to avoid temptation and sadness, read them daily (hel 3: 28-29) and PONDER them. pray over their more mysterious passages. have a good week.

elder green

WEEK 20 WYOMING (WEEK 56 OF MISSION)

hey everybody!

another great week! we saw many miracles in our zone this week. we set some goals to find more people to teach in the zone this week, and asked the missionaries to pray to hit the goals. The Lord answered our prayers and we found many more people who are ready to listen to the message of the Restoration. In our own area, we just had people poppin out of the blue. as we work, the Lord works. Even if we don't say or do the perfect thing, He still helps us. If we spend an entire day knocking on doors and no one is interested, the Lord sees that effort. He will bless us with people to teach who may just wander into us because we put in the effort to try and find those who were prepared. 

Dont have a ton of time today, but I wanted to share my testimony of living Apostles and Prophets. They are who they say they are. They are special witnesses of Jesus Christ. When you listen to them speak, listen closely and listen to the Spirit or you will miss what they are trying to share with you. We have run into many atheists lately (which is VERY UNCOMMON). It has been strange to see. In reviewing the latest general conference, one talk has really stood out to me above all others. Elder Christofferson's talk about the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. I just love everything he shared. Was Jesus Christ resurrected, or was He not? If so, then He is a divine being and the principles and commandments He taught must be obeyed. Faith is more than psychology or the power of positive thinking, but an actual power. If Jesus Christ was resurrected, then He lives today. If He lives today, then He will lead and guide His church today the same way He always has: through prophets and apostles. I bare my witness that those we follow as apostles and prophets of Jesus Christ are exactly who they say they are, and that Jesus Christ leads His church today: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Elder Green