Week 90

Riding with Elder Pearson

  Well this week has been quite the crazy and great week at the same time!  As mentioned in the title it was my last full week serving with Elder Pearson ::(.   He has been serving as zone leader for a long time, so he will be getting released and transferred to a new area.  It has been so great serving with him. He has been one of my favorite companions!  He's taught me a bunch and we've had a lot of great times, He'll be getting transferred this Wednesday!  This next transfer I will be serving with Elder Plaira!!  He is from the Philippines, and I've heard a lot of great things about him.  

   At the beginning of the week we headed up to a town called Batesville to do an exchange before our big Zone Conference.  I went with Elder Jennings and we had an awesome exchange.  I got to teach several lessons in Spanish which is always the best!   I met for the first time a Mexican that is from Tijuana!  We we teaching all that day, and met a lot of great people.  

  We then drove down to Jacksonville for our Zone Conference.  This conference was also the time that they would be installing TIWI's on our car.  They are little boxes attached to the windshield that yell at you when you are going too fast, braking too hard, and don't have your seatbelt buckled. We are actually one of the last missions in US y Canada to get them.  They are kind of cool, and will reduce a lot of accidents and everything.  Also the AP's took our Chevy Colorado that we had, but luckily we got a new Nissan Frontier which is pretty sweet as well!  

  In our area we were finally able to see the Mauldin's again after a little while without seeing them.  They have been really busy but we're excited to see us again!  We taught her y the two boys a great lesson on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  They loved it and she even gave us a candle melter for our apartment.  They are planning it out so her aunt or daughter can make it out to the baptism towards the beginning of May.  What was awesome is they Cori and her Husband Jeremy made it to church this Sunday!!!!  Unfortunately the kids were at their grandparent, but that was a huge step for Jeremy to come to church and afterwards she texted us saying that they loved it.  

  As well our friend Joey was able to make it to sacrament meeting, and he had some good questions about it.  It was cool because we saved a seat for the Mauldin's and him.  Pearson was sitting in between them so there wasn't room for me on the bench.   I just went back and sat by a guy I didn't really recognize.  The whole back row ended  up being a bunch of Harding students (Harding is basically BYU for Church of Christ) that were there to learn about the different religions.  But he was asking questions and I got talking to him y his friend after.  And she turned out to be majoring in Spanish, so I got to talk to Spanish with her and it was super cool!  They were great people, and it was a cool little experience that I ended up being able to go back and sit by them.  

  We were able to teach y find a lot this week, and while finding we found this lady named Amber.  She came out and we had a lesson right outside of her house.  We started talking and she had a lot of questions, and we basically taught the restoration, and plan of salvation in the same lessons.  She said a lot of what we taught went in line with her personal beliefs.   Fast forward to Saturday and we are able to bring a member with us to teach her.  We gave her a teachings from Ezra Taft Benson book because she wanted to learn more about what modern day prophets taught.  Then we read the introduction with the BOM with her.  While reading we got to the part that says "Those who pursue this course and ask in faith will gain a testimony of its truth and divinity..."  She then immediately asked, "well what are yours?".  So Elder Pearson and I were both able to bare strong testimonies of how the BOM has blessed our lives and she really enjoyed those.  It was a powerful moment, and she said that our testimonies answered several questions that she had been having.  We are going to visit her again this week, and it should be great!  

  Well that's what I got for this week, there is going to be a ton of change this upcoming week.  Love y'all lots and have a great week!  

Us with Brother Shirley sporting our favorite baseball teams!