TALL Mission Tales: Easter

April 17, 2017

Hola Amigos!

I have a lot to report on this week considering I didn't email last week. You didn't email last week? But it was your mom's birthday and your sister’s birthday! Yeah I know. Here's the story:

So last Sunday night my companion and I were syncing our iPads and planning. I thought to myself "I'll probably have tons of time to update my ipad, why not do it now when I have wifi?" So I started downloading the new iOS system. Unfortunately by 9pm it was still downloading so I decided to stash it under a hymn book in the chapel and leave it overnight so we could be home on time. That was 9:00 on Sunday night. 8:00 on Monday morning my ipad was gone! Who in the world moves hymn books in a chapel between 9pm on Sunday and 8am on Monday?!?!?! Another unfortunate event is that we had committed to be in a city 45 min out of Longview all day for pday so we couldn't look for the ipad all day. Finally near the end of the day on Monday we came to the knowledge that some kid had wandered out of seminary that morning and into the chapel, and for some reason he was rearranging stuff in the chapel and found my ipad. For whatever reason he decided to throw my ipad under a couch cushion right outside of the bishops office. Make sense to you? Yeah me neither. The cool thing though is that GOD ANSWERS PRAYERS! I promise you that there is not a humbly offered prayer offered since Adam that God has not sincerely listened to!

Other things this week: Our ward has started a 40 day fast. That means that 40 different families will consecutively fast a day for the missionaries and missionary opportunities. We have seen some cool miracles because of it!

One cool miracle is Jessie and Haylia. (Jessie is Haylia's dad). We met them on the street a while ago and got their address but have never been able to catch them at home. Finally we prayed and we were like "Heavenly Father if they're not home we're going to delete them from Area Book." They were home! They also have turned out to be some of the most incredible investigators I have ever taught. We taught them on Sunday and Tuesday and Haylia came to mutual on Wednesday and loved it!

Easter was great! Really spiritual - the way it should be. We had stake conference and Elder Blunk came to visit. He told a story of when he was a mission president and he had a missionary who never smiled. Ever. Even the most chill missionaries in the mission complained about being his companion and serving around him. Elder Blunk eventually got the story that this missionary was a convert and grew up with a foster mom. The foster mom died right before he left and he got to meet his real mom. His real mom had 9 kids and had only given up this missionary for adoption. The missionary asked Elder Blunk through tears "why didn't my mom want me?" Elder Blunk gave the only Answer he could. He said he didn’t know but that he knew that the Atonement could heal him so he invited this Elder to do the same challenge President Nelson just issued to all the YSA. He told him to go through the topical guide and study every single scripture in the standard works that mentions Jesus Christ, Savior, redeemer, etc. The change was remarkable. All of a sudden this Elder started smiling more and more. He became a trainer. He trained 3 times. He became a district leader and then became a zone leader. When he got home he was married in the temple and became part of the branch presidency in his hometown. Years later when Elder Blunk went back to visit he asked the missionary what had changed him. "The Atonement of Jesus Christ" came the reply.

I know that Jesus Christ is real. It's kinda hard to bear testimony over email, but I really believe that! Love y'all!

"No man knows how bad he is until he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means - the only complete realist."

~C. S. Lewis