Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday Elder Josh Hickey! We love you! :) ;) :)

Update on Progress in Baytown

Update on the Coles and Garcias

This past week has been pretty good. we are still working with the coles and the garcias. the gracias are awesome they love us when we coem over they cook us a bunch of food. when you do not eat a lot they get affended so you have to make sure you eat a lot and make a lot of compliments, they cooked us ribs, rice and shrimp it was very good. they have been reading the book of mormon which is way nice. They have been struggling with coming to church because armando works a lot but they want to come to church and they definelty want to be baptized. hopefully they will be baptized before I go.

 

the Koles we taught the restoration and they loved it and is understanding it very well. Jo is still loving relief society and church, she loves how welcoming and friendly everyone is. She is very excited to be baptized on the 24th of this month.

 

Smiths

We are teaching the smiths who just moved from ohio and is looking for a church for there 14 year old daughter, we were going to teach the dad but it seems like the mom is more interested and she read the pamphlet we left with them and she had many questions which we answered and helped her to understand. We left her with a book of mormon and she said that she will have it read by next time we come and visit them. we also are going to give them a strength for youth pamphlet and personal progress booklet and tell what programs the church has for young women.

Cow Stomach and Eternal Progress

Ummmmm...........Yummmm?

Guess what I ate the other day. I had pieces of cow stomach in a soup. you know the lining of it, It was very disgusting, I could not get past the texture, it was all rubbery, and slimy.They took us out to eat for breakfast and had breakfast burritos it was pretty good.

 

Garcia's Progress

we are still working with the garcias, They are sucha great family, one of our members brought a icecream cake for a lesson. He told him we have an icecream cake right in front of you and it want do you any good if you are not partaking of it and feasting. They hae been struggling keeping commitments. They said they would start reading.

Coles

We taught the coles yesterday and had a great restoration lesson, we had to use a lot of analagies, pictures, videos and stuff becasue she is a very visual person, which helped her out a lot. She wants to be baptized hopefully we will be setting a date for them this week.

The Most Tremendous Miracle

Miracle in a Trailer Park

We had a huge miracle that happened this week that I got to tell you all about. a few weeks ago we did the hour of power and knocked this trailer park and we only knocked a few doors because we found out that it was mostly spanish people. This one guy answered and said that he was too busy. two weeks went by and we saw the same guy that told us that he was too busy was at church with his wife. He told us that he has been less active for 28 years and just decided to come back to church because his life has not really gone anywhere. He told to his wife who is not a member to come with him and if she did not like it that she didn't have to go again. she doesn't get impressed that easily. She loved it, with everyone welcoming her. She loves relief society with the idea that they go around and help people out. She said To her husband I want to be baptized, so we are going to start teaching this thursday. When he told us that when he said that he was too busy was because he thought that his dad who is really active into the church sent his address to the church who lives in las vegas. It was his birthday when  we knocked on his door. His wife works at the hospital and has been talking to this one lady about religion. the less active family name is the coles. they came and sat down in the chapel pretty early and where they sat is actually were a young family sits everyweek. it was the same lady that has been talking to her about religion. isn't that sweet or what. He wants to become very active in the church.

 

Garcias

One other thing we are working with the Garcias who has a date for march 24th. Mexicans know how to party. even if some family members come out to visit them they put on a huge fry which was the same time that we came over they had a bunch of fried fish, bass, flounder, and  red snapper, and they had a lot of fried shrimp, fried potatoes, dorritos with this very delicous homemade salsa.

 

Harvesting the White Field

Part Member

tonight a part member family is feeding us dinner and we are going to teach them too. The husband is not a member but he has been to a lot of the activities and campouts, which he enjoys. hopefully we can get him to join, then we are teaching the Garcias which is going to be another great lesson.

we met with this other sweet less active part member family, brother brandons family is all active but sister brandons is not. they attend the methodist church. He still has some kind of testimony, so we are going try to work with them.

More Exciting Tree Chopping

But we did a lot of service this past week. we helped some members cut down a huge tree. we told them that they would need professional help because if they cut it down it come down and break the fence, but he said no if we throw up a rope and pull it, it will land on the other tree. We threw up the rope around a branch which took awhile then we tied it off, then the member started to cut it down, and it started to break off and we were pulling with all that we had, and it still fell on the fence, and it was very load, it was like a thunderbolt striking something, the neighbours were like it was that man over there, yeah it woke up the whole neighborhood, it was only around 3pm.  we helped a member to clean out her garage and reorganized it because it was very messy, you could not even walk through it. then we helped some investigators dig out the pipe there yard and put in new pipe.

 

Blessing of the Priesthood

We also saw a recent convert Preston that was in the hospital, he is in there pretty often because he has sickle cell and he had the pneumonia, and he was pretty down so we gave him a blessing. we saw an investigator Jo that was in the hospital too she had a pretty bad stroke.

 

 

Amazing Baytown People

Baytown People

The Garcia's who have been taught by missionaries before the hurricane ike hit houston. When the hurricane hit there house got destroyed and loss contact with the missionaries and we found them by tracting into them which was a miracle. They said they want to be baptized but want to learn more about our message and come to know if these things that we teach are true. we set a date with them for the march 10. We taught them the first lesson wchich is the restoration of the gosepl. lets just say that the spirit helped us out a lot in that lesson. Becasue I did not do that great explaining and teaching it as well as i like. But my companion thought it was really good becasue they asked good questions.

 

The medinas are another sweet family. They want to know more about our message. we taught them about our purpose and they fed us dinner which was really nice. They hae questions about the book of mormon and about prophets which we will be answering and explaining to them this week.

 

More Amazing Baytown People

I love Baytown and I think this is my most favorite area I have had. Because one the people here are really nice. Since I have been out here and knocking on doors, I have seen that God has been preparing the hearts and minds of these people to hear and to accept the restored gospel, we have found a ton of people. I know that pretty soon that baytown will baptize a lot of people in the church. baytwon is ready but we are getting the ward missionary minded and excited so they can invite there friends. There is very few that are not ready yet but there time will come.

Baytown Kids

Baytown boys and Injuries

I AM IN BAYTOWN, I LOVE IT HERE!!! But I am serving in the 2nd ward. I love the people here they are so nice, love the ward. My new companion is Elder Jensen he is from Thatcher, Arizona he has been out for nine months. He is a really great companion. This is a bike area, we biked for the first day we got here, I am so grateful for that they have sidewalks here. It was a long time since Elder Jensen has rode a bike because he got in a bike accident and broke his arm, he was driving a car for awhile until I got in the area, than in the morning we went to the church to play basketball with the district for morning excercises, which he sparined his ankle. we have  a car again. Our mission president said that he will turn this area into a car area. We probably wont be riding our bikes that often. This transfer is going to go by so fast because first its only five weeks becasue of the new change, and with all the many things that our mission has planned for.

NASA

Yesterday Our mission president took our zone (pasedena) and the broadwy zone to NASA it was really fun. got to see a bunch of cool stuff. This friday we have zone meeting, this coming up monday we have zone P-day, two weeks from now we have zone conference and then the next week we have zone meeting again. 

People

Christian is ninteen years old he has graduated from high shcool and is working two jobs to earn money for college. He has a little brother and his mom who are with him. Him and his family does not have a really religous background, we are teacahing the basics who God is, prayer, yah the basics. I love them so much we are going to teach them the restoration soon and set a baptismal date with them soon.

Paul and Tavia is a couple that we have been working with, they came to church this past sunday and seemed to love it. Paul has been taught the restoration many times and we are trying to teach his girlfriend the restoration. we are going to set a date with them and get them married. they have a new born.

Jose is another person that we are teaching he has been reading the book of mormon I mean really studying it using the cross references to the bible and asking a lot of questions. which is great but he is not getting the docterine that is in it. we are going to teach the plan of salvation and have him to pray about it.

We have more investigators and a lot of potentials but those are the only ones I have really got to know so far. we have been working with a lot of less actives too.