My beloved brethren and sisters, haha just kidding, I'm trying different approaches on how to start my letters, so bare with me! It has been a pretty good week again, everything out here is going well, and is about all the same, I'm not sure how long this letter will be, so sorry if it is short this week. Nothing too exciting or any crazy stories happened this week. Time goes by so fast it's crazy, it doesn't seem like only a week ago we were emailing! Sometimes days can drag on and take forever, but looking back it really goes fast!
I guess to start out I'll talk about Melvina, We've been going over there about every other day and at least trying to make daily contact with her, if we can't teach her we'll either stop by or give her a call and just see how she is doing. She is still going good with everything, and is looking forward to her baptism on the 15th. We have been going over there and teaching her all of the commandments and all of that good stuff. She is really close to baptism and is definitely ready! Billy is doing awesome like always, he should be getting the priesthood this Sunday and hopefully he'll be ready to baptize Melvina on Friday! We always have the best time going over there and teaching them, one day this week we had "Dancing class" after we taught them. They taught us how to do all of the dances like Cupid Shuffle, and Dougie, etc. Better watch out ladies.. Elder Bell can bust a move! haha just kidding. I can just rock at doing the Bernie! (The dance me and K.C. did on the cruise.)
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| The "Bernie" |
Phillip has been making some awesome progress. Well, it's hard to explain with him, because he's making progress, yet not really making progress at the same time, it's confusing, I know. He's been really learning a lot about the gospel and we can always feel the spirit when we go and teach him, but he still isn't over his drug addictions. It's hard because he doesn't have a job so he has all of this idle time, yet if he was to find a job which is way hard in San-B right now, he wouldn't be able to pass the drug test. It blows. He has really been making a lot of progress though, saying sincere prayers and reading from the Book of Mormon daily, He also really likes D&C too. He tried setting a baptismal date for himself, but it wouldn't work out haha. He said he wants to be baptized while we are here and transfers are in two weeks, but we'd rather have him be baptized when he is ready and not for the convenience of us. We also want him to be off of drugs for at least a month before being baptized. The requirements are off of an addiction for a week to be baptized, but this addiction we want him to be off for at least a month so he doesn't relapse.
We started teaching Ricky this week, I don't know if I mentioned him before, but he is Jessie's son. He's fifteen years old and is a really smart kid. We taught him the restoration but didn't have time to finish so we came back another time to finish it, and the second time was so much better then the first. The spirit was there way strong and he was able to feel it. He says just by us telling him about the Book of Mormon and the short passages we have read with him that he believes it's true. We committed to be baptized, but we haven't set a date with him yet. It's so crazy inviting people to be baptized on the first lesson, I thought it would be nuts and people would get like scared or thrown off by it, but after practicing and role playing it's natural for me to invite somebody to be baptized on the first or second lesson.
Jessie and Adam, I love them, but they are causing us some real problems! They are like two fifth-graders that are in love, that have to be mean towards each other to show it. The missionaries get to be the lucky candidates they have chosen to be in between all of the problems they have. We constantly get texts or calls from them, complaining about the other person, or saying something is wrong, and it's just really hard to be patient with them because half the time they are joking around and the other half they are being serious. I think I'm going to go over there this week and read them the story, The boy who cried wolf. haha
We have this recent convert in our ward I don't remember if I mentioned him before, Bobby Bradley! He is this ex-professional wrestler. We had dinner with him this week and it was awesome! He has so many stories! He was telling us about how he would do wrestling in Mexico and that all of that wrestling is real, but the WWE wrestling is fake, he did both wrestling. I've never heard of him and I used to be big into that fake wrestling stuff, but he's on a video game! It's so crazy seeing his old pictures and hearing his stories. I don't know if he was very good or not haha, has anybody ever heard of him? I'll have to look him up on YouTube when I get back or something! He was talking about his first time being on TV with Rob Van Dam who was his tag team partner he told us that they froze up on the camera and didn't know what to say so they were all pumped up and said: "I'm Robby V, And I'm Bobby B, and we're here to wrastle!" and then they just awkwardly sat there haha.
We see the Schreiners almost every day, but are only able to teach them like 2 good lessons a week. We try more but their house is so chaotic! Kayla and Don have been sick these past two weekends and so they haven't been able to make it to church yet, but the first time we asked them to be baptized they were kind of hesitant, we asked them last night again and set a date with them and they were way excited and said they really wanted to. The Schreiners have like 7 kids, one kid with autism, another they adopted that was a drug baby so he has super crazy ADHD like hyper 24/7, and a three year old that is uncontrollable. They also have a couple dogs that like to fight and bark, so it's really hard teaching a lesson there. If not all of the kids are going crazy, at least one of them is crying or getting into trouble, and if that ever isn't happening the dogs see something outside go by and they start barking until the kids come. It's almost impossible to teach over there. We've been trying to get them to come to a member's house to teach but they have a hard time getting over there and stuff like that. I think we'll start asking if we can teach them outside, so we can feel the spirit. One of their puppies loves me though, it's a pitbull/collie mix, that gets into so much trouble, but whenever I pick it up it falls asleep in like five minutes. The other dogs come and sit on me too, it's pretty funny when I have a puppy sleeping in my arms, and then two other dogs sitting on my lap. You can just call me the dog whisperer!
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| Elder Bell - The "Dog Whisperer" |
We had a zone conference which was way sweet. We went and they talked to us and pumped us up about missionary work and how to better work in our area. They had this amazing talk/video, It's two talks combined Elder Eyring and Elder Holland talking about the atonement. It's called missionary work and the atonement. Look it up on youtube, it's so awesome! It will make you cry! It talks about a lot the atonement and missionary work (hence the name..) but you can relate almost all of it to life back at home, and when things get tough. I strongly encourage everybody to watch that video. After zone conference we went to the ensign book and I was like a little kid in a candy shop! I got so many things to help me study, to help me teach, and to help my investigators! (Sorry mom if I spent too much haha)
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| Elder Bell put this in his room to remind him of that Zone Conference |
The February Book of Mormon Challenge is going great so far. I'm loving reading it! It's such a great book, this book is truly the word of God. "no wicked man could write such a book as this; and no good man would write it, unless it were true and he were commanded of God to do so." This book is so true it's ridiculous. I bore my testimony this Sunday all on the Book of Mormon, and how I know without a doubt it is true. There is this challenge in one of my books that I want to give to somebody that doesn't believe Joseph Smith was a prophet. It's a challenge for somebody to write a book like the Book Of Mormon and it states like 27 different steps and ends with finally giving up your life for that book. It's kind of cool, I'm just worried if I give them all of those facts about the Book of Mormon and how it was written they would get mad or something, or I would make them feel kind of dumb. I would feel like a Boss walking away from that lesson, because the more I think about it, it really would make them look kind of dumb. Anyways, yesterday during our study/personal time I got lost in the Book of Mormon, and ended up reading 60 pages! Whoops, I went a little too far ahead! I'm hoping I can finish it in even less then the 27 days I had set aside in February. Is anybody else doing this challenge with me? It's awesome.
We went to teach Phillip, who lives in a retirement home with his mom, but he wasn't home and we saw these people moving. Although we were in our suits and everything we still decided to help. The lady was an inactive member and knew who we were and didn't want help from us, but we kind of ignored her and asked the husband and he was glad we were there to help. I knew that they weren't really interested in hearing a message, but we helped anyways. When you're in the service of your fellow beings, you are in the service of your god, so why not? After we helped move them in they started talking to us and were being super nice. The husband isn't a member but he knows almost everything about our church. He told us stories how he is an electrician and worked on the Conference Center. He said he would go to the park during his lunch breaks and he saw Gordon B. Hinckley. Supposedly they sat and talked there for like six hours, and he talked about how great of a guy, and spirit President Hinckley had. He said that, that had happened a couple of times and they got to be good friends. After he told us the stories, they told us to come by sometime and share a message with them, and then I thought. How awesome would it be if we ended up baptizing this guy? We baptized somebody who couldn't be converted by President Hinckley! That would be nuts. That's what I love about my mission is seeing people who had such a bad past, or somebody who wasn't ever interested in the gospel before, become interested in it. I love my mission.
Have a great week everybody! Can't wait to hear from Y'all. haha
Love,
Elder Landon Bell
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