June 6, 2016

Deshawn

Elder Tamayo and I found him late Tuesday night and talked a little about what the sisters had taught him. It sounded like they just had nice chats and shared their favorite scriptures. I can see why Deshawn wasn't progressing. We had a very interesting lesson the next day where half way through he reached into his pocket and pulled out a bearded dragon. He went into our discussion thinking we were going to debate theology and it took him a little while to calm him down, but luckily he wasn't too serious about it, more of a game. However! He has great friends in the YSA and at the end we left on a high note where he explained to us that maybe this is God telling him he needs to study this faith and try it out. I am still confused but he accepted the pamphlet so it's all positive.

Alexis

A man I decided to give a picture of Christ to. We were walking through this complex which had a lot of potential investigators that we had contacted the previous week and off to the side was this hairy old man. Feeling a little nervous, I decided to just go for the soft, "here's a picture of Jesus" approach. He turned out to be someone who was looking for a church to go to, a common theme in those apartments since religion is about all some of them have. We set up a time to stop by a few days later, When we had our lesson, we had to rush because of an earlier lesson with Deshawn that I talked about so we shared what makes our church different, the Book of Mormon and taught him how to pray. It's something else helping an 50something year old pray, I really enjoyed the spirit I felt there. He sincerely thanked us as we left his apartment. Cool guy.

 

Small Bump

Sunday Night, I was coming back to the church from visits with a priest and Elders Sperry and Tamayo were waiting for us. While they were circling the parking lot, they pegged a street light with the truck. Luckily, the street light remained safe. Sadly the truck's fender got bender-ed. We'll see what happens, we are all very sad. 

Stake Conference

This weekend we had stake conference, super cool because of several reasons. The first is our stake president is a baller convert of 15 years who has kids still in diapers. President Overton is also a baller in the basketball sense. He plays pickup every Wednesday night andSaturday morning with people he's invited from various places. It helps that he's a black 6'4" who played sports in college. He shared powerful teachings on the Temple and being a minister. I love working around him, he's a saint. 

The other cool part was with President Griffin. He had just installed a reward program for the mission and we achieved the temple trip because we had 9 baptisms last month and there are 9 companionships  in the zone. When I walked up and announced that we made it, President Griffin gave me the biggest grin I'd seen him give (which is huge. He's not a big smiler, he's a rancher) and grabbed my neck, like a victory. It was a sweet moment to see him so proud. 

The rest of the week was similar to last. Random media referrals falling into our laps, like Danny who even though he's on parole, he wants to share the gospel with the rest of his "Catholic" family and one day be baptized. 

Love,

Elder Bryan

May 30, 2016

More transfer news
Elder Sperry and I were going to drive up during transfers to the
mission office with Sister Turville, a sweet older missionary who's
been in the mission since everyone can remember. When we drove up we
were told by the assistants that we were going to pick up a third
companion, Elder Tamayo who was trained by elder Sperry last August.
We were extremely excited but it also put us into a mini panic to get
another bed and desk. Elder Tamayo is a fantastic missionary who's
from D. F. Mexico/Houstan Texas and is such a solid leader. I hope we
all get to stay together till the end

Splits
The sweetest part about the trio is the easiness of going on splits
with members. This week we've been able to go on splits twice a day
everyday. This has been very good and effective because we're teaching
more people than I've ever taught in one single week. We are currently
teaching thirty individuals, couples, and/or families. The biggest and
potentially  family is the Maldonados with five children. They act
like members and the children all wanted their own copy of the Book of
Mormon. Now we just need to get all these people progressing.

Westwind YSA
So serving in an YSA is weird/cool. Weird because everybody goes by
their first name and no one cries in sacrament meeting. The cool part
is there's a lot of RMs and the bishopric is some of the most solid
I've seen. Bishop Hinton I swear was the voice actor for Flick from A
Bugs Life. Someone's got to look it up because it's freakishly close.
But cool. There hasn't been much work in this ward for a while so
we're excited to changing our name from the number 1 marrying ward to
the #1 Marrying&Baptizing Ward in the Phoenix stake. The other thing
known about the Westwind is that there's ton of Hispanics that go.
It's been fun to keep speaking Spanish even though we cover a English
ward again. We've been able to start teaching a couple people for the
YSA so we'll see where things go.

A lot of people here are really receptive. A man from Cuba named
Alexis accepted a picture of Jesus from me and called after us asking
if he could come to our church. Another lady we contacted in the
street was found in her apartment half paralyzed after falling down a
flight of stairs. When we stopped by we gave her a priesthood
blessing, shared a short message and two days later we saw her running
outside with her daughter. We'll be teaching her this Saturday. I'm
happy, time is flying by, and extremely busy.

Have a great week y'all!

Elder Bryan
Arizona Phoenix Mission