Kev is walking in Memphis!

I asked someone on facebook if they knew where Kevin was serving:

Elder Kevin Ludwig
3305 West Monticello Circle, Apt. #13
Memphis TN 38115

His trainer is named Elder Jordan Berger...they even sent me his phone number, I won't post that!
I'm sure Kevin would love to hear from you. It is funny how much Kev was wanting a burger when he got back to the states, now he will be living with one...Elder Berger...hahah...I'm so funny!

Kevin has arrived in Little Rock!

New Arrivals to the Arkansas Little Rock Mission (ALRM)

Last Day at the CCM August 26, 2013

Needless to say it has been an eventful week in Orem.... Mexico City is all about getting ready to leave. District A left yesterday or most of them. Most of us are going out tomorrow. Most of them at 2:30 me and Elder Henderson at 3 yes that is in the morning they are having me Email now because I do not know if I will be able to email when I get there. I don't know if I get to call at the airport or not. They are talking to Provo right now to find out. I think I can but I am not sure. If I can it will be around 11ish but I don't know I don't have the info with me now. But I will be calling in Atlanta because I don't think you want a call at 5 am. We finished with our investigators this week. I am no longer teaching. Yes I have pictures of them so don't worry I will send them when I get back to the states. We had Elder Johnson from the area 70 give a discourse Tuesday. He gave us a Challenge that I would like to give to everyone. He asked us to get on our knees and ask some questions even if we have asked them before.

1 Are you there?

2 Do you really have a Body?

3 Are you really my father?

4 Do you know me?

5 Do you love me?

It was interesting to hear this because it is so simple yet it is the very foundation of faith or in Spanish fe. Sometimes we skip the simple things because we just imply but we need to remember that our faith is built by small and simple things. Little by little. It is like a car when you are just given one. Most don't know how it works. We know how to use it but if problems come and it stops working we can't do anything, yet when we build it then we learn every small part. We learn to care about it and when problems come and one part stops working you know what you have to do to make it work again.

In theory I will send more tomorrow. I love all of you and can't wait to hear from you. God will bless you, good things come to the people that wait just ask Kira.

Elder Ludwig

August 20, 2013 week 5

Week five I am a new man. I have been looking back on my progress that I have made and it is crazy. I am not the same person. I have come to love the Lord more than ever. I glory in my God always. I would recommend a mission to everyone it is fantastic! When you look how much you have been blessed. Me and Elder Henderson have been getting better and better at working together we are now the dynamic teaching duo. Yesterday was one of our high points, Hermana Rivera was having us practice teaching she came over and watched for a little then went to the other groups she came over and had us demo the teaching fundamental that we were working on which was resolving a concern after a commitment falls through. WE GOT A BAPTISMAL DATE! Mateo who was a non-religious person to start has made amazing progress and is now preparing for baptism. I ran in to the room and told the class, the story that came to my mind was Alma 26 when Ammon’s brothers are talking about how they think he is boasting this is his response. "yea, I know that I am nothing as to my strength I am weak therefore I will not boast of myself, but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things yea behold, many mighty miracles.....Now if this is boasting even so will I boast for this is my life and my light my joy and my salvation" the power of God is In this work and I am learning that more and more every day. This is part of my spiritual journal entry on august 17th "We just had a lesson with Frances. It started with the plan of salvation and we moved to life on earth. The spirit moved us to the love of God, She asked us how she could get her family to follow Christ, Elder Henderson followed with the story of his uncle who fell away yet his daughter was converted and whose example got the rest of the family Baptized and the uncle back to activity. That is when he gave the baptism commitment. she paused... we waited... she said she was not sure because people had said bad things about us. I felt I needed to invite her to find out for herself so I told her she needed to read the book of Mormon after she had just previously said no, and that she needed to ask God herself. She paused for a good 5 minutes the spirit was powerful it was so thick you could not help but feel it. She will now read the BofM and pray I found out later that when I said that commitment Elder Henderson was about also, but the spirit told him to wait and then he saw that it was my job to do so. The quote of Kevin of that day was "say what you can and let the spirit say the rest". God has really blessed me the last few weeks and even more so the last few days. Last week we had a devotional from Provo, one Elder Scott gave that talked about prayer... he basically stated all of my feelings that I had been having the past few weeks. At one point he stopped and by his authority gave all the missionaries that are learning a language power if they have the faith. Also his wife was there.... that is one that is harder to explain if you get the chance I think you can find the talk on Lds.org I would watch it, it was powerful. On more temporal notes. My roommates are leaving this week some left this morning and the others are leaving tomorrow. There was an Elder who came from Orem he had some hot sauce that is 1.5 million sculville units so I had to try some (the ghost chili is 1 million) yah, that was not the smartest thing that I have ever done but It was something I can say I have done. Everyone has asked me if I felt the earthquake... here are my words on that... Disappointment the alarm went off and no one could really feel it here. I did not even know it was an earthquake. The people that have sent me pictures thank you a ton I love getting to see what is going on back in Utah. I miss you all and hope that everything is going well. I am happy to say one week and I will be in the same country again, my challenge this week is to search for a way you can grow to be more like Jesus Christ. I promise if you try you will gain more light than you can ever imagine, and you will benefit all that you come in contact with.

Week 4 at the CCM

Samana 4

I have been slowly getting better at speaking Spanish. We have a new district of non-Spanish speakers in our zone; it is good to see how much I have grown from when I first got to the CCM. Not to mention the Peru and Guatemala Mtc's are full so we are getting 200 more people this week. We have 4 investigators now. Frances who is my teacher Herm. Rivera she is portraying her grandma. Manuel who is my other teacher Hermo. Robinson. Now we are teaching other missionaries who are acting as investigators as well as we are portraying investigators. My name is Colton, and Elder Henderson is Landon. We are teaching Mateo and Zach. It is hard because Mateo does not have any religious back ground and does not believe in God yet Zach has grown up around the church his whole life and is Christian. So we are trying to find a balance between the two. Me and Elder Henderson had an investigator named Rosa last week (remember the Rosa lesson I was sick for?) well needless to say it was not our high point in teaching, we did not know it was our last lesson with Rosa that was kind of a crash and burn. Yet we have started to get better at teaching together. I have reached Alma now in my reading of the Book of Mormon and it only made me think how important it is for me to teach the people of my country. Alma often does not get the glory of missionary work that the sons of Mosiah do but he did so much in the land he belonged to with the people of the Nephites. Not to mention Alma and Amulek make the dynamic duo of teaching. I just want to learn to model that kind of power and spirit. Not to mention the ability to know the spirit well enough to know what your investigators thoughts are.

Me and an Elder Moore from Idaho have been doing a lot together lately we go on splits when his and my companions go to practice for the musical number they are doing next Tuesday. I was able to tell him a lot about what I know about the history and doctrine in the scriptures and I got to share the story of my conversion when I did I thought about it and I don't think I have ever shared it with any of you. I feel my family and friends should know the story of how I came to the Truth of the gospel.

In growing up in the church I have learned from the time I was very young the stories in the scriptures. I know them fairly well and that knowledge has always come to me very easy. Yet they did not mean anything to me until I found my testimony. Two events in my life have helped me find my testimony. First was when I was in 3rd grade, It was when I lost most of my friends yet found one that changed my life, Lance. Lance, was in my class was never the most popular, me on the other hand had many friends and could consider myself very popular. Lance was often made fun of because he did not learn as fast as the other kids, or could not do all the sports and such. I did not like how the other kids made fun of him but I knew if I did something about it I would be giving up my friends. Yet I knew what I had to do... I had one friend after that Lance, and a whole lot of people that made fun of me who I thought were my friends. Because of Lance I met other friends real friends like Eddy, Nick, Tohi, and Jared. At the end of 7th grade they told me how they were going to take a ballroom dance class the next year. So not thinking about it I did the same. Because of that I met, Kylie, Alex, Sofia, Brie, and Jesus. These are all people who are really true friends to me.

This is the second event that helped me with my testimony. I had been praying for over 3 years to have knowledge that the church was true; I felt I had never been given an answer to this prayer. I went to church and could only think when someone said “I know the church is true” how can you know? What did you do that I didn’t do to find this out or are you just saying it and you don’t really know? Sophomore year I had an early morning Seminary class with my dear sister Klarissa, one day a scripture was shared. I thought nothing of it; just that it was a nice scripture. Little did I know God had something in store for me. Later that night I was at the stake road show and I was back stage texting some friends... One of them was having a really hard time. I wanted to help but did not know what to do. I felt that I should share that scripture, yet I did not feel I could. The feeling continued to come to me, Share the scripture, finally I thought to do it. I could not remember the exact wording of it. God provided a way, Sami Chun was in my class and after asking him what it was soon I had a book in my hand and some short words in my mind. I shared the scripture and it worked. That night I could not sleep thinking about what I had done.... I got down on my knees one more time and asked if the church was true... This was what came to my mind, why are you questioning what you have always known to be true?

A testimony is like a pen, God has given you the pen placed it next to you yet you have to be willing to pick it up and start writing or the pen will only be lost and pushed to the side. Every day you should seek to share your testimony and have it grow and help others grow theirs. That is what our savior did.

I love you guys and hope everyone is doing well.

I can't wait to get back to the states and eat a Burger.

August 6, 2013 Week 3 at the CCM.

We cleaned the dorm for Pday today so now it is all nice and clean and WE GOT WATER, for the longest time we have had to use water bottles with filters on them but we finally got a water jug.... I hope they don’t take it from us again. I have to say I like the weather here. We get lightning storms all the time which is much cooler then the storms in Utah, and actuality it is really not that hot.

IT is pizza Tuesday! Every Tuesday we get pizza because we get new elders. We are also losing the first generation of greengos today. 3 weeks to go and that will be me going out in to the field. It is hard work down here but I feel like I have gained a lot of experience that I would not have any other way... like what pineapple tastes like in pasta. The food down here is the strangest part. For some odd reason if they every have a pasta in white sauce they put pineapple in it. They must really like pineapple because they put it in everything even the pizza that is the pretty much only kind that we ever get. Some times if we are lucky we get some supreme but that goes out fast. They are getting better at making dessert. We had some raspberry rolls yesterday. I guess it was to make up for the dinner of no bueno that we had on Sunday..... After fasting all day.

An Elder went home this week. He was a good friend of mine. After he left we all got a lot closer in my district. My branch president, Pres. Muchata said that he wanted us all to start to read the book of Mormon over again. In the last 2 days I have had the ability to get almost 100 pages in with knowledge and meaning in every verciculo. I would like to challenge anyone who reads this to read the book of Mormon, if you have read it before read it again. God will reveal his love for you as you seek to find out his will for you. It reminds me of when I was in Sunday school class that was taught by Bro. Barney and he told me how he thought I was like Alma's son Shiblon. I have been tested here very much and I know that I will be tested more as I continue. I may have not had to be bound up in cords, I may not be teaching people as wicked as the ones that he did but the Lord is with me. The 23 psalm says (paraphrasing) even if I am walking through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil because the Lord my God is with me, my cup runneth over. In Jesus the Christ it talks about the cup, both as bitter of sin and the sweet of Christ’s redemption. Yet I may not be perfect I do not need to be yet, I have a perfect savior on my team. As you read the book of Mormon Another testimony of JESUS CHRIST you will come close to the savior. When you use the Bible and the Book of Mormon together, you will have power and truth at your disposal that you could not match by any manner of weapon or natural disaster.

On a happy note I have been doing very well I was able to give Elder Henderson a Blessing yesterday. The priesthood is a true power and authority from God, I can attest to that. Elder Cole or Kika is here at the CCM now and as far as I know he is doing well (this is a boy Kev knows from school). I now wish that I would have taken more Spanish in high school. I have learned more in the last 3 weeks then most would learn in months. Hermano Robinson said that it takes about 6 months to feel that you can actually speak. I will tell you at 6 months how it is coming.

Yesterday we were teaching Manuel we had major spirit testifying... then it started to rain on us.... we almost got a commitment to baptism but we had to change it to a soft commitment. Next up Rosa tomorrow, and next time we teach Manuel we are going to pound with the spirit and going to get a full commitment. 

flying into Mexico


This is who Kev flew into Mexico with


Elder Ludwig and Elder Henderson


Random statue right outside the CCM


Kev's I.D. if he gets lost


Kev's District


Real Mexican Food