October 28, 2013

It was a good week this week. We have a baptism Saturday. We got Abilino to CHURCH. He was not in too much pain to come and what I am told we made the mission Goal of 60 baptisms this month which is really good. I was sad to hear that Klarissa had a slow week because this was one of my best. 11 con un miembro presente or member present. The story for this week is the power of members. So we have a thing in the branch called the iron rod that is (a brass hand holding a bar I will send a picture when I get one it is a missionary award but the branch got one) and basically when someone is given the hand they have two weeks that they are to focus on missionary work. The person that has it is named Brother Trejo he asked if he could come out with us so that he could fulfill his responsibility with the hand and he lives in our area (please note he feeds us every Wednesday). We took him to some appointments and had a lot fall though. The last one we went to was a family, Martin and Claudia with their young son Martin. Claudia had to leave but we had that chance to teach Martin who surprised us. He is a man me and Elder Berger found after a very hard day of 5 hours of walking and no success. Martin who is very shy and soft spoken had not only read the intro to the Book of Mormon that we had asked him too but also the testimony of the prophet and started asking about it. It was weird how we found that out, we asked him if he had questions and he asked us about the angel that appeared to José smith in his room.... we thought he meant the first vision but we started to roll with it and found out he read the testimonio del el testigo, so it was a good lesson He said he would try to come to church but he had said that before so we were not sure if he would. About 5 minutes after sacrament started Martin and Brother Trejo who is also a very shy guy came walking in and sat down. Martin stayed for all 3 hours with his son. It was a true demonstration on how powerful members are. Brother Trejo went (WITHOUT BEING ASKED) and reminded Martin and took him to church. It was a good day.
Now we just have to start working with his wife and get her coming. We have a feeling that we are going to be getting some more baptisms for November. I really want Martin and Claudia to be baptized when I am here. I want to be able to see an investigator be able to progress from start to finish. So far Martin’s journey has been amazing to watch. Elder Berger came and visited Memphis; I did not get to talk to him much because I was teaching primary that day.

Love you guys and hope all is well.

October 21, 2013

This week; work, work, work! We had 22 other lessons, which is double what our goal was and 3 times as much as I have had before. We are really pushing the talk to everyone thing and it seems to be working we have found some great people and a lot of less actives that we did not know were out there because the where baptized outside the country but moved here and have not come to church for years. One of them was this guy named Juan from Honduras. We tried some finding around his area and we knocked this one door and the man let us in and tells us that he is actually a member, all but one of his siblings are also members back in Honduras and that one of them served a mission. But he has not been to church in years. We invited him to come and he said that he would try because he does not have a car but really wants to come.

Avalino the guy we have the date with is disabled because he fell off a ladder when he was working and it has caused a lot of problems for him. So now he can’t come to church this week so we are going to have to change his date until he has been to church more than once. but we had the Elders that originally started teaching him pass by on their way down to church so they gave him a blessing and we will see where it goes from there.

I had to teach Gospel principals yesterday.... in Spanish. It was about the role of families. It was an interesting experience having to teach a lesson without any for warning. Me and one of the other elders (because we were doing exchanges. The other two missionaries did primary... we did everything yesterday) got up and did the class. we actually had a good experience and we got a new investigator out of it because one of the less actives in my area came to church and her friend came to so we set up to start teaching him. We also got two referrals from this guy in the ward. He is 17 and getting ready for a mission at the end of the year and wants us to start teaching his mom and step dad. We are really excited and hope that it goes well.

Love you guys and hope all is well.

Elder Ludwig

October 14, 2013

So the district has changed drastically we lost one area so my area just got twice as big. My companion is Elder Childs, how I would describe him is the stereotypical district leader. Very responsible and very oriented to baptism. The first few days he took some getting used to (not in a bad way just very different from the goofy Elder Berger) but me and him get along well. We are really wanted to push the Memphis zone back to where it was last year. The Spanish branch has the ability to have 50 baptisms a year and that is what we want. We are working really hard trying to find a fresh teaching pool and start to get some baptismal dates.

I am starting to improve in my Spanish which is good! Yesterday I had the chance to bare my testimony in Spanish in the testimony meeting and I did it without messing up to bad. Now I just need to work with understanding what other people are saying which may have started out easy but now is much harder. The work is hard but it is well worth it.

We are working with a less active family now. They have been taught anti LDS things by the 7th day Adventists. This is one of the hard things about being down here is that our new converts and investigators have so much anti and it is always coming to them. It has really made me grateful to have a home in a place with a strong support system in the church.

I now have a dinner every night. Elder Childs was in the branch when he started his mission and actually served in this area. One of the people that he baptized previously would switch what group of missionaries that they would feed. She called us last night and told us that she was going to stop and only feed me and him because she wanted to us the time she had to serve the missionary that baptized the family.

Over all I am doing well. I can't wait to get back in to a car and start getting some dates set. We are going to bring the Spanish branch back to where it should be. I hope y'all are doing well. You’re in my prayers.

Love you!

Oct. 7 2013

Elder Berger is gone and I am staying in Mississippi right now with the Spanish west elders who live and serve more south then me in Spanish south area. we got a date set with an investigator. We also got our car taken away this week when one of the other Elders in a different city called and set a bunch of repairs up without telling us, needless to say Elder Berger and I were not happy. I did watch conference Saturday in English and Sunday in Spanish. Elder Scott actually translated his own talk. This was interesting. You will have to send me the talks because I have only understood about half conference. I was told that my next companion is going to be an Elder child’s who I hear is good. I will not meet him until Wednesday.

Love you all,
Kevin