Week 66 (1/27/2020) College

Dear everybody,

Campus opened on Tuesday, and it was honestly one of the longest weeks of my life. 

We walk around from about 9-1, eat some pancakes around 11. The problem is, there are a whole bunch of air pods walking around campus. We will try and say “hi” to someone, and they just walk past. All these poor guys look so depressed, it makes me fear for college. 

I mean, there are a lot of people out here, more than I have ever been around while proselyting, but yet they still don't really want to talk to us. Even wearing normal-ish people clothes, we can part the red sea of the people on campus by our mere presence. One young woman walked into the same elevator as us, we said “hi”..............silence. I have never felt so invisible. It is good preparation for the dating pool, though. Say hi to someone.......silence. Big oof. 

In other news, we taught a lessons to our friend S__. S__ has been attending institute for months, started coming to activities, we invited him to church and he came two weeks in a row...it is just natural to try and teach him, right? Turns out that S__ has different beliefs than us, including not having a belief in Christ. So there is a long road ahead of us.

Other than that, we are getting contact with a lot of the people who were taught before the break. Of course, YSA text and then don't set anything up, so that is always just a tad bit frustrating. Hard to set up lessons with these busy young folk. 

We got a list of all the YSA unbaptized children of record in the Orange and Beaumont stakes, which was about 60 or so folk. So that gives us some people to try and contact when we aren't on campus or working with the missionaries. 

Friday we had an exchange with the Woodville elders, Elder Brinkworth and Elder Taimi. I was with Elder Brinkworth. We knocked on this one door, and the woman answered looking rather grumpy, but we shared a little of our message. She softened and said she had intended to answer the door looking mean just to see how we would react. It turned into about an hour long conversation, where she wanted us to come back and she wanted to talk to her neighbor about meeting us too. It was pretty sweet. She said she hadn't been able to go to any church since her husband died about 4 months ago, and felt like we were sent from God. Which is good, because we are!

We were in Jasper for our district council, so that means that in the last month I have been in or through all of my previous areas. 

This upcoming week, we will have a long temple trip on Wednesday, and just still working on campus. I think that is about all the big stuff this week. 

Well, I could give more details, but honestly I just don't want to keep writing. Ask me questions and I might answer them J

Love y'all, take care,

Elder DeFord

Week 65 (1/20/2020) Yoda

See, when your main prozelyting area is closed, and you have to be in your apartment doing office work half the time, and you have a 1000 piece Yoda puzzle, there is only one thing to do. At one point our whole floor was converted into Yoda puzzle solving lab. Now he is framed on our wall, and we talk to him like he is another person living here. He was a tough puzzle, for sure. 

In other news, some of our work is finally picking up, people are getting back in town for the summer. Someone we have been trying to contact all transfer finally got back in touch with us, so we should be meeting with him this week. 

Wednesday we had our zone conference, and we just focused on faith in Jesus Christ, which I love! I wish everyone was just more focused on the Savior! It was good to spend that time just talking about Him. 

Oh, Monday we had fhe with the YSA, Elder Carraway and I got to teach the lesson, so we talked about the tree of life...which was also the subject of institute...and Sunday school, and we did come follow me with some other YSA. I feel like I got Lehi’s vision on lockdown at this point. 

Skipping around a little, church was wild. President Harris, the Orange stake president, was there to teach Sunday school. And then President Hewlett showed up. And the President Ratcliff of the Beaumont stake. The stand was crazy, we had all these keys jangling around up there. It made Sunday School really good, though, with all of them sharing insights. 

Let’s see here...we did blitzes with two of our companionships, a comp study with another one...had a meeting with President Hewlett and President Ratcliff about missionary work in the stake...

Oh, funny story from branch council. None of the YSA leadership showed up, so the branch presidency just had two of the YSA that were there sit in. One of them it was her first week, the other one was our investigator, and they were both honorary members of the branch council for the day. Pretty funny!

Well, Lamar is supposed to open up here Tuesday, so we are pumped to get crackalakin on campus. 

Love y'all, take care!

Elder DeFord

Week 64 (1/13/2020) A Testimony of the Savior

Dear y'all,

It was another week where actual prozelyting was a little far from the truth. 

After our FHE with the YSA Monday night, we picked up the Orange zone leaders and drove them all the way out to Kingwood to spend the night at the Assistant's before our meeting the next morning. We arrived at 10:30 pm, the APs weren't done planning for the meeting until almost midnight, poor fellas. 

Tuesday was the Mission Leadership Council, we talked a lot about what the mission needed (a greater focus on Christ, was my takeaway) and about new mission standards for music (a whole lot stricter than what they used to be, but I think it will be a good thing) and district council topics. It was actually a pretty sweet meeting. The rest of the day was driving the Vidor zone leaders home, driving back to Beaumont, dinner, then institute, where we just started the Book of Mormon, so just as Come Follow Me starts, so do we. 

Wednesday we had our interviews with President Hewlett in the morning. Both of us (Elder Carraway and I) talked to him about what we can do for the area and for the zone. As we cover the biggest zone in the mission (30 missionaries) President really wants us to be watching over them. And until campus opens, we have a pretty good opportunity to do so. Only one more week until we can actually do some real prozelyting, sigh. 

My spellcheck never believes prozelyting is a word. Then again, neither do I, so there is that. 

Wednesday we also had to plan for our district training, so we squaded up and figured out our subject (our relationship with Christ) the skill we wanted to work on (bearing testimony of Christ) and how it would look. 

Thursday and Friday were spent actually presenting district training. With five districts,(and at least a half hour drive to all of our districts except Beaumont) it takes us two days to get through all of them. And those are a draining two days! They went really well, though. 

We were using our extra time those two days to try and invite YSA to the game night we were holding on Saturday. 

Saturday morning we blitzed one of the Beaumont areas (it was weird to do normal missionary work) and then we had our game night. Attendance was not all that it could be hoped for, but everyone that came had a good time and an invite to church. 

Church was fun, mostly because I got to speak. Go to a YSA, and they will use you. I also got to fill in as pianist for the first two songs, as the branch pianist (also the other speaker) was running a little late. In any case, I got to speak on fasting and fast offerings, which, combined with a special fast I was doing, really increased my personal testimony of fasting. 

A cool experience: we were texting and calling YSA who had formerly been taught, and one, who was taught over a year ago, responded almost immediately that she would love to meet with us, which was pretty sweet. 

With what we taught at district training, I want to share my testimony of Christ. I love Him! I really do love Jesus. Sometimes I feel like a youth pastor at a non-denominational church when I say it, but I truly do love Him. He means, and has meant, everything to me, and I have been changed by His grace. I know that His way is the only way to peace in this life, and happiness in the life to come. 

Serving in His holy name,

Elder DeFord

Week 63 (1/6/2020) Happy New Blegh

Remember last week, I said that I had 2020 vision, so I knew exactly what I would be doing when 2020 started, sleeping peacefully in my bed? Well, I was wrong, I was throwing up all night. Which is exactly what I was doing when 2019 started, too. It is a bad habit, which is not caused by habitually getting wasted New Year’s Eve, I promise. 

Anyways, I was home sick Wednesday, we planned transfer and miles on Thursday, went to district council and the temple on Friday, did splits in Port Arthur (my old area) Saturday, and church and Come Follow Me on Sunday. The campus doesn’t open up until the 21st, so we are trying to figure out how to proselyte the YSA until then. 

Love y'all, I am feeling better now!

Sorry it is short, but that's about all there is to report from this week.

A sincere feeling of general affection to anyone reading this,

Elder DeFord

Week 62 (12/31/2019) 2020 Vision

It seems like such a long time ago, in 2015, when the joke started going around "where do you see yourself in five years? -I don't know, I don't have 2020 vision!". And now, 2020 comes in less than 24 hours! And I do have 2020 vision, so I can tell you where I see myself in 16 hours- asleep in Beaumont. Yes, I am getting transferred. I am sad to be leaving Pasadena, but the Lord wants me elsewhere. 

I will still be serving as a Zone leader, covering just the Beaumont YSA, so no family ward. We cover a huge area, the whole Beaumont and Orange stakes for YSA, but our main prozelyting spot is Lamar University. To relate more to the college kids, we kiss the white shirt and tie good-bye, and go out in more casual clothes, button ups and khakis. It will be interesting not having a tie! My new companion is Elder Carraway, who, if you will remember, was my MTC companion as well. It will be quite the reunion!

To give a final update on the people we are teaching for everyone in the celestial stands, S__ is doing great! We taught the law of chastity, and some conflict ensued in the household, but she is okay, she won the knife fight, and she is excited to be baptized on the 25th of January!

The D__s are probably still doing good, we did not have the opportunity to meet with them for a couple of weeks because of the holidays, they were out of town. 

We had an interesting experience looking for members that had fallen away. We were knocking on a door that was supposed to have a Sister Lowe living there, and the resident was named Mr. Lowe...but had no idea who Sister Lowe was! He was, however, interested in learning more about our message and meeting with us. It is crazy how the Lord shows forth His mighty hand! 

I am definitely going to miss this area and the members here. Every area has a special place in your heart, after you get to know the people and they let you be a part of their lives. 

Thank you everyone for the Christmas wishes, I definitely felt loved! Even without a White Christmas ;) and now, I can actually sing that "I'll be home for Christmas". 

I love you all, I know this one is short but that is okay!

Happy New Year

Elder DeFord

Week 61 (12/25/2019) Merry Christmas

The subject line was certainly pretty easy to come up with this week. 

Merry Christmas! I hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas and holiday season, and staying safe no matter what your weather is. Ours is still in the upper 70's, but I am sure there is probably ice somewhere in the world. 

We had exchanges this last week with the Broadway Elders, I went down there with Elder Capello. Our day was pretty slow, but good. He is a funny guy! He is from Brazil, so getting called to Texas English Speaking was both a foreign country and language to him, but he learned conversational English in only a couple of months. Definitely impressive! 

During our exchange we taught someone who really just wanted some closure that we really did follow and know the Bible. It is interesting in the south, the adherence to the Bible. Someone that Elder Harward and I taught later in the week was similarly concerned, and many people will turn us away immediately because they don't want any more Bible, or another Bible. 

I just think it is funny, because most people don't really understand what the Bible is. Yes, there is a scripture in Revelation that says not to add or take away from these things. But since Revelations was written years before the Bible was compiled, that is probably not what it is referring to. No, the Bible was neither written or compiled by God. It was primarily written by inspired men, prophets, who had authority from the Almighty God. It was compiled by well-meaning and inspired individuals who wanted to bring more of God's word to the people. These compilers chose certain things to include based on availability and what they felt needed to be included. They seemed to have an affinity for Paul's teachings. In any case, in is not an exhaustive compilation of God's word, nor does it ever claim to be. In fact, no where in the Bible does it talk about the Bible, or claim to be a complete collection of God's word, or claim that it is all of God's word that you need to be saved. There is a prophecy in Ezekiel 37 that references the coming forth of the Bible, but it also prophecies of the Book of Mormon as well. 

In any case, it can be frustrating in the Bible belt when people have an unnatural adherence to truths that really don't have any relevance to the Bible's actual teachings. Then again, we are out here to "find them that will receive you", so we can move on and keep looking if people aren't open to our message. 

We also had our mission Christmas conference this week. We had a talent show, white elephant, and Elder Harward and I got to play Santa and hand out everyone's packages. It was a lot of fun.

Well, I am going to go enjoy Christmas. Thank you for your holiday wishes, love y'all, wishing you the best Christmas. 

Elder DeFord