Week 15 11/??/15-11/15/15

Monday

Pday! We ended up having to go give a blessing to a 8 month old that had swallowed a quarter... But they wouldn't let us back there 

Tuesday

Today we had a lesson with J! He is amazing! We committed him to read something every night from the BoM. We found John a few weeks ago knocking doors with R, our recent convert. Other than that, not much happened today.

Wednesday

We got out today and tried to have a lesson with a person that we contacted yesterday, who wasn't home. Surprise! But we decided to stay in the area and knock some doors. We were able to find a new investigator named Ot! He was an interesting case. While I was writing our number on the back of a pamphlet, my comp just straight up started testifying and teaching the Restoration. We ended up teaching him a 2 minute lesson and setting up a return appointment

Thursday

Today was zone conference! It was a lot of fun and it was super spiritual! Amazing to learn so much! It was super good to see President and Sister Drake and they are amazing! Zone conference talked a lot about following up with our investigators every day, so that's what we are going to implicate. But J has been calling us everyday to let us know how his reading is going! So that's good I guess!

Friday

District meeting! Another day of meetings! Love them! It was super good! After more meetings, we had a lesson with K! It was super good and the Spirit was super strong. 

After K's lesson we biked around quite a bit. And then we had another lesson with John! R invited us and J over for dinner and fed us and then sat in and let us teach a lesson! Members are so important! They are amazing! When they testify, it brings the Spirit in a way that missionaries can't do. 

Saturday

Today we made two trips out to China. We had a referral from a YSA member and they ended up being super legit! His name is W and he owns a tire shop. Anyway, he lives in Beaumont, not China and we don't get to teach him! Cause he's in the South area! And so does the other guy that we found out there! 

The next trip out to China was with Bishop to visit a less active family. It was a really good visit and Bishop is a super inspired man! 

Sunday

Today was Ward Conference! So all the meetings were coordinated by the Stake auxiliaries. The meetings were all super inspired and J was there! He is amazing and super inspired! J is already doing missionary work and has introduced his family to us. He is planting seeds for us to harvest in the future! Super amazing and inspired guy!

We had dinner tonight with a family that made us Kolaches! I have never had one before and it was really good! Basically what they are is a roll with steak or sausage or boudain or some sort of meat inside them. They are amazing! 

-Elder Allen

Week 14 ?

So this week was difficult and we worked pretty hard and I didn't have a lot of time to keep a log, so I'll just briefly review the things that happened this week!

It rained a lot! So we focused a lot on the investigators that we already had instead of trying to find new investigators! Because we focused on the investigators that we already had, they made really good progress! We have a few of them on date and taught them each a lesson or two this week! 

We had J (one of the ones with a date) come to church! He enjoyed it! We had a multi stake conference that was broadcast from Salt Lake! Elder Oaks and a few other 70s talked and gave us really good direction on what to do with our futures! 

D also came! He's super cool and we met him through another member! We were able to teach him and he's going to get baptized in the future!

We talked to a lot of people this week and it was really fun! We ate dinner at a lot of members houses, cause they're really nice to us! The food was really good and we loved it! The ward down here is really cool! They are being nice to us missionaries and coming on lessons with us all the time! Members are the best kind of missionaries! Everybody knows someone that is ready to hear the Gospel, it's just up to them to find hat person and share it with them!

Miss y'all very much! Your prayers are felt and appreciated!

-Elder Allen

Focal Point Nov 2015

November 2015 

Added to the Fold 

Focal Point 

Beaumont Zone 

Teryn Farrow 

Catlyn Skinner 

Davin Soignet 

Jared Soignet 

Marissa Soignet 

Micah Wagner 

Broadway Zone 

Leo Martinez 

Nallely Martinez 

Emanuel Quesada 

Melissa Rodriguez 

Derek Rodriguez 

Constelacion Torres 

Emily Sanchez 

Kingwood Zone 

Vanessa Yescas 

Thomas Alger 

Orange Zone 

Jamie Decorte 

Sarah Decorte 

Edward Patton 

Charlene Patton 

Mandy Frazier 

Sunshine Lopez 

Casey Robilard 

Khalil Seller 

Pasadena Zone 

Tony Morales 

Ashley Smith 

Pine Trails Zone 

Wilfredo Molina 

Andres Rendon 

Summerwood Zone 

Tyler Ranges 

Amber Byford 

Matthew Hosking 

Donald Holcomb 

The Standard Bearers 

(met their baptism and reactivate goal) 

Kingwood Zone 

Hermanas Kikongi / Conrad 

Elders Murdock / Moeakola 

Elders Dabb / Paulson Pine Trails Zone 

Hermanas Wilson / Carling 

Elders Martin / Henrie 

Broadway Zone 

Elders Reed / Dennis / Roberts 

Elders Kohler / Ludlow 

Hermanas Davies / Barrus 

Hermanas Leiva / Owens 

Summerwood Zone 

Sisters Casas / Wilson 

Sister Johnson / Malm 

Pasadena Zone 

Elders Heath / Crawford 

Elders Rasband / Asay 

Hermanas Stevens / Hull 

Hermanas Johnson / Francis 

Sisters Wood / Knight 

Orange Zone 

Elders Roberts / Strong 

Sisters Castaneda / Sessions 

Elders Moos / Boyack 

Elders Knebell / Saunders 

Elders Harrington / Hansen 

Beaumont Zone 

Sisters Tanuvasa / Cooper 

Elders Lacusta / Swallow 

Elders McDonald / Forbush 

L to R: Sister Tanuvasa, Caitlyn Skinner, Sister Cooper 

L to R: Sister Cooper, Teryn Farrow, Bro.Hewlett, Sister Ta-nuvasa 

L to R: Elder Ludlow, Derrick Ramirez, Melissa Gallegos, and Elder Kohler 

L to R: Elder Wooton, Andres and Elder Nickolaus 

Convert Baptism - Our First Covenant 

L to R: Hermana Conrad, Hermana Kikongi, Vanessa Romero, Hermana Sharpe 

L to R: Hermana Johnson, Leonel Avalos, Hermana Fran-cis. 

L to R: Elder Smith, Brother John Hanks, Charlene Patton, Edward Patton, Elder Roberts, Elder Strong 

L to R: Elder Moeakiola, Brother Curtis, Brother Al-ger, Elder Murdock 

L to R: Hermana Leiva and Hermana Owens 

Leo and Nallely Martinez 

L to R: Hermana Davies, Hermana Barrus, Constelacion Torres, Gracie Rubio, Agustine Lopez 

L to R: Elder Moos, Sarah Decorte, Jamie De-corte and Elder Boyack 

L to R: Hermana Leiva and Hermana Owens 

Emmanuel Cisneros 

Convert Baptism - Our First Covenant 

L to R: Sister Wood, Ashley Smith, Sister Knight 

Arriving - 

Missionaries to Preach My Gospel 

Departing - Spiritually Mature 

Missionaries 

Back: Elders Sirrien, Souza, Bingham and Hukill 

Front: Sisters Redford, Nielsen and Rawle, President and Sister Drake, Sisters Bushman, Browning, Ludlow and Mel-ton 

Back: Elders Roberts, Strong, Stevenson, Mitchell and Smith 

Front: Sisters Porter, Stiles, President and Sister Drake Sisters Rob-erts and Bonar 

L to R: Elder McDonald, Justin Livingston, Micah Wagner, El-der Forbush 

L to R: Kyle Staley, Marissa Yeagin, Elder La-custa, Devon Yeagin, Jerrod Yeagin & Elder Swal-low 

Convert Baptism - Our First Covenant 

Missionaries in the News 

President & Sister Drake 

Comments & Counsel 

Dear Family, Friends, and Missionaries, 

I have been truly touched by the reading we, as a mission, have been doing in the Book of Mormon. This week I have been focused on Ether 12. This chapter is a great teacher of Faith, Hope and Charity. These three qualities seem to permeate the ability to achieve the Celestial kingdom. I want to bring special atten-tion to verses 26-28 that talk about our weaknesses and why He gives us weakness. Verse 26 clearly warns us that many fools will make fun our weakness, not to help us, but to scornfully use us to their end rather than to our growth. " Fools mock, but they shall mourn; and my grace is sufficient for the meek, that they shall take no advantage of your weakness;" He goes on to further state if we will come unto him in humility he will make our weak things strong. A great promise. Verse 28 "Behold, I will show unto the Gentiles their weakness, and I will show unto them that faith, hope and charity bringeth unto me--the fountain of all right-eousness. 

We have been given weakness to help us better understand that it, with faith and hope can become a strength and only fools mock those that try to change and become obedient. Then through charity we ob-tain the "full fountain of righteousness." 

All of us need to continue, as he says in this scripture, to come to him and his grace will be sufficient. Re-pentance is the beginning of the process and His love propels us to succeed. Continue to put your faith and hope in him that we may all become partakers at that fountain of all righteousness. 

Our missionaries are doing great things and although we will miss those who have completed their service and returned home with honor, we are grateful for our newly arrived Sisters and Elders and look forward to serving with them in this great work. 

The Church is true! 

President Drake 

FROM THE ASSISTANTS 

"If any man will do his will, he shall know of the 

doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I 

speak of myself." (John 7:17) 

“We recognize that as learners, you and I are to act 

and be doers of the word not simply hearers who 

are only acted upon. Are you and I agents who act 

and seek learning by faith, or are we waiting to be 

taught and acted upon? 

-Elder David A. Bednar 

(Seek Learning By Faith) 

The size of your faith or the degree of your 

knowledge is not the issue—it is the integrity 

you demonstrate toward the faith you do have 

and the truth you already know. 

-Elder Jeffrey R. Holland 

(Lord, I Believe) 

Love, Elder Hansen & Bond 

“Knowledge is like paint, worthless... until its applied.” 

Birthday Wishes 

November 

01—Elder Noall 

01—Elder Bigler 

02—Elder Dennis 

05—Elder Futrell 

08—Sister Price 

08—Sister Bare 

10—Sister Thayne 

10—Elder Hyman 

11—Sister Sharpe 

14—Sister Rogers 

17—Elder Martin 

24—Elder Moeakiola 

25—Elder Swallow 

26—Sister Delgado 

28—Elder Haymans 

Congratulations 

On 10s going to: 

Elder Strong and Wilder 

Elders Larsen and Daye 

Sisters Casas and Wilson 

Elders Ludlow and Kohler 

Hermanas Owens and Leiva 

Elders Galland and Adair 

Elders chamberlain and Stock 

Sisters Davies and Barrus 

Sisters Sahagun and Bidstrup 

On Their Apartment Inspection! 

Families ~ Up Coming Transfer Dates 

December 7—January 18—February 15 

Please do not send packages/mail to apartments the week prior, as they may be transferred and the U.S. Post Office will no longer forward mail without an additional charge. 

Send 

baptismal pictures to: 

When you email your pictures please label them with those who are in the picture 

Families, 

All travel for missionaries going home is schedule 90 days prior to their departure. If you need to change airport destinations after that time, the family will be charged the change fee. Please call us if you have any questions at 281-xxx. PLEASE Notify the office EARLY to avoid change fees. 

Thank You 

Families 

Please keep the office updated if your: 

E-mail address -Street address -Phone number changes 

or 

Bishop/Stake President changes—we need their new address/phone number 

Please e-mail the new information to: 

FROM THE OFFICE 

I will Stand for Truth and 

Return with Honor 

Week 13? 10/26/15-11/1/15

Monday

We had another pday... This time we stayed at the church by ourselves, cause everyone else was at transfer meeting. I'm still in Beaumont, but I'm don't training! And I'm still with my trainer

Tuesday

We don't have a car, so we weren't able to go shopping for food yesterday, so that's what we did this morning! The Ward trunk or treat is also coming up so we grabbed a bunch of flyers to pass out to random people and invite them.

We gave R (our recent convert) a call and asked him if we could meet with him. He said yes, so we went over for dinner and a had a lesson with him. It was a really good lesson and the Spirit was super strong!

Wednesday

We have a somewhat new district. Everyone has been together for the last two transfers and we just found out that everyone but the DL is staying for another one! Our district is fantastic! It is so much fun to be a part of it. We have breakfasts and lunches together all he time and I end up making pancakes a lot...:) that's what happened today! I got to make pancakes. It was a very nice honor and blessing to eat pancakes, cause my comp is sick of them... He won't eat them anymore. The pancakes were really good!! I put some blueberries in some. And I put other things in others, but they all turned out really well!

We had a lesson today with K. Her husband is a member and she has been investigating the church for quite some time, but she just won't commit to anything. But the lesson we had today was amazing! She really opened up to us and told us hat she already knew she was gonna get baptized, she just needed to know that all of this was for her, and not for anyone else. We were able to help her see how she would be able to tell if all of this is true. Remember my farewell talk? The one about knowing truth? Ya... That's come in handy so many times already. People want to know how to tell truth and I know how to direct them to that. Crazy how that works right? K said that she would think about it some more.

Tonight we had the trunk or treat! It was a lot of fun and most of the ward was dressed up in costumes. Here were a lot of Less active families and also a bunch of nonmembers there! Super cool how a party can bring everybody out... We were able to meet quite a few people!

Thursday

Weekly planning is always on a Thursday. So surprise! We planned for the next week today. I caught a gecko and named him J. He was green sometimes and brown other times and I have a habitat on my desk. I tamed him and he sat on my arm. He's dead now:(

We had our Hour of Power tonight and we took R. We had him pray over a road that seemed good to him. Funny story, the road he picked is one that we have knocked over and over again. Another funny story, the first two houses we knocked on we taught lessons... Members combined with the full time missionaries are amazing. R said what each person at the houses need to hear and it's something that neither I nor Elder Leftwich would've thought to say. It was absolutely amazing! We taught the lesson and R taught the person from personal experiences. It was amazing.

Friday

Today was zone meeting! We got a new zone leader this transfer and he is amazing! Our new district leader is pretty cool too. Zone meeting was absolutely amazing! I was able to learn so much that I can now bring back to our area. We had a lesson after zone meeting with an older lady named Imogene. She's 89. I'll let y'all know what happens!

Saturday

It rained all day. We got a text saying that we needed to stay inside for the day cause there was so much rain. It made for an eventful day...

We did what we could, but I hate being stuck inside the apartment. Halloween! Happy Halloween. R invited us over for dinner which we accepted, but we still had to be inside by 7:00. Dinner was good! Apparently the food that I know as 'Stuff over Fritos' is actually called Frito Pie... Essentially the same thing. 

Sunday

We went to church and it was amazing! The newly called Houston temple president is from the Beaumont ward and the Bishop asked him to take the last few minutes and bear his testimony, which he did wonderfully and powerfully. He is a truly remarkable man. 

Other than that, it rained lot. All day. Again. We tried biking around, but there was nobody out. We tried knocking a few doors, but nothing. So we went around to members houses and actually met some of the members of the ward! It was really cool! 

Happy next week!

-Elder Allen

Week 12 10/19/15-10/25/15

Disclaimer: This week was a lot of contacting with not too much success. So this is short, just deal with that fact and move on!

Monday

Pday! You know how those go

Tuesday

Contacting! All our appointments fell through again. And we didn't get to do much. We were supposed to be on exchanges today, but the District Leader didn't get around to it... He had another appointment hat he had to be at, so we didn't do it today, but we are going to do it tonight and tomorrow!

Anyway, all our appointment fell through, it was just one of those days. We didn't know where to go or what to do. The APs gave us a challenge this last week, which was to literally flood the Earth with righteousness. They interpreted that as being hand out as many possible copies of the BoM as you can. So that's what we spent most of today doing. Talking and testifying of the BoM. It's amazing how powerful it is.

Wednesday

Exchanges! Elder Udall and I were on exchanges today! Once again, all our appointments fell through. So we rode around all day, talking to each other and everybody who we could find. We got about 20 street contacts today, but only passed out 2 copies of the BoM. It was a tough day today.

Thursday

Elder Leftwich and I are back together now. Somewhere there is a hurricane about to hit. I think Mexico. But they're predicting rain for this entire weekend.

We had weekly planning this afternoon and we decided to make it fun.

We made cookies! But we only had two pie tins. So we could only cook

15 bite sized cookies at a time... We pulled the first tins out and realized we didn't have a cooling rack. So we looked around a little bit and decided to take our fridge apart. We pulled one of the wire shelves out and it happened to fit perfectly over our sink. So we cooled our cookies on a refrigerator shelf over the sink full of dirty dishes. After that, we went out and biked around! Our appointment (singular this time) moved to tomorrow. We biked and biked and handed out copies of the BoM. I can't remember how many we handed out, but it was a lot compared to the typical day.

Friday

We had district meeting this morning and it was the last district meeting as a district. Our district hasn't changed in 2 transfers and we've gotten pretty close. But we are going to see what happens for Monday! We will get calls tomorrow! We had a lesson lined up and she actually decided to come! While we were biking to the lesson we contacted a guy who we'd seen before. Last time we saw him, he was having a rough day and asked us to pray with him, which was super cool! We were able to follow up with him and he told us that our prayer on his behalf was the point that changed his entire day around!

Super cool. We handed him a copy of the BoM and taught him about it.

We also delved straight into the Restoration! So we had a lesson on the way to another lesson! First time this week!

Our lesson was good. It was with P. She is very non committal and we have trouble committing her to do anything, but she is e sweetest lady ever!shes almost read the entire BoM from the time we first saw her, yet she isn't making very much progress. She loves talking about Jesus Christ and His grace! She won't come to church unless God tells her to... So we are praying for that.

Saturday

Transfer calls come today! It started raining this morning and hasn't stopped since. We had nothing better to do so we started biking! Yay!

You step outside and two seconds later, you wanna go back inside! But you just keep on pedaling. We had a goal to pass out as many copies of the BoM as we could. We were still a few short of our goal, but then the miracle happened. We said a prayer and told Heavenly Father that we were going to give out the rest of our copies. We still had like 10 copies in he box. So we prepped them and loaded them up in our backpacks and rode around, cause knocking doors looking like cold, scared, wet, miserable, whimpering, puppies isn't the best idea. We don't get inside like that. So we biked around and contacted people outside! A lot of them had compassion on us and told us to step into heir garage for a few minutes. We were then able to pull out a copy of the BoM and present it to whoever the person was. This happened over and over again and by the end of the day, we had passed out all 10 copies in about 4 hours before the rain fm got so bad that we decided to go home... That bumped us up to 37 copies for the last week and a half from the time of the APs challenge. Crazy, huh!?

Well calls came and I'm staying Beaumont! And I have another 6 weeks with my trainer! Our district will be the exact same for another 6 weeks with the exception of Elder Udall, our district leader. So this will be the 3rd transfer of the best district in the mission!

Sunday

Church! Yay! I like church. It's one of my favorite times of he entire week. It was the primary program and I was reminded a lot of back home. It rained all last night and all today too. We didn't have any investigators at church cause the roads were so bad. Half our ward didn't show up... Crazy. Lots of rain.

After church it rained a lot. All day. I like rain. You never get dehydrated while riding a bike in the rain!

-Elder Allen