Hope y'all are ponderizing!

 

Elder Mitchell was so excited to find these!

Hola,

Another week has gone by in Smyrna. Missions are full of ups and downs. You have up weeks and down weeks, and up days and down days throughout your up and down weeks. This week was kind of a down week. Just kinda slow. On Monday we had a chance to talk with O for a few minutes. We just kind of talked more about the Book of Mormon and recognizing answers from the spirit. We're going to try him again tonight, so hopefully it goes well. This week we also met with the V family. We taught them the plan of salvation, which they seemed to understand pretty well. We tried to commit them to baptism, but they didn't really understand the whole proper authority thing. That's kind of the problem with all of our investigators. Every Latino gets baptized as a baby in the Catholic church, so...it's kind of a struggle.

Those were the only lessons we had this week. Everything else fell through. Also, we are kind of in a sticky situation. My bike tire popped, so I need a new tube. We found a place to replace it, but we weren't able to bike this week. We also have had limited use with the car. We only have so many miles per month, and past missionaries went over their miles, so we've inherited their mile debt. So this week we've been walking...a lot. It's been pretty tiring. Let's just say we will be glad when the new month starts and we have fresh miles. We've been pretty limited this week as to where we can go, so we did a lot of tracting near our house, with very limited success.

Our goal for this week is to try to focus on the Book of Mormon. We want our investigators to gain a testimony of it, because then they'll know that everything else in the church is true. It all rests on the Book of Mormon. We'll see how it goes, but we really want to read from the Book of Mormon with our investigators.

The bright spot this week came yesterday. H came to church!! It was the first investigator that we've been able to get to church, which was super exciting. H has been to church before, but his health has been keeping him from coming recently. We weren't really prepared to teach a gospel doctrine class, so we just looked up the lesson for the week which was...the law of chastity. I'm thinking, "oh great, we haven't taught him this, this is just going to be great." Our ward mission leader Hermano. K actually did a really good job, and even though it took a while, H was able to understand it. Later during sacrament meeting there was a talk on pornography, so we were just hitting H with all the good topics. He had a good time though, talking to all the other members, learning more about the gospel. He is just progressing so well. He's awesome.

My ponderizing scripture last week was Isaiah 57:21 "There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked." My new scripture for this week is Isaiah 58:13-14 "If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: Then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it." Hope y'all are ponderizing, cuz it helps, it really does!

Hopefully this week will go a bit better. Hope y’all have an awesome week too!
With love,

Elder Mitchell



They carved pumpkins on p-day. Can you guess which is Elder Mitchell's?

Goal Setting--It Works!

Out tracting this week, they 

found this hobbit hole, in Tennessee!

Hola!

First some good news and bad news. Good news is that I'll be saying in Smyrna next transfer, and I'll still be with Elder A. Woohoo! The work is really progressing in this area now, and Elder A and I are pretty tight, so I'm pumped. Bad news is that we have lost R, our referral from Massachusetts. We were really excited for him to come to church this week, but he informed us that he was moving to Florida for work reasons, and I guess he's staying there indefinitely. We are still trying to figure out what we can do with him, maybe find elders in Florida for him. But, other than that we had a really good week!

On Tuesday we had a Trainer/Trainee meeting in Franklin. I got to see Elder B and Elder W from my CCM district, which was pretty great. We had trainings by the AP's and by President and Sister Andersen. It was great. We had lots of fun, and learned a lot from the trainings. We played a PMG jeopardy/Scripture mastery game, which I kind of dominated...Yeah, scripture masteries, good stuff. But, I guess they do that game every trainer/trainee meeting, and the trainees usually get blown, but I kept us within 200 points. Pretty fun. We really liked the training from Elder D, one of the APs. He talked about setting effective goals, and having the mentality that you are going to reach them. Dad used to say a goal unwritten is only a wish. Well, a goal that is written but doesn't get looked at for the rest if the day is only a wish too! Elder A and I haven't been too good at doing goals, and we definitely haven't been hitting them. So we took Elder D's words to heart, and our mentality has changed. And we saw so many blessings because of it this week!

Later that night, we were tracting around, trying to find some Spanish houses, but we kept knocking into uninterested white folks. We were getting pretty tired, but I said, "We have a goal today to find a new investigator, so that's what we're going to do!" So, we said a prayer, and tried going down another street. We weren't really feeling it, so we turned around and went down another road. Finally, at the end of the street, we found a house with some Spanish indicators. We knocked, and talked to this guy G. We talked to him a little about the Restoration and the Book of Mormon. He also told us that we could come back on Saturday to teach him more! When we came back we kind of found this crazy situation. G actually lives with friends. His friend is a less active and his wife is Catholic. His name is O. O's Dad is very concerned for his son (he was the one telling us all this). The dad thinks that if we can get his son back to church, then the wife will join. We kind of found the family at an opportune time, because the dad is only here on vacation, and has to go back to Mexico City, so now it's kind of on us. Cool experience to find these guys.

This week we also found the V family. They were in our area book, and I had a feeling we needed to try them, even though they hadn't been contacted in about half a year. We had a super solid lesson with them, and taught the whole restoration lesson. The husband F has a lot of questions about prophets and stuff, but the wife J was super accepting of everything. We'll try to see them again this week. Super cool family.

Then, H. He is awesome. We started teaching him the commandments this week, and told him about how we could do a proxy baptism for him. He got so excited! He said that is so ready to follow Christ, and really wants to be baptized. We still need to get some stuff ready with him, but we set a new date with him for November 14th. He truly was prepared to receive the gospel. The only problem for him has been his health. But, he is awesome.

It's been a really good week for us. Normally, we are nowhere close to reaching our weekly goals, but we actually exceeded some of them this week. For instance, usually we find one to two new investigators a week, but this week, we found 6! Elder D's training helped us a lot. I testify of the power of goal setting! It works! When you ask the Lord to help you, and you set inspired goals, the Lord will help you reach them, and you will see success and miracles! The work rolls on here in Smyrna! The Church is true; I love being here on my mission. Hope all is well back home! 

Love,

Elder Mitchell

Here are some pretty random pictures he sent:

Elder A at the hobbit hole

Beautiful sunset in Lavergne

What a couple of crazies!

Not much has changed!

Joseph Smith Asked the Same Thing!

A local store/bakery regularly delivers 

their extras to the church in Smyrna.

The elders are so willing to take care of it.

Hola,

I can't believe that this transfer is almost over! Time has just gone by so fast! I’m hoping I'll get to stay in Smyrna, because the work is just getting rolling here! But, as Moroni said, it mattereth not withersoever I go, so long as it is the will of the Lord.

My new ponderize scripture is Alma 5:49, "And now I say unto you that this is the order after which I am called, yea, to preach unto my beloved brethren, yea, and every one that dwelleth in the land; yea, to preach unto all, both old and young, both bond and free; yea, I say unto you the aged, and also the middle aged, and the rising generation; yea, to cry unto them that they must repent and be born again." Ponderizing is super cool! It works! I can already testify after a week that it makes a difference.

This week was interesting. We didn't teach much, and we had many plans fall through, but we are working so hard! It started last Monday night. I was kind of feeling fed up, because I just felt like we weren't doing all that we could, and that we needed to be more obedient and plan better. My volcano of greenie fire erupted in the form of a 20 minute venting session. Entonces (and so), we resolved to do better.

On Monday night, we were asked to drive out to the hospital in Murfreesboro to give a blessing to a man named Y. I was kind of freaking out, because I don't know how to do blessings in Spanish, but, Y spoke English (whew). After the blessing, we nearly got lost in Murfreesboro. But, we found our way back to Smyrna, and visited O. He is so golden! He is just so interested and has so many questions. We were talking to him about the restoration, and he started asking all the right questions, like, "So after Christ, which church had the truth?" And we were like, "Joseph Smith asked the same thing!" Plus, I feel like O was just one of those people that I was supposed to find. For some reason, I can understand about 95 percent of what he says, even though he is the fastest native speaker that Elder A has ever heard. That to me is so cool, because I can't really understand many other people. We have a lesson with O tonight, and I'm so pumped!

We weren't able to meet with H this week, but we finally got word about what to do for him! So, a member that is a doctor has to visit with him and confirm that he physically can't be baptized. After that, we need to get consent from the First Presidency to do a live proxy baptism. So, it would be like doing temple baptisms, but he would be there. How weird is that! Also, we met with R this week. She is interesting. She believes most of the stuff, and is progressing, but she still is struggling to understand the why she needs to be baptized again by proper authority. We will continue to work on that.

The other highlight of the week was meeting R (a different one). He was our referral from some Hermanas in Massachusetts, and he is pretty cool. We taught him the Restoration, and he was super open to everything, including the Book of Mormon. And he wants to come to church! He is awesome.

We are continuing to work hard here, on Saturday we find out if we are being transferred. Hope y’all have a great week!

Love,

Elder Mitchell

Do Your Homework!

With his companion at transfer meeting

Hola,

This week was pretty slow. Many appointments fell through, and we weren't able to meet with very many people. We did talk with H briefly, and invited him to watch general conference. We did get a lot of referrals from our branch president, and we will try to contact them this week. Also, probably the strangest thing that happened this week was us getting a referral from Massachusetts! Some sisters there were doing an online tracting project I guess, and they referred this guy to us who lives in our area. Hopefully we can meet him this week.

Tuesday marked two months since I started my mission, and I celebrated by going on "vacation." I went on my first exchange. On Tuesday, I spent the day with Elder L, the other greenie in our district. Yeah, they put the two greenies together. Fun. It was good though. In the morning we went and played games with old people. They really appreciate the elders coming each week, and it was really fun. Old people are really sassy. During the afternoon we visited a lot of families. English work is so different than Spanish!! You can actually set appointments with people! There's plenty of other differences too. We had dinner with a recent convert. She is super solid in the gospel, and her husband is progressing now, which is awesome because at first he didn't want anything to do with the church. At night we had a Book of Mormon class with a bunch of recent converts. It was cool. The exchange was good, and I learned a lot from serving with Elder L.

Then it was back to Spanish. It took me a while to get back into Spanish mode. On Wednesday we had district meeting, and I prepared a role-play on using the Book of Mormon to respond to objections and answer questions. It went pretty well. Also this week, I got to have Chick-fil-a!! It was pretty great :)

With the change of the month came an immediate change in weather. It had been cloudy and in the 80's, and it just dropped to the 50's for a few days, with lots of rain! But, we got to stay out of most of it with Conference.

Conference was awesome. I just love it more and more every year. It was a little weird though, sitting in the church foyer, watching it on our I-pads. It was pretty cool to have three new apostles, and I just felt an outpouring of the spirit. I really liked Larry R. Lawrence's talk, which prompted the question, "What lack I yet?" I asked, and got my answer, I hope y’all asked too! If you listened to conference right, you should have some homework to do. I really liked the invitation to ponderize scriptures every week. I hope everyone does it! What's your scripture? Mine for this week is Mosiah 28:3,

"Now they were desirous that salvation should be declared to every creature, for they could not bear that any human soul should perish; yea, even the very thoughts that any soul should endure endless torment did cause them to quake and tremble." 

I liked a ton of talks, and had a few questions answered too. Conference is awesome! My invitation to everyone is to do your homework! Whatever the spirit told you to do this weekend, do it!! I know that this church is led by living prophets and apostles, and it was such a privilege to listen to them this weekend.

Hope all is going well. May the Lord bless you all in all of your endeavors. This is the Lord's work, and I express appreciation every day that I get to be a part of it. Love y’all!

Elder Mitchell