"Oh Robert Looooves Glenn"

Sooo,

Update this week.

This week was really eventful. I've loved it. There was a lot of good but I don't know where to start. 

Here, we'll start--so we met this awesome new couple. I'll describe them a little bit. So Bob (not the same bob I've mentioned before) and his wife. I'll describe what he looks like first. He wears an old hat that says "Christ King" on it and "Jesus" on the brim (In houston christian merchandise is fairly popular). and he was wearing a shirt saying something about his rights to have a gun and had camo on it. They're a pretty stereotypical 'Texan' family. He was like, "ya, one reason I know a bit about ya Mormons is Glen Beck" then his wife popped it, "Oh Robert Looooves Glenn" "I do not love him honey" "oh he loves him, I'll tell ya." But we had some fun teaching them. They're great.

Another highlight is our lesson with Bob (not the one with the crazy war stories). This is the one that is a somewhat less-active member. We went over on Sunday and talked about the plan of salvation. The conversation went a lot of places and it was great, but the Spirit really entered in the room at the end when we started singing together. Bob used to sing barber shop quartet. We just went through a few songs out of the Hymn book and picked which parts of Harmony we would sing and went through them. The Spirit came really powerfully. He wanted to sing more songs but we ran out of time. He's an awesome guy. But music is just really powerful. I love it. 

I went on an exchange with Elder Sami in the bacliff area (which is pretty much the most ghetto/redneck/white trash place i've ever seen) it was a really fun day. A lot of people there live in really messy and old trailers. It's a city right by the coast. There were a lot of interesting people.

So, it's mardi gras here so at a member's house we celebrated by eating bbq ribs and some king cake. Mardi gras is huge here, they have a ton of stuff going on and eating king cake is one of the big traditions. There's usually a plastic little fake baby hidden in the cake somewhere and whoever gets the baby has to put on the next celebration.

Well I gotta get goin. Love y'all! Have a good week!

Love, Elder Russell

some good stuff

Hey I don't have time to give a very big update this week. I'll try to give some good stuff though. 

Sooo... it's been warming up quite a bit. This week most of the days I got to wake up at 4:25am for a choir thing we did for some zone conferences in the mission. Valentine's day was normal. Yesterday we were going to a dinner appointment and all a sudden while we were walking over there it smelled like good old antelope island. I was reminded of that wonderful place and then turned the corner and saw that a sewage pipe had broken and the sidewalk was covered with a bunch of stuff. Isn't weird that the same smell of dead birds, dead brine shrimp, salty sand and dead flies and a bunch of mosquitoes can equal sewage? weird huh.  I gave a talk in sacrament meeting and one of our good friends named Bob was sitting in the front row. he's a character. he's semi-less-active but we spend a lot of time with him. He was making faces with his eyes crossed and tongue out at me the whole time trying to get me to laugh. at the end of the talk when I was trying to get everyone all pumped up about the subject I was speaking on his phone went off and it must have been on full blast. It was playing like led zepplin or something. He didn't hear it for like 10 seconds cause he's kind of old, so I just felt like a baptist preacher preaching to rock music. it was good though. He's awesome. well..

Love y'all have a good one!

immortality and eternal life of man

Love y'all!! it was so good to get the pictures form ya!

Man I am just in such a good mood. Life is so good. Missionary work is awesome. Lately I've been reading a ton! I made some really big 'year 2' goals for reading and divided them into smaller and smaller goals so I will have week by week and day by day goals. I love the scriptures. I could spend all day in them. They are great. And I am around awesome people all the time. The people here (my companion, the other missionaries, the members, former members from my last ward) are all so fun to be around.

This week has been great! Not too much of an update that I can think of...

I just heard some good knews from one of my last companions (Elder Iloilo) he was telling me about some of the people we had been working with and many of them I had been kind of sad about because they had stopped reading and wouldn't pray even though we had very spiritual lessons with them and we'd spent so much time praying for them. Elder Iloilo told me that they came back and many are preparing to be baptized. I was at a devotional we put on for members and investigators last night and one of the speakers was talking about how no efforts are wasted when they are for the Lord. Whenever you share your testimony or a gospel truth it is never wasted. I don't think we begin to see the true results of our actions in this life but they are great.

mosiah 2:17, when you're in the service of your fellow beings you're in the service of God. How could you serve God? You'd have to be assisting him in His work and His purpose. What is His purpose? It's to bring about the immortality and eternal life of man (Moses1:39). Galations 6:2, Mosiah 18:8-12 talk about bearing one anothers burdens and comforting them who need comfort. These are commitments to serve that we make when we make our covenants with God. We're covenanting to put forth a greater love and be instruments in God's hands to bring about His plan. Service is motivated by love. Love is the motive of God's works. That's why God is love (1 John 4:8-10).

Well those are just some thoughts. I Love y'all! Have a good week!

-Elder Russell

more fun pictures

awesome pictures from the mission field

how many are being prepared like him

Ok so for the weekly update. Man, this week has been really crazy. So I guess I gave y'all an update on wednesday when we went to the temple. I'll just kind of update what's happened since then.

Thursday was crazy! we had a lot of appointments lined up and didn't have time to breath hardly, we loved it. Time flies by when your busy. We've been working with some people I may not have mentioned before and some I've already talked about. On Friday I was on an exchange with Elder Johnson. We had this awesome member from their ward come out with us. His name is Steven. He's a convert and he's the most happy person I've ever met! He's preparing for a mission. So, to tell a little bit about him, he grew up going to disney sponsored schools and even college and then worked at disneyland so he's obsessed with it. He was telling us about how when he worked there for one of the jobs it was really important for them to smile. They had to just smile all of the time. It sounds kind of weird but he was telling me about how if you just always are smiling, even if you aren't happy, something will happen or someone will say something that will change your mood so that you are happy. I thought it was really good thinking but I haven't tried it out yet haha. Anyway, we also ate at this place called freebirds. It's a burrito place and it's pretty good. Elder Johnson got the biggest burrito that I've ever seen in my life. They said it weighed as much as a new born baby. He won the man of the day award. 

So, in the past few days things have been pretty interesting. A lot of our plans have fallen through and I've been a bit sick and tired and our car has been getting nails in the tires so we've had to switch in and out the spare and get that fixed and a few people have been a little bit more rude than usual to us but I've had a hard time remembering all of the bad because God just blesses us so much. The other night it was a rough night and our plans weren't working out and we met this lady walking by as we were walking to where we thought our car was in the parking lot and she told us about how her husband just had finished reading the bible. She told us he's probably be home and led us to the apartment. He wasn't home so we set an appointment to come back. Later as we found out that our car was actually in a different place we walked to where it actually was and saw a guy a little ways off and walked over and started talking to him and found out that it was that lady's husband. This guy started telling us all of these things that he had learned as he read through the bible. (we found out he did a very thorough study of it when he read through). He told us--among a few other things--that "You see, man has taken the important things that are taught in the bible and put his own twist on it. All of the different churches are only partially true with man's own twist on them. People don't understand the importance of Priestly authority. It's like it says in the Bible, there will be a restoring of all truth and all things." Me and Elder Baird just sat and listened to him and we just got more and more excited to teach him. It's amazing how God prepares the people who are put into our path. It makes me wonder how many are being prepared like him all around us.  I just finished doing a really detailed read of the story of the sons of Mosiah going to the land of Nephi to teach the Lamanites. I just love that story. They are the best examples. They had so much faith. That story is so amazing. If a people who were "a wild and a hardened and a ferocious people; a people who delighted in murdering the Nephites, and robbing and plundering them" (Alma 17:14-15), could change into a people who were righteous and so converted that they "never did fall away"(Alma 23:6), then think of the changes that can happen with the people around us, or even us ourselves. 

Well, anyway, I gotta get going. I love the Book of Mormon! It is the word of God. 

Love y'all! 

Elder Russell

Yes, this is Elder Johnson- They grew up as friends! 

testimony of the things we teach through the Holy ghost by praying

So, since we just got back from going to the temple today I don't have my journal--which I usually bring to help me remember what had happened during the week--so I may not be able to include everything I wanted to in this email. But one thing I remember I have been meaning to tell y'all about this new area is that the Nasa apace center is in our area. ("Houston we have a problem") anyway, that was random just because I kept forgetting to tell y'all.

So this week I spent a lot of time with other missionaries other than my usual companion. Occasionally missionaries do what is called an exchange where a missionary from another area switches places with a missionary in another area for a day. One of the missionaries I will be going on exchange with on friday will be Elder Johnson (Landon Johnson)--he's in my district. Anyway, I went on three exchanges last week and learned a lot from the other missionaries. It's always good to see different working styles and what is most effective. I love missionary work! We met some cool people this week, some we're still going to be teaching and some aren't continuing for now but hopefully in the future. One of the people was Billy. He's just about 20 years and old and we met him walking down the street. He had just gotten out of jail and wanted to turn his life around. He learned more about God while he was in jail. We taught him the message about the restored gospel, Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. He pointed out that he felt the Holy Ghost. He said, "While y'all were talking I felt a different feeling. Kind of like chills. I get a good feeling." Another couple of people we've met and been teaching a bit are Rojnoth and his brother Ovenosh, they're from Trinidad. They're young guys but really mature. They've been through a lot. They are Hindu but as we taught them the plan of salvation they were able to compare it to a lot of beliefs that they already have. We are teaching them about how they can get a testimony of the things we teach through the Holy ghost by praying.  We met this other guy--I don't know why I'm telling you about this guy, mostly because he's just interesting--his name is Bob. We were driving out of a complex and we saw this guy with yellow tinted sunglasses looking at us so we rolled down the window and started talking to him. He's come to some really different and sad conclusions about God because of how he's reacted to the very crazy experiences he's had. He stopped believing in God's love for him and I think that developed into him not having a belief in God. We bore testimony to him about God's unrestrained love for all of His children. He just couldn't accept the fact the God could love him. he told us, "God couldn't love me, I've been in 3 wars, Vietnam, Korea, I've been a mercenary in africa, I killed people for money, not for a country or for any good reason. God couldn't love me. I've seen things happen to people that you couldn't imagine." It's such a sad thought to be stuck accepting the lie from Satan that the creator of your soul and world doesn't have a love or care for you. We're going to be stopping by Bob in the next few days, hopefully he'll be able to let God pour His love into his life. 

Well I gotta get goin. Love y'all. Have an amazing week! Read, Pray, Go to Church!

Elder Russell