hot sauce on his hand

La Familia,

So I will just tell y'all some random stories that have happened recently. My journal has been pushed to the back burner most of the days this week because of other stuff so I'm pretty much taking what I wrote in it. 

So one story. We were out with this awesome member teaching and for lunch we went to firehouse subs. I love firehouse subs for two reasons. 1. they have really good sandwiches 2. They have all of the hot sauces from hot to hottest so you can feel manly when you use the hottest one I guess--which is what we always do. So anyway, as usual we got our sandwiches and looked through all of the hot sauces and got the hottest ones they had. On one of the bottles it said for the description something like, "you think you know hot? Not until you've had this. Use very sparingly. Only one drop at a time! Also works good for melting wax on hardwood floors or removing grease stains on sidewalks. enjoy." It ended up being pretty hot. But that's besides the point of the story. So we got all finished up and one of the people who was with us went to the bathroom and took quite a while. maybe like 10 minutes later he came out with a surprised look on his face and explained how he kind must have got some hot sauce on his hands and should have washed his hands before going to the bathroom. The hot sauce bottle had said something about not getting it on your hands or skin because it irritated or something haha.. but anyway.

Sunday was a good day. Church was pretty good. In sacrament meeting Mitt Romney's name was only mentioned like 15 times. (Texas....)

The rest of the week was awesome. I can't pull out any particular moments that'd be worth writing. I guess instead I'll give y'all a scripture chain you can study. That'll be worth while:)

So these might not all be in the best order but I think if you read them all you'll definitely learn something. take an hour out of your week and just look at these and think about them.

Matt. 22:36-40; Col. 3:14; Moroni 7:45-47, 48; 1 John 3:1-2; Moses 8:13; Mosiah 5:7; Gal. 4:4-7; 3:26; 1 John 3:3(1-3); John 14:16-21, 23; 1 John 3:3; 3 Nephi 12:8; 2 Peter 1:4-11; 1 John 4:16-17, 20-21;John 17:3; D&C 14:7; 2 Nephi 32:6 

Love Y'all! 

Elder Russell

peaceful and content

man, I've been slacking on the updates. even my journal has been a lot worse lately.

But this week was really great. We've been spending a lot of time with some of the less-actives. I love the people we work with. The members and the people we're around are just awesome. 

I just hope everyone of y'all have a really good week. We have a good reason to be happy. I've noticed as I've tried to read and ponder every chance I get and just fill my life with the scriptures and good thoughts that I've been really

peaceful and content. I love life. And I'm also listening to some cheesy EFY music right now as I'm emailing (we email at the church) and it's making me happy too. 

So here's a good topic/question for y'all to inspire some of your studies this week. 

So first off, all of us that come to this world die physically and spiritually, we are redeemed from physical death by the resurrection and that is a free gift. Why do we receive that gift for free but then we have to work for the other? Or do we get a redemption from spiritual death for free as well? 

also, we know that the second death is a spiritual death (alma 12 and 2 Nephi 9), so then, what is the first death?

That's just some food for thought for y'all. I hope y'all are reading and praying every day. We've gotta do that. it's the best way to live. I love y'all! 

-Elder Russell

"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