9 Oct 2018: ¡Bienvenidos a Élder Troya!

Hola todos!

It's been a week chalked full of miracles! Elder Troya is my new companion from Park City Utah. He went to BYU for two semesters and is already fluent in Spanish! His family is from Ecuador, so they speak it at home. He has an awesome testimony, and I feel like he came pre-trained, so I really am not doing a whole lot to train, but I am working harder than ever. 

Having a bike makes it a little harder to plan the day out, but the natural air conditioning feels great! Right now, Vegas is sitting around 70s-80s right now which is awesome. 

Highlights of the week:

-Trainer training: Wednesday night before I met Elder Troya, President Youngblood answered all the questions we had as trainers. Elder Dougal and I got there late, because the member that gave us a ride decided to take the entirely wrong way to the mission office. That mixed with Vegas traffic, you get the idea. 

- Thursday: we visited a few men thay live in a sober living apartment complex. All of them are inactive members of the Church. We shared a message, another comes in, and asked us if we would bless the home, and give a blessing to his friend. The one, when asked if he wanted to hear our message, said "No no, I'm good, I'm spiritual not religious". So we proceeded to give the blessings. Afterwards, we were talking, and the guy who didn't want to hear our message, said "I want to talk to you guys" so we talked to him, and it turns out he was a member, who just fell away, and got into substance abuse. He told us that when we gave the blessing to his friend, he felt this overwhelming peace and joy come over him, and he took it as a sign from God that he needed to change his life. 

That was an awesome experience. Literally a miracle right off the bat in our companionship, in our first appointment.

-Friday we had a great district council. Our new district leader, Elder Rodrigues is training, and used to be the assistant to the president. We are going to have so much success as a district! 

-We had a disappointing experience on Sunday night. Very long story short, we contacted a lady whom we had met a few weeks ago, and she told us that she wanted us to leave and never talk to her again, because we had inadvertently missed the appointment we had set up with her. That was very hard to take. Missionaries are still people, imperfect people. 

  

General Conference was AWESOME! So many gold nuggets of revelation were revealed, including two hour church to focus more on the family, and 12 NEW TEMPLES! I learned a ton this past weekend, and my testimony was strengthened.

Yesterday I had a great interview with President. He has quickly become a mentor, and a father/grandfather figure to me. 

To close, I want to share an experience we had yesterday. We were biking, and I waved to an older man watering his yard. I biked past, and then felt I should go back and talk to him. We did, and after we talked for a bit we gave him a Book of Mormon. He took it and said(in spanish): "If I read this, will it answer all my concerns ?" We testified about the power of the Book of Mormon, and he said he will definitely read it. The converting power of the Book of Mormon, is real. It is awesome, and I invite all of you reading this email. If you are already reading it, study it. If you are not a member of the Church, I still invite you to read it. What have you got to lose by reading it?

Much love,

Elder Lovell