20 Years Old

Hello Family,

Well... I am officially 20 years old. It was an awesome birthday. Guess what we did for my birthday? Oh you're right, we did missionary work. It was awesome. We made brownies and had some ice cream when we got home that night to celebrate. I have a picture and a video of it but I forgot to bring my camera here to send it to you. It was good. Ha, it sounds like you had a lot of fun at the ranch with 21 girls? That is way too many. I shared the whole texting story with Elder Walton and we had a good laugh about it.

This week..

We are still working hard, trying to find some people to progress. We are teaching lessons but no one is really progressing towards baptism and coming to church. We did have a sweet thing happen to us this week though.

On Monday we had a lesson with a lady and her husband that we EBPed a week ago. Now EBP is "Elder Ballard's Promise". He promised that if we talk to 10 people a day outside of our normal finding efforts then we will baptize more and have more success. Anyways... we EBPed her and she called us a week later and wanted to meet with us. So we set up a time on Monday and we went back with Brother Chandler from the Ward. We had a pretty sweet lesson with her about the Restoration and Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. She had a couple of misconceptions about Joseph Smith that we cleared up and we gave her a Book of Mormon to read. We then gave her a priesthood blessing cuz her arm was messed up and after it she was like "Wow, that was awesome. Thank you."

We didn't get a return appointment with her cuz she had to talk to her husband. Now, her husband we have met before and he did not like us. He is British and is stuck in his ways and has a really bad case of MS. He didn't sit in on the lesson, which sucked, but oh well.

On Thursday we get a call from her at about 10:30 in the morning, seeing if we could meet with her right then. We were down the street, luckily, at a member's house helping him do some stuff, and so we said that we could. We met her at the park just down the street, and she explained to us how her husband didn't want her to meet with us and how they had a fight about it. At first we were thinking "Oh no, this is going to be bad." But the miracle of it is that she then explained how she had opened the Book of Mormon and started from the beginning and read the Introduction, the Testimonies, and all the way to Jacob or something. She read for 45 minutes, and she said, "It made so much sense and I could understand it and I loved it."

She also explained that she had never done that before in her life and expressed that she knows it is true, and wants to learn more but has to talk with her husband and stuff. It was awesome to hear her say that cuz the Book of Mormon is very powerful. Her name is Teresa Green and her husband's name is Chaz. So if you could pray for Chaz to open his heart that would be awesome. We are going to swing by there sometime this week and see how things are going. That was an awesome miracle here in McNeil!

And it is also awesome how the Book of Mormon works in peoples lives. It is so true and can bring so much joy, peace, happiness, etc... Even if you just read a verse a day it will make your day that much better. I have seen it in my own life while I have been out here. It has changed me and I am understanding it better and applying it more than I ever have before.

That is about it for this week. We're still just working hard each and every day. Trying to wear myself out so that I can be dead tired each and every day. It's good to hear from the family, I hope that y'all have a good week. I love you all.

Love,

Elder Harvey