Coming to Church

It has been a really neat week. We met someone last Sunday who came to church with one of the members. His name is Jarod. He happened to be working for said member. We got his number and asked about coming by for a lesson. He said that would be OK, but he was really busy, and lives far away, so we weren't able to visit him. Yesterday, he showed up to church again. We asked him if he would still be interested in having us bring a Book of Mormon by his house and teach him about it. He said, "If I wasn't interested, I wouldn't have come back!" Also at church was Kacey (two times for her now) who has recently discovered general conference and has been sending us her thoughts on just about every talk from last conference. She is so awesome! And the Thompson's also were able to be there, I think I talked about them 2 times ago, but only the husband is a member in that family, and the wife and daughter want to be baptized. It's been incredible how many people God has allowed us to meet recently.

Included in the pictures is us fixing a roof and trimming trees for a member, and us tracting a porch that was well equipped.

Love,
Elder Stephen Watts

Recent convert, Angel, would not let us take a normal picture of her

Kacey

Kacey was introduced to the gospel by a member because she was the first grade teacher of the member's daughter. I'm not exactly sure how the conversation was brought up, but the member invited her to read the Book of Mormon and gave her a copy. The member then gave us her phone number.

So for about three weeks we would call Kacey and text her and answer her questions and keep her excited about the Gospel and the Book of Mormon. And, for three weeks she would tell us that she would love to meet up and take the lessons, but that her husband wasn't ready yet. She mentioned that her husband was reading the Book of Mormon and studying online and stuff, but wasn't convinced yet. 

Yesterday, Kacey came to church and introduced herself to us as Kacey _____. We were shocked and Elder Twitchell asked, "You mean, the real life Kacey, the girl we've been texting for the past few weeks?" She said yep. She said that she was done waiting for her husband and was ready to take the lessons. After asking a few followup questions we discovered that she had been doing her research, and had even chatted with missionaries on mormon.org. She mentioned that she joined a Facebook group called Mormon women whose husbands don't go to church. We're not sure what we're going to teach her because she already knows everything there is to know about our faith. She's ready to join. It's incredible.

Many of the other people we've been teaching are progressing rapidly as well. We are very excited for many of the future converts we are teaching. 

Hurrah for Israel!
Elder Stephen Watts

Teaching Families

Hey All!

So, these past two weeks we've been going crazy finding part-member families. Part-member families are tricky because most of them have seen missionaries a lot in the past, so you have to figure out a way to teach them that's different. But, we have had a lot of success nonetheless. One family that we found was a member, Bradley Thompson who went through a divorce a year ago, and was remarried 2 months ago to a non-member. Before we even taught them a lesson, he had talked to her about going to the temple and having an eternal family. Teaching them was a blast. They asked all the right questions and promised to come to church.

It's sometimes more rewarding teaching families (part-member families included) because we get to see the family rally around their faith, and become more united as they choose to follow through with commitments. The gospel of Jesus Christ exists to bless families. I wish I had more neat stories to tell this week.

Love,
Elder Stephen Watts

New Companion

It's been a great week! I love my new companion, Elder Twitchell. I keep trying to speak to him in Spanish and he never understands, but apart from that, it's been great.

We've changed the focus of our work toward part-member families, partly because I knocked thousands of doors with Elder Bushman (maybe even half of the area) and partly because that's the revelation we received. One of the part-member families we found was a Nevadan, born in Vegas, but lived in Tonopah and Reno. He was an active member in Nevada, but a divorce and some ward drama led him to inactivity (and a move to Texas). He hasn't been to church in Texas yet, but told us that he still has a testimony, and would like to go back. He has a wife and 4 kids (3 are of age to be baptized). We taught them about the restoration and invited them to be baptized. They agreed to consider it, then they invited us back for another discussion and dinner. We were pretty excited.

Kenneth is doing well, and came to church for the third straight week. The 101st door family (the Hernandez) are progressing, but slowly. Many more of the people we are teaching are making some sweet progress as well.

Love,
Elder Stephen Watts

Elder Twitchell and Elder Watts

Elders from the two Tyler districts

Self reliance

Hey all!

Anyone remember Kenneth? He has muscular dystrophy, and is bound to a motorized wheelchair. He lives in an apartment by himself, but is about the nicest and smartest man I've met. Anyway, he came to church for the first time 2 weeks ago, just 2 days after we found him wheeling around in a parking lot. Yesterday, he came for the second time, and stayed all three hours (he left after sacrament his first time). Anyway, it just so happened that in Priesthood, someone from the stake was boldly chastising the ward for being the only ward in the stake without a self-reliance program to help people get educations, find jobs, and provide for families. We were a little worried about what Kenneth thought of it, but instead of being discouraged, he offered to help out. He said, "I know I'm not a member of your church yet, but I would love to help people with this self-reliance program." And so we've been in contact with the bishop, and pretty soon our investigator is going to have a calling as ward self-reliance specialist. So if any of you feel like things aren't working out the way they're supposed to in your ward, I encourage you to have a Kenneth attitude, and see what you can do to help out, even if no one asks you to or expects you to.

Tomorrow is transfers, and Elder Bushman is off to his home in Logan, Utah. My new companion is Elder Twitchell. He's a veteran, and has been zone leader for a long time. I'm pretty excited to begin anew out here in East Texas. 

I love you all!
Elder Watts

Door Number 101

On Saturday, as we were leaving the apartment, Elder Bushman looked at me and asked, "how many doors do you think we can knock today?" Counting door knocks was something we'd never done before. I considered that we had about 5 planned lessons to teach, and told him maybe 30 or 40 doors. He said that he wanted to go crazy, so we decided to knock 50 doors (later we learned that 50 doors is about two hours worth of knocking doors). When we got to companionship study, we began with a prayer, and Elder Bushman, being a little sleepy, asked God to help us knock 100 doors. That's when we decided we might just go for it. Anyway, we challenged the zone to go door-knocking crazy with us, with a little deal that whoever knocked the least amount of doors would make everyone breakfast on P-day. 

Anyway, we knocked and knocked and knocked that day. It was sunny, 102°F and humid, but really not too miserable. We had to get to our last lesson at 8:30 and it was about 8:00 when we had 87 doors knocked. So we were literally running from door to door trying to get that 100 number. Through it all we had found just 5 people that were interested, and just 1 maybe 2 that we felt could progress. It was 8:34 when we hit that door number 100 (so we're already a little late to the lesson) and Elder Bushman and I just looked at each other, and in unison, said, "We've got to get one more." So we did. Door number 101 made all the other doors worth it. Inside was a young family: mother, father, and a 3-year-old boy. The mother explained at the door that they don't go to a church because her husband doesn't speak any English, and the Spanish church down the street doesn't have a nursery for kids. We quickly switched to Spanish mode, and impressed her with our skill set. Her husband came running to the door to see if it was really possible that two Americans could speak such good Spanish, and if there really existed a church that was run in both Spanish and English and had a nursery for kids. They invited us to come back and share our message with them.

Thus sayeth the Lord: "for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith." (Ether 12:6) Miracles are often times seen after great sacrifice is made. I believe that in God's perfect planning, of course it's always going to be the last door, the end of the night, after we've been tempted to give up and we still push through, that we can see the greatest miracles. I encourage you all to keep on going throughout all of the hard times in your lives, past the point of wanting to quit, until you can rest in the mercies of Him who is always in control.

Love,
Elder Stephen Watts

Rolling down the highway

So, one cool experience we had this week was finding a guy named Kenneth. We found him rolling around in a motorized wheelchair outside his apartment. He was coming home from the store or something like that, and he let us come in and teach him a little. He lives like a quarter mile from the church, but the road he'd have to take to get there is a highway and there's a bend that the cars come flying around. He said he'd go, but was nervous to take his wheelchair down that highway. We offered to walk over along side him so we'd be more visible for the cars and he loved that idea. His exact words were "wow, I'm impressed with you guys." Anyway, he rolled into church and could only stay for the sacrament, but he loved it! He is a genius, but has muscular dystrophy that binds him to the chair. He also read 10 chapters of Nephi in between Thursday when we found him, and Sunday when he came to church.

Sorry for the short weekly, I love y'all,
Elder Stephen Watts

P-day hike with some of the zone