Elder Bryson Ryan -Texas Lubbock Mission: Elk and Mountains

Hey everyone! Sorry I always get these out late I just hate writing on P-Day but anyway. This week was a solid week...not too much happened but also no near death experiences so we like that. Also this week I saw some Elk! So for those who know me ya know I was loving it and losing my mind.

So Elder Alvey and I are SMS (Social Media Specialist) missionaries and long story short our mission is SO TERRIBLE at social media and contacting our referrals that we get from social media. In fact so terrible that church cut our missions social media budget hahaha. So that means we're failing miserably sooo we spent a lot of this week studying, researching, and preparing presentations to train our whole mission and we'll start doing that this next week so hopefully that goes well.

This week we met a family who has like 900 hundred people living in their house and their grandma went to the hospital with a blood issue, I'm not sure exactly what but we were able to go visit her in the hospital and that was awesome! Also turns out she is a member! She was baptized a long time ago so now were gonna try to reactivate her and start teach her whole huge family!

Oh so we went skate-contacting and we rode by this huge church that was having a festival. They invited us over and fed us and we left and I fell so freaking hard on my skateboard but hey we're still alive.

Oh turns out I'm a master painter because a lady in our ward asked us to repaint a picture of Jesus she had on a rock and I have to say I killed it.

This week in town was the Green Chile Cheese festival and there wasn't green Chile or cheese so I don't know why it was there but it was a big party and we got to contact a lot of people haha. We didn't have too much luck and then this week we had a lot of people interested but we couldn't get anyone to let us come back and then even a few people said they would come to church on Sunday. So we called and texted all Sunday morning and they still said yes I'll be there but no one ended up coming. Thats alright though just gotta keep planting seeds and trying haha.

So PDay was SO SICK we drove out to a place called Ruidoso and it's kinda like a mini Jackson Hole. It actually has mountains and it's green which was a nice change of scenery from Roswell. We also saw tons of elk and an awesome Bull Elk so highlight of the week right there.

So one thing I was thinking a lot about this week was Christ's infinite love for all of us, and specifically his Atonement. Because of his love for all of us, he performed the Atonement. Now a cool thing we were talking about this week was the Atonement is not a THING, it's something that Christ DID. He did it so that he CAN forgive us. It's important because when we feel that forgiveness, it's not the atonement we're feeling. We're feeling Christ forgiving us through his love and mercy. And he can only do that BECAUSE of the atonement which he suffered. I loved thinking about it like this because all my life I've thought about it as the Atonement, and forgiveness of our sins. But thinking of it this way makes it a way more personal experience, and brings Christ to the center of it. It makes our relationship with Christ way more personal.

Sorry not too much happened this week! Love you all! Talk to ya next week!

Love, Elder Ryan