Evelyn got baptized!

 Hey everyone! Sorry I don't have much time at all for an email. Evelyn got baptized! She was so happy and it was so cool to see true joy for following Christ. I was able to confirm her and that was an incredible opportunity. Definitely one of the most spiritual moments of my life.

    We faced a lot of rejection this week haha. Elder Checketts and I are grinding, tons of time in the streets but it was rough, no one was willing to talk and it was a struggle to find new people. But it is all okay, there's a scripture in Acts 5:41, Peter and John just got beaten and they were "...rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name." So that got me through haha.

    Sorry for the incredibly short email, I love yall! 

Love, Elder Ryan

Texas Talkers

 Hey yall! We had a pretty solid week.

    I went on an exchange and I got to go to the YSA area on Texas Tech. It was a blast. We did some contacting on campus and it's so fun. There are people literally everywhere we probably talked to hundreds of people in under an hour. We gave out 15 plus copies of the Book of mormon, it was a blast.

    We taught Evalynn, and went over the baptismal interview questions with her. She's so excited to be baptized! 

    We taught a lot of member lessons this week and it's going really well. They're starting to get real excited about missionary work and they're talking to their friends and inviting them to church. Only problem is all of our members are Texas Talkers and never shut their mouths so its a treat to try and get in and out quick.

    We had a really cool lesson with some of our friends who struggle with The Word of Wisdom. They want to convert but just can't get over their addictions. It's a long process, but they're SO willing to go down it. Pray for Dakota and Red!

    This week has been difficult, because with whitewashing we don't know anyone. Also this area hasn't been taken care of so we feel as if we're restarting. But it's okay because we know the Lord is helping us. My goal is to "apply the Atonement" in every part of my life as a missionary and it's blessed me so much. Every contact I make, every conversation and every lesson, even all my thoughts I'm trying to center them on The Atonement. It's been amazing to see the spiritual change this past week. I challenge yall to do the same!

Love, Elder Ryan

New Area, Same Comp

Okay wow. Such a miracle filled week. Whitewashing is kind of difficult, because we have no idea what's going on. But the Lord blessed us for sure. So I'm back with old comp Elder Checketts, and we hit the ground running. 

 We taught one of the girls who is on date here and it was great. She's so ready. We also had a miracle and were able to put our friend Travis on date. We had the prompting to invite his member friend so we did, and it was perfect because he knew him and we did. But we felt like talking about baptism. So we did, and his friend testified to Travis that he was ready. He has to work on a few things, but he's willing and ready! So his date is in July! 

 Our friend Evalynn, who is on date for May 21, is so cute and so ready. She's 10 haha. Her mom is not a member though but she comes with her to church every week. She told us this week she knows the book of mormon is true, and our church. But she is waiting to make the decision on her own accord. So pray for the Earls! 

 We did a ton of street contacting this week and had tons of success. We met this guy who said he had been praying for God to guide him, then he met us that day! He was like this has to be a sign and we were like heck yeah it is! We also met a few other people that were miracles. A ton of people who we were able to share lessons with and they want us back. It's so awesome to see miracles daily! 

 Well I love y'all! Sorry this is a short email, but I wanna leave y'all with one thing. We've been inviting the whole zone to focus everything they do on the Atonement of Jesus Christ. It is the center of who we are and why we're here. As you focus on that, you'll have greater purpose and peace. I challenge yall to read "The Very Root of Christian Doctrine" byu devotional. It's so good. I love y'all! 

 Love, Elder Ryan

Transfers

Hey everyone! Transfers this week and it is CRAZY! I'm going to be a Zone Leader with my old comp Elder Checketts, and we're whitewashing a new area. I love Elder Checketts so it'll be great, I'm a little stressed but it'll go well!

   So honestly, for my last week, it was kind of a bummer. A lot of our friends dropped us, and we didn't have too great success. We did find 4 new people, and they have a lot of potential!

   We had a cool lesson with Edith, Sandra and Anita about The tree of life, and it's seriously such a cool story. If you havent studied up on it in awhile, I would highly recommend it. Its such a great reminder about EVERYTHING we will face in life and how to get through it. The mist of darkness falls on all of us, but we all have the right to cling to the Iron Rod, so we can make it and partake of the Atonement and goodness of Christ. 

  We found a lady named Mary who's nuts haha. She loves Jesus and the Bible, but she hates the book of mormon because "the Bible doesn't talk about it." We met a few other Baptists this week who thought the same thing. We showed them so many scriptures but they had a different meaning for everyone so really it was all useless. Definitely strengthened my testimony because they made no sense. 

 But there were some miracles. So about 2 months ago, I was shopping in Walmart on Pday. I had the prompting to start talking to a lady and I did, and she ended up being a member who lives on the border of Oklahoma and Texas. We just had a normal conversation, and she said her branch meets so far away so I invited her to our branch without thinking. Anyways, she has brought her whole family the past two weeks. She heard I was leaving and pulled me aside after sacrament, and told me that her and her husband were pretty inactive and thinking about kind of being done. But then when I reached out to them they decided to start coming back and they're ready to be active again!

   The other cool but sad goodbye was with a nonactive member named JW, and his nonmember fiancee Nydia. When we went to say goodbye, JW opened to me and Elder Jensen about his relationship problems with Nydia, and how he's ready to drop everything in his life to focus on bettering his life. He told me that it was because we kept on coming over and would just have fun with them and shared a message at the end. It showed him that you can still follow God and sacrifice certain things, but have more joy and fun in your life. So now he's trying to come back to church, and he made me promise I'd come back to Dalhart. So remember to always be yourself, and show the joy of the gospel! 

   Anyways, that was the highlights of the week! I'm pumped to go Lubbock! Theres a Costa Vida so that's a plus, and Ibackground-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: "Segoe UI", "Segoe UI Web (West European)", "Segoe UI", -apple-system, "system-ui", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: start; vertical-align: baseline;">   Love, Elder Ryan