Falling in Love with Jesus Christ

So this week I went to Roswell for Zone Conference and then we had one here in Lubbock. Roswell was awesome because I got to visit my friend Margaret that I found and taught when I was there. It was super cool! We read 3 Nephi 11 with her and it was an awesome experience.

    We also had some great lessons with our friend Jordan. She was baptized in another church less than a month ago. Just a day before we met her she was actually praying and asking God to guide her to a new community. Then we ran into her! We had a two really good lessons about priesthood authority and why we're the true church. Afterwards, she called our member Olivia and asked her an awesome question. She explained that her grandma was baptized but not with authority, and she has since passed away. What happened to her? So our member was able to explain The Spirit World and Temples and Jordan absolutely loved it. The gospel is so perfect and truly for everyone. Jordan is now wanting to be baptized!

    I was able to give a few priesthood blessings this week which is such a privilege and blessing. One of them was to a very inactive member named Ross. He approached us and explained that he hasn't been in a few years, but he and his girlfriend want to come to church. He said he knows they need to come to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It was so cool that God guided us to him, and that he was so open and ready to come back.

    Sacrament meeting was a huge miracle this last week. We've been working really hard to get our members to help us in the work. On Sunday, we had 8 nonmembers join us, and only three of them were from us missionaries! One of them was our friend Jordan too. But the members are starting to bring their friends, and it's super awesome to see.

    I wanted to end this email by talking about an idea that's been running across my mind. It's about the need to Fall in love with Jesus Christ. It sounds weird at first, but if you're in love with Christ then every thing you do, think or say will be something that brings you closer to Him. The purpose of our life would be to simply improve our relationship with him everyday! So I wanna change yall to find what you need to do to Fall in love with Jesus! Love yall!

Love, Elder Ryan

Trust in God!

Hey yall! This week was a good week. We taught a lot of lessons and found some awesome people. We also had two zone conferences this week. I'll just focus on some of the highlights! 
  We had a Zone Conference down in Odessa and it went really well! Afterwards I went on an exchange with Elder Griggs. I learned an awesome lesson about just letting God's will happen, and how He knows better than I. We had 3 lessons planned that night, and we left kind of late so we were gonna be late for the first one. So we called and pushed it back to after dinner. Then, one of our other lessons called and canceled. We were bummed but we still had 2 lessons after our dinner appointment. Well, our dinner appointment ran so late that we had to cancel one of the lessons, and then the other lesson texted us and said he couldn't make it. 
  I was super super frustrated. I was angry we left late, I was angry that the dinner appointment went long and it was all just frustrating. We decided to go contacting at Texas Tech even though it was dark and didn't make much sense. Well, we went and we found 4 people in under an hour! It was truly a huge miracle. Their names are Jordan, JJ, Jehu, Ross and his girlfriend. Ross is a really inactive member and his girlfriend isn't a member. They came up to us and asked to meet! 
  Later that night, we also were able to teach a pop up lesson to Bryan, one of our really struggling members. We talked about the covenant path, and the blessings of being yoked to Christ. It was much needed for him and for us. I learned through this whole night that God has a plan. God knew our lessons would cancel, and he knew everything that would happen. He needed us elsewhere and had something else in store. Remember to trust in His plan! 
  Our friend Caden is doing good, we had a good lesson about the blessings of being in the fold of God and how to enter His fold. He knows he needs to be baptized, but the desire isn't truly there yet. Pray for him!
  Well those were the main highlights of the week! Love yall! Talk to ya next week!

Love, Elder Ryan 

Lions

 Hello!! Some highlights this week were I went back to Amarillo on exchanges, and I got to hang out with some lions and chimpanzees again. We also found some cool new people at Tech!

    This week was really good. We've been working a lot with our recent convert Olivia and her friend Whitney. They're so awesome. We were able to go to the temple and do baptisms for the dead with them this weekend and it was so cool! They both has family names to be baptized for which was even more special.

    Had a cool experience with our friend Caden. He's really smart, so he understands what we teach but he's missing the spirit aspect. We taught from 3 Nephi 11 where the Nephites hear the voice 3 times but only understand it the last time because they "open their ears and look steadfastly toward heaven." He was able to understand the importance of our efforts in listening to the spirit and it was super cool!

    We had a way cool miracle at Sacrament meeting. Our friend Caden was there again, and he's doing so good. He wants to be baptized!! He told us he's shooting for end of December to beginning of January, but he's so ready so hopefully we can move it up. Anyway, during sacrament he got up and left. After about 5 minutes, Elder MacDougall and I had the thought to go check on him. When we went into the hall, there were two YSA age people named G and Madeleine sitting there. We talked to them and they felt like they should attend church and they picked a random one and ended up at ours!! Seriously so cool how the Lord will put people in our path at all times if we listen to the spirit.

    We found a new girl named Nia, who is really cool! She didn't love her other church because she didn't feel welcome. She's excited to look more into our church because she wants a new "church home." 

    There is a really inactive member in our ward named Andrew. He hasn't been the whole almost 6 months I've been here. The other day I had a random thought to call him, so we did and he actually answered and set up time to meet which is super rare. When we met he said that a week ago he was praying to God to help guide him, because he felt depressed and alone. Then we called, and he said he was gonna ignore it per usual haha, but he remembered his prayer. We had an amazing lesson with him. He also came to sacrament on Sunday!!

    The lesson was all about the grace of Jesus Christ, and his ability to forgive us OVER AND OVER,  and his power to heal us. Remember at all times that Christ suffered completely alone in the Garden of Gethsemane, and he bore the cross by himself so that when we go through our Gethsemanes, and when we bare our own cross, we DO NOT do it alone. 

3 Nephi 9:13-14 "O all ye that are spared because ye were more righteous than they, will ye not now return unto me, and repent of your sins, and be converted, that I may heal you?

    Yea, verily I say unto you, if ye will come unto me ye shall have eternal life. Behold, mine arm of mercy is extended towards you, and whosoever will come, him will I receive; and blessed are those who come unto me."

Love yall!

Happy Halloween y'all!

 Happy Halloween yall! Hope everything is going good

    This last week was transfers week! So we got them all planned out and then on Monday we welcomed a bunch of new missionaries into the mission. It was pouring rain but we had cool tender mercies that day. We always take the new missionaries on Texas Tech campus for an hour or so and let them try and contact people. It was raining so Elder MacDougall and I said a prayer so that we could do what God wanted us to do, and we felt to just keep the schedule like normal. So we did and when we were driving to the campus with the new missionaries it was pouring rain. I started to think okay I don't know if we'll be able to contact people at Texas Tech, but I remembered that we were prompted to just go forward. So we did and the second we went on the campus with the new missionaries the rain stopped! And it didn't rain for the hour we were there, but about 10 minutes after it started raining again. Such a cool miracle!!

    Our friend Caden is doing pretty good. We had a really great lesson about Following the prophet and the blessings of it. He reads The Book of Mormon and prays and comes to church, his issue is he just doesn't feel the importance yet. He doesn't notice or feel the spirit. He likes our church but we're working on the actual conversion, feeling the Holy Ghost. So please pray for Caden that it will happen!

    We met a cool guy named Luca at Texas Tech. He's from Germany and he's here on a track scholarship. He's apparently unreal at high jump so that's pretty cool. He told us he's been looking for more meaning in his life, it was so cool to be guided to him that day.

    We had an awesome lesson with our friend Christopher, and the family he's staying with. They all decided to sit in and we had a great discussion about prayer, the book of mormon and the gospel of Jesus Christ. They all really really liked it, and the daughter Destiny is really wanting to learn more!

    It's been a cool week! The Lord truly blesses us with so many miracles, we just have to look for them! Love yall!

Love, Elder Ryan