New Transfer!

 This week was transfers! It was super hard to say goodbye to Elder Draper and Elder Nordquist. But my new comp is great and it'll be a good transfer!

    It was a really busy week with meetings and helping a lot of the missionaries in the zone get settled in, but we still managed to get some good work in.

    We had a really good lesson with the Molers. They've come to church twice now, and it's been the first times that they've come since church has been changed to 2 hours. They've been reading The Book of Mormon as a family and reading the picture book version with Mckenzie! We haven't set a date for Mckenzie, but she loves primary and wants to be baptized!

    We had a lesson with a new person named Silvia this week! It was a really good lesson, but also tough because I found out I'm allergic to her cat and it sat on my lap the entire lesson. So that was miserable. But other than that, she had some awesome questions. A few days before we gave her older son a Book of Mormon and left him with 3 Nephi 11 to read, and he read it and told her that he loved what he read. So she was super excited to get her own copy of The Book of Mormon and start reading it!

    We had a really sweet lesson with our recent convert Melvyn. He's felt really overwhelmed recently. And he talked about how he's too afraid to ask God for help. We had a super tender lesson about God's love and his desire to help us, and afterwards Melvyn said a prayer with us. He broke down in tears and literally begged for God to help him, it was such a sweet experience. The spirit was so strong and he felt so much of God's love!

    Not too much else to report for this week, love yall and I'll talk to ya next week!

Love, Elder Ryan

Tracting

    This last week was a super good week! We found a lot of people to teach from tracting, and we had some overall awesome spiritual experiences. We found out this week that Elder Nordquist and Elder Draper will be leaving, and I'm staying and getting Elder Allphin! I'm so sad to have a change, but I'm also excited to work with Elder Allphin.

    One of the spiritual experiences this week came from a priesthood blessing. An inactive family in the ward gave us a call, and asked us to come give a blessing to their 4 year old daughter Roselee. She is blind in her left eye, and she was going to Oklahoma City in a few days to have a surgery that would hopefully help her see better. I was lucky enough to be able to give the blessing, and in it we blessed her that her eyesight would be totally restored and she would be healed with a fast recovery. When we said that, she yelled during the blessing "I'm gonna be okay!" Later in the week after her surgery, we got a text from the member. Roselee came out of surgery saying to the doctors and everyone around that "my glasses see better." She can now see perfectly! 

    In our daily planning session one morning we felt prompted to stop by a non active member, named Jocelyn. We've never been able to get contact with her. But we stopped by at night and she answered and let us in! We sat down in the living room with her and her husband, who isn't a member. We got to know them a bit, and then we shared 3 Nephi 11 from The Book of Mormon with them. We talked about ways to have one on one experiences with the Savior in our everyday lives, and then we challenged them to read the rest of it. They said they would! As we left, Jocelyn grabbed us by the hand and thanked us for coming over. She started to cry and said it's funny that we came over today, because something very challenging happened and she needed support. It's so cool to see how much God cares about His children!

    While we were tracting this week, we were able to find 3 new people and teach them all right on their doorstep. We shared with them The Book of Mormon, and we've been trying to share 3 Nephi 11 with them. That account is so powerful, and is such an amazing testimony of Christ's love for each and every one of us. It's awesome to see a person feel the spirit when we explain it and read some of it to them. If you havent read it in awhile I challenge yall to read it! Love yall!

Love, Elder Ryan

The return to Dalhart

 Hello everyone! This week was a pretty good week! I went to my old area up in Dalhart!!

    Going back up to Dalhart was a really cool experience. I wasn't able to reconnect with any old members, but I was able to use my spanish a ton which was super nice. The two elders I was with didn't really speak Spanish, and we taught 7 lessons in Spanish! It was a super big blessing to be able to practice that.

    The other week we were looking through our records and saw that a new member family had moved in named the Molers. We knocked and their door, they answered and told us they had actually been there for a year but just barely had their records move over. 

    They invited us over for dinner this week, and then we shared a message with them. We opened up The Book of Mormon and read out of 3 Nephi 11. The spirit was insanely powerful as we talked about the Savior's visit to the Nephites. We talked about how today, we are still invited to come unto the Savior and feel the marks in his hands, feet and side. As we did, they started telling us that they haven't been to church in years but they know they need to come back. They also told us their daughter, Mckenzie, is 9 and they want us to get her baptized! It was such a cool experience, just seeing how the spirit of Christ can change hearts.

    Also the other week we went to a members home, the Kilgore's, and we shared a spiritual message. There were two people there who we didn't recognize, and honestly it was kinda awkward, so we left feeling uncomfortable haha. Later we talked to Brother Kilgore, and he said those two people were his wife's brother and his girlfriend. His wife's brother is a member, the girlfriend isn't. He said that after we left they asked so many questions about us and The Book of Mormon, so he gave them one and they're reading it together!

    So we went back over to their home, and read the account where Alma the Younger heals Zeezrom. It was a powerful discussion about the power of Faith in Jesus Christ, and the power He has to heal and strengthen us. They both said that they've loved reading the book of mormon together and are going to keep at it! So please pray for them! Love yall!

Love, Elder Ryan

Zone Conference & Lubbock

  This was an awesome week! We had Zone Conference and I went back down to Lubbock to my old area which is a blast. I'll talk about that a little later.

    On Tuesday we had a fantastic lesson with the Von Bose family. The dad is a member but he hasn't been active since he was 19, he's maybe 40 or so now. His wife is not a member, and she grew up in a Baptist church. Missionaries have tried to get in with them for awhile but haven't had much success, so we were stoked when we finally got something set up with them. We went in and talked for a bit and got to know them and eventually we found that this is the mom's second marriage, and she had a 5 year old girl who passed awY in a car accident a few years earlier. She is still really heartbroken, and she feels like no one has the answers to what will happen to her little girl, if she will get to raise her one day, and questions like those. 

    It was a really sad situation, but as we talked with her, we spoke about the Resurrection of Christ and the hope that comes through Him and His Atonement. We started to ask about her personal relationship with God and she hasn't prayed in years, and then she practically begged us to help her grow closer to God and Jesus Christ and fix the relationship. SO COOL!! Please pray for Ashley!

    On Friday I went down to Lubbock for MLC and it was super great. We decided as a mission that we would read the Book of Mormon from cover to cover by June 15th. President Child has made some incredible promises, including that every area would baptize if we do it!

    A huge lesson I learned this week was the importance of Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. With our friend Ashley having lots of questions about the Millennium and whether or not she could raise her daughter and how that would work, I started digging looking for something that would help her. What I learned was that we don't have all the answers to questions in life, but what we do have is our Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and His Atonement. We may not have all the answers, but I know that all things will be made fair through the Atonement of Jesus Christ! Love yall!

Love, Elder Ryan