Loving Odessa!

Hello everyone! Sorry again, but I missed last week so this email is covering 2 weeks now. This is my second transfer in Odessa, and I've been with Elder Beesley for two weeks now. We've been loving it! 

   I'll give an update on our friend Jaylon. So she hasn't been answering us as of late. She was so prepared and so many miracles happened to have us find her. She was on date for baptism, and then she would randomly not speak to us for weeks at a time. We stopped by her door 3 times a day for the last 3 weeks to try and get her ready for her baptism. She's answered sometimes and told us she still wants to be baptized, but she just dropped us this morning! So sad. She needs the gospel so bad. Everyone pray for her!

   Another update on our friend Patrick, he's planning on getting baptized June 10th. He's been talking to us but he hasn't been able to meet and he goes out of town every weekend so he hasn't come to church in 4 weeks. We haven't met with him in awhile, and he's still working to overcome a lot of his addictions. Please pray for him that he can meet with us and overcome his stuff.

   Our friend Cornelious is doing super good. We've had a couple of incredible lessons with him, and lately we taught him about The Restoration. The spirit was so strong, and it testifies to me everytime of how true this gospel is. He's been reading The Book of Mormon daily. The main issue is he's only 28, but he is always on an oxygen machine because of some lung issues he has. So it is really hard to get him to come to church, but we're working through it and we'll figure it out. 

   One of the members here, Brother Williams, invited his good friend Jessie to church. Jessie is really struggling with an alcohol addiction. It's been going for 12 years and he can't stop by himself. He's lost his job, and his wife and 5 kids over it. We gave him an addiction recovery pamphlet and had an awesome talk about how through repenting and the gospel and the addiction recovery class, he can rely on Jesus Christ's willpower instead of his own. It was such a powerful conversation with him.

   It's overall been a great two weeks, Elder Beesley is super willing to work as hard as he can, so we've been walking everywhere and going at it. We've been able to talk to a ton of people, and we have lots of potentials to teach right now.

   We meet weekly with a member named Barney Barnes haha, he's 65 years old and we're working on getting him to the temple. We read 3 Nephi 17 with him, and we learned that our friend Barney needs a personal relationship with Jesus. It became super clear that he only saw Jesus as an unpersonable Savior, someone he didn't connect with, even though he knew he saved Him.

   It made me realize that we can know Jesus is our Savior and Redeemer, but not have a personal relationship with him. Jesus invites us all the time to "learn of Him" because as we learn how Jesus is kind, loving, forgiving, compassionate, etc. we grow to truly love him and trust him and rely on him. So do what you can this week to develop a relationship with Jesus! Love yall!

Love, Elder Ryan