Sup tweakers
The main story I’m going to share in this email will literally blow y’alls mind so be mentally prepared. If you don’t have a lot of time just go read that part. It will be under “Read This”. Seriously, read it. Haha.
But this week was freaking nutso. Missionary life is insane. I’ve never been so busy in my life (except for when I was bowling every day after school my senior year). This week we invited a ton people to be baptized and we are finding like crazy too. Also got a handful of people on date and another handful that is super close. It’s weird how I’m literally seeing and hearing miracles that I didn’t even think were possible and I’m not even surprised by any of them. I thought I would be, but I’m really not. The reason I’m not surprised is because this gospel is true, and because “...faith cometh not by signs, but signs follow those that believe.” (D&C 84:65-73). I believed first, and now I’m seeing signs, and yea they’re awesome, but they aren’t where my testimony got started. So yea for this email I’m just going to talk about a couple people we’ve met and some dope stuff. If you don’t have time, at least go read about “Read This”. Okay let’s do this baby!
0. Short funny things.
1. Teaching Heaven
2. Walmart Finding
3. El trabajo en Mexico
4. Read This
0. Short funny things.
--This was a HUGE rip. I tried to send a mass text to everybody we’re teaching, but instead of sending the mass text individually, I sent it in a group chat. I literally made a group chat with everybody we’re teaching to see how they were doing. It was awful! The people we’re teaching who don’t even know each other literally starting fighting in the group chat because nobody knew what was going on and I was watching all the texts come in like “no no no no noNOOOoOOoOOO!”. Anyways so I had to call everybody we’re teaching individually and just be like “hey sorry I accidentally added you in a group chat with a ton of other people. Just ignore it”. Except the worst part is that somehow I added a wrong number in there, so in addition to everyone we’re teaching, some 12 year old kid was being a dofus and wouldn’t stop spamming the chat. So yea that was a rip! But I called everyone we’re teaching and I don’t think any of them are gonna drop us.
--We were in a video call lesson and one of the mom’s older kids who’s probably like 17 looked at us and said to his mom “man look at these losers!”. We’re not sure what he was trynna accomplish with that statement but me and Elder Powell continued to just smile at the camera like 
--In another zoom lesson, there was a super bad echo. Every time I said something it would repeat back right away. I messed around with the phone and stuff for a bit, and thought I fixed it. I then said “I think the echo is gone”. About 5 seconds later at a super loud and obnoxious volume came my echo saying “I think the echo is gone”. It was super funny haha
1. Teaching Heaven
To be brief, we found this lady a couple weeks ago on a walk, so we went by to visit her. We’ve started teaching her, and then started teaching her entire apartment complex. It’s a really sketchy area and there’s only 5 people in the complex, but still it’s super awesome. We gave one of the couples in the complex a priesthood blessing to the husband who is really sick, and since then, his wife said he’s actually starting to speak which is amazing, and he’s just feeling so much better. It’s amazing what the priesthood can do. Another guy in the complex I talked about last week is a really awesome dude who is struggling with the word of wisdom. We stopped by to check on him the other day, and he told us to come back the next day at 4:20. Then he looked at us and smiled and said “get it?”. We were just like “okay dude whatever” haha. But, I am a man of my word, so at exactly 4:20 the next day, we knocked on his door. He was really impressed with our commitment and wanted to talk more about the gospel but he had been breaking the word of wisdom right when we had knocked so he wasn’t really mentally there. But we had a quick little discussion with him and he asked if we could pray together before we left. He wanted to hold hands with us, but I quite frankly wasn’t about to do that haha, so we all stood in a circle and had our elbows all touching for the prayer. It was pretty legendary. But anyways, this little apartment complex is teaching paradise. As a missionary I have found that finding through other people is the most effective thing.
2. Walmart Finding
Not sure what it is, but we have been finding a TON of people at walmart! Probably because I’m always smiling and waving at people while we’re in there and conversation’s just happen. Our ward mission leader actually works at walmart, and I think he’s been a little taken aback at the number of his fellow employees that have Books of Mormon. But basically we are talking to a ton of walmart workers and it’s just fantastic. It has been incredibly difficult for me as a missionary to know who to talk to. They tell us to “talk to everyone!!” and I’m like “okay well that’s not possible”. We’ll be at walmart or at a stop light and I feel like in every instance I need to whip out a Book of Mormon and go up and just prophesy/convert. So it’s been really difficult for me. It got to the point where I was just broken. Since I can’t talk to everyone, for a period of time I was in a bad cycle of self-loathing for not being better. I’d walk past somebody at walmart and just feel like a total failure for not stopping them and asking them if they want to hear about Jesus Christ. I would do it occasionally, but the fact that I couldn’t always do it made me feel kind of worthless.
Then, I had a spurr of revelation that I think God shoved into my head. Instead of living by the principle of “talking to everyone”, I have rewired my mindset to instead, “connect with everyone”. This has brought so much more success. I’ve realized that as a missionary, the sad reality is that not everybody is going to be influenced by a sit down lesson where we teach them the gospel. But, I can ensure that as many people as possible will be impacted by the gospel that I’m carrying in my eyes. So, I don’t stop every person I see and say “yo here’s the gospel”. Instead, I connect with everyone. I say hi to literally everyone, I smile (even with the mask), wave, ask people how they’re doing, etc.. This has brought so much success! I focus on just building a relationship with people and connecting with them first, and naturally, the conversation goes to the gospel. So basically what I do is yea I ask people how they’re doin and stuff. Then I whip out the gospel and it is so natural. We’ve established a relationship, and then I’m like “yo hey so we’re missionaries sharing messages of peace and hope. Can we share this message with you real quick?”. They are always down. We share a 5 minute restoration, give them a Book of Mormon which we always have handy, and then BAM, they’re baptized! Jk not that quick but it’s good either way. So basically we taught a couple walmart people and one of them is progressing super well. We played pool with him and his GF and got wrecked by him. At the end of the pool stuff we shared a spiritual message. I also talked to them about my family and was like “yea I have 11 siblings”. They looked a little shocked, so to better justify the amount of kids I was like “yea my dads a polygamist”. They looked pretty horrified and suuuuper uncomfortable for a sec but then I was like “jk” so it’s all good. I got a good kick out of that. But yea they’re solid. After we played pool we taught the restoration and gave a BOM to another really awesome couple playing pool. So yea connecting with everybody is working mighty miracles!
3. El trabajo en Mexico
Another really cool miracle is Shelina and her kids! They were gonna get baptized this week but we’re pushing it back again to further develop their testimonies. But it’s all good because they are so dang elect and I know they will be some of my favorite people I’ll meet on my mission. Anyways, a month or two ago Shelina’s daughter who’s 10 said that when she was younger she used to hear a voice help her with stuff but now she doesn’t hear the voice and she wanted to know if God still loved her. Anyways, I was like (in spanish obviously) “yea fosho he loves you!” and I promised her that she’d hear the voice again. Well, flash forward, during one of our lessons this week Shelina and her son both felt ready for baptism but the same daughter still had doubts about it. I told her to pray about it and promised her she’d get the answer. Well, she did it! Let’s go! She prayed if she should be baptized and she said she heard the voice come back and tell her she should do it. Heck yea baby! Crazy miracle, but honestly I wasn’t even surprised. I knew she would get an answer. Everybody gets an answer who sincerely asks, and I knew she would ask sincerely.
4. Read this
Okay y’all, this story is insane. So freaking awesome! You need to read this. I’ll try to sum it up as best I can.
So, yesterday was church. Me and Elder Powell had BIG plans! We had so many tweakers that wanted to come to church (and some non-tweakers). We spent the entire morning working on getting everybody to church. We coordinated rides for everybody. Guess what? NOBODY CAME. I was distraught. It was a huge rip. We did get one lady to join the zoom meeting on her phone, but when we got to the church we saw that she was no longer on. I was outraged! We were so desperate haha that we drove back to her house to figure out what happened. Well we were able to get her online again, so we made our way back to church. On the street to get to our church, there’s kind of a little bridge type thing next to this lake which is totally frozen. This is where the story takes off. Keep reading.
So, were driving to the church right next to this lake/bridge. I look over, and I see this person with an red hoodie walking. I wasn’t driving, so I was like “yo Elder Powell should we invite this youngin to church?”. Elder Powell is usually somewhat hesitant about encouraging my fascination for talking to tweakers off of the side of the road, but this time he didn’t hesitate. He pulled the car over right next to the guy, and was like “yo wanna come to church?”. The person looked at us. It was a kid, 19 years old, who looked really stressed out, but when Elder Powell invited him to church, he lit up! He started to make his way to get in the back of the car, but it’s a mission rule that we can’t give anybody rides. So he was about to get in and Elder Powell was like “actually sorry we can’t give people rides”. The kid started to go absolutely hysterical. He walked away, bawling his eyes out, crying hysterically. It all happened so fast. We couldn’t just leave the car there in the middle of the road, but I wasn’t about to just leave this dude. I looked at Elder Powell and said, “you drive next to us, I’ll go talk to him”. I hopped out of the car and sprinted towards the kid, who was still crying hysterically. By the time I got to him he was still totally broken. I’m gonna try to recount our conversation as best as I can remember. So I put my arm around him and was like
“hey hey man! It’s all good! It’s gonna be alright! Don’t cry!”
He continued just bawling. He looked at me and I could tell this man was lost. He was totally broken. His voice broken and full of tears he said
“I’m lost! I don’t live here! My friend left me here! I live 2000 miles away. I’ve been homeless for two days. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
He kept going on for a little bit and I just kept my arm around him and kept telling him things were gonna be okay but he was really stressed. I was like
“It’s all good man! I’m far from home too. I don’t live here. We can help each other out”.
Then this is where it got crazy too haha. He was like
“Man I was about to commit suicide and jump into that lake. I’m so scared. I don’t know what I’m gonna do. I’m going to die…” and so forth.
It’s so cool how the gospel works. I could tell this precious soul was broken and being attacked by the powers of the adversary, but as a worthy priesthood holder, I was ready to help! I knew things were going to be okay. He was scared, but I knew God had a plan. I was like like
“It’s all good man. You’re gonna be okay. Me and my friend here are missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and we are here to help you”
Just then Elder Powell wanted to get in on the action haha so he parked the car on the side of the road and came over to walk with us. Our friend was still crying super loudly, but we were able to calm him down. I was like
“We’re gonna go to church and it’s all gonna work out. You gotta stop crying though. We’ll talk to the bishop and figure out how to help. My name is Elder Wride and this is my companion Elder Powell”. He told us his name was Matthew.
Anyways, so we kept walking till we got to the church. By that point the meeting had already been going for like 10-15 minutes, but it was fast and testimony meeting so it was all good. Me, Elder Powell, and Matthew went and sat in the very back. Since we had a guest, I felt like I had to bear my testimony, which I did. I testified of the plan of salvation, the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith, and the divinity of God’s plan. I talked about how God puts us exactly where we need to be to help those that are in need. As I was saying this, I could see Matthew’s eyes light up. After my testimony, I sat next to him and asked how he felt. He whispered to me “I feel alive”.
After the meeting, we knew we had to get this good soul to the bishop to figure out where he was gonna live. While we waited for the bishop to get out of his other meetings we taught Matthew the restoration, the plan of salvation, and read from the Book of Mormon. We invited him to be baptized. It was dope. The spirit was tan fuerte.
After that we talked with bishop. Bishop is used to people trying to just use the church to avoid self reliance so he was quite hesitant to help. He tried to get Matthew a bus ticket to go back to his home in Corpus Christi Texas, but Matthew has no ID whatsoever, and you need an ID to ride the bus. So, to sum up our meeting with bishop, the three of us left the church with still nowhere for Matthew to stay, so we just started to walk back to where we had parked the car. Matthew had stopped crying at this point, and started to tell us more about his story of how he got here. Basically him and his friend left Texas to go “find God”, but they got in a fight because his friend wanted to “get high” but Matthew didn’t, and they fought and his friend kicked him out and left him on the streets of of Paris. He had been here two days, with nowhere to go and nowhere to live. He called the cops last night and they were able to get him a night at a hotel, but at the point we found him he still had nowhere to live. He was trying to find help at a possible church, but was really distraught. He was walking past the lake and was greatly considering suicide and throw himself in there, when just then me and Elder Powell pulled over and were like “yo wanna go to church?”.
If that ain’t a miracle, I don’t know what is. Even if I never saw Matthew again, the fact that we were right there to keep him from possibly ending his life was a miracle. He may not have done it with or without us, but God put us there right at the exact moment.
So we were walking to our car, still without a place for Matthew to stay. We were walking by a different christian church when I had the feeling to go and ask them for help. Elder Powell was hesitant, but upon reflecting on D&C 66:6 (inasmuch as ye can send, send) I sent it anyways. We walked up to the church and told Matthew to go inside and ask for help. We wanted to go with him but didn’t want this christian church to think we were intruding (and all christian churches hate us...because we have authority to preach the gospel). So Matthew went in, talked to this super nice pastor who got him a hotel room for a week. What a miracle! Man I am so thankful for that pastor dude. Wish all people were like that
So yesterday we went over to Matthew’s hotel room and talked some more about the gospel. He wants to change. He wants the gospel. We read from the Book of Mormon and talked more about baptism. It’s going to take some work, but we’re set for him to get baptized on the 23 of January. We told him to pray about baptism after reading 2 Nephi 31 and we’re gonna go over tonight. The problem we have now is getting him a place to live here in Paris for the foreseeable future. He has no ID, so no homeless shelters will take him, and we have one week with him at the Hotel. We were able to call his mom though and are going to send the missionaries to her. None of his family talks to him because they are all satanists except his mom, but she’s broke and has no money to get him back to Texas. So I think now the gameplan is help Matthew get an ID somehow, get him at a good location here in paris, get him a job here, and then get him back to Texas with his mom who hopefully we will have converted by then. Or, get him and his mom to move to Utah because Matthew says the people in Texas aren’t good influences. He only has two friends now haha, and it’s two Elders. It’s gonna be good.
LONG STORY SHORT:
We pulled over to talk to a guy to invite him to church and apparently he was gonna commit suicide but now he’s doing better and he’s got a baptismal date.
Thanks for reading the weekly if you made it this far! I just had to share this story with you guys. Maybe one of y’all needed to hear it…? Just know that God has a plan for you. Email me if you can! Also if you have any thoughts on how we can help Matthew with legal stuff let me know. We’ll see what happens.
ADIOS
love you all muchisimos
