September 23, 2013

That was one of the fastest weeks of my whole life.  We had a lot of fun and talked to a lot of people. It feels like every night we get home honestly happy to plan and then as soon as we're done at 9:30, I'm hit with a train of tired.  We went down to Savannah yesterday with a member, Brother Clark, to catch the end of Stake Conference.  We only were there for about the last 45 minutes because we had to go to Parris Island.  I got to interview one of the recruits that is going to be getting baptized next week and he is really happy.  Everyone in his platoon talks about how that's what he looks forward to more than anything else. 

We've been out looking for Spanish people as usual in Beaufort and found several new families.  We were praying really hard one day that we would find a family that could act as part of that foundation we want in a Spanish group and found some people in a store called the Veracruzana that told us they have been thinking that God wants them to take another direction in this life.  She's from Mexico, but her name is Susan!  They're an awesome family.  We're still teaching Luis and invited him this week to read the Book of Mormon within the next 6 months.  It's about three pages a day..  Not too much.  We talked about how especially as missionaries we have discovered that days are always better when you're reading the scriptures.  Elder Wright has been blowing everyone away with his testimony.  He's amazing!  

Did you say that there was two inches of water in our basement and you had to take the carpet out and get it replaced??  Was anything damaged in our house from the flooding?  I'm glad that things are looking a lot better.  I keep checking the pictures that you post on Facebook, but they're mostly just of other people's houses.  

For some reason I don't have as much to write this week.  I'm praying for you!  I love you so much :)  Keep praying for Carlos and Yovana.  I don't know why, but they haven't spoken to us in several weeks.  I hope that we didn't do something wrong...  They seemed so solid and then just stopped answering their phone..  Frustrating!!  

Love,

Elder Moore

P.S.

I just wanted to share with you a pretty cool experience that I had last night as Elder Wright and I studied using Family History to find people to teach.  I was just going over it confused about how I could ever use family history to teach Spanish people and I pulled out my four generation pedigree chart and looked over the names.  When I looked at grandma Brady's name I just had a flood of the spirit of Elijah or something.  I feel like I kind of zoned out and saw her in my mind and she spoke to me as if she were in the room.  I don't know if it was just my mind, but the spirit was so strong afterward.  I feel like she's on the other side of the veil trying to give me support and advice.  I wrote down what she said in my Book of Revelations.  I hadn't really ever experienced anything like that.  

Love,

Eric

September 16, 2013

Hello!

Sorry, I didn't see that you had sent an e-mail from your friend's e-mail.  That's good news that it sounds like nothing really got too damaged..  I can't imagine what you're going to have to do though to get it all cleaned up.  That's so nice of the Elders and Sisters to help you.  How much of the neighborhood was flooded??  What caused the flooding??  Are you still living in the house or did you just have to leave altogether??  I saw pictures of it on your Facebook.  Was the creek ridiculously high or what?!  

It's been a lot of fun over here in Beaufort.  Elder Wright and I are getting along amazingly and the Lord is helping us to help his children out.  We had a pretty slow night on Saturday.  All of our appointments fell through and all of the houses we wanted to visit for backup plans were guarded by big, unleashed dogs haha.  It was really weird.  We talked to a Jehovah's Witness lady that wouldn't accept a pamphlet from us but then told us that she's open to read whatever we give her, so we just gave her a Book of Mormon and for some reason she accepted that haha.  It was interesting.  BUT the next day we had probably one of the more productive days of my whole mission.  

We got up at 6:30 as usual for Parris Island and we found another recruit that wants to be baptized and has been reading the Book of Mormon during his free time.  He acted like he hadn't been reading that much, so we asked him where he was and he told us he had just finished 2 Nephi!  I'd say that's a TON!  Especially considering how little free time they get to read or do whatever else they need to.  It's inspirational to have those recruits as an example of sacrifice and diligence.  They have something like 4 hours of free time on Sundays and all of those people in the LDS service are giving up 2 of those hours to worship the Lord.  After church was over, we went out on "rescue visits" with the ward to see some less actives and try to reach out to those that haven't een visited lately.  I went out with the Ward Mission Leader to this community out by the sea called Fripp Island and we found a man that hadn't been visited in 15 years and he told us he'd prefer for it to stay that way, but we invited him to church and he told us that we could stop by the next time we were in the area to talk to him more.  He was really nice.  It's amazing that people can slip under the radar like that.  I wish you could have seen Fripp Island, maybe one day we'll come back to it :)

 

That night we had dinner with some members and we let them knwo that it was Elder Wright's BIRTHDAY!  So they put candles on the cake they had made for us and we all sang to him.  Baby's first birthday :}  I'll send some recent pictures sometime soon.  Just before the dinner appointment, we headed over to see Luis Castillo and taught him about the first vision and tried to figure out his doubts before setting him up to be baptized on the 13th!  The spirit was so strong in the room and Elder Wright bore such a strong testimony of how the Lord will provide a way for his family to accept him being baptized.  Man, I was so proud of him!  My little baby's all grown up and sharing the gospel.  When we went home at night, Elder Wright told me, "I think that we have days like Saturday so that the days like Sunday are twice as good."  I couldn't agree more!  

We had Zone Meeting on Friday and I was asked to train on applying repentance in our own lives so that we can more effective teach it to our investigators.  I was really nervous about it because that's a pretty bold thing to speak about, but I felt great about it :)  I found a quote by elder Bednar that I shared that goes something like this:  "Guilt is to the spirit what pain is to the body - a warning to prevent further harm."  Something like that...  I compared carrying the burden of past sin or transgression around to recruits that try to hide something as serious as a broken rib so that they can just get off of Parris Island ASAP.  They ALWAYS find out that is probably the worst thing you can do because when you don't heal properly, you're not only hurting yourself but also your platoon.  I invited everyone to repent.  I feel really good about it :)  It totally wasn't me though.  I'm really not that good at trainings.  I just had fasted and prayed a lot that the spirit would teach everyone in that room that repentance is the way to purification and powerful teaching and testimony.  

I love you a lot!  Have a good week :)

Con muchos abrazos y besitos,

Élder Moore

September 9, 2013

Savannah Zone Confence

Querida Familia!

I am training Elder WRIGHT from Orem, UT and he is awesome!!  He is assigned to speak Spanish, just like Elder Johnson, and because there are now four English missionaries in the ward, we are trying our best to only find and teach Spanish speakers.  It's a little bit of a challenge, but nothing we can't handle!  I wish that you could somehow see the difference that I felt before transfer meeting and after.  I went up to meet my new companion and could tell right off the bat that things were going to be fun with him, even though he was a little bit quiet.  Every day we have been talking to each other and playing this getting to know you game in companionship study that has been helping us to talk more openly.  It's also a bit of a challenge to teach with unity right now just because the language is something that he's still working to strengthen.  In Beaufort there are a couple of places that are pretty much nothing but Latino, so we'll be spending a lot of time there pretending like we're outside of the United States :)  

I couldn't have asked for a better situation than the one we are living in right now.  I couldn't have asked for a better district leader, either.  His name's Elder Lash and he was serving as an assistant to President Cottle for two transfers before coming over here.  We've been helping the English Elders to have a lot to do considering they're basically starting from scratch.  Living with them is a lot of fun.  We always have a lot of faith-building and funny stories to tell each other when we get to the apartment at night. 

Other than transfer meeting on Tuesday, we spent most of our time out talking to a lot of people.  A lot more people have been thanking us lately for what we share with them and listening to what they have to say.  We ran into this girl named Nayeli the other day and she told us that she was stressed out about finding a job, so we taught her about the Lord always providing for those people that strive to keep the commandments and being obedient and then we taught her to pray and said a prayer right there.  Teaching Carlos and Yovana has been a bit harder lately because of the stress that Yovana's been dealing with during this week of Antonio's birthday.  I'll send you some pictures from the party on Facebook.  We got Antonio a little tie and everybody loved it!  He was so happy to stick his face in his one year old cake.  We met some of the friends that Yovana is always talking about and they invited us over for dinner sometime so that they can make us their famous lasagna.  We'll also get to teach them!  The birthday party at first felt a little bit uncomfortable because everybody seemed to avoid talking to us, but it worked out in the end when we just found some people to talk to.  

President Cottle told us this week that the Atlanta mission is receiving 50 missionaries next transfer and that 24 of them are Visa waiters that will be going to Brazil.  I didn't realize how big of a blessing it was that Hannah's Visa showed up.  It sounds like she is having the time of her life down there, too :)  

Love,

Elder Moore

September 2, 2013

That's actually the literal translation of popcorn.  (palomitas) it means little doves.  Yeah, that's probably my favorite food.  I don't know if you remember, but I broke that crazy diet we were on with a whole bag of popcorn.  Is one of the Elders in our ward a Spanish speaker?  Does he find a lot of work being in a companionship with an English-speaking companion?  It sounds like they get along pretty well with you two.    

I was thinking the same thing about the rescue remedy.  The most healing part of them is the way you open and close the container.  I threw it to another Elder and he dropped it and they spilled all over the floor though, so the design I guess is a little bit flawed.  I'm somehow almost completely out of them.  I have been sharing them a lot. I don't know if I should be, but I wanted to see if other people thought they worked.  I can't say for sure.  Thanks for sending them though.  I'm still stressed, but I don't think it's nearly as bad.  

On Saturday we got a call from President Cottle telling us the news and we found out the Elder Johnson's going to another area to finish training with someone else so that I can train another fresh, new greenie. haha  I'm praying that it'll be someone that I'll just immediately hit it off with, but either way I'm feeling more confident that it's going to be better than before.  Don't they usually say that you mess up on the first kid and things get easier the more you have??  I was "released" as District Leader for now because President Cottle wants me to only worry about training.  I say released like that because it's not really a calling, just an assignment.  It's funny because all of the trade-offs that I went on last transfer were probably the least stressful part of it.  I loved being District leader.  We found out that all of the missionaries that I loved so much except for one are going to split off and become their own district or leaving tomorrow to be transferred.  I'm going to be the old, dusty one that's been in the area for months and be part of almost an entirely new district.  We're going to be living with two other Elders now and focus entirely on Spanish work so that my new trainee learns how to be a Spanish-speaking Elder.  Not that you wanted to hear all of that, but that's the news.  I'll send you a picture of the newbie next week :)

I don't get to go down to Savannah all that often, but this week we went down for a trade-off and it was the first time I had been to River Street.  It was really cool.  We listened to some local "jammers" and saw an enormous barge pass by and talked to a couple of people.  The mindset of everyone down there is a lot like what people in high school talk like.  Liberal and weird.  It's right by the Savannah College of Art and Design, so that'd probably explain it.  It was beautiful!  We went into that candy shop because I remembered that you told me they serve free praline samples.  We were basically just tourists.  

Carlos and Yovana invited us to come over to their house early this Saturday so that she can teach me the way that she makes tacos.  It's Elder Johnson's last night, so she's going to make something delicious for us tonight.  I'm not coming home this time until I can cook like an Hispanic.  :)  

It's sad to think that everything is going to be completely different after tomorrow, but it's also exciting.  Transfers are the most stressful time for me, especially when everything is changing, but I think that the Lord will bless us here in Beaufort like he usually does.  It'll be fun working exclusively Spanish again, but I'm not one hundred percent sure about how much work we'll be able to do before we run out of potential investigators.  

Emalie left to go back to BYU, so she told me that her mom would take place in making baked goods for us haha.  It was sad to see her go, but we'll see each other again before she graduates in the spring.  Will you plan on us going to general conference in Utah, with Myles if possible, right when I get back?  That'd be cool if we could be there for graduation and general conference.  Let me know what you think..  It's mostly just a trunky thought because Emalie went back.  

I love you!!  

Elder Moore

PS  will you send me my priesthood line of authority ASAP?  I think that I left it at home and I want to give it to some people that I ordained priests and gave the Aaronic Priesthood to yesterday.  Sorry for not telling you more about that!!  It was amazing!  We were at Parris Island and both of the recruits that were baptized in the past couple of weeks chose me to give them the Priesthood.  We did it in front of the whole congregation, which was a bit intimidating, but I haven't felt the spirit that strong in a while.  I also realized that those are ordinances of salvation and learned a lot about what the priesthood really does in the blessings that I gave.  It's amazing!  

Sunday, September 1, 2013

Here are some pictures of Elder Moore that I found on Facebook:

Elder Moore and Elder David Huckvale in Savannah, GA
(looks like a foreign mission to me!)

I'm glad to see Eric is having opportunities to play the piano!

Elders with President Barry