November 11, 2013

Dear Family,

It's weird getting an e-mail from you and not hearing about the thousands of missionary experiences you've been having with the neighbors! I hope that everything's just as good as always! How are things going with the people you were teaching a couple of weeks ago? Are you being persistent? :)

We had Veteran's Day yesterday and all of the libraries were closed, so we are using some time Tuesday to write you... Weird! But anyway, we had a couple of awesome things happen this week. I'll start off with Parris Island, there's always something great to say about that place! So, we have been teaching a recruit that was given a Book of Mormon on the plane ride to Parris Island. On the plane she also met someone else that was a member of the church on her way to Parris Island as well, so they figured they'd probably see each other around during their time here. She was dropped to FRP for an injury she had and then was put into something called STC (I think) which is basically just the waiting area for the few recruits that have to go home to recover or drop out of training... She's going home this week, but coming back to the main point of the story, she's been really receptive and reading the Book of Mormon for the past couple of weeks. We taught the restoration and after the first vision she asked us if she would be able to give the closing prayer for the her last time at service on Parris Island, so of course we let her and then we pulled her aside when everyone was cleaning up and getting ready to leave and invited her to be baptized. I've never seen anyone more enthusiastic or happy to be invited in my life!! She told us about how great she feels being in the church and how she can't wait to go outside of Parris Island. Remember, I said that she was going home, but guess where home is?? Savannah, GA!!!!! So I'll be going down on a trade off on the 20th (my birthday :)) to teach her with the Zone Leaders, the missionaries we'll be handing her off to! The work is moving forward! :) I'm so happy for her.

Recruit Costello is graduating this week and I told him that I would attend his graduation since it might be one of my last weeks here and I want to see him off! He is so solid! He gave his departing testimony in church and talked about how Parris Island is an amazing and spiritual place where he was baptized and received "his Aaronic Priesthood." I only put it in parentheses because that's the way he says it. I really hope that some of these people come out west. It'll be fun to see what it's like when I'm a normal person and can just talk to them whenever.

I hope you remember me telling you about Luis. He's been attending church for a very long time now and we were thinking he wasn't getting baptized with the permission of his parents at least until his birthday in November, but we just talked to his mom and found out that she's completely fine with whatever decision her children make as long as it teaches them to do good. So we got to set up an appointment to teach her and her daughter as well as Luis tonight with a family in the Ward, the Atwells. She also made tamales and told us to stop by to get some. They were WAY good. You know things are going good when people offer you food! I'll let you know how it turns out, but I'm excited to teach them and many others this week.

 Like I've told you before, the youth in the ward has been on fire missionary work-wise. We gave a tour of the church building to one of the member's friends, Anna and we'll be teaching her family as soon as we can get a time worked out with the Morgans. It's been so much more fun to have the youth involved and the families in the ward. I think that's the way missionary work is meant to be done. Most solid converts seem to stay solid when they have good friends in the church anyway, so it's a win-win working with the members :)

Sounds like you had fun in San Antonio! You better have energy for my kids!! Keep up the good work. I saw in the newsletter that there were only 28 baptisms in the whole stake last year.. Man! It's good to know one of them was Myles Ramos :) Keep helping the Elders out! You're being wonderful examples to every member of the church, myself included :)

One more story - we're teaching a Mexican man and his family and they also made some food and offered us some, so of course we accepted and he was explaining it to us like we had never seen food like it in our lives. "Estas se llaman TORTILLAS!" Haha (these are called tortillas) "MEXICAN FOOD!" Little, round discs you eat your meat and beans with... Who'd have thought?

I love you so much! Thanks for the updates and for writing such wonderful e-mails :)
 Elder Moore