March 19, 2013

Querida Familia:

This weekend Gladys Knight and the Saints Unified Voices Choir came to the Orange Park Stake Center for a devotional / performance.  It was SO AMAZING!  There was a huge focus on inviting nonmembers because it was a missionary effort, I guess she's called to be a missionary!!  It was also focused a lot towards members of the Baptist church because everyone in the South thought Sister Knight was CRAZY when she joined the church. She and her husband, William McDowell, bore testimony of the restoration and the Church of Jesus Christ and they had swag.  During Gladys Knight's testimony, she had this hammond organ playing a jazzy solo in the background, it was like nothing I've ever seen before!  Straight out of a movie.  There was a WHOLE LOT of praising!  The songs were written by Gladys Knight or arranged by her, but they were mostly upbeat and southern gospel types of songs.  Uphold me with thy sweet spirit, whatever you do LORD don't take your joy from me.  Heavenly Father!  Haha I still feel that music in my bones.  Will you get me their CD please?  I think it's called One Voice and it's incredible :)  The mission received a LOT of referrals from the event and they are even better than normal because all of these people filled out their slips THEMSELVES of paper asking for this little gift bag that the missionaries are going to be delivering the next couple of days.

 

I can't wait to hear about how the Trek goes.  Hopefully you can pull that cart!  I'm sorry, I didn't take 100 pictures, but I did take a lot more than usual and forgot the cord.  I'll post them to Facebook sometime this week though.  We're going to be going to a BBQ for P Day in just a few minutes, so I don't have a ton more time to write.  Things are going well over here, my new companion's name is Elder Nelson and I will be meeting him tomorrow at 12:30 when I drop Elder Winward off for good :( 

 

Thanks for your prayers and love :) 

 

Love,

 

Elder Moore

March 11, 2013

Zone Conference-Jax East

Dear Family: 

It was a pretty good week.  I went on a trade-off with the District leader and it was really nice because for the first time in a while I was reminded that I can hold my own in a conversation with a Hispanic!  I had to teach everything the whole time because the other Elder doesn't speak Spanish.  We met a bunch of new people that day from several referrals that we received from their neighbors and set up return appointments with them!  This is actually usually how knocking goes for us:  I've told you before about the clues we look for, i.e. Dora gear, bright paint, upside-down mops outside, etc., and then we knock on those houses to find Hispanics and just ask everyone which of their neighbors speak Spanish.  This area's really nice because we only have to worry about Spanish-speakers, but in most areas of the mission it's half and half English/ Spanish.  It's really fun looking for new people when we don't have anything more productive to do.  On good days where I actually want to see people, I think that it might be my favorite thing to do!

Things are going good with Taina and Alfredo, but everyone is getting sick lately, so they weren't at church.  We hope it doesn't slow their progression though!

We have been going on somewhat of a fried chicken binge over the past couple weeks.  We have been to every fast food chicken place just to find the best one and have definitely determined Popeye's is for sure the best, but KFC actually holds its own pretty well, surprisingly.  I have been obsessed with cole slaw, biscuits and FRIIIIIEEED CHICKEN, but after the last one we had, Church's Chicken, I think I'm about done with fried foods for the rest of my life.  We eat really well when we don't eat out to make up for the fried chicken we get when we eat out.  Ugh this is just making me hungry talking about it.  I learned in my nutrition class that it's important to remember to shop the perimeter of the store when we go food shopping, so I've been trying to live by that every since.  Our groceries are usually pretty cheap and our fridge is full of way healthy food for the most part.  A couple of weeks ago a member fed us skrawberry ice cream with animal crackers and it was a great discovery, so we bought that too.  Haha.  

Thanks for everything.  I PROMISE that I will take at least 100 PICTURES this week and send you some soon.  That's a promise!!  

Love you,

Elder Moore

March 4, 2013

Dear Family,

That is the most amazing news about Hannah's mission call!  I was telling Dad about how I have always felt like he and Hannah have always had a special connection and now it's going to be even stronger!  I am so incredibly happy for all of you!  I'm sad that I missed it..  Also the video didn't work, but thanks for sending that picture of you guys and Charlotte!  You all look so happy :)  I'm glad that you get along so swimmingly :)

We did a lot this week.  Every day we went out with so much faith that something great would happen and, even though Taina wasn't baptized, we started teaching a man, Alfredo, about the restoration.  Taina doesn't feel like she is ready to commit to coming to church every week and make a covenant with God, which is a little bit sad in a way but at least that means that she is taking this seriously.  She's not going to get baptized just because we wanted her to.  Elder Winward and I both felt good about moving the date to a few weeks from now.  Alfredo is one of the most humble men I have ever met.  We had an incredibly powerful lesson with him on Monday or Tuesday or something and at the end we taught him about how important it is to read your scriptures and pray every day to maintain the desire to follow Christ.  He committed to do both and be baptized on the 17th of March.  He has been reading every day and praying and came to church yesterday!  He has a somewhat hard time reading, but is so blessed for doing it without shame every time.  It's interesting to see how two people can accept an invitation so differently.  Taina will be baptized, we just need to get her some more support from her less-active family.

Rene, a Cuban man that was baptized in December was telling us about an experience that he had with his boss last week regarding working on Sundays.  He told us that the boss was pulling the whole "just one more Sunday" thing to get him to work on Sundays regularly and he said something like, "OK, but this is the LAST time.  It doesn't have anything to do with my loyalty to the church - I made a COVENANT with God that I would keep His commandments. I will not work on Sunday or I will get a new job.  God will provide."  Isn't that great?  I honestly feel like Alfredo is the same way already. 

One more story, then I gotta go.  We were shopping today at Wal-Mart and this old man came up to us and asked us if we thought that Joseph Smith was in Heaven or Hell, so we told him heaven and asked why he was asking that.  We cleared up a couple of misconceptions that he had about the restoration and then A TON of people walked by and added their two cents about being saved and Jesus and how that old man knows way more than us.  It was seriously something that would ONLY happen in the South.  Like five people walked by us and added to our conversation and then walked away.  Haha it's so funny how often things like that actually happen.  It's like a foreign country some days down here.

Thank you so much for your letter.  I studied all of those things this morning and then I said a prayer and felt like everything that you had said was true.  You're an amazing person, Mom!  Thank you for your example :)  Say hi to Charlotte from me.  I still live in the same place.  I'm not sure when we'll be moving, but I'm not getting transferred anytime soon.  

Love,

Elder Moore

February 25, 2013

Dear Family:

We found out this week that we've had her name wrong the whole time!  Haha it's actually Taina Diaz, and we've been calling her Daina Encarnacion.  I just don't understand Latino names still though and probably never will!  She is still planning on being baptized, but it's going to be this Sunday.  She's scheduled to be interviewed and is really progressing very well.  We went over to her house on Sunday (yesterday) to get her over to the church because we heard she might not be coming and she just told us that her mom needed the car, so she didn't come this week, but we had a really powerful experience with her at the doorstep.  We talked to her about the importance of keeping the commandments and how God doesn't give us commandments that we can't keep and invited her to pray for a way to go to church from now on.  She was a little bit hesitant about it, but then she did it and the spirit was so strong.  All the stress that we had just went away.  We missed the sacrament because of it though!!  

This week we had Zone Conference, but it was only the Jax East Zone.  It was so nice having such a small group.  It really feels like we're coming together like a big happy family.  Haha we learned all about pride and giving short, powerful 4-minute lessons.  It was a really good conference.  It makes me sad to think that President and Sister Barry have such a short time left here, but it's amazing that they told us that Savannah is being dissolved back into the resurrected GA Macon mission in July!  That's where Elder Jones and Elder Winward were at the start of their missions!  It's good news to hear that they are going to be making so many new missions!  I hope that the missionary force stays as huge as it's going to be forever!!  There's a chance that I might change missions in July, but hopefully not.  My missionary plaque is weird enough as is.  Could you imagine - "Served in the Mexico Cuernavaca /Florida Jacksonville / Georgia Macon Mission from May 2011 to April 2014."  That'll be interesting to explain to the kids one day ;)  We found out that the new mission president's name is President Paul Craig and he's from north Salt Lake.  One more thing I thought I would share with you while we're on this subject.  I was translating my Patriarchal blessing this week into Spanish and I noticed that it says I should follow the counsel of the bishops, stake presidents and mission presidentS with an s if you didn't see...  I thought that was pretty neat.  

It's been raining cats and dogs in bursts lately.  It's nice that we don't have to be out in it for too long.  I'm sure that if I was still with Elders Johnson and McArthur though that they would make me be outside just because it was raining so hard...  Did you know they're both married now??  Elder Winward's trainer has a 3 or 4 month old baby!  It's crazy how fast people move when they get back into normal life.  I wish that I was there to see Hannah open her mission call!!  Let me know how it is and what her reaction is like!  I'll send pictures sometime soon.  I just am terrible at taking them, so I don't have many.  Things are fine.  Not great, but definitely spiritually strengthening.  I'm pretty sure that it's going to be April of 2014.  If not, February.  We'll see.  March is a good estimate.

The Church is true and Jesus is great!  

Love,

Eric

February 18, 2013, President's Day

Dear Family,

Daina should be getting baptized THIS week if everything goes according to plan.  Satan tends to be pretty difficult though the closer you get to baptism, so we're just going to try not to go crazy under the stress before Saturday.  She is so amazing!  She has been doing everything that we leave her with and trying her best to live the commandments that we've taught her.  I'll let you know what happens this weekend, we're really excited for her!!

Waldina and Audelio didn't get married, he decided to flake out at the last minute, but we're going to try to focus on teaching the whole family when they get back from dropping their family back off in Houston...  I just don't know what could have possibly stopped them from wanting to get married though, they went through all of the classes and everything and just stopped.  Hmmm we'll see what we get out of that in the next few weeks.. 

Honestly, we're just doing the same thing that we always do - looking and teaching those that let us in.  Nothing too out of the ordinary happened this week.  We're teaching a member's 7 and 9 year-old kids that should be baptized soon as well!  They are so much fun and so easy to teach.  We taught them about why praying is important and told Mike, the 9 year-old to pray and he did such a good job at it!  We also taught them a little-kid version of the restoration and they seemed to understand everything we taught.  

Sorry, I'm having a hard time thinking about what to even say...  I hope that you have a great week and I'll let you know how everything goes next week.  We'll make it EXCITING...  Haha by the way we use the computers at the church, so we never miss out.  :)

Love,

Eric

February 12, 2013

Week #3

It was a great week!  Elder Winward and I work great together and we have been seeing a lot of success because of the effort we make to be diligent, regardless of whatever else we would rather be doing than work!  It's inspiring being with Elder Winward again because he has come so far in the past year and is such a great missionary and gives me hope that I can see so many blessings that will come later on in my mission from doing my best.  

Daina started progressing a lot this week after we had a lesson and explained about why it's important to read, pray and come to church.  It's funny because it feels like we're there to just give people a little nudge out the door sometimes.  She came to church this week and is planning on being baptized next Saturday as long as she keeps up her commitments.  She learns SO fast.  It's like she remembers and comprehends everything that we talk to her about.  She understands that the gospel is seriously clear as the day is true and doable.  It has built my faith a lot to see her so willing to give everything to the Lord.  I think that he has been preparing her for this for a while now.  

We are teaching several other people as well.  There is going to be a wedding in the church this Friday.  Two of our investigators were told by one of the members that the Branch President is able to perform wedding ceremonies, so we're hoping to get something great out of that.  Pray for them though because I have this bad feeling that they're going to stop acting interested the day after the wedding.  The woman we are teaching, Waldina, acts very interested in what we have to say!  

We received a LOT of referrals this week including a member referral a way out in the boonies :)  His name is Luis and he is one of the humblest people I have ever met.  He had a lot of great answers to the questions we asked and seemed very interested in knowing about the restoration and baptism.  He committed to be baptized on the 3rd of March after he gets a testimony of the Book of Mormon and the prophet Joseph Smith.  It's just been such a nice couple of days.  It feels like the Lord has been pouring down the tender mercies!!  

Everything is going great!  I'm sorry that I didn't write you yesterday, I just realized that I forgot to tell you that we had P day on Tuesday this week because we do that on the weeks that there are transfers...  I'm not going anywhere thank goodness.  I'll be killing (sending home) Elder Winward when this transfer is over :( It's sad, but also happy that my prophecy is being fulfilled haha

I love you!  Everything is great!

Love,

Eric

Monday, February 4, 2013

The Three Amigos

Dear Mom:

We have really just been looking for investigators since I arrived.  We are teaching a Puerto Rican girl named Daina, but she hasn't been fulfilling her commitments of coming to church or reading the Book of Mormon, so we'll probably stop going over until she starts picking up the slack.  We are teaching a Honduran family as well that comes to church as long as their friend that's a member comes, but she works a lot of the time on Sunday, so they're really not considered to be progressing either.  It's hard to tell sometimes with hispanic people whether they are being geniune or not because virtually anyone that lets you in their house is going to act like they love everything you have to say to them, but a lot of the time it takes a lot to get them to actually read or come to church...  We found several people this week that have a lot of potential and seem very interested, so we'll be stopping by in the next few days to see how their own personal studies and prayers are going.  

The thing about missionary work is that we seriously are only here to invite the spirit to show how true, powerful and important the message that we have to share is and then it is up to the investigator to change their own life.  Sometimes it's a little bit hard to not own other people's problems and just tell them exactly EVERYTHING that they're going to do to change.  

Elder Lee split off from the companionship because another missionary, Elder Hernandez came back out a few days ago mid-transfer.  It's really exciting because both of us went home right around the same time as each other and now we'll both be back in the same mission for the next year!  I'm pretty sure that I'll be coming back home in February 2014, but it could end up being April because those are the two months closest to the 21st.  I still haven't heard any more details from President Barry, but I'll let you know when I do.  

We moved out of the apartment we were living in and back into the one I was in with Elders Johnson and McArthur!!  It's in a LOT better shape than it was a year and a half ago though haha.  Elder Winward and I bought this mold and mildew cleaner that burned holes in this cardboard box we were using to protect the carpet from being bleached.  Pretty intense, but it is starting to come together.  So now my address is 6200 Barnes Road Apt. S8 Jacksonville, FL 32216 - please let Charlotte know so that she can send letters there :)  We'll be moving again around the 1st of March when the lease is up.

I love you guys a lot!  Thank you so much for the herbal tea and buffalo cup.  You could say it was a "celestial" gift.  Haha You know me too well.  Hannah updated me on everything going on in her life.  It really sounds like things are coming back together for her!!  It was so good to hear such amazingly happy news from her :)

Love you,

Eric