Week 98.5

Ladies and gentlemen, we did it. 

Although it got cut just a bit short, I finally made it to the end of my mission serving as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the Utah, Salt Lake City West Mission. 

These past 1.9 years/22.7 months/98.5 weeks/689 days have been some of the greatest years/months/weeks/days of my entire life. I have come to know -- through successes and failures, blessings and trials, joys and sorrows -- that God is my loving Heavenly Father and that this whole time it has truly been His work and I am just His instrument. Sometimes I wasn't His best instrument. I have also learned that the greatest demonstration of His love was when He sent His Son, Jesus Christ to the Earth, to teach his Gospel, establish a church, and follow the will of the Father by suffering and dying for every one of us. He loves me, and he loves each one of you. His arm is always extended when you are knocked on the ground or even when you stand tall. 

I know that the Church of Jesus Christ, after once being lost, has indeed been restored on the Earth through a living prophet, as God has done time and time again with the prophets of old. This prophet was Joseph Smith. I know he was a prophet, because I have come to know that the Book of Mormon, which he could have translated only through the power of God, is undoubtedly true. I cannot deny the feeling that I get every time that I read a verse that was written just for me. It's true. It's all true. Every word. That was the first truth that I had to come to know when I started my mission; it was pretty hard to bear testimony of the Book of Mormon when I didn't know it was true at the beginning of my mission. I know my Heavenly Father hears and answers my prayers. I have come to recognize the promptings of the Holy Ghost, which is quite possibly the greatest challenge for every missionary and person alike.

Serving the Lord has proved to be one of the most challenging and most rewarding experiences of my life. I feel so bad for my first handful of companions that had to work alongside myself, me being one of the most unpleasant, arrogant, ungrateful, and unloving people that I know. I am grateful to have been changed through Christ, through countless moments of pure repentance using His Atonement. I regret not having been a kinder person towards the beginning of my mission, but I have absolutely no regret as to who I am today. I still have much to learn, grow, and change, as many of you will see when I come home. But I will break down and cry if I come home and anyone says, "You haven't changed a bit." If such is the case, these past two years will have been an utter waste.

But I know this time has not been spent in vain, because every night, I have gotten on my knees and tried to utter out the phrase, "Lord, I did my best today." For the days where I have truly tried my best, this sentence was easy to say, and the Lord would always "slam dunk" me with the Spirit as a confirmation of the Lord's satisfaction for my day's offering. For the days where I lacked true discipleship, the Spirit would let me know where I could've done better, and I would commit to do better the next day, and I again would feel a confirmation of my day's offering. The days where I was all in, I was the happiest, and the Lord blessed me the most. The days where I was a "part-time" missionary and focused more on myself, I wasn't happy, and the Lord didn't bless me as much. This is His work. I love Him.

I am very grateful for all of you that have been supporting me and reading these emails since week one. I really hope that you've seen at least a little bit of change in me since the beginning from just my emails alone. 

I'm going to be coming home tomorrow, December 17th. I will be giving my homecoming talk at church on Sunday, December 26th, and all of you are invited to come hear my testimony and my many experiences that have shaped me into the person that I am today.

I have loved being a missionary! See you all soon!!!

Elder Terry

Week 97 & 98

Hey all of you lovely people!

This is my final transfer!! I'm staying in the El Camino ward for the rest of my mission, and I'm staying with Elder Barnes and we'll be in a trio with the new addition of a legend, Elder Gaunt. Being that I'm going home halfway through the transfer, I'm basically living out of my suitcases... it's pretty difficult. And these past two weeks, I've had a lot of time to work super duper hard in the area and also reflect on how much I've accomplished and how much I've grown on the mission. What's helping me to endure to the end is how much I love the work, the people I serve, and the people I serve with. 

Miracles:

So we have found a whole bunch of new people to teach that have seemed very promising. However, on Sunday, only one of our friends showed up. We were pretty disappointed, but at that moment we re-lived this scripture from the Book of Mormon:

"Now when our hearts were depressed, and we were about to turn back, behold, the Lord be comforted us, and said: Go amongst thy brethren, the [Latinos], and bear with patience thine afflictions, and I will give unto you success." (Alma 26:27)

It was at this moment that God showed us that He still had everything under control. 

1. As we sat in the foyer mourning the fact that we were going to have to stop teaching a bunch of our friends, two people randomly showed up to church. Some members immediately fellowshipped them and they joined the Sunday school class. They then accepted visits from us.

2. We had a lesson with our only amiga that came to church, Viviana, and after having taught her for the past 4 months and having attempted to put her on for a baptismal date, she finally accepted a date for December 26th!!! Although I won't be there to see her get baptized, she has such a solid testimony and such strong connections with the members that I know that she'll stay strong in the church after her baptism. Viviana is so awesome.

3. As we made visits later in the day to let our amigos know that we were going to stop teaching them because they weren't keeping their commitments, we couldn't even finish visiting them all because we kept crossing paths with other new people to teach. We finished the week with my new personal record of having found 19 new people to teach in just one week.

I love being a missionary. 

Elder Terry

Fotos:

1) Found a big tire.

2) We had to take a companionship to the hospital at midnight, so here's us tired as heck with masks on

3) Chillin

4-5) Food trips

6) Got some boots for the snow

Videos:

1) I hate icicles 

2) Frozen rain gutter

Week 95 & 96

Hey everyone!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! You'll be happy to know that I ate like 4 Thanksgiving dinners and came home a couple pounds fatter. In preparation for a Thanksgiving mission devotional, my mission president reached out to me and asked me to pre-record a special musical number. I threw together an arrangement of "Because I Have Been Given Much" and "For the Beauty of the Earth", and sent it in after the first take. It turned out super well, and President Spencer hyped me up afterwards and told me he's gonna listen to it on loop. Patriarchal blessing prophecies were fulfilled. 🙏

Elder Barnes and I have been continuing to pop off by finding a bunch of really really cool people lately. First, we found the Pino family! We knocked on the door of what we thought was going to be this nice old lady that we talked to a couple of weeks back. But when we knocked, we met the Pino family, who had just moved from Venezuela 3 days prior! They let us in, we shared the message of the Restoration while sitting in a circle on their furniture-less floor. They loved it! Their 8-year-old daughter was smiling wide and hardly even blinked.

We also found the Velazquez-Ramos family. We knock and they warmly welcome us in. The father tells us that he had also recently moved from Venezuela with his daughter while his wife had been living here alone for the past year. Nothing gets a missionary going more than when someone says they have been looking for a church to attend. We told them about our weekly service, and when the mother realized that it would conflict with her work schedule. instead of giving excuses, she faithfully stated, "Imma talk with my boss and take the day off. If the Lord wants me to go to church, Imma go to church." 😎

Going into these last couple of weeks of my mission, I've been reflecting a bunch about what I've accomplished. For the first 3/4ths of my mission, I really wasn't seeing too much success in terms of baptisms and all that. I've always worked hard and I would find some pretty cool people, and after I left an area, the missionaries that came in would baptize the people I taught. I honestly had accepted that I was just a seed-planter, and I was okay with other missionaries reaping the fruit. 🍎🍓🍌🍐

It wasn't until these last couple of transfers that I realized that I could be more than just a seed-planter - I could plant the seeds, water them, till the ground, support the base, and watch them grow and grow until fruits started to grow, and be the one to reap the fruits all within just a couple of months! I know that God can perform miracles, and I knew he could use me as an instrument in His hands as long as I was sharpened and polished through the development of Christlike attributes and teaching skills. One of my biggest regrets in the mission is not having studied Preach My Gospel as thoroughly as I have these past couple of months, because I've seen miracles and promised blessings on the daily. I know this is the Lord's work, and He loves to show me that every single day that I decided to follow His will rather than my own.

Miracle:

So we send a list around the ward for members to sign-up to join us in our lessons. The list also got passed to the youth, and one of our amigos, Jose, signed up to join us in a lesson on Friday at 6pm. Now, at first we asked ourselves if it would be a good idea for a nonmember to join us in a lesson with another nonmember... but then we decided to full-send it. The Wednesday before, we had plans to teach the Restoration to Jose again so that he could be prepared for the lesson, but he ended up having a couple of questions and we ended up teaching him the Plan of Salvation because he needed it more. We were now just praying that we could set up a lesson on Friday at 6pm to teach the Plan of Salvation.

Lucky enough we did! And when we knocked on the door........ they didn't answer 😔 However, we knew we couldn't give up cause Jose was counting us and we were counting on him. We decided to visit the Tineo-Paz family, a family that we had found a couple of weeks back and hadn't answered for a while. We knocked on their door, and they (finally) answered!!! We got in, taught the Plan of Salvation, and at the end we talked about the importance of going to church. We then looked over to Jose, and he continued to bear one of the sweetest, most genuine testimonies. He related something along the lines of:

"Now, I have never been a fan of religion ever since I was a kid. I have gone to other churches, and it just wasn't for me. But when I go to the Church of Jesus Christ, it just feels different. When the missionaries come to my house and help me learn, it just feels different. So even though I'm not a member of the church, I invite all of you to come to church this Sunday, because you will feel different as well."

I had one of the biggest grins on my face the whole time. He was following the Spirit even though he didn't even know it. Sadly, the Tineo-Paz family didn't come to church that Sunday. But I don't think that lesson was for the Tineo-Paz family. It was for Jose. He talked to us after church and relayed how sad he was that they didn't show up. We helped him to recognize that that feeling of sadness was Godly sorrow, and that we are more than accustomed to that feeling whenever people decide not to change or keep their commitments. I can't help but see Jose as a future missionary. 🙌

I love being a missionary.

Elder Terry

Fotos:

1) Post-baptism photo with Axel and Alicia Morales

2-4) We went out to eat a bunch these past couple of weeks cause it was Hermana Krummenacher's last transfer

5) Me strangling Jose's puppy (not actually) cause it doesn't stop biting us 

6) Leaving cute notes for our amigos 🤗