Posts

#87 Jesus is Risen!!

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  Happy Easter! He is Risen!!!  I hope y'all had a great holy week as you focused on Christ and His infinite sacrifice and resurrection. Also, if you haven't checked out General Conference yet, do so today! Every single speaker testified of the love that Christ has for us and that He is the only way.  21 And now, behold, my beloved brethren, this is the way; and there is none other way nor name given under heaven whereby man can be saved in the kingdom of God. And now, behold, this is the doctrine of Christ, and the only and true doctrine of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, which is one God, without end. Amen. I too can testify that Jesus Christ is the way. He is the way back to our Father in Heaven. He is the way to joy in this life and eternal joy in the life to come. Death and sin are conquered all because of Him  The rest of the week was pretty interesting. It started off really tough. We had a lot of opposition. The worst part was that one of o...

#86 I want to hear them ring again

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  How's everyone doing? It was another great week in service of my God We helped two of my favorite people in the whole world move on Wednesday. Cheri and Julie have been such a great example to me and have helped me grow in my testimony of Jesus so much. Their example of sincere repentance was so inspiring. I'll miss them for sure   But they're moving to Nampa, Idaho so it won't be too long before I see them again  We went on a couple exchanges this week. I went with Elder Kisby in Cielo Vista which was super fun. I didn't really understand anything that was said, but it was still super spirit filled. I also went with my son Elder Empey. It was so cool to see how much we have both grown since we were comps like a year and a half ago.  Our friend Ezekiel was baptized on Saturday. There was such a sweet spirit at the baptism and he is just so happy to be a member of the church. His soon-to-be wife who lives in Paraguay is also meeting with the missionaries now an...

#85 The Blackwell's Backyard

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  Super good week! We had a lot of meetings but it was still really good. Wednesday and Thursday we had zone conference and they were probably the best zone conferences I've ever been to. The spirit was so strong and it was so focused on Jesus Christ. We talked about how Mosiah 2-6 connects to the covenants we make in the temple. Me and my companions gave a training on being called to the work and truly accepting the call. We talked about a talk from President Oaks in 1984 on why we serve. There are so many reasons to serve like hope for an earthly reward, a sense of duty, and hope for an eternal reward. But the greatest reason and the only one that will make a lasting change is the pure love Christ which is charity. We then talked about how we can develop that as our reason to serve. I think it was pretty good. On Thursday Elder Fiorito and Elder Kisby gave a training and oh wow, that was maybe the best training I've ever seen. They talked about anchoring ourselves to Christ a...

#84 God is Good, God is Great

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Hello everyone!  Super good past week! We had a lot of time to go out and work which was so good. We got to go on 2 exchanges and we saw so many miracles  The first exchange was with Elder King. We did a service at a new Presbyterian church. It was so cool to walk around it and see the similarities and differences between their church and our church. We were looking through their hymnals and they don't have the all time classics like "Praise to the Man," "Joseph Smith's First Prayer," and "The Spirit of God." So I think I'll stick with our hymn book   The rest of the day went and talked to so many people, but no one was interested in even talking. But that's alright. They will eventually   Our last lesson was in Spanish and it was pretty wild. She went from not liking the church and thinking it's evil to wanting to serve a mission. Shoutout Elder King for destroying her with the Spirit. The next couple days were thr exact opposite of th...

#82/83 Lost in the Airport

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  We also had transfers this past week. Elder Gurr is no longer my companion     We've basically been companions since August. But the missionary who replaced him is Elser Pulsipher so that's going to be pretty awesome. We went to the airport multiple times to pick up the new missionaries. We had one flying in from out of the country. We got there about half and hour after his flight landed because we knew that he would probably have to go through customs. We were waiting for about 45 minutes and he still hadn't come out. So we started walking around the airport thinking that we had to have missed him. But he was no where to be found. So we went back to where he should be and we called the mission office. One of the senior missionaries called Salt Lake who then got back to us saying it could be another 3 hours before he got out of customs     It ended up not taking that long, but it was actually super terrifying because we thought we lost a missionary who h...

#80, 81 God Is the Best

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 God is so good. The Lord is in the vineyard. Miracles happen. These past couple weeks have been so crazy. They were so hard, so joyful, and so miracle filled.  Kristen was baptized!!! The service was so good! She bore her testimony and her parents (non members) started crying. The spirit was palpable. I got to play the piano which was so much fun. After the baptism we went to BJs with her family and the Leavitts. I got jambalaya for the first time. Shoutout Elder Amos and his talk "Good News Receipe." We then had stake conference with Elder Bunker and that was pretty awesome. He talked about how we are literal children of God who wants us to experience joy and how we were exceedingly faithful in the pre-mortal life. We chosen Him before, we just need to choose Him again.  For absolutely no reason this week, Vegas decided to get stupid cold. On Thursday it was fridgid with wind and nasty rain. We were out biking all day, and it was one of the funnest days of my mission. W...

#79 Birthday Twin

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  What a crazy week it was in the Nevada Las Vegas West Mission!!! We had Zone conference on Wednesday and Thursday and they were so good! President and Sister Coleman talked about what true love really looks like. They focused on charity (the pure love of Jesus Christ) and repentance. We had some other great trainings on working with members and teaching for conversion. We also got CTR rings   I haven't had one of those in so long. President's final training was on inteGRITy. If we want to be successful in life, we must have integrity and grit. Super good stuff. On Saturday I went on an exchange with my birthday twin Elder Tuala (shoutout August 22nd). We were in his spanish area and we saw many miracles! We had a lesson with their friend Rosa who said she knows her next step is baptism, but her husband doesn't want her to be baptized. So pray for her! We had other amazing lessons that day and I was even able to share my simple testimony in Spanish. Sé que el libro de mo...