9/9/2013

It has been a pretty good week here we had a baptism on Saturday! Karli Schmitt was baptized and her 16 year old brother  was able to baptize her which was awesome! It was an amazing program and a great experience to be able to see that. So as for me and Elder Viana most likely he will be going back to Spanish work on Wednesday so I may be getting a new companion soon. So it will probably be a short companionship but it has been fun while it lasted and hopefully this new one will be just as fun. The work is going really good here but after a few baptisms our teaching pool is a little low right now and we are constently trying to find more people to teach. We average about 13-15 lessons a week but they want us to be teaching at least 20 lessons a week. I was able to go on exchanges with the zone leader this week which has really helped me to strengthen as a missionary and realize how to become the missionary that everyone wants to be. I have been reading a book called the Continuous Atonement and it is super good and I am on chap. 3 and recommend all to read it! It was one of my birthday presents, thanks mom and dad :), and it is really good in breaking down the Atonement and making it very simple to understand and how to apply it into our everyday lives. The best part about it is that it is very helpful for people that may think that their sin is too big to be forgiven or they think that they can't be forgiven for the same sin multiple times. It is a real convidence booster and everyone should read it. If y'all would like to pray for some of the investigators in my area right now our current progressing investigators are Monica and her son Ivan, Florence, and Shailyn McAbee (Alysha Cook's daughter). I love y'all very much and GO TEXANS!!!!!!!!!

Love,
Elder Curtis

Catch Up

The blog posting has been switched to me (Amanda) so I am playing catch up today.

08/19/2013

We had another great week here. We had a baptism for a girl named Tahja Snooks and she is a wonderful 9 year old girl that has a ton of faith and is amazing to see in a girl that young. My companion, Elder Eldredge, got to perform the baptism and the confirmation and that was really amazing as well. We got 4 new investigators this week which was really awesome most of which were thanks to the Spanish speaking sister missionaries in our area. They found a guy named David and his family for us to teach and a girl named Monica and her family to teach and while we were out making visits with the ward mission leader we found a girl named Florence Burges who is also 9 years old and lives a few trailer houses down from Tahja Snooks. So when we teach Florence we are going to try and bring Tahja with us so we can have a fellowship/member friend for her and someone that will help get her to want to go to church with her. Other than that it has been a pretty awesome week hopefully these new investigators will have an open heart to the message that we have to share with them. 

P.S. - Attached is a picture of the group that me and my companion went with to Yellowstone (Our District and the Zone Leaders) and also a couple pictures of my super awesome mountain bike. Thanks mom and dad :)

8/26/2013 (6 months!!!)

So the inevitable happened the Texas Dream Team is over. :( Unfortunately my companion, Elder Eldredge is getting transferred this Wednesday. I will miss him but we both had an idea that this was going to happen since he has been here his whole mission so far (6 months) so we have been preparing for this most of this transfer. So yesterday we had a surprise baptism which was an amazing blessing. Alysha Cook, one of investigators who had been taught for 6+ months, last weekend finally found her answer that she should get baptized. So we met with her on Thursday and she said that she wanted to get baptized on Saturday, August 24th, and so we scrambled around trying to get everything planned and organized to have the baptism on Saturday and we were able to get it all worked out. We show up at the church on Saturday at 8 am to start filling the font and in the parking lot is a hearse and we started worrying and then we went into the relief society room and there was a dead person in there and then we started freaking out what are we going to do. So we tried pushing the baptism back a little bit but Alysha had to work later that day so that wasn't going to work for her. Eventually we realized that there was nothing we could do to have the baptism of Saturday so then we rescheduled it for Sunday, August 25th, at 5 pm and it went great quit a few members of her ward came to support her and it was a really amazing service. So its safe to say that it was a very stressful week for us but it ended up turning out great and was probably one of the most spiritual baptismal services that I have been to yet. This next week we should be gaining 2-3 more baptismal dates so this area is growing really strong and hopefully I will be able to continue strengthening this area with my new companion. We still 1 baptismal date right now and her name is Karli Schmitt and she will be getting baptized on September 7 so I am really looking forward to that too. Well I hope everyone is still doing great and I am always praying for y'all and love y'all very much!

Love,

Elder Curtis

9/2/2013

So I don't have much to say this week because it has been pretty slow because we are doing a little clean up in the area and acting like it was a white wash (2 new missionaries coming into a new area). Unfortunately the lady we baptized last Sunday did not come to church on Sunday so she still has not been confirmed yet. We are not sure why she didn't come but most likely she had to work so that was pretty bummer. The work in the area moving along great we have a baptism set up for this Saturday for a girl named Karli Schmitt who is an amazing 11 year old girl. She has progressed really well and has been ready for a couple weeks now to get baptized but she wanted to wait for her dad to come home and be there at the baptism and confirmation. We have also been teaching a girl named Florence who also has a baptismal date for Sept. 21 but that might be pushed back to Oct 6because she didn't come to church on Sunday. My new companion is Elder Viana and he is from Venezuela and he is 19 and has been out 6 months like me and my old companion (Elder Eldredge). He doesn't have an accent but he has also been living in Salt Lake for the last 5 years. So he speaks really good English which is nice so we can still communicate well. So far we are working really well together and we both think this is going to be a great transfer. Well I know I am forgetting some things that happened like always but I have to go run some errands and do some laundry before we go to zone activity at iJump (a trampoline park). I love y'all very much and look forward to hearing from y'all next week :)

P.S. - Thank y'all sooo much for the birthday wishes and presents It made my day getting cards and presents from y'all. They were amazing and Michelle you can send me cookies anytime you want those cookies were delicious!!