3/3/14

Well this week has been about the same as previous weeks. We are still struggling trying to get the Crose family to come to church. We are still consistently trying to increase the work in the area and on Saturday I had a personal revelation we went out on visits with our ward mission leader. I slowly started to realize that this area requires a different kind of missionary work. As we were making visits I decided that instead of trying to share a message at every door contact that we had but instead we would just get to know the people in the area more and build a friendship first and then they would be more likely to let us in again in the future to be able to share the missionary lessons with them. We had 3 solid contacts that night and I felt like Saturday night was one of the most productive days we have had since I have been in this area even though we were unable to share a message that night. I know that is contrary to everything that I have been taught but nothing else is working here. I really feel like this is what needs to be done here. Once people realize that we are more than just missionaries and when they really do feel that and know that we care for them personally and see them as more than just a baptism is when they will open up to us more and that is when we will start seeing the success in the area. Oh and I forgot to mention that we have still not received our iPads but most likely we will be receiving them in April sometime. Supposedly I heard that missionaries are getting them when the enter the MTC now but oh well we will get ours soon enough ;) Oh and for y'all that are trying to follow with my bible reading I am currently at Genesis 48 and I recommend that y'all skip Genesis 38 because it is quite graphic and weird. Well I have to go do some shopping now but I love y'all very much!! Have a great week!

P.S. - For my year mark it is tradition to burn a shirt so I will be posting pictures of that as soon as we actually get around to doing it. The pictures that were in the last email were actually not pictures but just funny little smiley faces that gmail has. So it was nothing too big that y'all missed out on. LOL

P.S.S. - Mom thank you so much for not emailing Pres. Brinkerhoff the week that I did not send a weekly email. He has enough to worry about in the mission field. Thank you again!

02/24/2014 (1 Year!!)

Well hello hello. Sorry for not emailing last week but the place we go to do emails was closed last week for presidents day so my companion and I decided to take a stress free pday and just chilled and relaxed at the apartment for most of the day. We had a great mission conference with Elder Bednar! It was really weird because at the beginning he told us not to take notes and that taking notes that you can't find or don't use is "stupid". Yes he actually said that notes are stupid. The reason why he did not want us to take notes is because the whole conference was centered around learning from the spirit and to not focus on what he was physically saying. In contrast, he wanted us to write down the promptings of the spirit. It was a really weird experience because I walked in thinking that we were going to get a conference talk but instead he had a 2 part Q&A session with us. The first part consisted of a Q&A of the 3 talks that he asked us to read prior to coming to this conference. The second part consisted of a Q&A of questions that we wanted to ask an apostle and he made sure that we didn't ask any ridiculous like where is the sword of Laban.  It was a really fun and spiritual experience! Unfortunately we did not get to take a single picture with him or shake his hand but we were able to take a semi-small group picture with him and our mission presidency. So that was really cool and spiritual experience. So as for the area not a lot has happened in the past couple weeks. We are having a hard time with helping our investigators come to church. We are always looking for more people to teach though. Our wards are starting to catch the vision and they are starting come out with us more and more. It is really cool to see the excitement that they gain after coming out with us. Well I have to go do some shopping now. Hopefully next week we will be able to have some success and that I will have much more to report. Thank you for all the prayers that y'all have said to help me. I love and pray for y'all everyday! There is nothing more powerful that the power of prayer. I have learned and gained a strong testimony on prayer in the past year and how there is no such thing as a prayer too small or too big. I love and miss y'all very much!! Have a great week! 

P.S. - My expect date of departure is exactly 1 year from today, February 24, 2015.

P.S. - I am currently at Genesis 38 in my Old Testament reading but I am also reading the Old Testament institute manual so I am reading quite slowly but I am learning a lot and it is really cool to learn some deep doctrine :)

2/10/14

Another week has come and gone but this week has been very eventful. The area is starting to pick up which is awesome and we were able to extend a baptismal invitation to a family, they accepted, which was pretty sweet. I was able to help set up Elder Hernandez to invite this family. The family we invited was the Crose family and we invited Kristan (single mother, mid-30's) and her son Adryk (13 years old). She has another son but he is only 6 years old right now but we will continue to work with the whole family. Unfortunately they did not come to church this week but they still have enough weeks to be able to come in order to be baptized on March 8th (this the current date for their baptism). They accepted but she also wants her brother (a return missionary) to be the one to baptize her and her son and she would need to contact him and plan a day and time. In addition to that excitement I was able to see Tolan on Thursday and we went out to lunch together which was really fun to be able to see him again. I have attached a couple pictures below one is a picture with Tolan and the other is a picture with Elder Felton (he was my companion when we covered the Paris Idaho Stake). Elder Felton goes home on Wednesday and so I was able to get a picture with him before he went home. I also went to the eye doctor to get contacts this week which has been pretty interesting trying to get used to them. It still takes me awhile to get them in and take them out but I am getting quicker. They gave me a trial pack to use for a week before we order some after my return appointment on Wednesday. Oh and I forgot to tell y'all last week but we found out at interviews that we will be having a mission conference coming this Saturday, Feb 15, where we will be meeting Elder Bednar!! I have a suspicion that there will some talk about iPads and that we may get our iPads on Saturday!!! For obvious reasons I am getting pretty excited about meeting an apostle and hopefully he will have some presents for us ;) Well I have to go now but I love y'all very much and thank you again for all the letters and support that y'all have given me :)

An extra picture for your viewing pleasure:  James and Elder Hernadez eating dinner with Amanda's friend Erin.  Erin mentioned she was moving to IF on FB, Amanda replied with "My brother serves there," and Andrea, a friend of Erin's saw that and mentioned she was serving dinner to an Elder Curtis in IF that very night.  Erin needed to go to IF to make arrangements for the move, so she asked if she could join too.  And so James was surprised by dinner with Amanda's old friend Erin and new friend Andrea.

Address

(This is Amanda, the sister, speaking.)

I know James would appreciate letters.  If anyone feels so inspired, his address is:

Elder Curtis

1460 E. Benton, Apt #4

Idaho Falls, ID   83401

2/3/ 2014

Hey so this week has been a better week. It was my companion, Elder Hernandez's 20th birthday on Friday and a family took us out to Texas Roadhouse which was really fun. This has been pretty slow as well but the lessons we were able to have were really great. Our teaching pool is slowly starting to increase and the area is starting to see some success. We are praying that we will be able to have a convert baptism this coming month. We had a miracle happen this week and someone Elder Badoni and I tried to teach last transfer, we were unsuccessful because of the parents, came to church this week and his whole family was there. So we will be going this week to try and start teaching. His name is Kason Kingsford and he is 9 or 10 and it was a true miracle to find out that he came to church on Sunday. We were also able to have some really good interviews with Pres. Brinkerhoff this week and he is truly inspired and a great man. He helped me to understand one of my main jobs is to help Elder Hernandez become a great missionary. He also talked to me about how the Stake that we are currently serving in has one of the highest less actives in the stake boundaries and basically I felt like he was telling me that my 2nd job is to help those who are struggling to come back to church. After that he said most likely these less actives will have some unbaptized over-age youth for us to teach. So it really helped to know that he is not too worried that we have not reached the mission standard of excellence, which is every companionship baptizing monthly, and that we need to start with bringing less actives back to church and then the Lord will bless us with baptisms. I am truly grateful to have him as a mission president. He has really helped me to grow a lot in the past 6 months. Thank y'all for the super inspirational and encouraging emails and I am looking forward to the letters that should get here soon :) I love y'all very much and very grateful that Heavenly Father has put me in such a great family and I know that I have y'all as a family for a reason. I love Heaven Father so much and am very grateful for all that he has done for me. I know that if we put our trust in Him nothing is impossible. I know that He is always there for us and He is just waiting for us to talk to Him. We just need to humble ourselves and ask for help and He has promised that He will be there to lift us up when we are down. I hope y'all have a great week! I love and miss y'all very much!!

P.S. - I have attached a picture of my companion and I and also a picture of the wonderful steak I had :)

01/27/2014

Well I promised y'all some pictures last week so here are a couple of pictures of me at my study desk. Since those pictures were taken I have moved my desk to a different wall and hung up a Texas flag bandanna on the wall. This week has been really slow trying to build up the area and we did not have any lessons and unfortunately we were not able to meet with those I talked about last week and have lessons with them this week. We are having trouble with getting into doors. We have some really good prospects. We go out almost everyday with the ward mission leader in one of our wards and are working with our other wards to make it possible to work more with all of our wards. Alexus Dutton unfortunately has not been able to come to church yet and when we were walking around making some visits we found out this week that her mom is making her come to church with her. Her mom goes to Calvary Chapel which is our local anti-mormon church :( To be honest this week has been a little bit of a struggle. I am starting to loose the fire and the motivation. So I thought y'all would like to know that missionary work is very very hard especially in a slow area. Some days it is really hard for me to go out and do the work and have the continuing faith to find someone to be able to teach everyday. It is hard being a senior missionary and making sure to keep my companion is staying motivated everyday and helping to grow and become the missionary our Heavenly Father wants him to be. So request time I know y'all are really busy with your everyday lives but I could really use a good pep talk. If y'all can find time in your busy schedules I would love a hand written letter with some encouraging uplifting notes and your testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I have just finished reading Moses and Abraham in the Pearl of Great Price and now I will skip Joseph Smith-Matthew and Joseph Smith History to read the Old Testament. Currently I am at Genesis chap 8 and I have gained a great testimony of the plan of happiness and each of our potentials. I know that our Heavenly Father has great expectations from each one of us. He loves us much! He wants us all to succeed. Lucifer and even Cain had great potential to go on to be great people but they chose a different route and because of that they have lost out on many many blessings that our Heavenly Father was waiting to give to them. I know that through Jesus Christ and only through Jesus Christ can we all reach our potentials of being "noble and great" souls in the kingdom of God. We all chose this life and knew that we would go through many trials but still we all celebrated with much rejoicing anyways! I love Heavenly Father very much and I am grateful to be serving a mission here in the Idaho Pocatello Mission. I am very grateful Jesus Christ and his sacrifice that he did to make it possible to be able to live with Heavenly Father again someday. I am very grateful to have the family that I have and for all the love and support y'all have continued to give me. I love y'all very much and miss y'all very very much too. 

                                                                                                        

P.S. - I was told by a less active family that we were teaching that I should share a short message about Jesus Christ that I shared with them and in a previous talk I gave a while ago. So I gave a talk on faith in Jesus Christ which made me think of past talks I have had with dad. I remembered dad has told me time and time again in the past about being truthful in everything that I do because it takes a lot of time and experiences to build a trust in someone but at the same time it takes one thing/lie to loose all the trust that you have in someone. Well as I was giving this talk I realized that Jesus Christ, being a perfect being, has never done one thing for us to loose our trust in him. This is amazing and something we must remember everyday because of the Atonement he knows us perfectly and descended below all of us that we may all have a shoulder to lean on and someone to help lift us up when we fall. Anytime that we may feel like we are all alone and nobody understands there is always at least one person, Jesus Christ, he is always there waiting for us to call upon him to help us through anything. I love this idea very much because we can always rely on him because of the Atonement he knows everything that we have done and what we are going to do and he is the only one that can help us every time. I have a very strong testimony of this I have a very strong testimony on prayer and how Heavenly Father hears and answers all of our prayers no matter how big or small they may be. I know that our Heavenly Father loves each and everyone very much and He is waiting to bless us everyday as long as we are doing what He has asked of us to do. I stand as a witness of these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

1/20/2014

So we have a had a fairly eventful week here in the area. We were able to go out with our ward mission leader almost everyday which has been really awesome and we were able to teach many lesson, most of which were to less actives) but we were able to find 3 over-age youth in this hunt to clean up the ward records that we will be able to hopefully start teaching. One is Jaden Crystal and he is 14 years old and his friend who lives across the street is currently serving a mission. We were going through the unbaptized over-age youth list when we found him (we found all 3 from this list) and we were able to share a lesson with him and invited him to be baptized on Jan 22nd and he accepted! His mom is a non-member as well but she wasn't as excited about the idea but she agreed to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it. The next was Tyler Shaw and he is 14 years old as well and as we were talking with him we found out that he was interested in learning more. His grandparents live next door and are active members and we were going to visit them when he happen to be there so we decided to share a quick message with them and left a soft commitment with him. We found out that he is currently really busy with school but that in couple weeks we could probably start teaching him. With that soft commitment I basically said if he were to find out for himself if what we have to share is true would he act on it and be baptized and left the invitation. He accepted as well but we did not set up a date for him mainly because we don't know when we are going to be able to start teaching him. So that was another awesome experience that we had this week. The third was a girl named Alexus Dutton and she is 10 years old and wants to be baptized. Like Tyler we went to go talk to relative that lives in the ward first (Alexus' Aunt) and she happen to be over visiting so we started to talk with her and that is when we found out that she wanted to be baptized! So we started talking with her and her aunt to find out what is currently holding her back from being baptized right now and she said that her mom wants her to start going to church first and learning more about the church. Unfortunatly, she did not come to church this week but we are going to try and start teaching her and hopefully we will be able to see her this week and we hope to be able to leave a baptismal invitation with her as well. 

Well that is the highlights from the past couple weeks and next week I should have a couple pictures for y'all :) I love and miss y'all very much and hope y'all have a great week!!!