Wonderful week!

August 26, 2013

Hello hello,

  This last week was wonderful! It was also pretty dang busy. We were teaching lessons almost all day everyday it was wonderful. Our investigators are really starting to progress and we have two baptisms coming up this Friday. We are soooo excited!!! One is a guy named Jesus Espinoza haha kinda funny. That's about half of my family's name ;) lol jk The other one is a 9 year old girl. It should be an amazing experience for them so we are trying to plan it out as best we can! It will be difficult with how busy we are starting to get but we will make it work :)

  We were doing very well not too long ago with finding new investigators but lately we haven't been doing so hot. But it's cause we are starting to teach all those investigators now! haha I'm not sure how correct this is but there was talk of our area getting split again! That would be two splits since I've been here! Too crazy haha But our old area the university ward is also doing wonderful so it really was inspired that our area should split. So if it happens again I'll be okay with it. I would just hope we don't have to give up all of our investigators again! Haha. Next transfer will be my companions last transfer which is crazy to think about so we both hope I stay with him till hes done! that would be awesome! we both do really well together and have accomplished lots in this area!

  So, every single time this one ward missionary goes out to lessons with us something crazy and unplanned happens to where he is able to really relate with people we meet with and help them out. Its starting to get a little weird haha. It just goes to show that God really does work in mysterious ways for our benefit. Some people think that God is not a loving God and that some things are just a coincidence but after many different experiences I've had on my mission where things just somehow manage to happen at the right time and right place and we are somehow with a certain member in our ward and peoples lives are blessed because of these "random" things. Yeah, they're not just coincidences lol. Some people just have a hard time really thinking about certain things as being a blessing in their life. but the moment they realize that, they start realizing and noticing other small tender mercies the Lord gives us and their lives start making a turn for the better :) Its wonderful! Lots of people think we are just out there to see how many people we can baptize. But really we actually really desire to help out a person in any way we can. We want to help them build their faith and find peace in their life and share this wonderful message we have. Which of course eventually leads to baptism but its not for our benefit. Its for theirs. Being a missionary has taught me many wonderful things that I will never forget. So I would encourage everyone to go and do missionary work! There are not many things that are more satisfying I promise :)

  I hope everyone had a wonderful week and has an even better one this week! Love you all!

Love Elder Jaden Espinoza

"Me and a prarie dog"

Pretty great week!

August 19. 2013

Hello :)

  This past week wasn't too bad. We went on exchanges with the Zone Leaders so that's always a good experience. I stayed here in my area and my companion went to their area. We still somehow managed to talk to people who only spoke Spanish so it was a little nice to having to be the one to talk to them haha. I only have a few things I know how to say to people on like door approaches or something like that. But I can surprisingly understand most of what they say. I still need to learn it though!

  We were at this apartment complex a few weeks ago and this girl came running to us asked if we were Mormon so of course we said yes and she said, "ME TOO!!!!!" She was a little excited lol. But she wanted to know where the church was so she could start going. She had just moved here and got married about a month ago. Anyway she invited us to come to her house and answer some questions she still had cause she has only been a member for a few years. Her husband stayed in their room most of the time until the end when she wanted us to help her stop smoking so she called him out and asked him to join her and he accepted! We have this 15 step program we teach to people who wanna stop smoking. They committed to everything we asked them to do. And now we're going to start teaching him the lessons. They move in October cause he's getting out of the Army. But he's accepting to the Gospel so we will get him before he moves! ;) haha.

  We also started teaching a few other pretty legit investigators this last week. It was a pretty great week. No crazy stories or anything sadly haha. We have two baptisms scheduled for next friday so we are pretty stoked about that! One is a 9 year girl and the other is this girl in the wards fiancee. Its been nice this transfer to only have to worry about the 1st ward so things in this ward are finally starting to get a move on haha.

There still continues to be the random crazy thunderstorms but its pretty awesome! Its sad though cause they always happen at night!!!! When we can't go drive around in all the crazy rain! The thunder and lightning is pretty intense though.

  We went to the El Paso Zoo this morning as a district. That was actually pretty fun. they have some pretty cool animals here.

Well I hope everyone had a great last week and has an even better one this week!! Love you all!

Love Elder Espinoza

Which side are you on?

August 13, 2013

  So this week was a pretty good one as usual! Just trying to stay busy finding and teaching people. We found a wonderful family of three last week and we're so excited about it! They have a 9 yr old daughter who is autistic. They were supposed to be at church on Sunday but the husband had to work :( But the wife promised to come next week even if he was working lol. She seemed really excited about Relief Society. She was telling us how she was looking to join a womens group of some sort for support and things like that. I don't think it was a coincidence that we were planning on talking about the Relief Society that day!! We are looking forward to helping this family progress in this wonderful restored Gospel!

  I fall in love with this area more and more after every week. Its crazy that we are already in our 4th week of this transfer! We both hope we stay another transfer. If not i'll be very sad :( My companion goes home after next transfer so that's another reason why we wanna stay companions. We get along great and work well with each other.

  Last week our mission president and his wife came to our apartments and interviewed. We probably have the most amazing mission president out there! It was an awesome experience. Something he challenged us to do was to act as if Jesus Christ was our third companion out tracting door door in a white shirt and tie. Lemme tell ya that really makes you think about how you go about your day and whether you wanna get out and work or find something less productive and lazy to do. The thing I love about being a missionary is you learn integrity. No one is out there watching us making sure we're doing what were supposed to be doing. Its all on us. The thing is though, is that Heavenly Father is watching us. SCARY! Haha. Not really though. I think it helps us to be a better person when no one is watching. And also I feel like he's not watching us so he can count every time we slip up but to help us and comfort us in times of need. Being a missionary is probably the greatest thing ever and I wouldn't trade it for a thing.

Something I learned in scripture study this week is that God will not suffer his plans to be destroyed. Satan will not win no matter how hard he tries. Its almost like Oregon State trying to beat Oregon. It just ain't gonna happen ;) lol! But really, we need to decide which side we wanna be one. The winning team or the losing team. We already know whose gonna win. We just need to show by our actions which side we are on.

  I hope everyone had a great week! Love you all and thanks for the love and support. You're all in my prayers!

Love

Elder Espinoza

A wonderful week as usual!

August 5, 2013

Hey!

  So this last week was wonderful as usual. Being a missionary might be the greatest thing ever! We talked to quite a few people last week. We had two experiences where people wanted to have a debate about religion haha. Of course we are told not to bible bash but surprisingly they weren't bible bashes. They actually turned into teaching opportunities and new investigators haha! Its amazing what you can say when you have the spirit with you! Its also a testimony builder. The more you share the gospel the more your testimony grows. I've heard that a lot and have experienced for myself that it is true. It was very interesting to talk to those people and to hear their beliefs. Many were the same but theirs were just so empty and doesn't make that much sense. That's why I love being a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Its wonderful to have the full restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. Both times after the "debates" I turned to my companion and said,"Man, there's no way this Gospel isn't true!" It just makes so much sense and then when you the spirit testifies the truth of it to you it brings a comfort to your soul. I've seen it in my life and the lives of people I teach. The Gospel is for everyone and makes bad people into good people and good people into better people.

  I had the privilege of baptizing one of our investigators in the singles ward who we had to hand over to the sisters. It was sooo exciting cause that was the first baptism where I started teaching the investigator! Even though I didn't get to teach him the last lesson it was still a wonderful experience and I feel as if I have made a new life long friend. Tha'ts how I feel about lots of people in this area. There are soo many wonderful people here. I'm gonna be very sad to leave this area but good thing we have Facebook right? Haha.

One thing our Zone is doing this month is having a companionship fast every day of the month. The purpose of the fast is to find families to teach. Although my comp and I have not found a family to teach there have already been companionships that have. We had zone meeting on Friday and after, the whole zone goes out for lunch. Guess who got picked to fast that day? Yep, we did. Haha. It was pretty hard sitting at a pizza buffet and just watching everyone eat their delicious, saucy, meaty, cheesy, tasty pizza. Haha! But that night two families were found so it was soo worth it.

  Another day we went to a BBQ. AMAZING. Definitely the first person !'ve met on the mission who claims to make good ribs and actually does haha. Well not too much has happened here in El Paso other than that. Just trying to help bring people closer to Christ. My companion told me a pretty cool analogy. The military gives the people on the front line fighting the most the best weapons. the people in the back doing office work don't really get the best weapons. It can be the same for us. When we're on the front lines doing missionary work whether were missionaries or not, our Father in Heaven is going to give us his best weapons. Hope everyone is doing well and has a great week :) Love you all!

Love Elder Espinoza

Elder Espinoza and Eddie. First Baptism from start to finish!

 

Elder Espinoza, Eddie, Elder Bushman

Us and the Sister Missionaries that took over the young single adult ward.

Us and Brother Gogan. He gets deployed this week :( Definitely one of our favorite families in this area. We are over there a lot haha.

Us and the Booths. They're from Ephrata Washington. They're called to serve in the singles ward. They're really cool and love us, haha, we were sad we don't see them as much anymore. 

Elder Espinoza got a surprise visit from Marcus Andros and a plate of cookies!

Marcus is from Washington and was visiting his in-laws in El Paso.

Be interested not interesting

July 29, 2013

Hello hello,

So this last week was a little different. It was weird not having to worry about the singles ward anymore. Kinda sad actually cause we miss everyone there and all our investigators we had! One is getting baptized this Saturday and he asked me to baptize him so !'m very excited for that!! Hes a great guy. We had a lot of free time cause basically half of our work isn't ours anymore so that meant lots of tracting time! Which means lots of crazy experiences too haha.

We meet lots of interesting people. Our mission president has counseled us to be interested not interesting and you can definitely tell the difference while talking to people. When they see that you are actually interested in them the open up a lot more and are a lot more willing to listen to what we have to say. We met this African American lady who says she is a prophetess.... very interesting individual. Haha. She is really cool though! She dances and sings glory all the time its pretty funny but she has a very strong testimony about Jesus Christ and that's how she expresses it. We invited her to come to Church and she came with her two kids. She sat way up in the front but we could still see her waving her arms around in the air whenever she liked something that the people giving the talks said. We couldn't hear her but we heard from members she was saying glory, amen and hallelujah the whole time haha. Shes got NO shame whatsoever its awesome. Anyway she really enjoyed church and wants to come back again. We gave her a Book of Mormon and she dove right into it from the cover page and is really enjoying it so far. She's very interested in our beliefs. She hasn't heard anything about our Church but so far we've been able to answer questions she's had and give her new ideas that "totally make sense" that shes never thought of before. She would be a great addition to the first ward! We just need to kinda clear what exactly a prophet is and does. She is very spiritual though and reads and prays a lot. She is a fun person to be around so we are excited to start teaching her.

This area has a bright future ahead of it for missionary work. Our ward is excited that they don't have to share us with the university ward anymore haha. So we will continue to stay busy and help people build their relationship with our Father in Heaven.

The weather had been pretty crazy here since its monsoon season and my comp and I have loved every minute of it! Lots and lots of crazy rainstorms. Which is something I've always wanted to be in on my mission since I was a little boy and who woulda guessed I woulda got that in El Paso Texas?? Not me that's for sure! But its been awesome! Lots and lots of awesome thunder and lightning storms its just sad cause they always happen at night when we have to be in the house :( Luckily we have an awesome view from our balcony lol. Lucky me!

Well I hope everyone had a great week and has an even better one this week!!! Thanks for all the love and support. It really helps a lot! Love you all!

Love Elder Espinoza

Here are a couple of pictures of new friends they found  in their apartment this week.

A giant whip scorpion

An eventful week!

July 22, 2013

Hello hello,

So this last week has been a pretty eventful one! We had some good and sad news. The good news being my comp and I are staying together again this transfer and the bad news being our area is being split :( But even more good news is that we both got to stay in the ward we wanted too haha. But sad news again is that we have to give up 3 GOLDEN investigators who we started teaching and one of them is getting baptized next Saturday! But luckily we can go to that :) We're not too sad about the split we kinda figure we got that ward started on enough missionary work to get their own set of missionaries. We will miss lots of the members there but luckily we're still really close so its all good haha. We are excited to now only have one ward we can focus on and get to know the members really well. It was hard to get to know the members cause we would switch back and forth ever other Sunday to both wards. So we're excited.

So the investigator who is getting baptized next Saturday is a really awesome guy! His girlfriend is a member and goes to a Spanish ward and he doesn't speak Spanish so he went to our family ward and it was funny cause we figured he was a member cause we had seen him before dressed in a white shirt and tie so when we found out we jumped on it super fast! We taught him the first two lessons just last week and he is already getting baptized :) Its wonderful to meet and teach the people the Lord is preparing for his gospel!

So its been cloudy and rainy all last week as well and that was amazing! We both missed rain. Even though it doesn't rain too much on the east side of Washington it still rains WAY more there than it does here haha. One day it poured all day and the ground here doesn't soak up water very well so when it rains everything floods. We had to drive up this street that's a huge hill and it basically had a river flowing though it! I happen to LOVE puddles. Idk how many of you have seen the movie UP but in the movie there are dogs who work for the bad guy and all you have to do to get them off track is to say squirrel and they say where! and start looking for it haha its pretty funny. but that's how I am with puddles so I was loving it!  We got our car completely covered by a huge wall of water coming from this huge lifted truck it was pretty awesome haha. Lets just say we found as many excuses to drive up the road that day haha. Its all dried up though now :( But I found out that El Paso can be a beautiful place...when it rains....which is once a year...haha.

Well I hope everyone had a great week and has an even better one this week! Love you all!

Love Elder Espinoza

Another good week!

July 15, 2013

Well this last week has been a pretty good one! We had interviews with the new mission president. Him and his wife are so awesome! They have brought a wonderful spirit to our mission and have given us lots of determination and committed us to lots of goals!!! This mission is really gonna be something else by the time I leave. Lots of missionaries that are going home soon are sad that they don't get to be here when this mission grows like crazy!! But I get to be!!! lol :)

  We have been finding lots of new investigators lately and they're all so awesome! We've had soo many very spiritual lessons with them. The family we met on the 4th probably doesn't live in our area so we have to stop teaching them and pass them off to the other Elders ( We are SOOO sad!!!!! We love them and wish we could finish teaching them but oh well. They will feel the spirit and know the truth of our message whether we teach them or not cause the spirit is what testifies truth to us all.

  So I didn't get to save any ones life this week but it was still a good one haha. We went on exchanges with the zone leaders and that is always awesome. You learn so much from them. They are Spanish speaking and I went to their area. boy was that an experience lol. He taught me some door approaches and what not but I never had to do it cause every time it was my turn to knock a door they spoke English, haha, but we had a few lessons all in Spanish and I kinda just sat there not knowing what was being said but it was awesome cause I could feel the spirit. Basically everyone gave me crap for having my last name and not speaking Spanish lol! Especially when they found out my Dad is from Mexico and speaks Spanish and so does my step dad! So they didn't blame me too much ;) haha. I learned quite a bit of Spanish though. I also learned I know a lot more than I think I know haha. I understood a lot of stuff It was pretty cool.

  We have transfers coming up next week so i'll know by next Monday whats happening. I hope I stay here in this area with my companion. We love it here its so awesome!!!! Well I hope everyone had a great week and has an even better one this week :) Love you all!!!!

Love Elder Espinoza