Monday, September 5, 2016

Pearland Texas, Week 99: August 8, 2016 - August 14, 2016

August 15, 2016

So the biggest news is that I am safe as far as transfers. I will officially end the mission in the Pearland Ward. Big relief. But, its kind of wonky that my companion is getting transferred. My new comp and I have been just having a blast, so its a great way to end on a solid note! I'm excited to be able to have a new companion for my last little stretch and just hope I can get him acquainted with everything nicely.

We had a sweet sweet week this week though. I was quite proud of how things turned out. Probably the best week we have had in a long time. We didn't teach as many lessons as we did last week but it was more of a quality over quantity type effort. And, it doesn't even matter how many lessons we teach because I was super focused on just finding new people so we COULD teach. The Lord blessed us. We are now officially teaching Austin's kids!! We got to see them twice this week. They had us over for dinner one night and we talked about the Book of Mormon and shared a cool video on it. The second time we saw them some member's home.They actually invited them over for an after church dinner!! it was tight! The members invited her first and then us after and its amazing because our ward is taking them in sooo well. They are being the best at befriending and involving Austin. We taught the family and Austin's family about the Atonement of Christ and it was a pretty powerful lesson! The kids and Austin were paying way close attention and the kids totally understood. We also asked the other member family good questions and they had great responses that helped teach.

We also had a way cool experience as we went to go see a less active family and we saw someone mowing the lawn. So we waved to him and he came over and talked to us on the driveway. Turns out the less actives did not live there and the dude we talked to was named Steve. We proceeded to ask if he was religious at all and he told us about growing up baptist. We then taught him the highlights of the Restoration right there and then and he thought that was pretty nifty and said we can come back to share more with him this week!! It was awesome.

That is so cool to hear that you guys got to talk to Sis Hanzon!! Its always weird for me when the two worlds collide, but its exciting at the same time. Bet that was a neat visit. The weather has been cooling down actually!!! The storms roll in and drop humidity and temp a ton. I am super stoked for all the good plans we have when I get home.I try not to get trunky ;) I only think about it during morning workouts and when I shower. Beside that, the work is occupying the mind which is nice because thats not the case for all old missionaries.

Love you tons,
Elder Deans

 

Pearland Texas, Week 98: August 1, 2016 - August 7, 2016

August 8, 2016

We had a sweet week!! We just had a fun time throughout and we were able to see tons of people we planned to see. We also hit our highest record of lessons in a week this week again, 27 lessons. One day we had 7 lessons which was our daily highest record. We also had a highlight of being blessed with a mini missionary to join us from Thursday to yesterday. The whole stake did a mini mission experience this week and it was with the youth from 14-18. Our missionary was 15 years old. His name was Michael Barnes. He was a really good kid. He was way down to teach alongside with us and he asked lots of questions to learn about things, and he just had a jolly time with us. We talked a lot about Batman because he's a comic and game fan, so we totally related. He bore powerful testimony in multiple lessons that we had and it actually touched one of our members so much that she bore her testimony in church and talked about our visit and how he made her day. We also got a lot better at street contacting this week. We were able to talk to everyone that we saw outside. It didn't lead to any investigators unfortunately, but the people were quite nice and it lead to a couple referrals as well. So at least theres something.

Our stake president met with our zone leaders this week and totally complimented our companionship because we're in his ward. He told the ZLs that he loved how we followed up with him in person after we invited him to share his testimony of the Restoration with a non member and also to share the Plan of Salvation as a home teaching message. He was able to share the message with his home teaching family and he's going to share testimony with people at work. He was just impressed that we remembered and stopped by on Saturday and helped him to keep working on it.

So Austin and the kids are doing awesome. They came to church all together again this week. She has a 8 yr old boy named Isaac and a 10 yr old girl named Taris. Blackie for some darn reason wasn't able to make it to church this week. We weren't able to see him for a lesson either. The lady with the tomales wasn't too interested so we tried her daughter one time and found out that she doesn't actually live there, just visits so we referred her as well to the other missionaries. So Wilber has moved out, he went back to Houston because life was more settled. But Ann still lives there and said we can come back in a couple weeks, so we will definitely do that and hope and pray it works out a little better this go around and we'll be able to see her often. Dinner appointments are filling up for the month. We've been able to have some super good lessons after we eat with the members. They're about to find us some investigators. .

 

Love you tons,

Janz

 

Elder Haslauer, Michael Barnes (mm) and Janz