March 24, 2014

Hello family! Thank you all for your emails! I loved it so much!! I have 11 emails this week and I always read yours first and reply back before I ever read anyone else’s emails. I hope that makes you happy! :) This week was AMAZING!! We had so much happen and saw so many miracles! But I need to answer some questions from the emails I got this week.

I am in the Palo Verde Ward in the East. My Bishop is Benjamin Howe. He is SOOO cool! He is about 6' 6" and in amazing shape! He plays basketball with us every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday mornings at 5:30. There are 2 sets of missionaries in the ward. Us and the Zone Leaders. They are really cool :) Our ward is the base ward, which means that everyone that is Mormon in the air force that lives on base is in our ward! That also means that we get to go on base all the time to go to dinners! I had a really cool experience on base that I'll tell you about a little later. :)

MOM: I didn't tell you about what happened to my foot. It wasn't as bad as it looks, it was just a bleeder. But I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to worry! Basically I was flipping a knife around and when I tried to do 2 whole rotations with it, I got a little scared to catch it. Because of the 14 years of soccer, I learned to catch things with my feet. Well... It just bounced off my foot! I had my shoes on luckily and when I took them off, I had a cut that was only about a centimeter long and 2 centimeters deep. Nothing too bad! :) It just bled cause I hit a vein right on the spot. Luckily my knife was sharp so it didn't do a lot of damage.

DAD: My clothes are holding out great! My shoes still fit and so do my pants! That is good cause that means I haven't gained too much weight! I do need some more garments though... Somehow I have ended up with only 7 pairs and so I am doing a lot of laundry and it’s kinda a waste. So if you want to send me some more tops and bottoms of dry-lux, I'd love that :)

Alright! Lets get onto the week then!

So one of our investigators, Bob, is really struggling right now. Satan is really working on him... He owes $15,000 in child support and another $9,000 for interest. So that is $24,000 and the bank wont help him because it is over $20,000. So he is most likely going to lose his house and his job. He doesn't know what he is going to go or what he is going to do. He didn't come to church yesterday either because when he leaves, his son comes over and steals from him. His son has stole a generator and over 50 DVD's. I don't know what is going to happen to Bob but keep him in your prayers please!

On Tuesday, we were supposed to go on Exchanges with our District Leader. We didn't get out of our lesson until 10:05... that's 30 minutes later than we are supposed to be home. Plus, we had to walk home (it was only like 5 blocks away but we were already late). So we start walking and we pass this bus stop. There is a lady sitting there and we say hi as we pass by. About 10 steps later, I get hit with the Spirit and say to Mora, "We're already late, lets go talk to that lady." So we go back and ask her if she is alright. She just kinda looks at us like, Who are you guys? I introduce myself as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and tell her that I felt prompted by the Spirit to come and talk to her. She smiled and started crying. She told us that she was walking home and as she was walking, she felt like she needed to stop at the bus stop. Her husband was killed there a little while ago and she tied ribbons to the backing of it to remind her of him. So she went over and checked on them then sat there and waited for God to tell her what to do next. That's when we showed up. We were able to bear our testimonies that her and her husband could be together for all time and eternity and not just "till death do you part". She couldn't stop crying and smiling. Elder Mora asked her "How do you feel right now after talking to us?" She said "I feel much better. I felt better before you guys said anything. This is an answer to my prayers." Her name is Deandra and we are meeting with her again this Wednesday. I can't wait! She is SOOO Prepared!!! And it was all the Spirit that did it.

 The Zone Leaders gave us a referral this week too. They said "The girlfriend was a member but very less active. She wants to get into the addiction recovery program. The boyfriend is a non-member but wans to get baptized. Congrats." They had an appointment set up for 7 so we went over and met with them. Her name is Nichole and his is Chris. He is AMAZING!! He knows so much about our church already and loves our focus on the family. So we taught the Restoration and he soaked it all in. THEN Nichole came in and bore her testimony about the church. Turns out that she is only a member of 2 years. She has a super strong testimony of the church, she just needed to be in a situation that allowed her to have it come back out. He also works on bikes, So he fixed Elder Mora's bike and gave him a bag for his bike. It is normally about $100 but he gave it to him for free! So now we don't really have to carry our bags cause we have one on the bike. He has one for me too but he has to check with his mom if he can give it to me. So I might get a nice bike bag!! This week, Mora has also got a jacket and a set of really nice golf clubs all for free! All he said was, "That's a nice jacket" and "Those are nice clubs" and they just said, "Well then its yours!" I might have to compliment people on things and maybe I will get lucky too. ;)

 So we went on base this week to a members house for dinner, the Whites. He is obviously in the air force but super funny which is kinda hard to come by with a job like the one he has. So after dinner, Elder Williamson (one of the zone leaders) asked him if he liked guns. Brother White said he did. Williamson asked if he liked shot guns and brother white said, "No not really. I only have 3 of them." All of us realized that meant that the ones that he did like, he must have a lot of them. He offered to show us his collection and took us into his garage. There were 4 safes in there. The smallest one was 4 ft x 1 ft x 1 ft (high x width x deep). It was empty. The next one was 4 ft x 2 ft x 2 ft and it was full of magazines for all different kind of guns. The next one was 5 ft x 3 ft x 3 ft. This one was filled completely full with ammo! All different kinds! The last one was the biggest! It was 5 ft x 4 ft x 4 ft. It was full of GUNS!!! From A.R. 15's to A.K. 47's to guns that folded in half that I'd never even seen before! It was actually really cool :) I took about 50 pictures with all different guns! It was amazing!!

Well That pretty much sums up my week! We had a lot of fun and kicked trash! I love it out here! The mission is the greatest decision I have ever made! I love the church and I love my Heavenly Father and Savior, Jesus Christ. Thank you for your emails! I LOVE YOU ALL SO MUCH!!!

~Elder Kyle Harris