February 18, 2012 A visit from Elder Christofferson & Elder Neilson

What an amazing morning we had on the morning of February 18, 2012.  Elder Christofferson, of the Twelve Apostles and Elder Neilson, an area Seventy, came and spoke to all the missionaries in all 3 of the Houston, Texas  missions.  There was about 500 missionaries gathered together to hear these two amazing disciple's of Jesus Christ deliver their messages to us.
What a blessing it was to have been there.

Elder Neilson spoke to us about working together in companionship's.  He also spoke to us about the atonement of Jesus Christ and that through the atonement there is hope for all of us.  He went over 2 Nephi chapter 31.

Elder Christofferson explained to us how mission assignments are made.  He said, if you've ever asked yourself, why did I get sent to Houston, Texas rather than  ________ or ______,  Elder Christofferson said, rest assure, you are exactly where the Lord wants you to be.

Elder Christofferson spoke to us about many things that morning.  He spoke about:

•     Take advantage of companion study time
•     Teach for understanding - Ask a lot of questions
•      Don't preach, teach
•      He made reference to Mark 10:14 
•      How do I become one with Jesus Christ

He spoke about repentance.  He said, repentance brings the spirit and the spirit testifies of the truth.

Elder Christofferson said, that it is the small daily things that we do that brings us closer to our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.

They greeted every one of us with a few words and a hand shake.   We were all so spiritually fed that morning.  It was wonderful!!

Here are a couple of pictures of our work area within our office.  

 This is the front office where Ginny spends most of her time.

   



This is where Joe spends a lot of his time when he's not out helping the missionaries with their cars or their broken bikes.

February 2012

We're getting pretty good at taking care of our duties on transfer week.  It's hard to say goodbye to the missionaries that are going home.  We become so close to each and every one of them.  They are amazing young men and woman.    It's also very exciting to get to know the new missionaries that are coming to the mission.

That's what transfer week is all about.  The missionaries that have completed their missions return to their families and new missionaries come to replace the ones that have returned home.  The missionaries that are still here in the mission, some of them will be transferred to a new area within the mission and will get a new companion.  Transfer week is a very exciting time for the missionaries.  It's also a very exciting and busy time for the whole mission.

Elder Newhouse, Elder Cui & Elder Cayus

Sister Van Tiendren

Transfer week takes place every 6 weeks.  I'm attaching a couple of pictures of some of the missionaries that have stayed with us the night before they leave the mission and some that stayed with us the day they arrived in the mission.  The top 2 picture are of missionaries that have completed their missions & are going home.  All the others are new missionaries just coming to the mission.

Elder Mitchem, Elder Duran & Elder Howell

Sister Perez, Sister Romney & Sister Green

 

Sister Ker, Sister Avery  Sister Harper

Poor sister Ker, she was so sick.  We all felt so bad for her.

Went to a Vietnamese New Year's celebration

Last night we had a really fun experience.  AT one of our Vietnamese Wards, they were celebrating the Vietnamese New Year.  (For those of you that don't know what a Ward is, that is one of our church's congregations.)   The missionarie's that belong to that ward came by the mission office a week ago and invited all the mission office missionarie's to the celebration.

They had a wonderful Lion Dance.  They hired this group of Vietnamese dancers.  Their costumes were amazing and it was so entertaining.  The room had fun decorations and after the Lion Dance they served a wonderful Vietnamese dinner.  Most of the food was really good, but some of it we didn't care for.  I wish I had taken pictures of the food, but I didn't think about it until most of the food was gone.