Week 37

Whats up family! This week has been a pretty good one! Tuesday morning we drove down to Louisville and picked up my new companion Elder Marco Torrico, from Lima Peru and its been pretty fun! a little different but still we've had lots of fun!

Me and my companion Elder Torrico (aka Bruno Mars)

Wednesday we went on down to the trailer park and visited with Jennifer and we had a pretty good lesson with her! She is really excited to be baptized but is still pretty scared to call and tell her parents in México but we're working on it! we were talking and we asked her why she wants to be baptized and she told us that she had a dream that Jesus told her that she needed to be baptized and to read the book of mormon so i think she's recieved a pretty powerful witness that its true, we just have to work out some of the kinks before we can do it so thats good, im pretty excited about that!

Thursday we had a lesson with Jorge and Zaira and they're doing awesome as well they are super solid and are reading from the book of mormon everyday and they are teaching their 3 todlers how to pray and they know that this is the true church, the only problem is that they haven't been to church yet haha Jorge works 7 days a week so next time we visit them we are going to take them to the chapel here and give them a little tour and hopefully that will spark their interest in coming to church on sunday!

Friday we contacted a hispanic lady and she told us she wasnt really interested so we asked her if she knew anyone that was and she pointed out a specific door and so we went and found a single mom named Blanca who has been through some hard times so she was pretty receptive to our message and we came back the next day to visit her and teach her about the book of mormon and the restoration and we asked her if this was pretty new to her and if it was hard to believe and she told us well yeah it is new but its not so hard to believe, God can do whatever he wants! She has great faith, i think she'll just need some time to digest everything!

Sunday we had church all day but at the end of the day we finally got back in contact with Ausencio! (not aurelio haha) but yeah we found him again after 2 weeks of not seeing him and he told us he's read the first three chapters of the book of mormon and said "this is pretty interesting" haha so im excited to come back and visit with him! last night we had a prayer with him and kinda just chatted about the Book of Mormon and baptism and it went really well, he is super prepared!

Over all this week went pretty good and im super excited to keep working here in Georgetown! the weather here has been a lot nicer! still cold but not nearly as bad as it could be!

Love you guys, hope you have a good week!

Para siempre Dios esté con vos!
Love Elder Follett

Week 36

HEY! What's up! this week went by super fast again! We got transfer calls!! Elder Henderson is getting out of here and going to Louisville and my new companion is from Peru and his name is Elder Torrico! I'm sad to see elder Henderson go but still super excited! Elder Torrico only has a few months left on his mission and he had never been to the U.S. before his mission so Spanish was his first language so I'm going to try and improve my Spanish as best as I can! I'm super excited! the new mission president is really changing things a lot! He's been here for a few months but he's just barely starting to change everything the way that he wants it! like 2 of the area's have been changed into a "zebra area" which means that there is a Spanish elder there with an English elder and they do both Spanish and English work! he's white washing one of the areas of Spanish elders (which means he's taking both missionaries out of the area and sending in two new ones) and our Zone Leaders said eventually Spanish elders wont share an area with English elders and only do Spanish work, they will have the areas most populated with Spanish people and do all the English work there as well, so times are changing here in the GKLM! 

This week was pretty good! Elder Henderson was a little sick at the beginning of the week but we still managed to have a decent week! we taught a couple of pretty good lessons. We weren't able to get a hold of Auerelo this week but were going to try and find him next week! I was able to talk to elder Torrico a few days ago and he told me he doesn't have a bike so its going to be pretty interesting to see what happens haha hopefully we can find one at the mission home on Tuesday maybe when were in Louisville! on Friday we had a zone conference and a guy named Elder Erich W. Kopischke of the first quorum of the Seventy came and talked to us and it was a pretty cool zone conference! it was pretty long but it went really well and I learned a lot! I think one of the biggest lessons I've learned about missionary work, and I know I talk about it a lot, but is its not about how many people you baptize or what leadership callings you have, and being obedient is not about saying how obedient you are, but its all about sacrifice.  As a missionary you sacrifice 2 years and doing a lot of stuff you like to do, and sometimes it can be pretty hard, but in the long run it is so worth it. He read us a scripture in Doctrine & Covenants 97:8 " Verily I say unto you, all among them who know their hearts are honest, and are broken, and their spirits contrite, and are willing to observe their covenants by sacrifice—yea, every sacrifice which I, the Lord, shall command—they are accepted of me." and he told us that you will know your mission was successful when you are sacrificing things you care about to be obedient and he told us just like the scripture said that the lord will except our sacrifice.

It seems pretty easy to do missionary work when you put it that way haha so im excited to see what happens with this new companion! He has actually already served in Georgetown, the very first 6 weeks of his mission so he already knows the area and the members here so that's good! 

With our 14 year old investigator named Jennifer we made some good progress this week! she told us straight up that she wants to be baptized and just not tell her parents in México haha and we can technically do that because her Aunt has legal guardianship over her but we all decided that it wouldn't be right! so we are working with her to be able to call her Parents and tell them "I know this is true and I'm going to get baptized" so we are going to keep working with her a lot! 

Also a pretty funny story this week so every Saturday night the whole Zone does a conference call and they send in a request to the missionaries praying and they will pray about it and as a joke elder Henderson texted "pray elder Follett will get a package soon...no just kidding pray for....." and then said what we really needed divine help with, so the sister was praying and she got to our part and said what we needed and I sighed in relief because she didn't pray for me to get a package and she finished the prayer and said "and please bless Elder Follett in Georgetown Spanish to get a package this week, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen." and I was super embarrassed haha the whole zone heard that and were all pretty confused and elder Henderson got a good laugh, BUT on Friday I got a knock on the door and the UPS lady had THREE huge packages all addressed to elder Follett! haha I was pretty surprised but happy! So thanks for the 2 Christmas packages, I haven't opened them yet don't worry!                                            

                                                                 My Miracle packages!

Overall this week has been pretty good and I'm really excited to keep working here and see what happens! I love you guys a lot! Have a great week!

Para siempre Dios esté con vos!

Love Elder Follett

Trying to fix Elder Henderson's Bike

Missionary work at it's finest. 6:30-7:00 every morning we're exercising! mostly "stretching" because were so exhausted from biking haha but to explain the shirt, we found a sleeveless white collared shirt and the little sleeve cuffs still with it so this is what happened!

Week 35

Whats up family! another week down! i cant believe tomorrow is already 8 months! time really is going by quick! this week was a pretty good week, a little slower with the holiday and everything but we still managed to have a decent week!

We found a potential investigator on saturday and came by and visited with him on monday night and were met with a little resistance haha.  He is from Mexico and has lived in the states for like 10 years maybe (still speaks very little english) but how we found him was we talked to two white ladies on their poarch and asked if we could pray with them and they were pretty rude and said no so like always we asked if they knew if any of their neighbors were hispanic and the pointed next door so we went and knocked the door and as we were waiting the ladies said hey he's right over there and pointed across the apartment parking lot, but before we could walk over the door opened and a pretty large young hispanic kid answered the door and we said (in english) hi how are you? and he responded "we're jehova's witnesses in this house" and then shut the door haha so we walked over to the guy the ladies pointed out and he was changing the oil in his old beat up car and talked to him and he was very nice and receptive and told us that he used to be Jehovas Witness and we gave him a book of mormon and he was super nice and without us asking he told us, yeah i'll read this book and ask you guys questions about it on monday when you come haha so he is awesome! on monday we came over and knocked the door and the big JW kid answered the door again and looked really surprised to see us again but we asked if Auerelo was there and we went and got him and we heard him say to him in spanish "tell them to go away" haha but Auerelo came to the door anyway and let us in and was super nice and we talked and had a really good lesson with him and he told us how he was a jehovas witness but was "dis-fellowshipped" so he wasnt allowed to talk in church or participate or be baptized or anything so he was really looking for a church that would accept him even though he wasn't perfect so he was really receptive to us and everything we told him he really stuck to and enjoyed, its almost like his time studying with the JW church like prepared him to meet with us and accept our message! it really reminded me of the verse in Alma 32 which says "And now when Alma heard this, he turned him about, his face immediately towards him, and he beheld with great joy; for he beheld that their afflictions had truly humbled them, and that they were in a preparation to hear the word." it was a really cool experience! so the resistance i was talking about haha while we were teaching him the people that he lives with (im assuming their family somehow) the whole time were playing JW videos really loud and being really rude and while we were praying the were like yelling really loud and just being really rude and hostile so next time we teach him we are going to try and get him to come to the church building here in Georgetown and give him a little tour of the building and teach him some more so hopefully that will work out!

Tuesday and Wednesday went pretty well, we taught a few of our investigators and it went well. Thursday was pretty crazy haha so in the morning we biked over to the church and played basketball with a few missionaries and a member from lexington which was fun! after that we went and had our first dinner at 12:30 and went straight from that to another dinner at 3 o'clock and lets just say we were pretty full after! after that we all went home and just hung out and played cards and it was over all a pretty fun day! not really the same without family but we had a good time!

Saturday night we biked down to the trailer park to visit our 14 year old investigator but she wasnt there so we went over and met with that family i told you about that likes to feed us and we knocked on the trailer door and it opened and there was probably about 30 or 40 Hispanics just all crammed into this little trailer all talking and singing and eating and drinking and we saw our investigator and he was like "HEY HERMANOS!!!" haha so aparently it was his sons 4th birthday and Hispanics are similar to Italians in the sense that they know how to party haha like it was crazy in there and Alberto, who knows we don't drink offered us a water and we took one and a cousin of his was like hey you guys don't want beer? and we told him no we dont drink! and he was like "ooohhhh right! how bout a tequila?" haha so we only stayed long enough to eat some tacos and chicken with molé and some birthday cake and then we were out of there haha Sunday was about 9 hours of church between meetings and going to the english ward in the morning and driving to Lexington for the spanish branch but it was a pretty good day!

Glad everything is going well back home and look forward to skyping with you guys in a few weeks! Love you! have a great week!

love Elder Follett

Para siempre Dios esté con vos!

the AMEN house! we volunteer here once a week and this week was pretty crazy with all the donations because of thanksgiving! this pile of clothes got about twice this size!