Mothers & pictures from zone conference

To the Missionaries of the Great Texas Houston Mission,

It was great to see you all at zone conferences this week. We hope you came away with deeper understanding of why God gives us commandments and why obedience truly is the way we show love to God and the way we receive further light and knowledge to not only be successful in our missions, but to receive eternal life.

We also hope you had a wonderful time speaking to your mothers and/or loved ones. It is interesting to see the loving treatment of the faithful women in the scriptures. The crowning and last event of the creation was Eve. God clearly wanted the earth to be prepared and beautiful before He introduced women into it. Mary, the mother of Jesus was the first to receive the angelic messenger regarding the pending birth of the Savior. The faithful stripling warriors were so valiant because, "they had been taught by their mothers, that if they did not doubt, God would deliver them." (Alma 56:47). 

Elders and Sisters, one of the greatest blessings you have in your lives will be that of your mothers. Even better, Sisters, you have the promise to be mothers, partners with a loving Heavenly Father to help fulfill the His vision of "bringing to pass the immortality and eternal life of man" (Mos 1:39) by having your own children. Elders, one of the greatest responsibilities you will have will be to treat your future wives and mothers of your children as the Queens and Priestesses they have been foreordained to be. We hope you will begin now to prepared for these roles. Sisters, prepare yourselves for marriage by doing all you can to be beautiful and refined in every way. Elders, prepare yourselves for marriage by holding women in high esteem. Be respectful of them. Be kind. Treat them with the courtesy and respect modeled by our Heavenly Father. This preparation will prepare you for the level of happiness we hope you all achieve.

We love you and will continue praying for your good success as you prepare for the greatest missions yet to come :).

Love,

President and Sister Mortensen 

 Here are some pictures from the Zone Conferences we held last week.

Spring Birthdays

Spring Birthdays

Spring Birthdays

Spring birthdays

Standards of Excellence

To the Missionaries of the Great Texas Houston Mission,

It has been great to meet with you individually over the past three weeks in interviews and review together important principles of planning. When we have a vision of what we are trying to accomplish, it becomes personal because it is about children of God. We hope that you will spend the necessary time considering all those who we can bless and plan for them in a way that invites revelation. Great blessings will follow. To learn to plan is to learn to become like God. The powers of heaven will be at our disposal when we do it the Lord's way. 

One of the great principles in PMG Ch 8 (p. 150) is that we learn that the only way we can bind the Lord is if we hold ourselves to the revelation we receive. With this in mind, last week we counseled together at MLC to determine how we could further establish standards of excellence to lift our vision and focus our efforts. Since we established two new investigators/week/companionship, great blessings have followed. As you know by now we have now established standards of three investigators at church and five member present lessons each week. 

We are mindful that these additional standards will take greater planning and greater faith, but we also know that as we focus our attention on these standards, great blessings will follow in the lives of those we teach. More people will come into the safety of the covenants and more will remain as they are better fellowshipped by the members.

When I think of raising the standard, I can't help but think of Captain Moroni, who felt a personal responsibility to to lead out in rallying the forces for good in defense of truth. We read in Alma 62:4-5: 

4 And he did raise the standard of liberty in whatsoever place he did enter, and gained whatsoever force he could in all his march towards the land of Gideon.

5 And it came to pass that thousands did flock unto his standard, and did take up their swords in the defense of their freedom, that they might not come into bondage.

As we rally around the standard, we will liberate our brothers and sisters in this area and bring them into the safety of the covenants.

We love you and love the work we are so fortunate to do together!

Love,

President and Sister Mortensen

The following are pictures taken at Mission Leadership Council last Tuesday. We sure love them and value the insights and spirit they bring.

Enjoying Sister Chappell's "Cowboy Dip" Delicious!!

President Chappell trains us on methods of success

Mission Leadership Council

Sister Bates and Sister Renteria after Stake Conference