Every Companionship, Every Month!

To the Missionaries of the Great Texas Houston Mission,

We loved seeing you all last week and spending such inspiring days together. We hope you will each commit to elevating your language so it reflects the dignity of your call and testify with boldness concerning the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon as well as promise blessings to those who read it.

We are excited for this Friday night and those recent converts who will be bringing their own names to the temple. Please try to have members come with them. You are also welcome to accompany your converts. We are hoping for a great day.

We will be distributing the schedule for those of you to attend the temple in March so that you can take your own names to the temple. Remember both you and your companion need to have found your own names and printed them to take to the temple in order to attend. This will become extremely valuable to you as you prepare to teach others to do the same.

Please make sure you all have the lists of unbaptized children of record and the part member families in the wards. We are confident that as we continue our finding efforts, challenge the members to do the same and review the names on these list, we can get to a place where every companionship can baptize every month and in so doing have even greater success in strengthening and establishing the Church (PMG ch 13)!

Love,

President and Sister Mortensen

Costco on P-day! 

We held Zone Conferences last week. The following are pictures taken during those three days.

Celebrating our Winter Birthdays

It wouldn't be zone conf without role plays

Celebrating our Winter Birthdays

Celebrating our Winter Birthdays

Someone told Sister Talbot the birthday box was a jack-in-the box!

Friday President Mortensen and I attended district meeting in the Bear Creek District. We were inspired by the training and leadership of Elder Backstein. What a wonderful district!

Love seeing Elder Seamons take notes!

Role Plays

Bear Creek District

Happy Valentines Day!

To the Missionaries of the Great Texas Houston Mission,

Valentines Day has a tradition that goes back centuries, but as we think about it today, we think of love and of those we love. It was the Savior's love that we celebrate each week as we partake of the sacrament. It was He who said, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." (Jn15:13) Each of you possess a degree of this love as evidenced by the fact that you have laid down your lives or set them aside in order serve a mission. We will forever be grateful you did. We wish each of you a Happy Valentines Day :)!

We are looking forward to seeing you this week at Zone Conference. We are going to be discussing a couple of important topics:

1. A Reverence for the Sacred

2. The Book of Mormon and the Restoration

We are sending you two talks (each in a separate email) to read before zone conference to prepare your minds to receive the revelation you need. The first is a talk by Elder D. Todd Christofferson that he gave to the YSAs of the church a few years ago entitled "A Sense of the Sacred." The second is a classic talk on the Book of Mormon given by President Marion G. Romney a former counselor in the First Presidency of the Church given in April 1980's General Conference. We request that you read both, but we only assign each companionship to prepare 5 minute talks on the following themes (one companion prepares a talk on the first and the other prepares a talk on the second):

1. In what ways can I better show reverence to God as a full time missionary?

2. How can I better teach the Book of Mormon and what blessings can I promise that have already been promised?

We are inspired by the increasing number of miracles we are seeing in our mission and know that it is a reflection of your continuing faith and hard work. We love you for it!

Love,

President and Sister Mortensen

Here comes Hermana Wallace! She graduated early from the MTC and we get her early. Yay!

We are so glad to have Hermana Wallace! 

Two awesome trainers for Hermana Wallace

 We held the 8-week follow-up training for the missionaries who arrived last December. They are doing a great job and are already really outstanding teachers and missionaries! It was great to have them all together again.

Going over our outlines with different trainers

Elder Visser came to help out. So grateful for him!

Lunch with these beautiful sisters

President Mortensen and I attended District Meeting with the Magnolia District on Friday. They have such a wonderful district! It was instructive and Elder Knight provided great training and leadership.

Elder Knight in action

Magnolia District looking and doing great!

Shepherding with Great Effectiveness

To the Missionaries of the Great Texas Houston Mission,

There is a great energy within the mission that is the direct result of the increased unity of purpose we are seeing. There has never been a time since we've been here where we have felt that our mission statement is becoming an accurate description of who we are rather than just who we want to be. It's an exciting time to be invested in the work.

We all want to succeed in our purpose, but the reality is that when we arrive in the mission field we don't know how to do it effectively despite all of our righteous desires and commitment. Over the course of our missions we gradually learn how to become effective. This process can happen more quickly as we teach each other and help one another succeed. It is important that this happens because the Adversary is working full time against us. His efforts intensify when our investigators accept a baptismal date. So must ours. With this in mind, we are asking district leaders to focus some of the discussion during our district meeting area reports to ensure that we are retaining those we have worked so hard to find and shepherd. We would like you to be prepared to answer these questions and any others your leaders feel inspired to ask relating to your progressing investigators and those with dates:

1. Where are they reading in the Book of Mormon? Is it daily? Have they received an answer to their prayers

2. What members are involved with them (no less frequent than every day after dates have been set and ideally appropriate member involvement for each member of the investigator family)?

3. What is the plan for church attendance? Are members committed to invite/sit with/fellowship on when they come?

And for those investigators with dates:

1. Do they have a covenant path calendar with their baptismal date on it as well as their temple date?

2. Have you started planning the baptismal service?

Please receive the questions asked in the spirit they are intended. We want to make sure we are remembering all of the critical steps in shepherding our investigators to the water. As we do, we will see a much greater harvest of the great work we are doing.

We love you and are grateful for your faith, sacrifice and commitment to this great work.

Love,

President and Sister Mortensen

Door approach role play

Door approach Role play  

Role plays in zones

Extended MLC with District Leaders attending

President Mortensen and I were able to attend Zone Meeting in the Woodlands Zone. We were so impressed with the wonderful leadership of Elder Barton and Elder Alder. Great things are happening in the Woodlands Zone!

Elder Barton inspires us

Siste Soto provides great instruction

Elder Alder handles a difficult topic with a great spirit

 We attended the Katy Stake Conference this weekend and had the opportunity to see our great missionaries in Katy. We were so pleased to receive such great training from the Katy Stake Presidency and are excited for the united effort to build the kingdom in that area.

We saw these wonderful elder today at church

We attended a wonderful baptism tonight and were so happy for these sisters.

A Great Loss

Here is a copy of the letter that President Mortensen and I sent to be read at Sister Jazmyn Jeppson's Funeral Service.

Brothers and Sisters,

We are so saddened by the sudden loss of our Sister Jazmyn June Jeppson. We know each of you love her as we do, but we want you to know the kind of missionary she was. She was one of the first Sister missionaries we met when we arrived in Houston. Our first recollection of Sister Jeppson, fittingly, was at a baptismal service in the first month of her mission. She made that scene a frequent occurrence over the course of her mission. She and her companion Sister Hailey Heaps had taught a young man who was getting baptized that day. We could see in Sister Jeppson a kind of focused energy. We came to learn that this focus was part of what made her great. It wasn’t long after this experience that she was training. No matter who she was with, she led out because she knew who she served and she was clear minded in her purpose. There wasn’t a companion who served with Sister Jeppson who didn’t come away from the experience a better person and a much better missionary.

She would ultimately train several missionaries directly and be the Sister Trainer Leader responsible for many, many more. Since her passing, several of them have mentioned that her influence changed their mission. She was an excellent planner and even a better teacher. Often we would role play in district/zone meetings. When we would see that Sister Jeppson was participating in a group, we would know that those participating with her were going to get the best experience because of the great listener and teacher she became.

While we are saddened by her loss, we hope all assembled here today will celebrate her life and count themselves lucky to have known her and to be positively influenced by her. We certainly have been.

We learn in D&C 138:57 that faithful missionaries like Sister Jeppson are “continuing (her) labors in the preaching of the gospel of repentance and redemption through the sacrifice of the Only Begotten Son of God, among those who are in darkness and under the bondage of sin in the great world of the spirit of the dead.” There is no more fitting destination for someone like Sister Jeppson who became a true messenger in every way. She loved bringing light into the lives of those who sat in darkness.  We know she will immerse herself in the work in that realm just as she did here. All of the blessings promised to the righteous will be hers. In that knowledge we find peace.

In the final night in the mission home we have each departing missionary write their testimony so we can preserve it for us and for them. Here is an excerpt of hers:

I am so grateful to have been able to serve at this time. I know the Lord is in the details of our lives and that He knows exactly what we need and we can know His will if we just ask. I feel I have just got a glimpse of how our Heavenly Father sees each of us and I hope I can hang onto that. I have seen a light so pure in so many of God’s children and it’s been such a privilege to help that grow brighter.

I have felt such an urgency to share this gospel with others. The gospel has become so clear to me because of the training I received and the many opportunities I’ve had to teach the principle of the restoration and the gospel principles. The most powerful experiences on my mission have been testifying of the restoration. I know the gospel has been restored. I am so grateful for Joseph Smith and the sacrifices he made to restore the church.

I know that I have a great responsibility to live the gospel…I will be faithful.

Sister Jazmyn Jeppson

We extend our love to each of you and challenge each of you to honor her life by being equally faithful in living the gospel as she was and she will undoubtedly continue to be.

Love,

President and Sister Mortensen

Texas Houston Mission

A collection of her missionary items at the viewing

Program from the funeral

The Texas Houston Mission alumni gathered at the funeral service for our beloved Sister Jeppson

Sister Peterson made these for all the THM alumni to wear at the funeral