A Wonderful Weekend and Wonderful Month!

To the Missionaries of the Great Texas Houston Mission,

What a wonderful experience it is to listen to general conference. It seems like it is even better while serving a mission! We loved the messages we heard. Many really stood out to us. One of them was Elder Renlund's talk. He spoke of how our proximity to the Lord determines the way we receive His counsel. If we are finding ourselves complaining instead of willingly receiving it, we need to repent and draw nearer to Him.

How inspiring to hear from President Monson. He doesn't have the strength that he once had, but is still committed to share the impressions that he is receiving from the Lord. We hope you listened. He spoke of having a vision for our lives; that when we understand where we are going, all of our decisions become very important in helping us get there.

We encourage District leaders to reserve some time at this weeks district meeting to discuss highlights and impressions of general conference especially focusing on how we can implement those things to make us better servants of the Lord.

This has been an equally remarkable month! More souls have come to the waters of baptism during this past March than they have in decades! Your increasing faith and obedience is leading to greater and greater miracles. We love you for it! You are making profound impacts on the lives of our brothers and sisters in this part of the Lord's vineyard.

We love hearing of the other miracles, some of which include the Tomball Elders asking a member who works for the school district to find out if we could teach family history in the schools. The request made it to the superintendent who said, "not only are we interested, but I'd like to attend myself." Great job Elders. We were equally excited to learn that the smallest branch in our mission in Hearne has invited 8 non member girls to attend girls camp and all have accepted the invitation! Great work Sisters! Many other miracles are taking place as we are broadening our vision and extending our reach. Think bigger. We loved reading about the Katy 1st Sisters stumbling upon a large family reunion (more than 50 people) in a pavilion and went to the microphone and shared a message about Easter and families.

We are the light bearers. We must speak out and speak up; stand out and and stand up. The blessings will continue!

May the Lord continue to pour out His bounteous blessings upon you as you labor in this beautiful portion of His vineyard! We love serving with such valiant servants!

Love,

President and Sister Mortensen

The Following pictures are each zone giving their accountability reports at MLC. They are awesome!

College Station Zone Leadership

Cypress Zone Leadership

The Houston North (english)  Zone leadership

Houston North (Spanish) Leadership

Houston West North (Spanish) Zone Leadership

Houston West South (Spanish) Zone Leadership

Bear Creek Zone Leadership

Klein Zone Leadership

The Spring Zone leaders

The Woodlands Zone leaders

The Katy Zone leaders

The Assistants

Mission Leadership Council

 President Mortensen and I attended the Zone Meeting in College Station last Friday. We were inspired and impressed with the instruction and leadership. We also loved the role plays and are excited to see how willing these missionaries are to teach with the Spirit.

Elder Aholelei instructing his zone.

Sister Sabin's inspiring message

Sister Richards message on Faith

Elder Croft lead a wonderful discussion

Role plays

Gorgeous! 

Love Love these smiles!

Role plays with these awesome sisters

The Larsens are great investigators

Role plays

Role plays

Last time with Sister Jolley. We will sure miss her!

Beautiful drive from College Station to Brenham! 

Easter and Passover

To the Missionaries of the Great Texas Houston Mission,

We thoroughly enjoyed seeing you at our mini zone conferences this last week. We hope you found the training to be helpful and we look forward to hearing about the wonderful experiences you will have as you begin to teach others to do their own family history.

With Easter here, we have been reflecting on the significance of the Passover. The Passover is a Jewish holiday that commemorates the Hebrew exodus from slavery in Egypt. It is also the celebration that took place in Christ's day right before His crucifixion and resurrection. 

We invite you to read Exodus 12 in your personal study that explains the way that the Lord institutes the Passover. It is rich in symbolism. Unleaven bread means without yeast so that the bread doesn't spoil. There are things that we indulge in that can spoil our spirits. Perhaps the most important symbol is the blood of a lamb that is male and without blemish. The children of Israel were commanded to take the blood and, "strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses" (v. 7). The reason for this was that the Lord promised to pass through the land to smite/destroy the firstborn of Egyptians, but would "Pass over" those who had the blood of lamb upon their doors. This would ultimately prepare the way for them to be delivered from bondage by the Lord. 

We hope you can see the application of this symbolism in our day. We too depend on the Lord for deliverance. If we will allow His atoning sacrifice to permeate our lives, we will be delivered from our sins as well as those calamities foretold by the prophets of old. It is interesting to consider the counsel by Prophets in our day to observe the Sabbath in this context and the value of the sacrament as we consider its protective influence in our lives.

We love you and hope you have a very Happy Easter!

Love,

President and Sister Mortensen

Sister McClain teaches one of the Family History Modules during our mini zone conf.

We held the 8 week Follow-up training for the missionaries who arrived last January. We were inspired by their desire to be great teachers and their willingness to try and to practice teach. What a wonderful opportunity to be together again. We love them all!

Lunch with our favorite people

President Mortensen spoke at the Houston North Stake Youth Conference last week. This group of youth committed to invite over 1000 friends to church or a church related activity. Wow! They are amazing.

Easter Season is Upon Us!

To the Missionaries of the Great Texas Houston Mission,

We hope you had wonderful experiences with family names in the temple. We are eager to hear about your experiences. We are so happy for you. We have never had the opportunity to do all of those ordinances in a day for one of our ancestors before. What a blessing for you!

We are coming upon perhaps the greatest Christian holiday that is celebrated across the world. For Christians, the Easter season is a time to celebrate Christ rising from the tomb, overcoming the bands of death and giving hope to the world for life after death. It was this victory over death, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that caused Paul to write to the Corinthians:

55 O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? (1 Cor 15)

As members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we have an expanded understanding of this victory, or the Atonement of Jesus Christ, that is critical that the world understand.

Over the next two weeks we hope you will work with members and leaders diligently to use the #Hallelujah initiative and invite commit the ward/branch leaders to encourage members to invite friends to church for an Easter service this coming week as well as to listen to General Conference (including the women's general session this Saturday evening) the following week so they can hear from those whom God has called as Prophets, Seers and Revelators in our day. Some of our greatest memories are when we have invited friends not of our faith to participate in these events with us.

We promise you that as you work diligently to invite ALL members (children, youth and adults) to use this initiative and invite their friends, we can help many turn their hearts to God and receive the blessings that He has in store for them.

Because of the promise of the resurrection, we are excited to about this week when we can roll out our Family History curriculum to help us be more effective in helping those we teach (members and investigators) deepen their faith in Jesus Christ as their hearts are turned to those who matter most to them.

Love,

President and Sister Mortensen

These wonderful sisters provide food for the needy in our community

The Cypress Zone was recognized for their community service 

We held a fireside in the Woodlands tonight and were blessed to have the Jeppsons as our keynote speakers. They shared some of the faith filled experiences they've had since losing Jazmyn in a car accident last month. We all loved hearing about our dear Sister Jeppson and left with a greater resolve to be a little better and to "be the Hero in our own story".  It is wonderful to have them here with us. 

These five former companions of Sister Jeppson performed, "Each life that touches ours for good" There was not a dry eye!

They comforted us

"I Will Go Before Your Face" by Ken Turner
Brother Turner painted this for the Jeppsons