Texas Houston Mission

Saturday, June 6, 2020

Devotional with Elder Soares

We were so happy to receive a call from the secretary of Elder Soares telling us he and his wife would like to speak to our mission at our weekly devotional. Our devotionals are Tuesday however with his schedule he was available Wednesday and we made it happen. We know however the Lord made it happen as we did have a scheduling conflict at that time which we were able to re arrange.

Hermana Dosdall recorded a musical number for us, she sang the primary song, How could the Father tell the World and Sister Bleak accompanied her on the piano.

Hermana Soares began talking about the Holy Ghost. She quoted Elder Scott who said, "Every good idea come from the spirit."

Elder Soares then spoke to us and shared a personal story about his family. He said we all go through pandemics and each one prepares us for the next one. Life is full of pandemics. Our mission also prepares us for the rest of our life.

Faith is a real power and allows people to awaken to God. Faith in Jesus Christ propels us to do things we would never do.

He encouraged us to study and ponder privately the new proclamation that was announced by President Nelson on the restoration. There are 5 truths contained in the proclamation.
1. The role of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ in our life
2. The calling of Joseph Smith as a prophet in the latter days
3. The Book Of Mormon
4. Christs church is restored
5. The restoration continues to go forward

He concluded the meeting by pronouncing an Apostolic blessing on all the missionaries.
He blessed us with strength, develop faith, have the courage to cry out to the Lord, to learn lessons and endure to the end. He also blessed us with more faith and confidence and desire to follow the Lord and the mission leaders.

He also thanked us for being able to speak to us! And gave us a virtual hug and blew us a kiss! We are so grateful for prophets and apostles who are such wonderful examples to us of followers of Christ.

Zoom Conference

Since all our meetings are on zoom and we have 7 zones in the mission, we once again decided to have 7 zone conferences, 2 on May 27 and 28, the first at 8:30 am and the second at 1:30 am. Friday May 29 zone conference was held at 1 pm. Tuesday June 2 we had our last 2, again one in the morning and the other in the afternoon. Each zone conference was 4 hours. We began with prayer and the mission statement followed by a musical number. President Peterson began with talking about how the mission is doing and missionaries shared miracles they have seen. He then talked about unity using scriptures and quotes from leaders. Sister Peterson talked about following our leaders and introduced the Burrolas who have been called to lead the mission July 1. What could we do to help them feel loved and welcomed?
The assistants discussed planning and went over the planning guide. They were followed by President Broadbent and our English Connect missionary specialists Hermana LaChance and Craig.
We then had a short break followed by training from President Peterson about the covenant path and a game called Kahoot with questions from Preach My Gospel that Herman Kilgore and Murdock helped organize. Sister Peterson trained on Small and Simple things showing a video about a gold miner not realizing it is the small flecks of gold that accumulate into something big. We then heard testimonies from our departing missionaries:
Elder Crow, Elder Kennington, Elder Tyler, Hermana Diaz and Hermana Knudson.

The planning guide

The Covenant Path

Assistants to the President

Elders Brown and Sevy

Musical number by Sisters McMullin and Taylor

Elder Tylers testimony

Elder Kennington

And Then There Were More

Tuesday May 26 we were happy to welcome 10 missionaries ( one actually was originally assigned to our mission and had to leave the Mexico MTC in March and quarentine for 14 days and we finally received him!) who have been reassigned from other missions, 9 elders and 1 sister. We are so grateful for their example of dedicated service and look forward to serving alongside each of them in furthering the work of the Lord.

Sister Willoughby (aka our granddaughters babysitter)

Sisters Tauelangi and Willoughby

Elders Martinez, Cook and Brown

Welcome back Elder Cook! He was here one day

in March arriving from the Mexico MTC and then was told

to return home to quarantine for 14 days. 2 months later

he finally came back.

Elders Cerdas and Heugly

Elders Ballard and Griesemer

Elders Longman and Reed

Elders Strong and Gerber

Elders Olson and Urie

Elders Dewitz and Wilkins

Elders Northrup and Davenport

Elders Beyerlein and Sanchez

Memorial Day BBQ

We have a BBQ at the mission office and wanted to feel some normalcy in our lives and invited the few senior missionaries that are still here to come for a BBQ. There are 9 of us and the day was beautiful with low humidity and we were able to go outside to eat and social distance! And of course the assistants are always invited as each Monday they come into the office for our meeting and to go over details of the upcoming transfers.

Sunday, May 24, 2020

Tuesday Devotional with Dr Jim Siebert May 19, 2020

Dr. Jim Siebert is a 2 time Emmy Award winning meteorologist for KRIV FOX News in Houston, Texas where he forecasts the weather for the 5pm, 9 pm and 10pm news Monday through Friday. Jim has worked for TV stations in Texas, New Mexico, Nevada and Utah. He earned his Bachelors degree in Broadcast Journalism from BYU, Masters in Meteorology and Earth Science from Baylor University and Ph.D in Technology and Science Education from the University of New Mexico. He is a co-founder of a technology company in Houston and holds 2 US patents for using lightning data for natural resource exploration. Jim and his wife Debra have 4 children and they reside in Katy, Texas.

Brother Seibert talked to us about being prepared temporally and spiritually. He shared pictures of hurricaine Harvey and other storms and discussed how each storm prepared us for the next. "If we are prepared we shall not fear."

8 Week training on Zoom! May 20, 2020

We were able to have our 8 week training on zoom video with 6 missionaries. We were able to put 2 companionships in rooms to role play certain principles of the gospel. We miss doing this is person however we are so grateful for the technology that brings us together. These missionaries arrived 8 weeks ago just in time for the stay at home order on March 12!