Whether by My Own Voice...

To the Missionaries of the Great Texas Houston Mission,

What a blessing to have the opportunity to feel the Spirit so consistently as we listened to the Lord's servants teach and testify of His living reality and what we need to do to find greater safety and peace in this life. We hope each of your took good notes and will review them together in your companionship studies this week. We also hope that you might share some of those inspiration you learned in upcoming district meetings that we may be more edified together. District Leaders, please allow for a few minutes of sharing thoughts regarding spiritual impressions we received.

What a blessing it is to be led by living prophets and apostles who can receive the will of the Lord and communicate it to us and then have the Spirit of God bear witness to us that it is true. It is hard to think of a greater blessing than to know the source of light and truth. We just need to listen and obey. One of the first messages of the Lord to us in this dispensation is found in D&C 1:38 where the Lord says:

38 What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself; and though the heavens and the earth pass away, my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled, whether by mine own voice or by the voice of my servants, it is the same.

We testify to you that the words we heard this weekend were the voice of the Lord. We now have a duty to follow the counsel of James and "...be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only." (James 1:22) There was a great plea from the Lord to us this weekend to have greater faith. We must follow this counsel. So how do we do it. We invite each of you to take some time this week to ponder about who you want to be. As you do so, consider the changes you will have to make to become that person. Set goals for yourselves and write them down. Review them weekly. Hold yourself accountable to them and you will see a greater light come into your lives. The blessing of this greater light is that you have a better understanding of who you really are and who you can become. 

What a blessing it is for us to be involved in this great work and to be the voice of the Lord to those who stand yet in darkness. What a great responsibility we have to live our lives in such a way as to allow His light to shine through us that they might see and hear. There is not greater blessing that we will find in our lives than to be in His service declaring His message. We hope you will enjoy every minute of it.

We love you and are grateful for your great example of faith!

Love,

President and Sister Mortensen

Last Sunday we held a Mission President's "Why I Believe" Fireside in the College Station Stake.

It was a moving fireside with beautiful music and testimonies. We heard an outstanding piano solo from Elder Lives and a wonderful piano and violin duet by Hermana Bohn and Hermana Provost. Elder Queen and Elder Griffith sang a beautiful duet, "Abide With Me" and Sister Packard sang a flawless solo of "Come Thou Font". Such great talent in the Texas Houston Mission! 

Mortensen kids with Brother and Sister Thomas

Our Mission Leadership Council

The following are pictures taken before role plays. We have wonderful leaders!

President Mortensen and I attended Zone Meeting in the Klein Zone last Friday. It was an inspiring meeting. The next few pictures were taken there.

Elder Allen preparing to instruct

Elder T is a great leader

Nothing better than singing the hymns with the ASL missionaries

Matching ties and smiles!

The Lord's View on Fasting

To the Missionaries of the Great Texas Houston Mission,

With it being Fast Sunday today our thoughts have turned to reflect on the Lord's view of fasting. We are grateful for the opportunity we have to fast. In D&C 59, He uses the term "fasting" interchangeably with "joy" and "rejoicing" (v. 13-14). Given the way most of us were raised and our resulting attitude about fasting, the Lord's view of fasting seems strange. Once we understand the power of fasting, we begin to understand the joy that results from it.

In Matthew 17, there is an interesting account of the Savior being approached by a man who asks Him to "have mercy" on his son because he was possessed of an evil spirit. He goes on to say, "I brought him to thy disciples, and they could not cure him" (v. 16). Jesus, frustrated by the lack of faith of his disciples, immediately casts out the evil spirit. The disciples seeing him do what they couldn't do, asked "Why could not we cast him out." The Savior's answer is instructive. He first says, "because of your unbelief" and then goes on to tell them that "this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting" (v. 21). 

As we have the righteous desires of our hearts granted after we exercise our faith through fasting, we experience great joy and have cause to rejoice. In our missions, we inevitably are confronted by circumstances that are more difficult than what we have previously experienced. These may include things like us having difficulty finding new investigators or progressing those we have found or getting along with a companion, etc. Often, these circumstances are given to us for the very reason the early disciples encountered difficulty in their ministry. They had to realize that they couldn't deal with their problems or challenges unless they sacrificed a little more so that they could exercise greater faith so the power of heaven was at their disposal. 

In the Book of Mormon, in one of the few places that talks about how the church was run, we read, "Nevertheless the children of God were commanded that they should gather themselves together oft, and join in fasting and mighty prayer in behalf of the welfare of the souls of those who knew not God" (Alma 6:6). 

What a blessing that the Lord doesn't just give us difficult circumstances, but also gives us the tools to deal with them and ultimately we not only overcome our challenges, but do so with stronger faith. We testify that it works!

We love each of you and are grateful for the acts of faith we are seeing in you as we strive to bring to pass His purposes!

Love,

President and Sister Mortensen

This picture was taking just before Elder Davis and Elder Nixon went to the airport to begin their service in Argentina.

We wish we could have kept them!

Departing missionaries gather at the mission home.

Temple trip with departing missionaries

Signing the flag

Elder Louder is the first to depart

I will miss these three together!

We will sure miss these faithful missionaries

Final Good-byes

Our wonderful Assistants, Elder Croft and Elder Visser

Here come the new missionaries!

It's so good to finally meet them! 

All of the new missionaries (minus Hermana Beus)

We finally pick up our last missionary Hermana Beus! She came from the Mexico MTC. 

Field trip to the Houston Temple to help us remember that the temple is the goal for all those we teach.

Awesome Assistants

The next several pictures are the new missionaries with their trainers. They are all in such great hands

On Friday, President Mortensen and I attended a District Meeting in the Woodlands. It was such an edifying meeting! We were impressed by the insights of Elder McCoard and those in the district.

Elder McCoard teaching