Sept 8, 2014

Hey Everyone!

Things are great! I’m having a really good time here in Brandon. For my year mark I burned a shirt on my porch, and made some homemade tortillas haha. Things are just still moving along and picking up speed. We've been having some good lessons lately and seeing people progress. oh funny story... so we were sitting by our investigator David, (the albino nigerian) and during fast and testimony meeting he just looks at us and says, "can i go up now?" I was just like what.... haha cause he says some pretty ridiculous things, so he just walks up to the front and starts bearing testimony on Elder Ferrolino and I, how all that we are teaching him is making him like life a lot more and that he is grateful he is still alive. I was so anxious the whole time that he was just going to go on a huge rant about some political issue (he does that all the time) and that I would have to go up and take him off the podium, but it turned out fine and it was really good. We are going to have to move his baptism date to a later time because lessons take forever with him. It took us almost 3 hours to teach him the restoration cause he was just talking like a mad man. We have this game Elder Ferrolino and I play with him. We call it jui jitsu teaching. We use things that he says to bring the conversation back to the lesson, and keep it on track. It is a really tough way to teach but it’s working and he’s loving everything were teaching him. It’s a lot of fun.

I love the pics that all the kids sent me. Tell them thank you!

So I’ve had a lot of crazy experiences this past week that have made me really grateful to know our purpose for being here on this earth. I’ve come to know just how real lucifer is, and how big of an influence he can have on our lives if we let him. He has a lot of power in this world, we all just have to keep resisting.

We went on an exchange with one of presidents assistants this week, it was interesting. He really liked using his “leadership role” and trying to “boss” us around, it was really annoying! So the whole exchange I had to find things to do because he had a car and I’m so used to bussing, I had just planned things to do that would take all day on the bus, and with the car it took an hour. So I was pretty stressed trying to find stuff to do. haha we took him to a lesson with David and he didn’t say anything the whole time, and David was having a really bad day and yelled at him for just sitting there like an idiot and told him he needed to teach like Elder Porter and Ferrolino. It was honestly the funniest thing ever. So the next morning he asked what we had planned and I told him we were going to do some roofing, so we went to help our friend Patrick and I got all harnessed up, strapped myself on to the rope and said “adios,” and I was on the roof for 2 hours talking about the gospel with Patrick. I threw Elder Ferrolino under the bus cause he had to stay on the ground with him for 2 hours but that was fine. hahaha it was a lot of fun.... at least for me..

Well I cant believe a year has gone by. My testimony is so much stronger and I’m loving every minute of my mission. Well, at least most minutes haha. Love you all!!

Elder Porter