Week

We had Zone Conference this last week, the last one ever for President Augustin.  Man, that guy is one amazing guy and I am so grateful for his service here!  He has no doubt changed my life and my thought process. His big thing throughout his time here was teaching us to always face the Lord.  He gives an analogy of standing on the stand at church and looking out to the congregation, the world. As a leader or just a member we often times want to do the "popular" thing, we want the approval of those that we are facing!  But, the then explains that as we turn around from the congregation, the Lord and the Prophets and Apostles are sitting on the choir seats.  We need to decide which way we are gonna face, the world, or the Lord.  I didn't explain it really well in my rushed emailing, but it had helped me grow a whole lot!  Popularity<Integrity.

In church we heard a Hermana give her testimony about her conversion, it was really cool so I want to share it with y'all as well.   She is from Mexico, duh, but had lived a lot of her life in El Paso, so she could speak English real well/  She made her living by being a private tutor for those who wanted to learn Spanish.  She talked about a couple who had just moved down to her city and wanted to learn Spanish, so she told them to pick a book to study, just a normal book to read.  She did this with all her students, she just read with them and helped them talk or whatever.  This new family picked to study the book of Mormon.  After a few months, this woman stopped the lesson and asked the family about the book.  She began to weep as she explained that the moment she started to read it with them she felt her life light up and she saw a light in the family and she wanted to learn more!  She was baptized and now is our relief society president.  The book of Mormon really is such a powerful book  I am really grateful that we have that evidence of the message of the restored gospel and of God's love.  I definitely can feel the spirit every time I read it.  Whenever my day had been bad or sad or whatever, I just take time to read a chapter and it just makes everything ok.  It's like the Atonement on paper! Anyway, read the book of Mormon!

We didn't teach a single lesson this week!  There was nothing going on.  Ever lesson we had set up canceled or punched, so we didn't teach once.  I definitely didn't feel like it though!  We really are working so so hard, so every day I feel so good about the work we did.  I never once felt down about not  teaching, I didn't even realize till last night.  I am confident that the blessings will come soon enough, well I guess the blessings are already here!  I feel so happy and am growing a lot, so I guess that is good enough:)

Love you all so much!!

Elder Porter