Bendiciones

This week was packed full of blessings!  I am one happy camper.

First off we had Stake Conference here in the Odessa Stake.  Missionaries are allowed to go to the Saturday Night Session now, too, so it was so sweet.  The Stake president here just recently got diagnosed with brain cancer, so there were a couple 70s here to reorganize the presidency.  Every talk that Saturday night session hit me real good, the spirit was strong.  Elder Meradith and Elder Retlund, from the 70, are power houses.  The topic was missionary work, duh, that's all anybody ever talks about anymore, but it was so so good.  President Zant, the old stake president with brain cancer gave his testimony about the Atonement and, boy, it was powerful.  There was hardly a dry eye in that meeting.  Sunday was so good too, we got to drive up to Midland (that's where the stake center is) and watch it there.  Church is true even in the Odessa Texas stake!

I've had a question the past few weeks about how to remember.  Whenever we feel the spirit real good we just want to be perfect, the atonement is working in us and we have no desire to do bad, but as soon as it's gone, at least for me, we forget.  Forgetting is basically the cause of every short coming, because if we remembered that we are sons and daughters of God with devide potential we wouldn't fall!!  So I asked President Heap for advice and he told me to study Heleman 5.  I did and as I studied it hit me, what I need to do in order to remember better.  SO.  I followed that prompting and I have set a goal to memorize a scripture every day for the rest of my mission. It has already made a HUGE difference this last week and I am so excited to continue on.  Each night I recite the scripture in my video journal, so y'all'll get to be involved a little.  It's real neat.

I am the worst Spanish studier ever.  10 am has always been the hardest hour for me to stay focused.  So I usually end up wandering off in my mind or studying something in English.   The consequence of that is that I still am not very good at Spanish.  This last week I prayed to be able to stay focused and it happened and there is already a REAL noticeable difference in my Spanish.  That is a straight blessing. I'm gonna keep working harder haha.

Since we are the Spanish area we have a car, but most of the other areas don't.  You know what that means?  Missionary Taxi service.  We spend a lot of time driving people around to appointments and out of rain and things like that.  This week we got a ton of referrals from everybody.  That is a blessing!  Service=blessings, duh, why didn't you think of that? haha.

So anyway, that's just a few of the many blessings we saw!  I love the church is real true.  I love y'all a lot, too!!  Be safe this week and love church on sunday:)

Love,

Elder Porter