Friday, February 8, 2013

One Year Mark!


Hey Everyone,

    This past week has been great, but it’s going to be quite monumental this coming week. On Friday Feb 8th I hit my one year mark on my mission. WHAT! Some days I can't believe it’s been a year already, other days not as much. But nonetheless it’s been a fantastic year, by far one of the best years of my life.  Looking back and see the changes I've made in my life to grow and the experiences that have refined to get at the point where I am. I give thanks to all my family, friends here in LA and at home who have helped me and prayed for me. I'm excited to know that I still have another year left to make an impact on the great people here in Los Angeles. The highlights of this past week is on Tuesday we had a zone activity here some missionaries got together to play sport and a little obstacle course game that the Zone Leaders set up. I was nice to do as many Elders in the zone were going to move to different areas the next day. Our zone did great work this past month, and thing seem to keep looking better. On Wednesday we had a great lesson with a couple Frank and Alicia again. We attempted to teach the Restoration to them but something prompted us to focus more on their understanding of the gospel. Frank shared with his life experiences that has helped him to God especially after being in Jail for 15 years. Alicia talked about her brother who was a drug addict who overdosed was dead for a week but stayed on life-support, came back to life, fully recovered and now is a Christian pastor. They had so many stories to share and I felt like we have gotten closer to us and trust us by sharing those stories with us. It was a cool story how the Elders found them. Well first, Alicia has a friend who is a member in Long Beach and for Christmas, she invited Alicia and her husband to a Ward dinner. They enjoyed it their time there, but no arrangements were made to send the missionaries to teach them. Then on New Year’s Day, Elder Low and his companion before me, Elder Harper, we driving up to the mission home to drop off Elder Harper, because he was being sent home because of his health. Before heading up, he told Elder Low he needed to tract one more street before he went home. They so happened to knock on Frank and Alicia's door. They were stunned because they thought someone from Long Beach sent the missionaries to them. We told this story to them and they know that we are teaching them for a reason. Tomorrow we have an appointment with them and their friends from Long Beach are going to accompany us to the lesson. I'm so excited and I hope it breaks the ice for them to progress towards accepting the gospel. Also we taught Jose again this week and he for certain he needs to be baptized but he's not fixed on a day yet. He's coming along he's just been stressed out with his health and working on selling the house. We did service for him on Friday to clean his back porch and help him assemble some screen for his windows. Super fun. Then on Saturday we when to a ward baptism for a young girl in our ward, Elder Low baptized her. Alicia one of our solid investigators come to support as they are close family friends. Afterwards we tried to set a baptismal date with her but she still doesn't want to commit to a date. Grrr. but she will be baptized soon. Anyway , Things are just going great here. I'm loving the mission right now. Great new things to come! I can't wait!

Missionary Quote of the week: If you treat a man as he is he will remain as he is, but if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought and should be. –Goethe
It's the truth we must see everyone as sons and daughters of God and they must be treated as such. If we want to help our friends to become more Christ-like, we must act Christ-like to them and be an example of the believers.

Well, I will see you all in a year!

Os amo tanto

Elder Marrott

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