Our area is honestly awesome. We're the missionaries for the Flower Mound 2nd and 3rd wards, and the members I've met here are honestly the coolest people ever. I can't express to you how nice and loving they've been to us. One member family that's especially cool is the Becks. They're wonderful. Somehow they found out it was my birthday and they made me a cake on the first day of being here. I'm not quite sure how they did it, but it was awesome.
The apartment we are in is the best in the mission so I've been told. It's awesome (everything here is awesome so I hope you don't get sick of me saying that word haha). It's hotter here than Côte d'Ivoire was, so AC is such a blessing. This place is way different from Africa, but I love it.
Doing missionary work is kinda hard in quarantine, but we've had some experiences already! We've had a lot of rejection, a couple arguments, but a few good interactions. One that we had was with a homeless guy. We are allowed a little bit of time to be outside each day, so on Sunday, we were walking around outside and saw this guy. He looked homeless, so we started talking to him. We asked him what his name was, and he said "it's not nice to call people names." Then he totally went off on how he gave up the name and how we don't exist and that the future exists before anything and how we had to choose the path of righteousness or the path of privledge... yeah it was interesting. We tried to engage him in gospel topics, but he would turn it into his theories of who knows what. But anyways, that was fun.
One fun experience we had was teaching a guy from India! The sister missionaries sent us a referral for him, so we called him on zoom. His name is Joshua Luther, and he speaks a little english. We taught him a little bit about Christ, and I really felt the spirit. I'm not quite sure what he got out of it, but hopefully he felt the spirit too. We'll see what happens with him.
Another cool thing that happened was with this lady named Chantelle. We send out random facebook messages each day, hoping that people will respond, and she did! She was actually really interested to hear what we had to say, so we called her on zoom. We actually taught her about our purpose here on earth and it was really cool. She wants to keep learning and eventually come to church! So cool. I'll update y'all on what happens with her.
Anyways, this week has been great! Here's the scripture for this week:
"Now we see that Ammon could not be slain, for the Lord had said unto Mosiah, his father: I will spare him, and it shall be unto him according to thy faith—therefore, Mosiah trusted him unto the Lord" (Alma 19:23).
I didn't think too much about this scripture when I read it before, but this time I really thought about it. Mosiah must have had to have a lot of faith. I wondered what it would've been like for him. Sending your sons to a land that, from the previous verses, seems like the last place any Nephite wants to be. But, the cool thing about the verse was that his sons' protection was dependent on Mosiah's faith in God. In the other verses, instead of Ammon getting hurt only a little bit, or the Lamanite trying to kill him missing with the sword, he just falls over dead. Instantly. Think about how much faith Mosiah had for that to happen. I don't know about you, but in the moment I was kinda blown away. It made me think, we can and should rely on the Lord for our protection. He is willing to bless us, it's just dependent on our faith.
Welp, this week has been great, I cant wait to see what the next one will bring! Despite the differences here and the quarantine factor, I love it already! See you guys next week!
-Elder Lyman
