Merry Christmas Everyone!!

Merry Christmas everyone!!! I hope everyone was able to have an amazing Christmas this year full of joy. I hope everyone was able to remember the real reason why we celebrate Christmas, the birth and life of Jesus Christ. Out here on the mission I have been able to see that. Remembering Jesus Christ, by remembering His Atonement and using it in our lives, is the best way to remember Jesus Christ, because if there is anything He wants us to do more than anything else, it is to use His Atonement.

This week has been really hectic. Being so far out here so far away from town we have been traveling a lot. We probably spent more time on buses this week than proselyting unfortunately. We had an awesome Christmas though. Christmas day we traveled to Georgetown to Elder and Sister Fry's apartment to Skype home and we had lunch with them and played some games, it was a lot of fun. Then we got back to Parika and went over to a members house and they fed us some chicken chow mien and curry and roti, which was delicious. And then yesterday we went back to Georgetown to have a Christmas activity with our 2 zones here in Guyana. We met at one of the chapels and had pizza and ice cream and watched "It's a wonderful life" so yesterday was a lot of fun.

This coming Saturday we should be having transfer calls so next week I will probably know where I will be next transfer. The transfer ends next Sunday

I don't have much time this week, but​​ I hope everyone is enjoying the holidays with their families and friends. Have a good week!

Elder Porritt

The missionaries cannot have success without the members, and the members cannot have success without the missionaries

Well holy cow this week has gone by really fast! This transfer is already half over, and it feels like we just started a few days ago. Things here have been a little slow... Yesterday at church only 1 investigator showed up at church and only 17 members. We have a bunch of investigators who are so close to being baptized its not even funny. Some of them need to just get married, but most of them just will not come to church. It has been a little bit frustrating, but we are going to focus more on the importance of Sacrament meeting this week, and find some more investigators who are elect. 

On the bright side, we had an awesome Zone Conference on Friday. Our topic of discussion this week was on working with ward and stake leaders. There was a really cool scripture that we looked at. It was Nehemiah 4:6. It talks about the Jews building the wall and that everyone was involved in helping build the two halves together. And in missionary work and building the Kingdom of God there are two halves, the missionaries and the members. Both groups have half of the responsibility of doing missionary work. The missionaries cannot have success without the members, and the members cannot have success without the missionaries. This week we have been working harder on setting up things like home teaching here in the Parika group. I know that it isn't just the missionaries duty to teach the gospel, it is all of us that need to do it. We all have that responsibility to bring souls to Him, and it isn't just a responsibility, it is a blessing. It tells us in D&C that "If we bring save it be one soul unto him, how great shall be our joy in the Kingdom of Heaven." There is no better time than the Christmas season to share the gospel with others, and help them experience the joy and the blessings that we have from the gospel.

Well everyone have a good week and have a very Merry Christmas!

Elder Porritt

A white Santa playing a flute, not something you see every day here in Guyana

Zone Conference Pictures

Praying for a White Christmas in Parika!

Hello everyone!!! Another quick week here in Parika! I hope everyone is having a White Christmas back home. As a mission we have been praying for a White Christmas, it was one of the mission goals for this transfer. Not obviously for snow (although that would be just amazing) but for some investigators dressed in white. We don't have any with set dates to get baptized this month, but it is still possible. We have like a 5 solid investigators that could get baptized if they would just get married. Nobody here is married basically, so that is one of our challenges. But it is still possible that we could have another baptism this month. 

We had a great turnout at church yesterday. 30 people at Sacrament meeting, 10 of which were investigators, so there are some that are keeping their commitments and preparing to be baptized. 

Not much noteworthy happened this week. We have done A LOT of contacting in our new contacting area, and found and taught some really promising new investigators. We taught some really great lessons, but that's about it for the week. Saturday we went on exchanges with the Teaching Assistants for a few hours. Elder White and I taught three really good lessons, and we came back to the apartment and talked about some things we could work on to improve our teaching.

My spiritual experience this week was during personal study. My favorite talk from last General Conference was Elder Quinton L. Cooks talk about the importance of humility. I was rereading this week and one of the scriptures he shared stuck out to me. He quotes Alma 5: 26-27 where Alma asks us "Have ye walked, keeping yourselves blameless before God? Could ye say, if ye were called to die at this time, within yourselves, that ye have been sufficiently humble?" This is a question that all of us can ponder upon and maybe ask God what we can do to improve. Humility is so important to what we do everyday. I also recommend reading over Alma 5 (It is AWESOME)

Have a great week!!!

Elder Porritt

Teaching visit with Elder White + the terrible haircut the barber gave me last week haha

Christmas

Stand Up for what You Know is Right

Happy December everyone!!! December is the best, I love this time of year especially the snow, so those of you back home enjoy the snow! haha, maybe we will get some torrential rain on Christmas hopefully, rain is the next best thing.

This first week with my new trainer has been alright. We have gotten to know each other a lot more, he's a pretty cool Canadian haha. He is actually the Zone Leader here on the west side of the Demerara. This first week he has kind of taken a step back in all of our lessons, just to kind of see how I was teaching and how much of the doctrine that I know, so it has kind of been tough basically teaching by myself, but now that he has observed me this coming week will be a lot better. Our success here in Parika has kind of sucked this past week. We only had 5 investigators at church, and that didn't include the Smith family who is supposed to be baptized, or the Smiths who were just baptized either. The Sabbath Day is something that people struggle with here a lot, but we are going to try and change that. We didn't have as many lessons as we would have liked, we had a whole lot of fall throughs, but we are hopefully going to increase our teaching pool this coming week. Really the best part of this week was that we started a new contacting area, so hopefully the Lord is preparing many of them to receive the gospel and get baptized. 

My spiritual experience came from reading 2 Nephi 7: 6-9 this week during personal study. It talks about the Lord Jesus Christ. When he was on the earth he was ridiculed and abused and rejected by so many. So much more than any of us can ever experience. But he willingly took it, even though he was the Son of God, and he could have chastised them or struck them all down, instead he willingly took the persecution that eventually lead to the Atonement. Sometimes each of us will feel a small measure of the rejection and ridicule that Christ felt in our daily lives by living by the standards that we do. But this scripture strengthens us by assuring the Jesus Christ knows exactly how we feel and when we are serving Him, He is on our side. And when He is on our side, who can be against us?

Everyone have a good week and continue to stand up for what you know is right.

Elder Porritt

Our new contacting area is MUDDY

Thanksgiving Turkey Bowl

WOW! My first transfer is already over! It ended yesterday and my father Elder Vance will be leaving me to go to Trinidad, and later today I will be meeting my mother Elder Correia. I think that Elder Correia has been out for like a year and half now or something. I had the opportunity to talk to him a little bit at the Turkey Bowl this week. He seems like a really cool guy.

Well I think the highlight of this week had to be Thanksgiving, even though we didn't really do any missionary work... But Thanksgiving was a BLAST. We left in the morning and it was pretty sunshiny, but by the time we got to the park it was pouring rain and it had been for some time. It lightened up and the field was flooded, but that didn't stop us one bit. We went ahead and had the turkey bowl anyways even though the field was just a huge puddle. There were 4 teams and two fields. We won't likely be having the turkey bowl next year because we had some injuries... About 15 minutes into the first game an Elder on the other field broke his arm when he went down and tried to catch himself. We made him a makeshift splint and loaded him up in the senior couples car. We still continued to play though. My team took the crown, mainly because everyone on our team was HUGE haha. After that we went to the chapel and had Thanksgiving dinner. The senior couples made a DELICIOUS dinner and we had pumpkin pie and it was just wonderful.

Otherwise this week has been very average. The Smith family didn't get baptized yet. Sister Smith has felt really sick and stressed out about her husband and kids in the bush at the gold mine. She is still waiting for him to call to talk to him about getting baptized, I guess she hasn't talked to him about it yet and she's not sure what he is going to think about it. But hopefully he will call this week, then they can have their interviews and such, and maybe get baptized this Saturday or the next. We didn't have hardly any investigators at church yesterday which was a little frustrating, because we have like 7 investigators with baptismal dates and none of them came to church...

But otherwise everything is going great here. I am really enjoying the work. This church is the only true church on the earth, and the only one with the proper Priesthood authority. Keep reading the Book of Mormon everyday. There is such an amazing power in the Book of Mormon.

Everyone have a good week!

Elder Porritt

Here's Mom and Pops

Transfers!!

Hello everyone!!! This week coming up is the last week of this transfer. Our last day will be this coming Sunday, and transfers will happen in the following few days. These five weeks have been really great,  we have had some pretty good success, people here are really receptive to the Gospel, they just don't like following up on commitments or coming to church much... but thats ok, everywhere has its challenges as far as investigators. On Saturday we received our transfer calls from the APs...... And I am staying in Parika this coming transfer, but I will be getting a new companion. My father Elder Vance will be transferred back to Trinidad for his last transfer before he goes home. I kind of wanted to be his companion for his last transfer, but that's ok. My new companion (My Mother) will be Elder Correa. I have only heard good things about him, so I think he will be a great Elder. He is from Canada and has been out for a little over a year I think. But I think that we will get along just great. He has an insanely deep voice, probably the deepest voice I've ever heard. (Other than Dennis Burt of course).

The highlight of this week was Shenia and Crystel Smith's baptism this Saturday. Shenia is 14 and Crystel is 11. We had to take about an hour bus ride to the La Grange chapel where the baptismal font is. The service was AWESOME. We had two great talks by some of the members of our Parika unit, and the baptisms were just great. Brother Mohammed one of our Melchizedek Priesthood holders baptized the two of them. We had to keep helping him say the words right like 5 times in a row haha, but he finally got it. For some reason they didn't bear their testimonies during the service, so on Sunday they had the opportunity to bear their testimonies during sacrament meeting. These two girls have GREAT testimonies and I felt the Spirit very strongly while they bore them. They are very excited to go to the temple and to be baptized for their grandmother one day.

We also have another Smith family that we have been teaching forever, and they have been very iffy about getting baptized but finally this week they committed to do it. We have been teaching the mother and her three daughters, and their interviews will be this Tuesday, and their baptisms on Saturday. Her husband and two of her three sons work in the bush, so maybe we will have the opportunity to teach them one day.

This Thursday we will be having THE TURKEY BOWL for Thanksgiving!!! I don't know how the Teaching Assistants convinced President Egbert to let us play flag football, but nonetheless they did. I think we are also going to eat Thanksgiving Dinner with the Frys or the O'Dairs, I'm not sure.

Everyone have a great week

Elder Porritt

Left to right Shenia, Crystal, Brother Mohammed

People in Guyana don't smile in pictures... It's really weird. 

Zone Conference Pictures

Denethor, Our Mouse Friend

Hello everyone!!! I hope everyone is having a great week. This week has gone by pretty fast, its pretty crazy. All is well here in our area, we have taught a lot of really good lessons this week, and our investigators are progressing.

We didn't actually end up having the baptisms this week, they are actually supposed to happen this Saturday, because we haven't taught them all of the lessons quite yet. They will have their interviews on Tuesday, and we will be finishing all the lessons on Wednesday and Friday. Also yesterday we went over the baptismal questions with the three of them. (Sister Smith is not married yet, so she can't be baptized until she does) :( And Rick told us unexpectedly that he is not ready to be baptized on Saturday, because he has something to straighten out in his life, but hopefully we can get that resolved in the next little while. So on Saturday, Shenia and Crystal will be baptized. Vinod and Natatsha's date had to be pushed back a while, among a few others whos dates were pushed back.

We had a lot of our investigators and members at church this week, which was great, but about 70 percent of them were so late they missed the sacrament. Everybody here runs on Guyana time, which is 20-30 minutes late to EVERYTHING. But the rest of the meeting, and Sunday school was GREAT. We don't have the third our of church yet, because we still aren't a branch yet, but I think we will as soon as Rick is able to receive the Melchizedek Priesthood. That would put us at five active tithe paying Melchizedek Priesthood holders, because we just had a Melchizedek Priesthood holder move to the area. His name is Anthony, and he was at church yesterday. He is a great guy. 

My spiritual experience this week came from studying in 1 Nephi 22, where Nephi is explaining Isaiah 48 and 49 to his brothers. It is amazing the prophecies that he and Isaiah made about the establishing of the United States on the American continent, and of the Restoration of the Gospel, which will be brought to all ends of the earth. To the seed of Nephi and his brothers, to the Gentiles, and to the tribes of Israel. I really learned a lot from that chapter. You should all go and study it, it is a GREAT chapter.

Good luck to everyone and keep working hard and doing what's right.

Elder Porritt

Typical study snack

This is our good friend Denethor. He was in our garbage and we trapped him and scared him into this bottle. RIP Denethor

Elder Vance and Denethor 

Every Member A Missionary!

Wow, this week has flown by super fast! It feels like P-day was not all that long ago. It also feels crazy that I'm already halfway through this transfer. We are doing great here in Parika, things are looking good. We have a couple of baptisms coming up in the next two weeks. We have the Smith family, sister Smith, the mother, and 3 of her kids, Rick who is 18, Shaniah is 14, and Crystal is 11. All of them are excited to get baptized this coming Saturday as long as we are able to make it over to their house and finish all the lessons we have left in time. The following Saturday is the date for the Singh family, Vinod and his wife Natasha. They are having a few marriage issues, but I think if they are able to iron them out this week they will be able to be baptized. 

Well the highlight of this week was ZONE CONFERENCE. Elder Alonzo and his wife, and President Egbert and his wife taught us about the Book of Mormon. It was so awesome. We had a lot of discussion on how better to teach the Book of Mormon lesson to our investigators in a simple way that they can understand, and of the converting power of it. Our Teaching Assistants (We have 8 Assistants in the mission, because there are 6 countries and it is basically impossible for the Assistants to the President to fly everywhere with the Egberts) Elder White and Elder Riggs taught a practice lesson of the Book of Mormon to a senior couple who were acting as investigators. It was great! Also we got a new senior couple over our district. Elder and Sister O'Dair from Arizona.

Elder Vance and I had the opportunity to give two Priesthood blessings this week. We had a contact who wondered if we could bless her daughter who had autism, and Elder Vance gave her a blessing. I had the opportunity for the first time to bless an old man who was a members father, who was going blind from bad cataracts. It was really cool to be able to bless him by speaking through the Spirit. Also Elder Vance and I were able to teach a fireside to our group who is almost a branch. (We just need one more tithing paying Melchizedek Priesthood holder to become a branch). We had about 20 members show up, and we taught them about the importance of MEMBER MISSIONARY WORK. Our work is not nearly as effective as it would be with the help of the members. They are so important

Well good luck to everyone and remember the every member is a missionary!!!

Elder Porritt

Our Area is Huge!

Hello everyone!!! Things are going great here in Parika Guyana. We have been working very hard this week to try to get to all our investigators. We have so many investigators its not even funny. But most of them are brand new, and we can't really drop them yet, because we don't know if they are going to follow through on their commitments yet. It is quite difficult to keep track of all our investigators, and most of them we are only able to see once a week. Our area is HUGE. We have investigators as far away as an hour drive, so we do a lot of traveling, but it seems like our most promising investigators live the farthest away, its weird... We have 7 investigators with baptismal dates in the next month, and all of them are very promising investigators, so we'll see what happens. 4 of them are supposed to be baptized on the 11th of November.

We had some really great lessons this week. The best one, however, happened on Saturday with a recent convert named Emtiaz. He is 18 and lives with his grandmother. He was baptized last month, and has been less active, because his girlfriend is a bad influence on him. We kind of hope they break up haha. We met with him and he asked us if the Bible says anything about the Book of Mormon. Someone had told him that the Bible tells us nothing about the Book of Mormon, but boy were they wrong. We shard with him a prophecy from Isaiah about the Book of Mormon being translated by someone who was unlearned. We a great lesson about the Book of Mormon, and bore our testimonies of how wonderful and true the Book of Mormon is. The Spirit was so strong, and I know that he felt it too. And the next day, he and his girlfriend were at church.

Sacrament meeting was great. We had 37 people come, 13 of which were investigators. They had the primary program which was still great, even though there aren't that many kids in primary. We have a sister from the United States who is a Peace Core worker here in Guyana, she teaches school here in Parika. She plays the piano for sacrament meeting, and she is our Sunday School teacher, and she is GREAT I don't know what our group would do without her, our Sunday school is always amazing.

This coming week we will have our Zone Conference with President Egbert and Elder Alonzo. We will be talking about the Book of Mormon. I am so excited!!!

Well thank you everyone for your letters and good luck this week. Keep reading the Book of Mormon everyday!!!

Elder Porritt

Here is our study area

Week 1 in El Campo - Currently Serving in Guyana!

Holy cow, I have done alot of traveling this week, and I am finally here in Guyana. So we flew from the MTC to Miami, to Trinidad and stayed in the mission home. President and Sister Egbert are AWESOME. They have been very welcoming, and Sister Egbert has made some REALLY good food for us for the two days we were there. President and I had a 15 minute conversation about baseball and softball, so he and I have some things in common.

Tuesday I found out I was going to the Parika area in Guyana, Guyana is an English speaking country by the way, I don't know if I have said that already yet, but I am not even speaking my mission language here haha, but I still have an hour of Language Study every day. My new companion is ELDER VANCE, He is from Idaho Falls and has been in the field for 21 months, and he is AWESOME. He and I have a lot in common so we have gotten along very well and we are teaching very well together. I should have already taken some pictures with him, but I haven't yet so I will send some next week. 

Parika is really sweet, it is not like extremely poor but people don't have a whole lot. Probably about half of the people are Hindus so that has been a struggle. They are basically 0% receptive to anything we say to them. The church is brand new here, the area opened up like 9 months ago and we only have a group, which is right below a branch. We get about 20 members to church for sacrament meeting and this week we had 13 investigators at church. We have 10 investigators on date to be baptized in the next 3 weeks currently, we are expecting probably like 5 or 6 of them to follow through on it. So the work is going great!!! The drivers are exponentially more crazy here. Public transportation is horrendous and we have to ride it occasionally to get around everywere. They play the most vulgar music I have ever witnessed and at indescribable volume levels. Normally we are on our bikes though. 

Well I don't have any time left, but everything is going good, we are teaching lessons and having a lot of spiritual lessons everyday. So all is good.

Elder Porritt

This is supposedly the largest all wooden building on earth or something. It is ENORMOUS

The largest floating bridge on earth, and its got to be like 3 miles, it is crazy

Here is what my companion made me eat the day I got here hahaha

Arrived at the Mission Home!

Dear Family and Friends,

Your missionary sons and daughters have arrived safely in the Trinidad Port of Spain Mission. ​They are tired but happy to have had dinner waiting and a bed to go to sleep. Tomorrow they will be in orientation all day and have personal interviews before they leave on Thursday to meet their new companions and arrive in their assigned areas. They will be emailing you on Monday, their preparation day, to let you know more about their week. We are happy to be serving with them and will take good care them. 

Sincerely,

President and Sister Egbert

Here are some pictures of the Last Day at the MTC

Last Week in the MTC

Hola everyone!!! It's good to hear from everyone. This is the last week in the MTC, and it has flown by so fast! We got some information about our flights this week. Elder Norton, Elder Stott, Elder Sessions, and I (the Trinidad boys) are leaving early on Monday morning. We will fly to Atlanta, then to Trinidad, and stay the night in the mission home. The next day Elder Stott and I fly to Georgetown Guyana, where I'm assuming our first area will be. One of the members here at the MTC just got back from the Trinidad mission and he has been telling us all about it. He said that Guyana was his favorite part of the mission because the people there are SO nice, but it isn't really a nice area. He said we likely will have an apartment with no shower and no washer and dryer. And it is going to be HOT like right on the Equator hot, depending on where in Guyana our area is. I am sure going to miss some things here at the MTC, like the AC haha. Most of the missionaries I have got to know really well are going to the Santiago DR mission. I am going to miss those guys for sure.

So on Friday, (and we will do it again tomorrow) we went on splits with the missionaries from the DR west mission. My new companion was Elder Incu from England. He had been out for 18 months. Holy cow that was a crazy experience no doubt. We all met at a stake center and split off from there. The missionaries don't have cars there. So how they get around is riding in a "Carrito" which is like a really cheap taxi. It is usually a 70's, rundown, gutted out, runs on a propane tank, car that they squeeze as many people in as possible. Just imagine a small 4 door sedan with 3 people in the front and 5 more in the back. It is SO uncomfortable, hot, and unsafe, but it is the cheapest way to get around from place to place. So we rode in one to Elder Incu's area and back at the end, we had two appointments lined up to teach lessons. We walked to one house to teach a 13 year old girl who was going to be baptized the next day. That neighborhood was kinda scary and VERY run down. My companion taught basically the whole lesson and I could only understand what he said really because Dominicans talk So fast it's ridiculous. We also taught a single woman about the Word of Wisdom, and she seemed to be very receptive of what we said. We walked around a lot, because the lessons were so far away from each other, so we got to kind of see what the city is like. We went to his apartment which didn't look great. All in all though the experience was AWESOME!!! Spanish is going to be a struggle to learn, but I am so excited to get out there and start teaching REAL people. 

We had a really great sacrament meeting on Sunday, and later that day listened to an MTC devotional talk from Elder Holland from 2009. HOLY COW I love Elder Hollands talks. He talked about how ESSENTIAL it is to teach with the Spirit in missionary work. The Spirit is the link that connects the Godhead, the missionaries, and the investigators all together. The Spirit was so strong the whole time he spoke. Also we had another Devotional from Elder Alonzo who spoke about the importance of following Christ and having faith in Him, it was great.

Thank you everyone for the emails. Everything is going great. Good luck to everyone with whatever they are doing this week. The Church is TRUE!!!!!!

Elder Porritt

General Conference was Just Amazing!

I can't believe that I have already been here for 4 weeks now. Counting today we have 13 more days in the MTC assuming that we leave here on the same day we got here. So I will only have probably one more email from here in the MTC. All is well here, we are working very hard with the language and practicing teaching investigators. We teach about 10 lessons a week to our fake investigators, and we are improving every time we teach. I am understanding more and more Spanish each day. I can understand almost everything we talk about in class every day, so that's good.

General Conference was just amazing!!! For maybe the first time ever I was able to sit down and watch all 5 sessions of conference and write down my thoughts from each talk. I can't believe how much more I get out of conference when I watch all the sessions and pay attention, which is difficult to do at home all the time. Here are my favorite talks

My favorite talk was from Elder Quinton L. Cook in the Saturday afternoon session. For anyone that wasn't able to watch the Saturday sessions I suggest going back to watch them, they were great. Elder Cook talked about the importance of humility in our lives. I really loved when he told us "Anyone who is sent to preach the gospel in my name will have the power to open the doors of the kingdom of heaven to any nation of the world so long as they are humble." This applies to me so much, and I felt the spirit so strongly when he told us this, and I have been trying to be as humble as I can so that this promise will come true for me.

My next favorite talk was President Eyring's talk from Priesthood Session. He taught us that "When God calls someone to a calling it is never a mistake", he also told us that we need to look past the weaknesses of our church leaders and have faith that they have been called by God and that he has a plan in place for them and that we should always sustain our leaders in word and in deed. I really loved this talk, and it has really taught me that our leaders are called by the power of God, and that we should never criticize them or think we could fulfill their calling better than they can, because God knows them better than we do and he has put them in that position to help and strengthen them. 

My third favorite talk was President Nelsons wonderful talk about the BOOK OF MORMON. I just loved his talk so much. He asked us the questions "How precious is the Book of Mormon to you? What would your life be without the Book of Mormon? What would you not know? What would you not have?" I know that the Book of Mormon is the keystone in our religion, and that without the Book of Mormon we would be very different people. I know the Book of Mormon is true and testify of its power. I also loved his promise that " If we read and ponder the Book of Mormon our individual prayers will be answered" this is such an awesome promise. I know that this is true for sure.

Other than General Conference the highlight of this week was going to the University. Ours and the other older district had the opportunity to leave the MTC and hand out Restoration pamphlets and teach the people at the university here in Santo Domingo about the Restoration. We talked to a few people and got a few numbers and gave out a few pamphlets, but nobody had the time to listen to our message. We were however able to teach one guy who was sitting outside one the buildings, he told us that he was a professor at the university. I had the opportunity to try to teach him about the Restoration in my terrible Spanish, but he was very patient with my companion and I. He listened to the whole lesson and we gave him the pamphlet and he said he would read it. We tried to give him a Book of Mormon, but he wouldn't take it, and he said something about he only reads the Bible. It was really great though. I was able to teach him about the entire Restoration and hopefully he reads the pamphlet and wants to know more. He gave us his number and the real missionaries will be giving him a call sometime soon to hopefully give him the lessons.

Thank you everyone for your emails! Good luck to everyone with everything. I hope you all have a great week

Elder Porritt 

This is Elder Chatterton and I

The Trinidad Boys

Working and Working on My Spanish

Here I am in the 3rd week at the MTC, technically it is the 4th week because of our delay, so we only have like 2 and a half weeks left. I feel like I just got here a few days ago and we are already in the third week. The older missionaries left the MTC yesterday and the day before, so now we are the senor missionaries here so to speak. The new missionaries all got here yesterday and today, and about half of them are in their 20s which is really weird. It seems really weird that we are the "older" missionaries here now and we've only been here for like 16 days.

Well this week has been great. Even better than last week was. This place kind of feels like home now, and all the things that are happening at home seem distant to me now... We had a piece of Hurricane Maria come through late Thursday and into Friday a little. It was pretty fun actually, because the wind and rain were really strong but not dangerous, so we were outside having some fun in it, I will have to send some videos. We have been working and working and working on our spanish, and it is coming along pretty good. I would say I can understand about 60% of what is said in spanish, if the person is speaking slowly enough. We have taught a bunch of fake investigators this week and they have gone really well. We can give a good lesson from Preach My Gospel and share scriptures and testimony, but we still struggle to answer their questions because we don't always understand what their saying and how put together a sentence to answer, but it is coming along well. We watched MTC devotionals from Elder Cook and Elder Bednar this week, both of which were absolutely STELLAR. Elder Cook told some great stories about missionary work and the importance of it. Elder Bednars devotional was also really good. I felt the spirit really strongly testifying that President Monson and his apostles are prophets and are the Lords mouthpieces for us in our day.

Yesterday we got to LEAVE THE MTC. We got to go to the store a few blocks away here in Santo Domingo. This place is just like a Walmart in the US, just not quite as big. Our district walked 3 or 4 blocks to this store to buy some essentials, but mostly candy. So we finally got to walk around the streets in the REAL WORLD. It was a real culture shock for sure to walk around these streets. Everything is different here, there is garbage everywhere and people drive like MANIACS. We walked down the sidewalk of a road that would be maybe 35 mph in the US and there were people flying past us at like 65 like it was nothing, all the while everyone just J walks and horns are honking and people are almost getting run over, its crazy. 

I am so excited for general conference coming up this weekend. After working so hard this week the though of sitting down and listening to the general authorities speak in english seems like Christmas to us. 

Thank you everyone for the letters and the support. I hope you all have a great week

Elder Porritt 

Here's the view of the city from the roof of the MTC

MTC Devotional with Elder Alonzo

Holy cow this week has been WILD!!! This is the first full week we have had in the CCM (MTC). It has really been a really awesome week though, full of spanish and full of the spirit.

The highlight of the week came yesterday afternoon. We had an MTC devotional, and our guest speaker was a member of the 70, Elder José L. Alonzo. He and his wife spoke to us at about 11 AM yesterday. Elder Alonzos wife spoke first. She gave a great message about missionary work and bore a powerful testimony of it. Elder Alonzos talk was absolutely awesome. He shared the scripture D&C 11: 21, and had us replace the word "Word" with "Atonement", which was mostly what his message was about, the Atonement. He also spoke briefly about prayer and that we should avoid things like "vain repetition," and making our prayers like "ordering groceries over the phone". He also councelled us to make our prayers like having a conversation with God like we would with anybody else, and that God wants to know how we are doing even though he already knows how we are doing. I really loved his talk and felt the spirit very strongly. His testimony was really the best part though. He knew without a doubt what he said was true, and so did I. 

We went through another session in the temple today, and did some more sealings, which was awesome. 

We are working really hard at learning spanish. It is SO difficult, but I know that it will come along soon enough. We have been practicing preparing for and teaching investigators in spanish, even though we still dont know didley squat of the language. It has been a struggle trying to communicate with our teacher/investigator, because most of the time we don't completely know what he says when he responds to our message. 

The first Sunday in the MTC has been really sweet. President Gulbrandsen says that we will come to realize that the sabbath is a delight, and I already have. Sunday is the best day of the week here. Sacrament meeting is great, and we have a 3 hour doctrine class with the president that is really awesome as well.

Well I hope everyone has a great week this week. I wish I could write more, but we only have an hour to read and write all our emails which is not nearly enough time.

Have a great week.

Elder Porritt

This really cool tree on the grounds, it is completely horizontally flat.

 The Beautiful Temple here in DR