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