Training my New Son & My 20th Birthday!!

Good afternoon everyone! 

Well my new companion is here safe and sound. Elder Bigelow is a brand new missionary just out of the DR MTC, so he speaks Spanish somewhat already, but he has much to learn, including Papiamento. haha. I've never taught someone a language before, but I guess we will see how it goes. He is from Syracuse Utah, and went Nuames High School in Layton. 

Our week was pretty great. It's been pretty interesting. In this area we teach about 50/50 Papiamento and Spanish, so its been tough for my companion, but he is catching on really fast to the language. He's a really hardworking missionary and is really excited to go out the door everyday.

We had two just awesome lessons with Nelson this week, and he came to church on Sunday!!! He had a really great experience, and the members here are really good at fellowshipping investigators that come to church, so he already has made friends with a bunch of members.    

A spiritual experience we had this week was when we taught Nelson about the Plan of Salvation. He understood already pretty well, and openly accepted what we taught him about what happens to us after we die, We asked him what he needs to do to return to live with God again. He said "We have to do more than we are now, to reach there." I thought it was a very inspired answer, where most people would give what we sometimes call "Primary answers" like "keep the commandments" or "read your scriptures" which is what you get from a lo of investigators. He realized, however, that exaltation requires CHANGE. It requires progression and becoming more like the Savior through learning from mistakes, and repenting and partaking of the Sacrament, and exercising the Atonement of Jesus Christ in our lives. This reminds me of a devotional given once by Brad Wilcox I believe. I think it was a BYU devotional. He talked about grace and its power to "save us after all we can do", and also its ability to help us in our day to day lives. But he referenced 3 Nephi 27:19 that says "No unclean thing can enter the presence of God", and he added, no "unchanged" thing can enter into His presence either. And that is so true. We have to constantly change our lives to align them with the will of God, and "Never stop becoming" as President Egbert would always say. 

We didn't email yesterday because we had Zone Conference. There are too many things that I learned to mention, but we studied Chapter 4 of Preach my Gospel, and talked about the role of the Spirit in missionary work, which is the MOST important thing. Without the Spirit there is no such thing as conversion. No matter the passion or conviction of any mans words, there cannot be true conversion and a "Change of heart" without the Spirit. We listened to a small broadcast, where Elder Bednar taught a small group of missionaries about the importance of the Spirit in missionary work, and holy cow Elder Bednar is a MASTER teacher. I learned a whole host of things just observing his teaching skills, aside from what he even taught about. But it was an awesome Zone Conference and I wish I had more time to talk about it. 

Well have a great week!!!

Elder Porritt

Mom,

Well now I'm 20 and I feel really weird about it. That sounds kind of old to me. haha. I had a pretty good birthday. I opened my package a few days before, because it came in last Monday. I really had some good laughs with all the stuff that was in there. On Saturday we got to go proselyting and that's about all that happened. haha, but it was a good day. Thanks for the package and everything

Well I don't have a lot of time, but thank you for everything that you do, and for all the updates of stuff back at home. I hope it cools down a little bit back at home, unfortunately August is also the hottest month of the year down here to, so it has been steamy.

Have a great week!