Blessed with Lots of Clouds

Happy Monday everyone!!! We have been really blessed this week with lots and lots clouds, which has taken it from boilingly hot to not so bad. We don't have smartphones or computer access to see the temperature, but it is HOT. We really had a very great week though, full of spiritual experiences and miracles.

In Carawara this week we had a miracle with our new investigator Magnolia, who had just randomly shown up at church a few weeks ago, (divinely designed) and we had the opportunity to begin teaching her. She has been so prepared by the Lord from past things that have happened in her past life. This week she had an amazing spiritual experience in the Book of Mormon and accepted a date to be baptized on the 27th of October. We had just given her the Book of Mormon less than a week ago, but didn't have a whole lot of time to talk about it, so we left her to read the introduction before we came back. A few days later we returned to teach her about the Book more in depth. She told us that she had read the whole introduction and the testimony of the three and the eight witnesses, and had a very spiritual experience. She said that as she read through the introduction that she "felt full of the Spirit" and that she felt that the Book "had life." She was just amazed at the testimony of the 11 witnesses as well, and she just felt for herself that the Book was true. We felt strongly that we should invite her to be baptized, and she accepted a date for the 27th of October. Just yesterday we another lesson with her, and she proceeded to tell us that just that day, after arriving home from church she received the news of a tragedy that happened in her family. We were going to teach her about the plan of salvation that day starting from the pre-earth life, but we decided to skip to what happens after we die. She mentioned about 3 times during the lesson, "I'm so glad that I'm a part of the true church." She expressed so much in comfort in what we taught her about the afterlife, and was so grateful to have this knowledge from the restored gospel.  Even after only having met with us for about two weeks now, and having received the Book of Mormon less than a week ago, she already believes that this is the true church, and is already telling all of her friends and family about it. Teaching her about the plan of salvation made a visible difference with her, and when we were reading from Alma 40 about the Spirit world, she was starting to tear up. As we were about to leave she told us that that lesson had really made a difference. It was an amazing spiritual experience for me in many different ways. It was no coincidence that God has sent her to us at this time in her life. I thought at the beginning of the lesson that we should just try to teach the whole plan of salvation in order, but then I felt that we should focus on what happens after we die, and we decided to do stray from the original plan to do so. So many things have been happening in her life, and I fell that God sent her to us just at the right time. That was definitely my spiritual experience for this week, seeing how God has prepared her in so many different small ways, and how the Spirit has worked through her and has testified to her of the truthfulness of the church and the Book of Mormon. It's been such a wonderful experience, probably one of the best experiences on the mission so far, among others. I'm so grateful for the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ and for all the blessings of it, including the Plan of Salvation, and the knowledge we have of where we came from, why we are here, and where we are going after we die. 

Other than our adventures with Sister Magnolia, there have been some other good experiences. We had the pleasure of meeting with President and Sister Baird this past week at the new mission home for lunch, which they are almost done moving all the furniture and stuff into it. It's a blessing to be able to serve on the island and branch where the mission home and mission president are for sure.\

Well thats about all for this week. Have a great week!

Elder Porritt

I'm staying in Curacao with Elder Bigelow

Hello everyone! Well this coming transfer I will be staying in Curacao to finish training Elder Bigelow, and I am really excited to do so. This has been a really fun transfer, and a really fast one too. Not a whole lot is even changing in our whole zone. We will be getting one new Spanish elder, and a couple new Spanish Sisters, and very few of the areas are being changed. I am excited to be here in this area for another transfer, and am hoping that we will have much success these next 6 weeks. 

We had some really cool experiences this week. We had two really great lessons with our new investigator named Magnolia, During the week we taught her about the Restoration through the prophet Joseph Smith. After reciting the first vision to her we asked her "What do you learn about God and Jesus Christ from this experience?" She responded "He wants us to be baptized and be born again." It wasn't quite the answer we were expecting, but it was an AWESOME answer. During these first couple of weeks, she has just shown a really great understanding of the importance of the Restoration, and pretty much every answer she gives to our questions is an inspired answer haha. I just feel like all the events in her life have been a preparation for this time that we are teaching her about the Gospel, and I know that what she said was given to her by the Spirit, and we definitely felt the Spirit. We are excited for what God has in store for her in the future. We are going to invite her to be baptized this week, hopefully at the end of October. 

We have this old lady named Theodora that we have been teaching for a long time. She has been having eye issues and has been waiting to have an eye surgery for like 4 months now, and finally about two weeks ago she got the surgery, and will be able to finally start reading in the next couple of days. We have pretty much taught her all the lessons, and have just been reading a little bit from the Book of Mormon every time we go over there, since she isn't able to read it herself. We had invited her to pray earlier this week about being baptized, which she really wants to follow Jesus Christ, but she wanted to know for sure if this was the right church that she needs to be baptized into. She prayed and felt peace, tranquility, and just really happy while she prayed. At first she didn't really understand what that meant, but we talked about the Spirit and how it communicates with us, and she understood that that was an answer straight from God. We put her on date to be baptized on the 6th of October. Matthew 7:7: Ask, and ye shall receive, seek, and ye shall find, knock, and it shall be opened unto you. I know that if we want to know something, we just need to ask God, who will give to us freely, and if we have faith we WILL receive. 

I hope you all have a great week! Keep working hard!

Elder Porritt

Another Beautiful Sunset

All in the Lord's Timing

Well, it's really hard to top what happened last week for sure and this week was going pretty great, until Friday night something happened. We have been teaching Nelson since I got to this area like 3 months ago, and boy had that man been prepared. He has such a solid understanding of the Gospel and a desire to follow Jesus Christ. We had a lesson with him that night with one of the branches recent converts who just bore his awesome new convert-like testimony and it was a great lesson, but that night we got a text from him telling us that he doesn't want to be baptized anymore, or come to church. We still aren't sure, really, what happened to cause this, but luckily he is still willing to have us over and talk to him whenever we want. He also expressed to us that he still loves the Book of Mormon, and when we taught him yesterday we bore our testimonies of it, and invited him to read, ponder, and pray from the Book of Mormon to know what he should do. We're still working with him and are hoping to we can help him to have the desire again, to follow Jesus Christ. 

On the brighter side of things, we met some really cool new people this week. There's this lady from the Dominican Republic, that came to church last week out of the blue. The relief society president told us that she would like us to come visit her. We bike out to her house, which was way out towards the uninhabited side of our area, and taught her, and then again this Sunday she came to church. She told us about how in the DR she had seen the temple and was always intrigued about it, and the church, she had a few friends that were members and had invited her from time to time to go to church, or some small Gospel invitation, and so many little things added up in her life and she decided to talk to us, and come to church. Truly God is placing people in each and every one of our paths to share the Gospel with. Even if some people may at first reject the invitation to come to church or something, many of those small invitations build up over time and bring someone to that "Curiosity" about the Gospel.

Well the transfer is almost over, and we will be getting our transfer calls some time this week. I don't really know whats going to happen, but I hope to be able to stay here and finish Elder Bigelows training. 

That's about all for this week. Everyone have a great week!

Elder Porritt

Hump Day!!

Well time is flying towards my one year mark now. On the sixth of September I will have been out for one year technically, even though I left on the 12th because of Hurricane Irma. haha. It's crazy to think that it's halfway over soon. It all goes by so quick. 

Things with Nelson are pretty good. Unfortunately we weren't able to meet with him, and he wasn't able to come to church on Sunday, because he was really sick, but we had another stellar lesson with him yesterday. He told us that "If we truly want to follow Jesus Christ, we have to be baptized." He understands the Gospel so well.

This week was really special indeed. President Nelson visited the Dominican Republic this week, and spoke to all the people of the Caribbean Area. It was amazing, because only a week or so ago, he woke up in the middle of the night and felt a strong spiritual expression "Go to the Dominican Republic," and, being exactly obedient, he made time in his schedule to do so. He and Elder Renlund, and all the members of the Area Presidency were there, and Saturday morning there was a missionary broadcast for all the missionaries in the Caribbean, which was AWESOME. Among so many things I learned, was something I loved that President Nelson said, that as far as he can see, the Lord is less concerned about the numerical size of his church, as he is concerned that all of the members have made and are KEEPING all of the covenants that they are able to make. And that really struck me, and was something I had never really thought of before. That the Lord wants, so bad, for us to become, be, and stay worthy to make covenants with him, and KEEP them always. It doesn't matter if everyone in the whole world is a member of Gods church, if they aren't keeping their covenants, God can bring to pass the immortality,  but not the eternal life, of man, which is most important. After the missionary broadcast, we had a baptismal service, and then in the afternoon the prophet spoke to all the members. Some of the members of the area presidency and their wives spoke, and then Elder Renlund and his wife, and then President Nelson stood up and gave his talk IN SPANISH... Best thing I've ever seen. Something I liked that he said from the talk was "Our covenants are far more important than any other promise or commitment we have or ever will make in our lives." That was kind of the pattern that I saw from the talks that were given. Making and keeping covenants. I would say, if the Lord prompted His prophet to immediately go to the Carribean Area to teach the people about their covenants, that they are of the utmost importance, more than we can describe. I know that President Nelson is Gods living prophet on the earth, and that this truly is the church of Jesus Christ on the earth today.

In other news, we had a really cool district activity this morning. We went to some pretty cool caves that are here on Curacao, and took a tour around in them. I will send some pictures of the activity. Some iguanas were caught in the process. haha

Have a great week

Elder Porritt