LOVE

Beautiful FAMILY!!

 

How grateful am i this wonderful monday morning here in southern florida!!! I will continue to tell you all how much i love it here. It is truly the best! Country is the best just put it that way haha i love VISITING the big city though. I am so very grateful for God. All the many wonderful blessings and miracles that he bestowed upon me this past week. My district was able to reach numbers and goals higher then ever before. We as a companionship (Elder thompson and i) were able to get 8 people to church and probably 4 that have a baptism date for this sunday. We truly are seeing amazing miracles here in homestead and in the mission field. I pray to god each night that he will protect and guide my beautiful family. As i have reflected on the week and also through studying my patriarchal blessing I have came down to the conclusion of what lead to this success. The anwser is as simple as..... LOVE!!!! In my patriarchal blessing it says something like "it doesn't matter any problem or concern that someone has the pure love of christ will always always healeth them" This Love was was i focused my district training on last week. So obviously the love of christ lead to helping and blessing the lifes of other. So how do we show people the love of christ? ITS SIMPLE! Tell them. Don't be afraid to tell someone you love them. This past week i commited every missionary in every lesson to tell every investigator they loved them. This helped us as we taught in place of christ. Look for ways to serve them. Through this love we were able to notice ways to help others. For example.. one of the older ladies that we said a prayer with one day. We knocked on her door and told her we were representatives of jesus christ then we asked her if we could pray with her. She said yes. She said she wanted to include her health in the prayer because she was sick. So after the prayer elder thompson and i asked her a specific question... can we take your trash out? she said no no you don't needa do that... then we persisted in doing so. She gave us 2 big bags of trash to take out to the dumpster. Well we weren't finished showing our love for her. We then asked her when we could return and share a quick message with her about our loving heavenly father. She said on tuesday. So we told her... okay we'll be here tuesday at 4.. also we're going to bring you a bowl of soup that way it will help you feel better okay:) As we said this and showed her this love of christ she basically broke out in tears. She felt how much we cared for her and also how much god cared for her. It was amazing! This love lead christ to perform miracles in our hands. These miracles are always happening to us. It's important that we recognize them!!!! As i was on an exchange with one of our zone leaders (elder jones) we went to visit a lady at 4:30. When we got there she wasn't there. Seconds later elder jones looked at his planner and said dangit thats my fault we were supposed to be here at 4 so she probably is gone. Well we looked at each other and said there is a reason god put us here. Next thing we know a lady was backing her car into a parking spot. We said to each other... this is it! We approached her and like the first words that came out of her mouth were heyyy i was baptized in your church! We went inside and asked her if we could pray with her fam none of which were members. She said yes. We went in here house and left a powerful priesthood prayer with them. Then the spirit prompted me to let this beautiful family know about the miracle in which god performed minutes before we met them. How we were outside this apt building 30 min later then we should have been. How we were supposed to even be in that area at that time... Well i followed the prompting and told this family. As i told the family about the miracle they all softened their heart and wanted to come to church on sunday. They accepted baptism and now are progress as a family. This family was prepared from the beginning but pointing out and helping them recognize the miracle is what changed them for good. The next day in my personal study i was reading about Alma when he was preaching in the city of Ammonihah. He got rejected. Not one person listened and accepted his teaching of christ. So he left the city. As he was leaving the city an angel appeared to him and told him to go back. So he did. Well on the other side of things Amulek was also visited by an angel. The angel told amulek that a prophet of god would be coming into the city and he needed to feed him (alma). So thats what happened. As they went two by two preaching the gospel amulek testified and specifically mentioned the miracle in which god had performed. How these two alma and amulek met up and how god put them together to preach to them at that time. It was amazing to read because as amulek did this the heartts of the people softened up a lil bit. Thats exactly what happened to me and elder jones when we saw that family!! IT WAS AMAZING!!!!

 

Ok onto some worldly fun haha we had a lot of spiritual fun this past week. WELL as i found out this past week on of the keys is in our area. And we have less active members down there. So elder thompson and i jumped on the bus and went down to key largo this past week!!!! We had to take the bus because we don't have miles for that in the car. It's like 30 miles away! It is awesome down there! The keys are crazy haha lots of fishing and fun! To get there we had to drive through some everglades and wow they are beautiful and SCARY to me at the same time! I am still yet to see any gators or snakes though. A member told us they'd take us one of these pdays. There are like parks and places to go see them like 15 min from our house haha so we'll go hit that up one pday!! Key largo was awesome though. We helped a LA member reopen up his pizza shop. It was the best. We know that through that LOVE and service they will return to church and his wife will be baptized.

 

Also we taught some funny lessons this week!!! haha one of the families we are working with that came to church :) they have 2 ysa age daughters. So we passed them to sister dunford and quiocho (who were in my last district) haha it was good to talk with them.... well turns out we ended up teaching this family and the ysa girls with the sister missionaries. So there was 4 of us missionaries there! We taught DOCTRINE haha it was the best. the first lesson we taught with them was one of the most spiritual lessons ever. then we went back a few days later and taught them again with the sisters. We taught about how CHRIST PATH IS STRAIGHT and we have to stay on his path or else we are on the path of satan. Then the sisters jumped in and taught how we stay on this path by  keeping commandments. We then all taught the law of chastity. It was INTERESTING haha one of the ysa girls... well turns out she is lesbian. So we taught it all and really showed her our love haha and she commited to live the law of chastity. Every member in that fam went to church is is preparing to be baptized.

 

I love you all!!! Today we are hittin up some shopping malls that are like along the swampy banks of homestead haha they will be sweet! Everything is like swampy around here. I love it though! I truly do. Elder thompson is amazing and we get along so so so well. He is a stud. He loves riding motorcycles so he may convince me into getting a bike when i get home ;) i love him though he's the best! I love you all family

 

Always remember..Love is what changes everything and determines the trust that god has for us!  BE LOVING... if there are people that are crazy and hard to deal with I know that the love is all they need. I have seen it here in the mission. Do your best and god will do the rest! I love you all and please please focus on the LOVE!!! i promise you a week and life of happiness and smiles. not only that blessings that come straight from god. Direct blessings!

 

ELDER OVARD

                                                                              KEY LARGO!   Gotta Love it!!!