"Forget the Dog, Beware of Wife"

President Mortensen, Josh, Sister Mortensen

President Mortensen sent this picture to us.

This week was a good one. Elder Gibbs and I have just been out here contacting as many people as possible. We did have one miracle last week though. The first door we knocked on was an older man named Roberto from El Salvador who let us in and we were able to teach him the Restoration. At the end, he said a sincere prayer and was in tears afterward. We have taught him once more since then and have another lesson tonight. He seems sincerely interested in finding the truth. He has already started reading the Book of Mormon and understands the gospel really well. We know that he has been prepared by God to be ready to accept the gospel. 

We also are working on reactivating lots of less-active members in the ward, as well as strengthening the members. We have probably 300 hundred records of adult members in the ward, and sacrament meeting attendance yesterday was 104. So we've got some work to do. Part of the problem is that a lot of the Hispanics down here are illegal, so they move and change their phone numbers quite often so it can be hard to contact them. I've come to appreciate church leadership in Utah much more since I've been here. Our bishop is a convert of like 2 years, and all of the adults are converts, but for the most part they are all trying their best to fulfill their roles in leadership. God expects effort, and he will take care of the rest. 

The weather is unpredictable out here. Some days it is like 80-90 degrees with tons of humidity, but yesterday was like 50 degrees with lots of wind, so it was really cold. I miss spring in Utah. And the mountains. But other than that, I'm happy where I'm at. We got to go to the temple last Thursday. The Houston temple is beautiful and pretty cool.

Our companionship is doing really well. We get along, laugh and joke a lot, teach well together, and talk about deep doctrine when we can, so it's a fun time. Our Sunday was good. We went to church and spent most of our afternoon and evening contacting, which wasn't too fruitful, but it's all good. The church is like 10 minutes away. It's a really big area, which is why we have a car. The Spanish is coming. It's not perfect, but I'm working on it. We do tract, but we work through the members as much as we can as well as referrals that come in from other areas. 

I'm not sure that there's much else to say, other than that this is God's work. It's hastening. 

-Elder Barrus

That sign definitely says, "Forget the Dog, Beware of Wife"

We had a ward Family home evening activity where we put a rope in the dark gym and had it lead to a tree that was lit up. People were blindfolded and couldn't see, so Bishop had our companionship try to lead people off the "Iron Rod" and we were successful with it. We played the role of Satan really well.