Lamb To The Slaughter

its been a crazy last week. we went up to arnasas pass and rockport last saturday and did lots of service, we were eaten alive by mosquitoes but it was the best to be out there helping. many wonderful miracles happened and continue to happen. God is good and the mission is the greatest thing anyone could ever do. im so thankful for all that my heavenly father does, especially for the time that i get to be here on earth. there was a crazy gas crisis and i was on an exchange in hidalgo when we got a phone call that the valley and corpus wouldnt be able to get gas sent down to us so everyone panicked and went and got their gas filled up, it took us an hour of waiting in line to get gas. it was such a miracle because the gas light came on while we were in line. thank you so much to everyone that supports missionaries.

I'll be coming home on wednesday and my home coming talk will be this sunday at 1pm at 950 North Main Street, Centerville Utah. not gonna lie it doesnt feel real at all.

the heavens

Gas crisis

Helping hands

it was pretty hot

The squad

Helping Hands

went up to Portland to have dinner with the Muhammads one last time..:/

Corpus

missionary toilet paper

picking up the greenies

saying goodbyes

Apple Shampoo

had a pretty crazy week! lets just start with Adan and Araceli, they were interviewed on wednesday for their baptism on friday.... thursday we get a call telling us that we need to pack a bag and come to mcallen for the weekend while the storm passes through..and so they canceled church all through out the stake and we took off, elder Harris and i are in Hidalgo now and we are with Elder Ortega.. what!!! and his compa elder peacock from kaysville. que milagro!! its been a blast being here and not going to lie, just super weird being here in hidalgo again, it almost feels like i never left.
we went out with Agustine to Golden corral this afternoon and we even played soccer with Presidente Torres it was pretty fun to see everyone there. the storm has shredded through rockport and port aransas. and those elders wont be going back to their area for a bit. its been pretty exciting being down here. on tuesday we were at district meeting and i saw a familiar face outside the stake center this is back in corpus, it was Hermano Vasquez from the weslaco branch. he was up in corpus working and he took us to this german restaurant. the first thing he said was.. "oh my gosh Gonzalez, i thought you were home already" hahahah i last saw him in Hidalgo and Beeville haha. its been such a blast, the mission really is the best. disfruta la vida y la mision. 🐒🐨😁😭

before the storm

Schnitzel sandwich

Elder "Panda" Johnson with his German Burger

after a fat meal appointment..

everyone has a seat in the house.. haha

Ceviche :D

Hidalgo Olympics

you can order online for HEB and just show up and they'll deliver it to your car and they actually ask that you dont get out of the car.

look who is backing up my car haha

backboard back windshield

the one and only Jerry Garcia

EQ visits, Agustine, Moi y Ortega

#PuraVida

Zero 8/21/17

Corpus is the best!! we've been meeting lots of people that are big fans of WWE, its really awesome to talk about all of our favorite wrestlers and favorite matches. #NatureBoy'RicFlair'
we went to the beach for p-day last week. it was pretty awesome. we have been making great contact with some ancient members that havent been seen in forever. we had an awesome lesson with Abinadi and his family. Adan our investigator told us that he believes that joseph smith was a prophet!! ahh!! i was ready to jump out of my chair!! we had quite a few visits to the hospital for different people and as we were leaving the hospital one day this man saw us and said. hello elders how are you? we had never met him before but turns out he is a member that just is about to move to our ward, he wanted a blessing and told us to visit him at his hotel room that he is staying in. we went over and he is living with his mom. we gave him a blessing and it was powerful. he bore his testimony after and told us how his life was before, it was awful and he drank and drugged himself into a coma, he said he was able to see the other side, he doesnt understand why he was granted that but he said that it smelled like roses and the air felt so good and he met his father there and his father said he could stay there with im but he felt very uncomfortable and unworthy to be there because he knew what kind of man he was in the real world and said no to staying.. he was in a coma for 2 months. after being released from the hospital his brother asked him if he wanted to go to the bar and for the first time in his life.. he said no.. and from then on he completely changed his life.. this week was one of the craziest weeks.. Sunday morning, Elder Harris went to go pick up this ancient member named Ricardo, the one who got his suit stolen, well elder Harris went with a member to pick him up and when they got there Ricardo said "im not going today" elder harris said "ricardo, open the door" he said ok. they then went in and elder harris helped him put on his pants and then they came to church. the whole way to church ricardo kept talking about how he couldnt believe that he was on his way to church. he loved it!! he has been a member for a very long time and was so happy to go to church!! its been crazy to see the change in the people we are teaching, the change that the spirit can do in someones life is so unreal!! In the morning we were out and about waking up our investigators for church and after we left one of them there was this man pushing his truck down the street to the gas station. we quickly pulled over and ran over to help him. we finally made it to the gas station and he was so grateful. that is how we met the Galvan family, we went to their house later and had an amazing restoration lesson. from experiences like this it truly testifies to me the truthfulness of the message we bring and carry in our hearts everyday and how we are guided to those who will listen. I rejoice in all that the lord does,for us. we are so weak and imperfect. all i ask is what more can we do?, what more can we give?

North Beach

Service at last

Starched pants for Ricardo

#spotted

We're Gonna Fight!!! 8/14/17

this week was one of the best!!
we had a zone meeting and i gave a training on sacrifice and diligence, i feel so alive for some reason!! later that day when we were out prosing we got a call and found out that Presidente Torres was going to be in corpus in 40 minutes and he wanted to have interviews with all of us, it was pretty exciting because we had almost every half hour set so that threw a big curve ball but everything worked out the way it was supposed to. we got a call from a brother in a ward telling us that he invited a whole family over and that he wanted us to teach them in an hour, we flew over there and taught the Bigam family they are super awesome and just moved from Colorado. at the end of the night we were visiting the Maldonado family that we started teaching and mid lesson one of the kids looks at the parents and says "I thought you said they were going to baptize me?" lol what a great question haha. My plan had me sign up for institute and that was actually pretty exciting. through out this week we had many set appointments and if we didnt the lord really guided us to where we needed to be at the right time. I went on an exchange with elder Griffeth who is from Price Utah he's pretty sweet! we are very similar and we had a great day.

Last sunday we were looking through the roster and came across this name Abinadi Hernandez and we decided to visit him because we had never met him. so we drove out there to visit him and we pull up to the house and ask if he lives there and turns out his father goes to the spanish branch in our building with us and he told us that his son doesnt live there and he gave us his sons address which is on the other side of Corpus, we drove out there and nothing, that was all last sunday. the father really wanted us to get in contact with his son so we thought we'd just really try during the week. wellll yesterday we set out to visit another brother we didnt know and we knocked the door and no answer, we almost got into the car but then something told me "you want to find people to teach, right infront theres a park full of people go talk to them" it was true, right infront of the house we knocked there was a park full of people. we then crossed the street and made our way to this man struggling to walk, we said hi, he said he had no time, i then looked around the park and the spirit said "you want to find families, go talk to them" and there was this little family playing t-ball, we walked over and we introduced ourselves to the father, he told us his name is Abinadi it then went silent and i asked him..."whats your last name" He said, Hernandez. we then just looked at him and he said, "I think you guys know who i am.." he was right.. it was the man we tried to find last week. he then told us that he wants to teach his 11yr old son about God and invited us over to teach him..Listen to the voice of the spirit and you'll be guided to the things you are seeking. this experience is something that will forever be in my heart. when he told us his last name i got way excited and told him i literally felt like i just met a movie star because we found him, ahh it made us so happy! The lord truly is over everything. we later swung by this media referral and the woman was just going through a crazy hard time and ended up telling us that she was baptized in the church.. wow que loco.. i feel like that happens a lot here haha. this man named Michael moved into our area that was being taught by other missionaries and is planning on being baptized. we visited him and after that visit there were some people standing in the circle that he lives in, we waved and said hi and this guy waved back and something just seemed different about him so we started talking to him, come to find out he's a member in san antonio that hasnt gone to church in forever, he was just visiting his family, he told us most of his family is in utah and have gone on missions and he gave us his info because he really wants to go back to church now and wants the missionaries to visit him.. his parents ended up living at the house they were at and are also members and we had no idea, the lord will really lead us to those that are waiting. this week was a week of breaking barriers, its hard to overcome obstacles in our life but one thing we really learned this week is that it is possible. put your mind to it and trust in the lord literally give everything to him because most of the things here dont matter but what matters most is the trust the Lord has in us and where our hearts are.

we helped this less active member find a suit for church. we dropped it off and we came the next day to see if it fit and we found out that someone had jacked it from his chair in the front room..he cant trust his roomates but for some reason we all just started laughing when we found out that it got stolen. oh well it was an ugly brown anyway haha.

it reminded me of Carl from ATHF

spooky apartments

The Devils Blood, literally an single drop will have your whole body burning

Blessed to have mexican food in the north, but its not like Hidalgo:/

Bro, Barrera the man who got his suit stolen

Hoss

crazy thing happened last week, we were at the mall on pday and we heard "hey elder" I turned around and who was there? Diana and Mariah Cervantes, i said woahhhhh ahhh!! and we ended up seeing the whole Cervantes family, the family that Messinger and I baptized in Beeville, they were school shopping ahh it was so awesome to see them. Later that night we made our way to a return appointment in "The Cut". The cut is a sketch part of corpus that gets pretty weird after dark. well we made our way to visit Joe, as we pulled up Joe bolted inside, the first thought that came to my mind was, dip cause this guy wont listen, but then another thought came and it was from an MLC about giving people a chance, so we got out and knocked the door... this woman opened and let us in there we had a very spirit filled Restoration less with 5 of the family, they are all adults and super eager to start reading from the book of mrmon. One of the sons even asked if before we left, if he could say a prayer. the next day we had a bomb district meeting at Cole Park, it is this park right next to the ocean it was awesome. our plan for that day was to make some Pros Plates aka mapped out and organize on paper our area to help in the work. well we started after district metting and we had been making calls to people to follow up a little and we called Adrian, the man who walked up to us at Eddies, well we called him to set up a cita and he said we could visit him right in that moment, so we put everything on pause and went to his barbershop... well we show up and start talking to him, within minutes he just completely opened up and has so many gold questions and was just in tears it was quite the visit but we both feel super strongly about him. the spirit is such a great gift, he continued to ask us if baptism really did wash away his sins. he has such a great heart. we also met the Sowels family, so we had tried to visit this member in a part of town we werent very familiar with and the member didnt have time for us so we left and walked around the block and just before we got back into our car, there was this woman sitting on her car, we offered her a card and began talking about jesus christ and she stopped us and said "wait, let me go get my kids" she ran inside and came out with three kids and we had an awesome short lesson with them. I went to my last MLC on thursday and it was soooo good, we talked a lot about Trust and The Restoration. i visited with Ortega and i just miss Hidalgo so much!!:/ all the good tortas and members there. we gave this woman named Joan a blessing earlier in the week and we had a follow up lesson with her and when we had given her the blessing she was going through a lot.. well we met up with her and she began to cry because she told us how doors were opening for her right and left and the peace that she has in her life now is something she has never felt before and show knows it came from the blessing.. she wants to tell everyone about her blessing and that it came from "the mormons". The church is so true. this week was crazy good!! we had a funny experience yesterday so we wear white shirts and ties right, well we had parked infront of some random house to figure out the direstions to the next place and we had been there for a little bit and this car pulled up next to us and they guy told us to roll down our window, and then he asked us what we were doing cause we were infront of his house, we told him who we were and we ended up setting an appointment to visit him haha that happened again, people were getting all scared cause we were parked hah. pero todo esta bien hah:) the mission is the best!!

kinda blurry but the Cervantes family

a little throw back pic from Hidalgo, we went to Rodizio as a final hoorah for the transfer

District Meeting

Bingo, is very intense over here

6 way intersection, its a good idea...

Mijo(Elder Barnett) and I. he's been out a year.. they grow up so fast:/

funny magnets 

Chancho 

thuggin

Healthy Body 7/31/17

First milagro of being in corpus, we were eating at this place called eddies, and this random guy walked up to us and said "hey what do you guys do for a living?".... gold question haha we then just went into it all... he called his wife and wanted us to talk to her cause he wants to take his whole family to church with us and have us come by.. say what....... orale no way!! there is unreal potential here in corpus, we've been finding a lot of great people. my compa is from st george and was in the national guard before coming out. he's a stud! i feel super happy to have him as my last companion. we've been having some powerful lessons with random contacts. i truly know that God is over everything..the spirit is touching the hearts of so many people, its just up to them to follow the promptings. we got invited to a thanksgiving dinner, it was awesome. we had this one visit and this brother told us that he wants to be sealed with his wife who is not a member. she was in the room during the whole thing and it was just such a great experience to see everything go down. not going to lie i really do miss Hidalgo and all that was going on down there. whenever i tell people that, that was my old area they look at me like how on earth are you alive hahah. its the best. the mission really is the best thing in the world, everyday i wake up and i just feel so full of fire and just want to hit the streets. have a great week!:)

Drove this beautiful thing to Corpus, they call it the Roach

oohh yeah baby, Corpus

a members rock collection haha

Magnet of the week

Ocean breeze

Pansa Llena Corazon Contenta