Armor of God

Dear Family,

It is still amazing to me how fast time passes. As you can see from the photos, we had a dunk contest last week while waiting for the rest of the district to show up and play sports with us. Today we are going to Kemah Boardwalk where there is a roller coaster that we are allowed to ride along with a whole bunch of carnival rides. Good photos will come next week.

The photos on the water aren't in my area, we were on exchanges with the Spanish elders. That isn't the ocean but is Clear Lake. It runs into the ocean and is a fresh/salt water lake.

Tommy keeps looking better and better for his baptism. During sacrament meeting he leaned over and told us of another experience he had feeling the Holy Ghost this week. He said that he was praying and asking God if in the next life he would be able to play video games with God and Christ and he said that the Holy Ghost came. I mean not exactly what I had in mind for feeling the Holy Ghost but it made us laugh. 

We also have a new investigator his name is Elroy. He is a member referral and Hispanic which means that I get to practice some teaching in Spanish! On exchanges with the Spanish elders we played soccer for an hour with some youth and they said we could come back. It was fun.

I taught Elders Quorum yesterday about "As man now is, God once was, as God is, man may be". I loved preparing for that lesson. It really helped me to understand my potential and that of those I serve. I also loved comparing that lesson to Elder Gay's talk from this past conference about what will a man give in exchange for his soul?

I hope all is well. Please pray for Elroy and Tommy. Thank you for your prayers.

Love,

Elder Case

Bearing Down in Pure Testimony

Dear Family,

This has been quite a week. Thank you for your love and prayers. We had a Zone Conference on Thursday and it was super good. President Ashton is awesome. We had about 15 minutes free time while waiting on lunch so he opened it up for question and answer and then taught us the doctrine of the kingdom. His knowledge of the scriptures is incredible.

I was in charge of the zone study (don't know why the zone leaders didn't do it) and had quite a good time. We talked about the difference between becoming a missionary and just doing missionary things. As I prepared for the study, I was prompted to study a little bit about Nephi compared to Laman and Lemuel. What I learned was that they essentially did the same things. All of them left Jerusalem with their father and journeyed into the wilderness. The differences then begin to pop up. It describes Laman and Lemuel: And then it describes Nephi:

 11 Now this he spake because of the ^astiffneckedness of Laman and Lemuel; for behold they did ^bmurmur in many things against their ^cfather, because he was a ^dvisionary man, and had led them out of the land of Jerusalem, to leave the land of their inheritance, and their gold, and their silver, and their precious things, to perish in the wilderness. And this they said he had done because of the foolish imaginations of his heart.

 12 And thus Laman and Lemuel, being the eldest, did murmur against their ^afather. And they did ^bmurmur because they ^cknew not the dealings of that God who had ^dcreated them.

And then it describes Nephi:

16 And it came to pass that I, Nephi, being exceedingly young, nevertheless being large in stature, and also having great desires to know of the ^amysteries of God, wherefore, I did cry unto the Lord; and behold he did ^bvisit me, and did ^csoften my heart that I did ^dbelieve all the words which had been spoken by my ^efather; wherefore, I did not ^frebel against him like unto my brothers.

This is what dad taught his seminary class a few years ago. The wicked murmur while the righteous pray. As I kept studying, it was just incredible to me how many things we do in life just to do them (Law of Moses) rather than doing them to become more like the Savior (Law of Christ).

We met with Tommy again. He really has wanted to feel the Holy Ghost and we kept telling him that he needs to read in the Book of Mormon to do so. We were in the middle of the lesson reading from the Book of Mormon with him and he stopped and said, "You know, the other day I was reading the Book of Mormon and I felt something like a shock. Is that the Holy Ghost?", he then said, "Also, I was thinking about what I had read in the Book of Mormon the next day and I felt an understanding. It was almost like someone opened my eyes and everything made more sense. Was that the Holy Ghost?" We sure loved to hear that! We bore testimony that it was the Holy Ghost and had a wonderful lesson with him. 

Other than Tommy, we have been spending all of our time doing service projects. I should have taken pictures. Last week we painted, tore down and put up drywall, and all other sorts of things. We have been working with less-active families to get them active and prepared to be sealed. That is fun work. The Spirit is there. I have seen hearts changed and softened. Some powerful moments have come as I have born testimony of being in the temple with all of you and reading the Book of Mormon every night. The parents just listen and then say, "Ok. We will do it if that is the feeling or if that is the result or the blessing."

Yesterday, I came to know for myself just how well the Lord can succor us. This Gospel is true. I know this with all of my heart.

Love,

Elder Case

P.S. The church changed its email policy for missionaries so I can now email anyone. I also have more time to email. So if anyone wants to get a hold of me you can pass my email along.

 

The Lord is Aware of Us

Dear Family,

Time passes much too fast. I honestly feel like I email y'all every day. Thanks for all the emails this week and the pictures and your prayers. I am grateful for your love and support. I forgot to mention the other week that every time I do a baptismal interview, I show the investigator a picture of the family. They all love it and it helps them to understand who I am a little better.

Well, our new companion is Elder Woolstenhulme. He is from Driggs, Idaho. He is a really good missionary. He was in the Marines before his mission and will return afterwards. He is great fun to have and brings a powerful testimony and Spirit with him. In fact, in his second lesson, he extended a baptismal date to one of our investigators named Tomas for March 30, and Tomas accepted! Tomas is pretty fun to work with. He really wants to feel the Holy Ghost and thus has desires to be baptized and read in the Book of Mormon. Please pray for him.

Another thing that is fun is that Elder Woolstenhulme knows some Portugese from the MTC and so we are talking all the time and comparing the languages. During language study we practice teaching in our own languages out of Preach My Gospel.

Transfer Meeting was crazy. There were 34 new missionaries in the mission and President Ashton created 17 three-some companionships. There is one elder that is training two new missionaries, opening an area, on a bike, and a Zone Leader. That sounds like fun to me! We found out during Transfer Meeting that we were losing the car and the Clear Lake 2nd Ward to a trio of sisters. They also kicked us out of our apartment temporarily. So we came home from the meeting moved all our stuff to the Spanish elders that live in our complex and cleaned and then moved the sisters in. We will move back this Friday when the Sister's apartment is ready but until then we are enjoying the sleep over of 5 missionaries in one tiny apartment.

So once again I come back to the Sacrament. I was having a really hard time this week with all the changes and trying to figure out how to work in a threesome and so on. I was fasting to know the Lord's will. I just wanted to know what He wanted me to do so I can become who He wants me to be. After the Sacrament, the first two testimonies were from returned missionaries who spoke of mission experiences when they felt lonely and discouraged and then sharing how the Lord manifested His love for them. As I listened the Spirit enveloped me and I once again understood the term "being encircled about eternally in the arms of His love". I cannot fully express the comfort that joy and peace I then felt but I am grateful to know that I have a Heavenly Father who is aware of me and who will always come to the rescue of those who are down-trodden.

Yesterday we were about to leave church and President Reeves (our stake president) asked if we could accompany him and his son to some of their home teaching appointments. We did so happily and our first visit was to Sister Naranz. She used to be very active and her husband was the superstar of the spanish members in this area back in the day. He died of cancer in the mid 90's and she hasn't gone back to church since because it reminds her too much of him. We spoke with her of the blessings of the Gospel and the temple and then she asked me to give her a blessing. That was powerful. As God spoke through me and expressed His love for one of His special daughters, I again felt the same sweet Spirit of earlier that day.

I am so grateful for this work. Each and every experience is a joy. I love you all and pray for you often.

Love,

Elder Case

We're Having a Baby!

Dearest Family,

I am pleased to announce that Elder Hillier and I will be training together this coming transfer. I am not quite sure how it will work but we will be in a threesome and we are training a visa-waiter that is eventually headed to Brazil. We have Transfer Meeting on Wednesday and are excited to have another companion. Something really neat is that this will allow us to get into every single house even if there is no man there. President Ashton said that because of this he wants us teaching a significant amount more. I spoke with the Assistants the other day too and it seems like they might split our area and take one of our wards away from us. Right now we cover Clear Lake 1 and Clear Lake 2 and I think they will just put another companionship in for one of the wards. It will be fun to see how it ends up working out.

As you can see from my pictures, it has been a great week full of "fluffernutters" and the ocean. I had the opportunity to do four baptismal interviews this week and one of them was on Galveston Island. I am the only District Leader in the area that speaks Spanish, so we went out there and had to wait a few minutes and decided to go on a scenic drive. It was awesome. Sorry I didn't manage to take any jumping photos on the beach with the sunset in the background.

We had Ward Conference in one of our wards yesterday and the 2nd and 3rd hours was a presentation on technology and the media. It was all based on a couple of different talks by Elder Bednar and was very powerful. The Stake Presidency shared a number of stories in which a spouse became addicted to video games or social networking and eventually ruined the marriage. They spoke out against video games very strongly and said two quotes that really impacted me. The first was, "If something is immoral outside the computer world, it is also immoral inside the computer world". The other quote was, "We have to keep the commandments in cyberspace just like we do in real life". Some of the people there were a little uncomfortable and it made me glad to be a missionary. I looked over at Elder Hillier and asked if he thought that my one hour a week on the computer was excessive and he advised that I should probably cut back.

We had some really neat experiences this week. Saturday night we were planning and Elder Hillier suggested that we try by a certain couple in the ward the next day. So we stopped by Sunday afternoon and from the moment we walked in the sister was saying, "How did you know to stop by? Thank you for coming, I needed a visit just when you came, thank you for coming". I am grateful to know that the Lord is aware of each of us individually. I have come to know for myself that President Monson is correct when he says, "The Lord is in the details of our lives". This lady's husband is not a member, but active in our ward and his church. So now we have a good place to start with him.

We had lunch with a less-active family this Saturday and had planned to teach them about the Sacrament. In preparation for the lesson I read 3 Nephi 18 during my personal study that morning. There are four different instances in just a few verses where it says that after partaking of the Sacrament they were filled. The first time I read it I immediately began to wonder just how much bread it would require to fill 2,500 people. Then I realized what it meant and the Spirit began to teach me. I know I talk about the Sacrament almost every week in my emails (probably because we do so much less-active work) but I continue to learn and be amazed by the central role that it plays in our lives. Each week we have the opportunity to "be filled" with the Spirit of God. To "be filled" with a member of the Godhead. That is an eternal blessing. I have also come to realize that worthily partaking of the Sacrament is just as important as being baptized because if we get on the path by entering the gate of baptism but don't endure to the end, the whole entering into the gate part doesn't help us out all that much.

Another neat experience we had this week was when we knocked on a door of a less-active member. Our notes on the ward list said, "sometimes receptive, sometimes not". Her husband opened the door and told us that we didn't want to talk to his wife because she would chew us out. She then came to the door and gave us an earful about how she has been trying to take her name off the records of the church for a while and how she has written letters to the bishop and stake president and she doesn't want anything to do with the church and so on and so forth. After about five minutes, we finally we able to get a word in and we then spoke with her for over an hour, developed a great relationship with her, and softened her heart towards us. She still wants her name removed but she told us we could stop by whenever just as long as we don't bring the other church people and she asked if we would help her move in a couple months and she referred us to her neighbor. As we walked away, I was amazed at the change that had taken place within her. Just another testimony that this is the Lord's work and that His Spirit will accompany those who are commissioned to proclaim it. I am so grateful to be one of those at this time. To be set apart from the world and to be a representative of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no greater work and no greater joy.

I love you all and know that this Gospel is true. I continue to pray for you and am grateful for your prayers in my behalf.

Love,

Elder Case

P.S. They use the word "wholenuther" here all the time. I always want to ask people how to spell nuther. Also, I heard someone use the word "usedtocould" the other day. It made me laugh.

The Apostles Speak

Dear Family,

What great news with the twins! I am so happy for Mary and Craig! And what is even better is that mom gave me an accurate count of the nieces and nephews in her email so now I know how many there are. This is crazy, I haven't even been on my mission a year and there have already been 5 nieces and nephews born. That puts us on track for at least ten before I get home. Good luck to everyone with that.

We had Stake Conference on Sunday. It was one of those that are broadcast from Salt Lake. I think it was all of Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. We were able to watch Elder Scott and President Eyring. It was incredible. Elder Scott gave a talk on the sanctity of womanhood and of course told very touching and emotional stories about his wife. One of the stories that struck me powerfully goes as follows:

He had been on a business trip for two weeks and returned home on a Saturday afternoon. The washer had been broken nearly the whole time he was gone and his wife had thus been washing the clothes by hand. He only had 4 hours from the time he returned home before he needed to be at a church meeting. He decided to spend the time fixing the washer. His wife Janeen, gently told him that she would rather he played with the children during that time. He resisted but she won out in the end. He said he had a wonderful time playing with them and then went to his meeting. He said he would have forgotten this experience except that that night around two in the morning, he felt two little arms around his neck and a gentle kiss on his cheek. His four year-old son then whispered in his ear, "I love you dad. You are my best friend."

It made me think of all of you. Especially with all the new babies. What a wonderful opportunities is ours to be members of this church and to have the Gospel in our lives. I continue to be amazed by the blessings which are found specifically inside the family. With the events of Spencer Jorgensen's accident (which dad informed me about) it brings in an even greater light the importance of being sealed together as a family in the temple.

Another really interesting story that came from Stake Conference was from President Eyring. He said that he was travelling in Europe one time and was with whom he considered at the time a trusted friend not of our faith but one who knew of the standards that members of the church enjoy. He said that he was then shocked as his friend led him into a building where President Eyring saw terrible pornographic pictures plastered on every wall. He said that though he had only seen them for a moment. They were burned into his mind and that no matter how hard he prayed, the images would not go away. After a number of days, while continuing in near constant prayer to have these obscene images removed from his memory, he was preparing a Family Home Evening lesson on prayer that he was going to share with his family when he returned home. He said that during this preparation, the Holy Ghost spoke to him and said, "I have protected you from temptation these many years and you have not been grateful for it, so now I have taken away this protection for a time so that you will be able to appreciate what I have given you". He said that the images were then gone and have never returned. He spoke of the Lord's prayer that says, "And lead us not into temptation". It really made me think about two things. 1) Do I pray and plead with the Lord to "lead me not into temptation" (or as the JST states, "let us not be led into temptation")? 2) Do I express adequate gratitude for the answers to prayer that I receive and have received. 

Both of these thought have been on my mind. And have helped me to recognize the great dependence I have on the Lord and just how blessed I have been.

I love this work. We are seeing many miracles. We should have some more baptisms in March. I have the chance to do four baptismal interviews this week. I love having that opportunity because I feel like I have some small chance to participate in the conversion process of one of God's children.

Sister Ball, the one who was baptized on February 2 has a limited use recommend and is going to the temple with the youth on Friday. I am so excited! She keeps saying that she can't wait for her year to be up so that she can be sealed to her deceased husband.

I love you all. This Gospel is true. What a marvelous time to live. The final dispensation in which we will welcome the Savior. What a powerful reality.

Elder Case

P.S. NASA was the coolest!

On Eagle's Wings

Dearest Familia,

As always, thank you for your prayers. I know I always say that, but it is only because each week I have some experience that makes me grateful to know that so many of you are praying for me. I hope you feel of my prayers in return.

I know my pictures are lame, but I didn't take any this week so I decided to show you my apartment. The pictures next week will be good.

We listened to a talk this week entitled "On Eagle's Wings" by Elder Holland. It was a BYU Devotional address and it really impacted my. He is such a good speaker. We are also going to NASA today as our District Activity! Never thought I would go to NASA but I am so excited! I will tell you all about it next week and I will make sure to take pictures.

Elder Hillier and I are planning what we call a "How to Share the Gospel Fireside". The other night while I was praying, the thought came to my mind that the ward members really do want to have missionary experiences and are doing their best but just sometimes don't know how to begin or what the next step is to help share the gospel with their friends, family, and coworkers. I shared my thoughts with Elder Hillier and he told me that a few days before all the same ideas came to him while he was praying. We shared our plan with our ward missionaries and the Bishops and should be doing that sometime mid March. We are really excited for it.

We are teaching a 9 year-old boy with Autism right now. His parents are both members but he just wasn't baptized at 8. It is fun because the only that he will pay attention or understand is if we teach with object lessons. We have enjoyed thinking of creating ways to teach him. We covered the Plan of Salvation on Saturday by drawing with crayons and markers on pizza boxes. He loved it and now will be able to put it up in his room.

I have learned two eternal truths through teaching him. 1) The Gospel really can be understood by little children. Like Grandpa Updike always said, "The Gospel is beautifully simple and simply beautiful". 2) The Holy Ghost can teach little children profound doctrine. I remember teaching with the missionaries back home. We were teaching a 9 year-old (I can't remember his name anymore) and in the middle of the lesson (also the Plan of Salvation) he asked if it all meant that we could become like God. When we asked who told him that, he responded that no one did but that it just made sense. As we taught Tommy on Saturday, he taught us about the spirit world before we taught him. He said that it only makes sense. It made me think of Alma 32:23:

 23 And now, he imparteth his word by angels unto men, yea, ^anot only men but women also. Now this is not all; little ^bchildren do have words given unto them many times, which ^cconfound the wise and the learned.

I am grateful for the Gospel and the simplicity which it brings to my life. Brother Fattelah (spelling) always says that, "The Gospel gives us the clarity of reality". It is true. This work is true. I love being a missionary. I don't think I will ever be able to come home. I have a secret wish that another call letter will come from Salt Lake asking me to serve here for the rest of my life.

Love,

Elder Case

As White as Snow

Dear Family,

I hope you are all feeling well. It seems like the entire world is sick with the flu. I continue to pray for you and am so grateful for your prayers.

We had a wonderful week this week. The miracles and the hand of the Lord were frequent as we went about our work. Sister Nancy Buchanan was baptized on Saturday and confirmed yesterday in Sacrament meeting. It was a wonderful experience to participate in teaching her and understanding the incredible change which the Atonement has wrought in her life.

After she was baptized, she bore her testimony. It was pure and powerful. The Spirit was there and I was filled with hope to know that someone as new to the church as her could bear such a wonderful witness of the Atoning mission of the Savior and of the restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the Prophet Joseph Smith. What a blessing.

We found a bunch of people to teach this week. Many were found in miraculous ways that were the result of following that still, small voice. Sadly, we have been visiting and beginning to teach many families where everyone but the father is a member. It is great to begin to teach them and help them feel the Spirit, but it is sad to see how many people are in this situation. I want to start a support group for LDS women who have non-members husbands and help them find ways to share the Gospel in their home.

A side note that I meant to include last week but forgot is mainly intended for dad. In my first lesson serving English, the one with the Confederate flags, there was a 25 year-old lady there wearing a shirt that said, "I hear voices, they don't like you." Talk about having a prayer in your heart!

We had a mission leadership training that consumed all of Wednesday. There were two people from the missionary department here one of which is in charge of all the international MTCs. He is about 30 years old. That has to be an interesting job. During lunch no one was sitting with them, so I took advantage and had a fun conversation with them. I learned how they filmed "The District" (the missionary training videos) and I learned about the troubles they are having with the new surge of missionaries coming into the field. Really interesting to talk with them and understand missionary work from the global perspective.

The training was pretty much that we are bad missionaries and need to change and do things like Preach My Gospel says and we did about 3 hours of role play. That was a joy. I actually really did learn from it though and have already seen the fruits of following the counsel received from Priesthood leaders.

Things are going well. I love this work. The Sacrament continues to take on more and more meaning in my life. As I listened to everyone bear their testimony and welcome Sister Buchanan and say that she is the cleanest and purest, I realized that we all have that opportunity each week. It made me wonder if I prepare for the Sacrament in the same way that I try to have my investigators prepare for baptism.

I love you,

Elder Case