2/18/19

Hey everyone,

It was a pretty good week. To start off the week we went to a District Council in Abilene. We were able to do a little bit of service at a food bank and for a member this week. And we have been doing some hard core planning this week for this transfer. This week it hit me so hard that I only have so much time to serve the Lord until i go home. Time goes by too fast. One of our goals with planning was to find more people to teach. So with that we were out on our bikes quite a bit and with that we were able to meet a couple of part member families in our ward and we are hoping to see some success come with that!! 

I know you all are probably aware that we can now talk with our families over Skype, text, or phone calls. Some of you have asked me my thoughts on it so here it is. I think that it is awesome. There are of course many things that are good about it and some things that many people have worries about it. But it all comes down to it being revelation from God to our Prophet Russell M. Nelson. This is a living church and changes sometimes happen to help prepare us for the Lord coming again. God blessed us with agency. All over the scriptures God promises that if we keep my commandments we will prosper, and those are blessing that come from obedience to what God commands. But only if we use our agency wisely and do what he says. Some people will say that it won't allow missionaries to have the same mission experience, or more importantly rely on the Atonement of Jesus Christ to lift them. But when a missionary is diligent and committed to His/Her calling this won't be a distraction. There are definitely hard and discouraging times out here and there have been so many times where I would have loved to call my mom and dad, but that is where we learn to rely on Jesus Christ to lift us. But missionaries can still turn to the Lord with this change. Hard times will still come, but that is life. 

Thank you all for the support and prayers. The Church is true. Love yall and hope yall have a great week!

-Elder Rose

2-11-2019 - Uno mas en Abilene

Like many of you know I received a transfer call last night. I got some good news that I would be staying one more transfer here in the Abilene 2nd ward. I was very grateful for the chance to stay home more transfer. We have a lot of things happening within the next 6 weeks here and I would have been a little sad to leave. 

This week was a good one. Started off with going to Brownwood for District Council one Tuesday. After spending some time out there with the missionaries we grabbed some bikes from the Sisters bikes that are going home and headed out. We than took a drive over to San Angelo to go one exchanges with the Elders there. I went with Elder Bingham and Elder Edwards. It was good exchange with lots of weird things that happened😅 but hopefully I was able to help them both learn somethings!! After we ended our exchange we headed back to Abilene and had a good rest of our day. 

Thursday we were having a pretty good day until we had the horrible realization of remembering that those bikes that we took from the Sisters were left in Elder Binghams and Edward's apartments..... Haha so we had to fix our mistake and than had to drive another 150 miles to get the bikes. 

This week we had an awesome lesson with Kele, Amos and their kids. We talked about putting down our weapons of war in Alma 24 and about baptism more. We talked about how Amos could baptize their family if he got cleaned up and that inspired them. We committed them to be baptized on March 23rd. 

The days and weeks just keep flying by faster and faster. The church is true. God loves you. 

- Elder Rose

1. Elder Bingham and Edwards 

2. Brownwood DC

3. Classic Tejas

4. The Eastman's 😊

2-4-2019

Howdy yall,

Just thought i would inform yall that it is currently 74 degrees here with a high of 79 today!! Don't you love winter?😊

This week was a decent week. I have been fightin an upper respiratory infection for about 6 weeks now. I got pretty sick early in the week and got put down for a few days. But went to the Doctor got some shots and antibiotics and feeling much now. Thank goodness.  Later in the week we were able to go and teach a lot of member families the Restoration and invited them to implement the ward mission plan into their families. This week we were also able to help a older lady move from here in Abilene out to Winters, TX. 

This week we have been preparing James Avery, one of the recent concerts here in our ward, to the temple this Saturday. We are driving over to Lubbock with him. He is an awesome guy and has some of the greatest stories ever. 

Yesterday we had dinner and a "family home evening" with Kele, Amos and their family. It was a great time. They are slowly progressing towards baptism.

Sorry for the short and not very detailed email, but hope life is good for y'all!! 

Much love, Elder Rose

1-28-2019 - A Sister's Mission

Family and Friends,

This week I hit my 18 month mark. Can't believe it. Sometimes its felt like 18 months and sometimes it feels like 18 days. But what I have learned these past 18 months are things I will cherish the rest of my life.

This week was a very busy week. We had Zone conference down in San Angelo. It was a great meeting. We talked a lot about the basic fundamental things of missionary work. It was a great reminder for me and hopefully helped a lot of the newer missionaries. It was crazy at Zone Conference because the 2 sisters that I came out with gave their departing testimonies. It hit me hard realizing that I only have 6 months left of my life to dedicate all my time to serving the Lord.

After Zone Conference that night we went on an Exchange with the YSA Elders here in Abilene. I went with Elder Wolford. It was great to be able to go with him. I have been able to see him grow a lot while I have been around him. We had a great exchange full of lessons, some service and he makes some good company! 😅

Later in the week I went on another exchange back to Comanche, Texas! That is a pretty wild place. And with the most 'Texan' people I have met my whole mission. It was a great time with Elder Ortega there. I've always heard so much about the people there from other missionaries that served there and finally got to put some Faces to the names, so it was a really good time!! 

This week we had an awesome lesson with Kele about baptism. We read 2nd Nephi 31 and also Mosiah 18 with her and talked about the importance, covenant, and promised blessings of baptism with her. It was great. She still has a couple of concerns but yesterday she was also able to come and join us at a baptism for someone here in Abilene. Afterwards both of her daughters were telling us that they wanted to be baptized. It was a sweet experience with their family. We are planning on inviting her to be baptized this week so please pray for her and her Family that they will be ready to accept! 

Love yall and hope everyone has a great week. The Church is true. 

- Elder Rose

The boyz in the Zone

Elder Mann & Nabrotzky

Elder Wolford

Larry Roberts

Elder Ortega