Trev Pulled A Brock

Honestly we had a bunch of cool stuff/crap happen to us this week. Some of it was really entertaining and fun/miraculous, others were just freaking weird and some were pretty scary or at least unpleasant. I am really not in the mood to type it all out. So I guess I won't. I am going with a different format today.


1 Yo, Élder Trev, nací de buenos padres. Y también soy de una cuidad
de bastante dinero. Es un poco difícil a describirles, cuan gran es la
vida aquí en Greenville.
2 La vida aquí es muy diferente, casi nadie tiene un trabajo que no es
en un rancho, o algo así.
3 Yo quiero terminar esta capítulo con mi testimonio. La doctrina de
esta iglesia es perfecto. La luz de Cristo es real. He visto cambios
en las vidas porque de esta luz. No hay otro camino a tener feliz para
las eternidades sin siguiendo las hermosos mandamientos de Dios. En el
nombre de Cristo Amen.

Google Translation:
1 , Trev Elder , born of goodly parents . And I 'm from a city
enough money . It's a bit difficult to describe, how great 
life is here in Greenville.
2 Life here is very different, almost nobody has a job that is not
on a ranch , or something.
3 I want to finish this chapter with my testimony. The doctrine of
this church is perfect. The light of Christ is real. I have seen changes
in the lives because of this light. There is no other way to be happy for
the eternities without following the beautiful commandments of God. 
 in the name of Christ Amen .

I wanted to leave y'all with a poem that has been running through my head through out my whole mission and even times before then. I have felt this to be inspiring and uplifting.

No matter where life takes me


You'll find me with a smile



Soon to be happy

Always laughing like a child

Never thought life could be so sweet

It's got me cheesin from cheek to cheek

And I ain't trying to wait for nothing

Because that just ain't my style

Life couldn't get better

It's gonna be the best day ever

-Malcolm Miller
All is well!
Elder Trev




Here is my companion Elder Isaac with his stupid mug. We spent a good amount of time in Walmart this morning picking it up I actually really like the guy though, we get along really well. Like for real he is cool. 

Almost as good as Idaho 

Greenville

Hello families and friends,

It is a little different writing you from Greenville as opposed to Grand Prairie; but it's a nice change of scenery. It was kinda sad leaving all the good friends I had made in GP (pero un día, yo puedo
regresar y visitarles). The Ward here is way more helpful and involved; it's like I have parents again. They make sure we get fed every night and it would be a big deal if we didn't. Our new Ward mission leader is really cool and actually helps us so that's a bonus. 

I have a new Greenie missionary for my companion. That was a change of scenery I was definitely glad to have...😬 We are in a bilingual English Ward that just has a few Spanish members. So it's really hard for me to continue to learn Spanish. My companion just bears his testimony
during our Spanish lessons. You can't really blame the guy, there isn't that many Hispanics here plus there is no Spanish Ward so it makes it really hard to learn. Not to mention his companion is far from perfect in his Spanish.

This guy is kinda funny though, this morning I sat in Walmart for an hour waiting for him to make a mug collaged with photos as a gift for his girlfriend that he swears will be his wife. Putting aside the fact that this is completely cliché and not that creative of a gift. As he was almost done I saw him put the title on the top of the mug "Happy Half-Birthday Sweetie" I about chocked myself with my tie. All this for her half-birthday. Needless to say he is a little light in the loafers but overall I like the guy.

This place is really just farms. We get to do a lot of farm work helping people out. I like all the animals. The people here are way more laid back; which is hard because then nothing really gets
done. I have to kind of pick and choose my battles there.

We had a baptism yesterday for an investigator named Krystal. It went well. We have some cool investigators here but most of them have a loose screw or two. 

Love Y'alls,

Trev

Krystal's Baptism

The Voice

Well I still don't know if I am getting transferred but I guess I'll write y'all now so I don't have to do it later.

This week was honestly pretty rough, despite our hard work and many activities. One of our best investigators (Estella and Family) dropped us, over text too! Honestly not very class if you ask me. They said they want to be Catholics. (1 Nephi 14:3)

Went on exchanges and I learned a lot of good stuff. Trend of the week was bashing. Everyone wanted to bash. I love when people bash on The Trinity because it's just completely lacks logic. So I always win that one. But we have one investigator that just won't budge on the 12 Tribes of Israel. We studied it out a lot and asked some of the more knowledgeable people in the area, I feel much more confident now with my knowledge in that area.

We have done a lot of office work this week for our English Ward. It will be really nice once it's done though. I know this email is super lame. Make sure you listen to the voice
recording. I really do love and miss y'all.

Love,
Elder Trev

The Ramirez Family

New Investigators

Top 5

Hey!

Sorry the WiFi is broke at the church today and I don't want to spend forever at McDonald's to get WiFi. Honestly I really am not in the mood to write an email today. Just summarize our conversation from yesterday. You could also say in my group email that my companion fell off his bike and it was hilarious. He flipped right over the handle bars.

It certainly was fun talking to y'all yesterday but it was so weird.

Miss you lots,

Elder Trev

Top 5 FaceTime Memories

1. He hates white people food.
2. He love his mission but never wants to live in Texas (He's a true Spud).
3. "You hear about so many rules on your Mission! Some of them aren't even real!!! My companion right now has tried to tell me about rules and I have to go through the handbook and prove him wrong. Some people become so obsessed with the rules and it slows down the work. Don't get me wrong, I actually am a pretty dang obedient missionary but I always do what's best for the work of God, not what's best for the rules." 
4. "I really miss home. I just want to do something crazy and chill right now. The way I have been thinking about that kind of stuff recently is, comparing it to fasting. Basically I am fasting from all my favorite things for two years. Fasting is kinda cool though, it helps us appreciate stuff more, we get blessings for it  and gain better perspective."
5. He told us a about a man who came to church Sunday saying he'd had a dream about two guy's in white shirts that had a message to share with him... The man totally want's to be baptized. Trev can't teach him  because he lives in another district:(

FaceTiming at Nicole's so Trev can see baby Emmett

Two guy's in white shirts and the man who dreamed about them

Sludge Slinging Sunday

Howdy y'all


We had a good week. We did a "noche de hogar" with Estella and her family. It went really well, the video is of the object lesson we did with them. (See attached video) The story I decided to tell you this week is about the Familia Muñoz.


Joel has been working his tail off. He owns his own handy-man company and with the recent heat he has been fixing air conditioners all day. He's also part of a huge renovation project on a house. He literally works until 10:00 every night so we have only been meeting with Vickey this week. She is actually reading now so that's a huge improvement. I sent the sister missionaries over there to just read with her because she doesn't work during the day.


Anyways, English church starts at 9 and Spanish church starts at 11. So we had already gone to English sacrament when I realized they weren't at church this Sunday. We went to their house to figure out what the problem was. Turns out, they didn't come to church because "Joel
has a bunch of stuff to do around the house" (which he kinda did). He was about to start cleaning their pool (which was literally a black cesspool of sin and filth). We made a deal with him that if he went to church we would clean the pool. I wish I had a before and after picture for y'all. We had two pumps - an electric and a gas one. To quicken the process we literally used 5 gallon buckets to get all the water out. After we drained the pool we got down in the pool with a shovel and a buckets and heaved out load after load of black sludge. We encountered some of the biggest spiders I have ever seen and also some snakes (which I still am not sure whether they were poisonous or not). We scrubbed the pool and rinsed it with the hose. After church was over we sat on their couch, read the scriptures with them, and ate some quesadillas. We just did our personal study there because we didn't have time before church. We basically just sat and studied like one big happy family. I really don't feel bad for doing service like that on a Sunday. 


We also brought a member with us to a lesson with them this Tuesday. We ate dinner with that same member yesterday and taught her nonmember daughter the Restoration which went really well. 


Last thing I'll talk about was this awesome contacting activity we did with the Spanish ward. With the help of our bishop we reserved a booth at the local farmers market. On Saturday morning, we brought two ward missionaries and the sister missionaries as well and, while passing out free lemonade, talked to about 1,000 people. We gave out so many Book of Mormons, church DVDs, pamphlets, and pictures of Jesus. It was a huge success! It was such a great way to talk to people because they pretty much couldn't resist the free lemonade. (It was dang good lemonade too, a Hispanic woman in the ward squeezed the lemons herself). 


We have been passing out a lot of Book of Mormons in general recently and the scripture 2 Nephi 29:2 has really been going through my head. Really that whole chapter has been. People here are such knuckleheads and just can't seem to understand modern revelation. I can't tell you how many times this week I heard someone say something to the effect of "A Bible! A Bible! We have got a Bible, and there cannot be any more Bible." People really try and bash with us and it's just the worst, especially in Spanish. Their doctrine lacks significant logic but people that bash usually aren't willing to listen with their heart or mind anyways. Sorry to rant so much to y'all!


Love,


Elder Trev


Shouts to Grandma Dixie for the Walmart gift card #TrueHomie

Cockroach Soup

We had a good week this week. Elder Corbridge of the 70 came and spoke to us. He is the author of "The Fourth Missionary" it's really cool. So we did that on Saturday. He is a very smart man.

We just did Nerf™ dart wars with PVC pipe in the gym at the church with our district. It was pretty cool. We figured out how to do it so it actually hurts. There is this red head kid in my district with
really pale skin and now he has welts all over his body...lol

We have is new Hispanic family (the Muñoz) that has come to church three times now that's really cool. We played Mexican bingo and did a really cool lessons with them. They speak only Spanish so sometimes it's kinda frustrating. The kids always ask really dumb irreverent questions

during the lessons. So from now on we are going to do our lessons with them at the church to just teach the parents and then put the kids in a different room with popcorn and a Book of Mormon movie. We are just working on some commandments with them and then they can get baptized.

So the Muñoz need to be baptized so bad. The grandfather and the granddaughter are ready but the grandmother still wants to increase her testimony of the restored gospel. Luckily Elder Holland was in town for a devotion this week, so we told her to go and see him and find out for herself if he is an apostle of Jesus Christ. We weren't able to go with them because it was "technically" out of our area. But we have faith we will be blessed for obedience. People always ask me who to pray for. Pray for them. I have been stressing out about the Muñoz though for the past week or
so, so seriously pray for them. But I mean they have had lessons with all of our stud members and now seen a Elder Holland too. Just pray that their hearts will be softened and they will receive an answer.

This week we made them a cake. While delivering them the cake on our bikes, my companion wrecked. He actually dismounted his bike surprisingly gracefully but their was a huge hole in the cake from his thumb.

This week we visited a family Elder Gay and I had helped move recently. While moving we noticed an absurd amount of cockroaches in their house. Especially in the dishes. We would move a box and 1000 bugs would just run everywhere. We went back to visit them and as we were sitting down for the lesson they put a big bowl of soup in front of us. It was hard to get the image out of my head of all those bugs that I knew were in their kitchen. Worst part is we had just gotten back from dinner with the senior missionaries so we were completely full. But we ate the soup.

There is good stuff going on in GP right now. The Lord is a very good missionary.

The video is us riding with a group of actual bicyclists. If you can imagine in your head a big group of bikers and then two missionaries following right along. If you saw that while driving by you have got to think it's pretty funny. We actually talked to them about temples while at a stoplight.

The last picture is of Adrian one of our recent converts from last transfer. He is really cool. We took him to visit this new investigator we have that's the same age. We had a really good lesson and he seems to be a very promising new investigator. During the lesson my companion ran back to the car to get another restoration pamphlet; and locked the keys in the car. It was kind of funny actually. We were teaching this investigator's neighbor the week before and I remembered seeing this group of Hispanics break into a car 😬... Anyways with our "ox in the meyer" we went and knocked on their door. Within minutes they had our car keys out for us and we were on our way. We just gave them a pass along card and went to our next appointment.

Sorry for the long email,

Love y'all almost as much as I miss summer in Idaho
Elder Trev

Adrian

Elder White Saved the Cake

Swimsuit Edition

This week we planned and implemented an idea that I think worked really well and could be really productive for other missionaries or even the wards back home. Basically the idea was to get all of our highly progressing investigators together at the church for a lesson. We put together a power point with the use of a laptop from a senior missionary couple, with several videos that really demonstrate what the priesthood is and how we have it on the earth today. We ran the
power point by way of question and answer. We also brought an investigator that we have that wants to get baptized so bad but she can't because of pending legal issues, a very strong recent convert and the stake president who is also a convert.  All of these people were asked to bear testimony at the end and gladly accepted. We let the sister missionaries bring their best investigators too. We held the actually meeting in the chapel; towards the end of the
lesson all were invited to be baptized again weather they had been asked or not, all accepted. To finish off we all had ice cream of various flavors along with assorted toppings for a delightful meet and greet. It was actually really fun and totally worth the work of setting everything up.

On Sunday morning right before we were about to bike to church we got caught in a huge microburst right as we were headed out the door. Me, knowing that there had to be a good reason for me to bring my swimsuit on my mission, decided that it would be best to not get our suit pants soaking wet but instead to bike there in less formal attire and then change at the church. It was a good idea too. By the time we got to the church we were soaked, but we just changed and everything was cool. My companion didn't bring extra shoes and socks so he was at church for the next six hours in soaking wet shoes lol.

The last picture is of Peter, Prince, and Olu. They have all accepted baptism and will all be baptized here in the near future. They all share an apartment...but this week Peter and Prince got in a fight over a girl (Prince is 70) so Prince kicked Peter out of the house and Peter doesn't have a job so he was homeless (he asked us if he could sleep at the church). Anyways at church yesterday I think we helped put the pieces of their friendship back together. I guess I just wanted to give a special thanks to the EHS girls class of 2015 for helping me understand how to deal with all this drama; I couldn't have done it without you! Honorable mentions: Liv Demordant, Emily Clegg, Oakley Tanner, Molly Sawyer, Annie Johnson, Jamie Solomonson, Ali Snooks, Halsey Anderson.

I hope y'all enjoy this letter and have a great week.
Love,
Elder Pattee

Trev & Elder White

Peter, Prince, Elder White, Trev and Olu