Our mini-missionary

Well this week has been the first week in three weeks that it hasnt snowed enough to close down the T so that's been great! I went on exchanges two days in a row this week as well so that was super fun.  The first one was with Elder Jackson who's our Zone Leader, he is like the perfect missionary. It was great to go on splits with him. We taught Harry our Chinese invesigator and Elder Jackson rocked the first discussion! After we taught the section on apostasy we asked Harry what needed to happen before God could restore his church. He confidently answered that he needed to call another prophet! He is so great. We also  committed him to be baptized.  He said yes before we could even finish our sentence. That was way cool.

After that I went on an exchange with Elder Rice he's a Haitian Elder who's been out for a transfer less than me so his Creole isn't perfect but we had a lot of fun together. He taught me how to pray in Creole so that was fun. It's a pretty cool language and it's very similar to French.

 

 

This picture is classic of Boston. It reminds me of the Huxtable houses. 
 

Friday night we had what's called a "mini-missionary" come stay with us for the weekend. Basically he's a priest aged young man who came and lived the missionary life with us for a few days. His name is Jacob and he was our good luck charm for sure. We got to every appointment on time. We had the busiest day ever and we met quite a few new people! First off we went and taught this less active lady about how to pray and all of her kids were sick so we were able to give them blessings. Then we went to the Hospital to visit a friend of an investigator in New Hampshire. She had just been diagnosed with pancreatic Cancer. We gave her a blessing and taught her about prayer as well as the importance of families. She asked us to come back and meet with her again! We will go on Tuesday. We are considering her a new investigator and we're gonna teach her all about Eternal Families tomorrow. After that we went and visited our main man Harry again and taught him all about the Plan of Salvation, it was the first time he didn't believe everything we said immediately but he has faith that he will receive an answer after he has prayed about it. We also met with a recent convert who's 14  and taught her about how we can use For the Strength of Youth as a guide in our lives. It was awesome to have Jacob with us since he's 16 and could relate well to her.

Here's our mini-missionary. He was great!

 

On sunday Harry showed up and he took the T all on his own which shows a lot of committment right there. We forgot to tell him how long church was but he was such a great sport about it! He found 4 people in our ward who speak mandarin Chinese, we didn't even know that people in our ward spoke chinese let alone Mandarin Chinese. After church he said it felt like a big family which was so great to hear. We also had a youth baptism in the Portuguese group and he stayed for that too! This Harry guy, he is pretty amazing.

 

This random sign made us laugh. No idea why it's there. 

 

Anyway I feel as though I'm just writing a log but I want you to know that so many great things happened this past week and I can't even remember them all or have the time to write about  all of them. I love you all and I am excited to hear from you all. 

 

Here is what I was talking about. People use whatever they can find to save their parking spots. 

 

P.S. if any of you have been praying for me to stay warm I'd like to cash those in now. Haha. It's been super cold here. - 

Elder Trevon Turley

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Lots & lots of snow

We've been super busy these past few weeks which has been way awesome! Although most of it has been filled with riding on the T and shoveling snow. Lots & lots of snow. 

This is my companion & I after shoveling snow for 3 hours straight. 

So we've had more snow than ever! Literally we've had record breaking snow and it's not stopping any time soon. It's been very strange to think that it's February and now it starts snowing a ton! The wind has been really bad & the risk of frostbite is really high. We can only go out for small periods of time during the blizzard. It's not too bad though, we just add another layer or two of clothes. I don't actually know how much is out there but I feel fairly confident in saying that it's over 8 feet of snowfall. Of course there's not actually 8 feet on the ground since it's been compacted and stuff but there is still a lot on the ground! A few days ago we went and had a community shoveling party with everyone in the neighborhood. Everybody parks on the same street so we just worked together to clear the street of snow. It was great because everybody helped and we got to meet all of our neighbors too! 

Here's a mound of snow for ya. 

On the down side it has drastically slowed down the T since the roads have become very narrow and the subway tracks are filled with snow. We've had to get very creative with getting around which really just translates to a lot of walking. I've been burning all the fat I've been picking up on the mission so that's a plus. We waited an hour for a bus the other day.  You might ask yourself "why did they not just start walking?" well to answer that I will say that there were 9 buses on that route that drove by going the other way so we knew that one would be on it's way back shortly. It didn't happen. We ended up making the 30 minute walk after all. 

Got to attend the temple last Wednesday. This is us walking up to it after a night of fresh snowfall. 

On the upside we found a new investigator and he is an allstar guy! I'll just tell you all about him and I'm pretty sure it'll give you hope for the world. So we get this media referral for him and he's requesting a bible so we call him and set up a time to meet with him and give him the bible. He is going to school at A local University so that's where we go to meet him. He's an international student and he's working to get his masters degree in Computer Science. We meet him at Starbucks and start making small talk and when we begin to shift to churchy stuff he just interupts us and says "hold up let me tell you my story" So he tells about how growing up in Asia & not being religious.  When he came to America he fell into a depression and started to feel hopeless. One of his friends told him that he should try praying to God as well as having him read the Bible. At this point he said "... so I tried praying for help, and it worked! I felt better." he also said that he knows that he can pray for anything and God will help him. So that was really great for us to hear. We began to introduce the Book of Mormon as well which he loved the idea of having two books that would help him learn about God and Jesus Christ. We committed him to take all the lessons at which point he asks us how can he increase his faith as we increase his knowledge of the Gospel, we read Alma 32 which he said answered his question. After this we read the story of Christ's baptism in Matthew since that's what he was familiar with, then we read 2 Nephi 31:5 which basically says that if Christ was so holy and he needed to be baptized then how much more do we need to be baptized. At that point we ask him what is this scripture saying and he tells us that it means we all need to be baptized including him. So then we asked him if he would be baptized and he said yes! We gave him our card which has our number as well as the address of our church on it. When he saw that he asked if he could come this sunday and we told him Yes! Unfortunately church was cancelled becaue it snowed so much. We texted him and told him that church was cancelled and he said that was fine and that he had read 1 Nephi already and that he'd prayed and felt peace in his heart. I am so pumped to teach this guy! We're meeting with him tomorrow so that's something I'm really looking forward to.

Yes I got your package. It was so great. We named him Chayo. 

Well that was pretty much is the highlight of the week. We've had to stay inside a lot lately due to the weather. It's really thrown our schedule out of whack. We've been doing a lot of shoveling and I'm so grateful for all of your prayers, they're keeping me from freezing out in this cold which is a huge blessing.

This is me learning to make bread. Elder Tuckett is one of the elders living in our apartment & he makes great homemade bread. 

Congrats to Cam for making the team. That's super sweet!

I'll be looking forward to your letters next week.

-- 

Elder Trevon Turley

NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message. 

If it ever snows in Mesa

Sorry I didn't send a letter last week. The Internet was so sketchy with all the storms. I  thought I would be able to write one to mail you but we were just too busy & I just couldn't find the time. I want you to know though that I do feel your love & support & it really means a lot to me. So thanks for that. 

This pic is the four of us who share an apartment. The public transit was all closed due to the storm & we were pretty much confined to our apartment. That night we watched The Testaments which as you know is a fictional Book of Mormon story about the coming of Christ. It was also Elder Corpus' birthday so we busted out some fine cheese & crackers & that was our version of a birthday party for him. 

We've been doing a LOT of shoveling so if it ever snows in Mesa don't you worry, I'll be there to shovel you out. Most of the shoveling is of course for clearing a parking space on the side of the road and it is a viscous battle among neighbors. When it snows six feet (yes I said 6 feet) it takes a lot of time to clear a space for your car to park. People will clear their space and then while at work they will leave some object as a placeholder. The most common is a chair but we've seen everything from Ironing Boards to Guitar Cases, it's pretty much whatever is laying around and is somewhat disposable. Some people have given up on shoveling their car out so at this point you can't even see it anymore except for the antennae which you will see in the picture I sent. 

Elder Corpus and I are doing very well here in Boston even though we're both about as green as it gets we have a lot of fun and I'm so happy that President Packard put us together! We're quite different but we work so well together. He was pretty much your all-star guy in High School. He's great at Football, he was valedictorian and is just a really great, fun guy. We balancce eachother out fairly well and all of the members are surprised when we tell them we've been out for three and four months because they say we work so well together. I hope we get to work together for a long time! 

This really cool guy was recently baptized. He was taught by the Haitian missionaries but was baptized in the English Ward. He is not only super cool but extremely funny. We will be teaching him the new member lessons so I'm very excited to be able to work with him. This is also my companion Elder Corpus. 

Well thanks for all your support and prayers because I certainly need all of it! It is really hard being out on a mission when everyone thinks that just because I wear a name tag that I'm the "answer".  It's certainly very humbling because it helps me realize how much I need to not rely on myself but to rely on God, His son Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost. I don't have the "answer" but I have been given the tools to help guide people to find what they are searching for. As a matter of fact you don't have to be a missionary to have those tools. We all have them. We just need to use them & application is required to find the answer for ourselves. 

Thanks again for all love and support. 

-- 

Elder Trevon Turley