Honey, where's my super suit?

Well this week was pretty good. My new companions name is Elder Nixon, I'm pretty sure I already sent home a picture of him. He's great, he went to BYU for a year and took a mission prep class there so it's really helped us get into the swing of things. I'm grateful for him and his enthusiastic spirit in going about the work. He's really thrown himself into it. 

Yesterday Harry went to the temple for the first time and he was baptized for his Grandpa! It was so great. It was on our Recent Convert Temple trip which is just amazing. Once a month the temple sets aside a day and for like 3 hours on that day the font is only for Recent Converts to come and do baptisms. The mission presidency and the Temple presidency are there as well as a ton of Recent Converts from all over the mission and they're all experiencing the same joy that comes from helping their ancestors receive the ordinances of salvation. It was really great. Harry also brought Emma who is one of our investigators that Harry helped us find. She had such a wonderful experience and I know that she felt the spirit just walking around the Temple grounds. Of course we had a member stay with her the entire time and answer her questions. 

We gave two people blessings in the hospital this week and both of them were from outside our mission but were at hospitals within our area so we were blessed with the opportunity to serve them.

I also lost my voice for like 2 days which is good because I think otherwise I would have completely dominated all of our lessons but it forced me to sit back and let Elder Nixon take the lead and he did great. 

I also ate goat in green curry sauce for the first time. That was interesting, it was also at that home where I ate Ox tail for the first time. 

Anyways the important thing is that the temple changes lives for the living and the dead. The key is helping converts go to the temple as soon as possible after their baptism. The spirit felt there confirms the importance of living this gospel faithfully and will make eternal impressions on those who are able to be a part of the great work done within the temple.

-- 

Elder Trevon Turley

So this is Dorchester. It's in Boston. It's a little hood. The bikers mob the city. They don't care about traffic. They have numbers. And speed. And no fear. Or cares. It's really quite entertaining.

How dare you open a space mans helmet on an uncharted planet!

Well Elder Corpus is getting transferred! We've been together for 3 transfers which isn't too normal in this mission. I'm grateful for the time that we had together. I'm getting my new companion on Wednesday so I'll send pictures of us next week. 

On Saturday night we went over to the family we've been working with house and reenacted a story from the Book of Mormon stories book. It went really well. We reenacted the story of the tree of life/Iron Rod and as each component of the story was intorduced we talked about the sybolism behind it. By the end the whole family was gathered around the "tree" a.k.a. a lamp in their living room. So we talked about how the Gospel was built for families and we asked what's something they could do as a family to hold on to the Iron Rod. They said prayer so we committed them to pray at night as a family and then we all knelt and said a prayer so we made sure everyone knew how to pray. It was so awesome and we all felt the spirit. The next day the whole family was at church except for the dad because he's an AA instructor and he had a meeting that morning but hopefully they'll all be there next week.

Things are moving along! It's great to see progress in the family. I've been fortunate enough to be here for most of the families conversion and it's been a blessing to see the Gospel begin to convert a whole family and not just an individual, there's a difference. It has helped me realize the blessings found within my own home and the opportunity the gospel gives us to continue to progress as a family. This church truly is built to help families and I have a testimony that the fullness of the gospel is best found in the homes of faithful members.

See Ya Next week!

-- 

Elder Trevon Turley

Here are some pictures from us playing soccer at the beach last week. Aren't posed pictures just the best!

Hello my name is Inigo Montoya.....

Well things have been pretty swell here! The sun has officially come out and today for our P-day we went and played soccer at the beach. It was a ton of fun and thankfully we were like the only people there.

Also Happy Mothers Day, it was great to see you & talk to you all. 

On Wednesday we went and taught the Delvalle family! They're doing awesome. We went with our Elders Quorum President to try and teach the family about the Priesthood since they just recently had a son and were wondering if he could be blessed in our church. The Two oldest kids are members and then they have three younger children. The mom is super interested and we're all pretty sure she'll be baptized but the dad is a little more reserved.  Fortunately the gospel blesses families! I know that as we continue to teach them and as they keep commitments and recognize the blessings that comes from obedience that they will join this church. Of course they have to start keeping commitments first which is the hard part! But that's OK things take time. We showed the dad a video that our mission President put together it's called "Christ's Church" and you can find it on reallifeanswers.org. So you may all now go look up the video and watch it becasue it's pretty great. Another website to check out is bostonmission.org   

The sisters took this photo of us teaching. This is what we do. 

I know the church is true, I know that obedience brings blessings and I know that prayer garnishes righteous choices.

Thanks and I'll see you next week!

-- 

Elder Trevon Turley

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Frying pans.......who knew, right?

So this week has been great! We've started to coordinate a lot more with our sister missionaries which has really helped us out! We went and played Softball with the Delvalle family and that was awesome! Afterwards the oldest daughter had a game so we stayed to cheer them on. We were definitely the loudest, hands down no contest. 

On Sunday we had a guy and a girl show up whom we had never seen before but the woman was a member who had brought her nonmember friend. He kept telling everybody he met "I'm Catholic but I'm still looking for the truth" so that was great. In Gospel Principles it was Elder Corpus and I, our sisters, the Gospel Principles teachers and the guy and girl. So it basically turned into an introduction to the Book of Mormon coupled with Moroni's promise at the end. He loved it! I'm so grateful for Gospel Principles teachers who don't mind when we hijack their class. We're going over this week to have dinner with them and teach them the Restoration. 

Here's our group at the Zoo last week. Good times!

We started a Power of Everyday Missionaries class in our ward and Harry is co-teaching! Talk about a good calling for a new member, right? His friend Emma who is still an investigator actually read the whole book and asked to be apart of the class, we weren't about to say no to her. Which is odd since she isn't entirely interested in being baptized as of right now but she wants to be a missionary so who knows how that makes sense in her head but whatever helps her progress. We're going to meet with her tonight and teach her about prophets.

This is a picture of the food at a Brazilian barbecue we went to yesterday. It was amazing! They had three aluminum trays filled with giant steaks sausage and chicken. We took this picture near the end but for like an hour the grill was constantly filled with meat. When it was done cooking they threw it on the cutting board sliced it up and we just ate it from there. It was ridiculously good!

Our mission President was teaching us about how we can use prayer to generate revelation and he was talking about how cultural prayers are often just vain repetition. It was pretty funny though he was talking about how everyone at our church prays that everyone will get home safely at which point he says "now, I'm not trying to be rude but with the amount of times people pray for safety you'd think the church was surrounded by shark infested waters!" we've really been trying to pray sincerely as a companionship and it has honestly been helping! It's not easy to retrain yourself on some of things commonly said but it's worth it.

This is us at the Boston Marathon last week. 

Anyways I've gotta be heading out. We're walking the freedom trail today so have a great day!

-- 

Elder Trevon Turley

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Twenty-three Nineteen. We have a Twenty-three Nineteen!

Well this week has been pretty fun I must say. 

We've been doing a lot of finding since we don't have many investigators right now so we spend all our spare time looking for new people to teach.  We met with the Gospel Principles teacher and talked about our Former Investigators with him and he gave us some insight on the best way to recontact them so that's been super helpful. Unfortunately with the T we can only reasonably visit like 3 potentials a day so it's slow work.

The assistant Ward mission leader has a pet hedgehog and he let me hold it. 

My companion and I get along real well but that happens when you spend 4+ months with the same guy 24/7. He's probably gonna get transferred at the end of this transfer so I gotta make sure that I make this last one count. He's spent six months here in Boston and it's his first area. Of course if I stay here one more transfer as well then I'll be here for six months too! Which is awesome to spend half a year in Boston!

Me in front of the Paul Revere statue. Cool story. The guy who sculpted this is the same guy who sculpted the Angel Moroni on the Salt Lake Temple. 

On Saturday we went to visit this family. The parents have 5 kids but the two oldest kids are the only ones who are members but I see so much potential with the whole family. We went over with our sisters ( Braswell and Thompson) to see if we could teach the whole family, except they were doing their spring cleaning so we said "what do you want us to do"? and they put us to work for two hours. It was so awesome! 

We also set up a time this week to go play Softball with the whole family on Friday! I was talking to The mom and she was telling me about all these churches she's investigated in the past so I asked her if she was still looking and she said no because she had already found it. She said it was our church but she was just too overwhelmed with life right now to make the changes she needs to to accept it. We tried to tell her that making those changes is what would help her the very most in life so we'll see how things go. This family is really great and I hope they get baptized while I'm still here in the area! 

Anyways we're gonna go to the zoo today as a zone so I've gotta be heading out! Love ya

-- 

Elder Trevon Turley

Me in front of a really cool boat

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All we gotta do is build ya an act! Make ya a star. A headliner! Dumbo the grrreeeaaat!

Today is Patriots Day which is pretty big here in New England. It's also the Boston marathon which is real exciting. So this week has been pretty great missionary wise but honestly I think I'm just gonna write about today as I'm limited on time. 

 So we got up at 3 am to make it to a re-enactment of the first battle of the revolutionary war. The actual battle only lasted minutes and America actually lost but that's alright. Never have I felt such a deep sense of patriotism towards the land of my fore-fathers as I did at that time. Plus Pres. Packard was there too so that was fun to see him. We also went to the Boston Marathon and that was a lot of fun! There were so many people there from all over the world! It was amazing how many members were there too. It was a pretty miserable day weather wise and a lot of the runners were walking around shivering because of the cold. it took us forever to actually find the race because so many roads were blocked off and there was a lot of security checkpoints everywhere. Although we finally got there and it was super great to just sit on the sidelines and cheer people on as they killed themselves running! Maybe one day I'll work up the self motivation to run a marathon. Maybe. 

Anyways I'm sorry this letter is pretty lame and not really gospel related but I didn't have much time and I knew I could write about this fairly quickly. Just know that I am busy doing the Lords work. 

-- 

Elder Trevon Turley

So this is me & my companion, our mini missionary & the sisters riding the subway. 

This is from inside a members house overlooking the skyline. Pretty nice view. 

This one is a poster of a girl at a stop & shop. She is pretty much their poster child for a fundraiser for children's cancer. The cool thing is we met her & we get to give her a blessing before she goes in for her next round of chemo. 

Have the days of miracles ceased? I say unto you nay!

Hello Everybody!

Have the days of miracles ceased? I say unto you nay!

We got into Ward Council. This hasn't happened since ever. It's very exciting and we talked about people that we're working with and what the auxiliaries can do to help them. It was so great and I'm super grateful for answered prayers.

We've had our mini-missionary with us for like 5 days now and he's pretty great. His name is Justin and he is so funny! He's 20 years old and he's joining us for two weeks to see if he can handle the stress of going on a mission. He has Turrets and the things that set him off are sudden noises, bright lights or anything that causes some degree of dis-contempt like police cars. He's a really great guy and I know he'll make a great missionary.

Harry was finally confirmed on Sunday! It took way longer than it should have but he's now finally a member of the church! So weve decided that we believe he was originally contacted by one of the three nephites. We thought he had requested a Bible on Mormon.organd that's how we found him but apparently that's not the case. He told us that he was in a Chinese restaurant talking to one of his friends about God when some guy from across the restaurant walks up and starts talking to him about God. Eventually the guy says well give me your number and I'll have our missionaries call you in a week. Harry never saw the guy again and we called him in exactly a week but that's because we got his number off of the referral page from Mormon.org. The crazy thing is that he only gave the guy his number but his info on the request page included his home address and his email as well. Every single time we teach this guy I learn something new about the Gospel. He is probably the smartest person I've ever met.  

Well thanks for all your support and enjoy life!

-- 

Elder Trevon Turley

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