Elder Neel: 3/7/23

 

Miracles happen when we are grateful

Spencer Neel <spencer.neel@missionary.org>

Hello my friends and family how are y'all!? It's going good over here in Lubbock, the weather has been in the 70s and 80s this week and I've missed warm weather so much. And then there’s always a little wind which levels out the heat. Enough about the weather though let’s get into the week!

Elder Kitchen and I have been off and running this week. I don’t think we’ve ever worked the area harder. Even with exchanges we’ve been able to really exceed our goals. He’s a hard worker and I’m excited for these next couple weeks. We went on exchanges this past Tuesday and I went to the Friendship Mesa area with Elder Nichols. We went out right after district council and just started to go. We didn’t even have a chance to switch out of our suits unitl 9! We stopped by and met with a lof of amazing and unique people. They had met a lady in an apartment complex a couple days earlier and we decided to go try to catch her home and she was. We were able to give her a Book of Mormon and testify of it’s truthfulness. I love testifying of the Book of Mormon because there is always a sweet spirit when you do. Overall it was another amazing exchange.

We were able to find 5 new friends this week! While out street contacting we met our new friend Robby Greene and he was so excited to see us. We were also able to give him a Book of Mormon and he wanted to come to church without us even asking. We went back for a return appointment and read the whole introduction with him and he was beaming the whole time. Sadly we will have to pass him off to the Heritage Elders because he doesn’t speak any spanish but he’s going places. 

With finding we had another small but amazing miracle! We had spent all of Wednesday night finding and decided to stop by one more house before we went home. We were looking for a guy named Dustin who hadn’t been stopped by for a long time. We instead ran into his dad, Orlando, who said he didn’t live there anymore but would like to hear what we had to share. We wanted to give him a Book of Mormon but left an english copy in the car (he speaks spanish but prefers to read in english) but Orlando waited patiently while we ran and grabbed one. We taught him the back story and invited Orlando to read the introduction to find the truth of this book. Right as we said that his wife, Mary Lou, pulled in. She thought at first we were from the Catholic church 😂 but perked up when we said we had been looking for Dustin. She made us promise to reach out to him and gave us his new number. We shared our testimonies again about the Book of Mormon and invited her to read with her husband. When she learned we speak spanish and go to a church that speaks spanish she was floored. Again without an invite she said she was going to be there 12:30 sharp. Heavenly Father put so many prepared people in our path and I will never forget this experience with Orlando and Mary Lou. I have never been more bold with my words in declaring the truth and the spirit was there with all of us. Elder Kitchen was also able to bear powerful testimony and it strengthened my testimony even more that this is the gospel of Jesus Christ and this is His church. 

Last little miracle🤠 we got a random call one night from some sisters in Dallas who said one of their friends just moved to Lubbock and was interested in coming to church. We called the lady whose name was Elizabeth Cruz and she was ecstatic and we sent her the address. We had no clue who she was and she spoke some fast Spanish but we hoped we would see her Sunday, and we did! She showed up and we talked to her for a while but then she went in the chapel and made herself at home. One of our members invited her to sit with them and it just made me smile so big. She stayed after church for a little over half an hour talking and hitting it off with our members. The sisters are going to start teaching her and I am so excited to see Elizabeth’s journey!

Doesn’t it feel so much better to be grateful?? This past week I made a challenge for a whole day to only say thankful prayers. It was tough because I wanted to ask Heavenly Father for a lot of things. But instead I said how grateful I was for the things I wanted to receive. Being bold with gratefulness was one of the coolest things ever. Just making everything centered around gratefulness made the day feel amazing! So I challenge all of you for one day this week to only say thankful prayers and watch what happens. We saw miracles happen in our area and I know you will too with your lives. I can personally bear testimony of this to you. Miracles happen when we give thanks to the One who makes those miracles happen. I can’t wait to hear and see what happens with each and every one of you. Go crazy with gratefulness this week. I love you all and until next week,

Elder Neel✊️