Houston Heat

Elder Blackburn did write a normal email today, but he did send several pics.

Bike repair and golden investigators

Some crazy things happened this week! It was all very exciting to be a part of.

So after taking the advice to get a compete bike tune up on Tuesday we headed up to the closest bike shop and waited for forever as they appraised it. They told me they would call me in the morning. Since we didn't have a bike for the day, we helped the Spanish Elders who gave us a ride with the English class that they teach. They introduced us as "special guest teachers" who had come to specifically teach the dog intermediate English class. It was super fun, I wish we could help out all the time haha.

Some good things came from Spanish class though. There was a lady named Neda and she has been taking English class but is not from a Spanish background. So since she is trying to learn English and isn't from a Spanish background that means we get to teach her! Yay! And also she became interested in the gospel through English class, and we have since had a pass off lesson this week with the Spanish elders and Neda is progressing very well. We gave Neda a Persian book of Mormon this week.

The next day we waited for the bike shop to call and since they didn't, we called them and my bike still wasn't ready and the bike shop wanted to do a full repair. So they let me know that my bike will be finished Friday so in the meantime I borrowed a bike from another elder who has a car so we were able to do some good missionary work even though I did not have my own bike.

One cool finding miracle we had this week was a man named Mario. We found him in the driveway of another investigator we had just tried talking to. Our other investigator wasn't super interested but we made the most of the appointment. Mario turned out to be a golden investigator with a capital "G".  Recently, he and his wife have decided that they need to go back to Church for their kids. So Mario and his wife have been going to different churches lately, but Mario said that none of them have felt that that's where God wants them to be. We let him know about Joseph Smith who had a similar experience. It was wonderful testifying of the restoration to Mario letting him know that if he came to know that our message is true, then it means that there is a church where God will let him know he belongs. We came away from the contact very edified and grateful that we had an opportunity to bear such strong testimony to him. We have an appointment with him this week to bring him another Bible which is what he wanted and to share more of the restoration with him and his family. We are looking forward to it.

We also had a really good counsel with the Bishop. His name is Bishop Ashcraft. He was raised in Davis County and his parents live on the north End of Chase Lane! It was a cool connection when I told him I live just south of Chase Lane. He is a great bishop and we look forward to working closer with him in the future.

Fall Creek

Well transfers happened last week and I have found myself in another part of Houston! I have now officially served in every zone in the mission! My new area is the Fall Creek Ward. It is in the Summerwood stake (same stake as Pine Trails from a year ago) so I'm happy to be here again!

My *new* companion happens to be my MTC companion from almost 22 months ago! Elder Goettsche from Pocatello, Idaho. It's always interesting being with a previous companion because there's hardly any adjustments needed. So we've been able to get straight to work!

We saw and taught some great people this week. One of the miracles was this sweet lady name Miss Shirley. We were in a neighborhood with about 45 minutes on our hands since the lesson we had planned for had just fallen through. So we decided to try a former investigator near by. After knocking and ringing the doorbell, this sweet older lady who ended up being the grandma of the former investigator came and answered the door. Miss Shirley liked to talk a lot. But she didn't go off on random tangents, it was all focused on the gospel. We got the feeling she's quite lonely, but at the same time she asked some really great questions about the Plan of Salvation. We are excited for our next meeting with her on Wednesday.

There is a variety of people here in Fall Creek, we were able to teach the area's most progressing investigator named Lupe. She has some interesting concerns because of her past experiences with churches being quite negative, but we hope that as we continue teaching her and as she comes to church her attitude toward religion will turn around. We had a member with us that was able to answer her concerns really well. Things are looking promising!

Mother's Day Skype was awesome! I can't believe it was my last Skype.. 2 1/2 months and I'll see them in person!

Transferred!

I will try to write what I can today seeing how we will be heading to
Kingwood today for transfers. I was actually kinda surprised when the
call came that I would be leaving I was really sad :( I really
enjoyed working in the YSA and with the senior couple the Lowes. I
definitely made some great friends here in the branch. We had a great
ward council and got some great programs we had come up with during
the week in place for the future of the branch. I would have been
completely okay with staying.
Along with transfers, there's a lot of changes in mission leadership
since the new mission president will be here soon and pretty much all
leadership in the mission is from my group so there are going to be a
LOT of changes in leadership here in the Mission. I will probably be
going down in leadership which is sad because I have loved my time as
a ZL here. I've definitely grown a lot!
This week was pretty fun and went by super fast because of all the
activities we had. Tuesday we had MLT so we have already been to
Kingwood this week. Some interesting things have come from the first
presidency. For example, we won't be having zone meetings any more.
Just zone conference. To compensate we as leadership came up with
District Trainings, where we travel around to all the districts and
teach them for an hour and a half each. We have four districts and it
takes us about 2 hours to go from one end of our zone to the other. So
Friday was stressful but it went really well. It was surprisingly fun
being able to do four trainings in one day. I'm going to miss it for
sure!
There's also a lot of flooding going on right in the east part of the
mission.. we had a pretty bad storm Wednesday and a couple areas in
the zone had tornado warnings so we made sure that those areas were
ok. There was some crazy lightning going on, it would illuminate the
entire sky. We took a video of it.
On Thursday we went up to Jasper to give a baptismal interview to this
sweet miracle investigator. Two weeks ago, we went on exchanges with
Fred and Woodville. DM was in Jasper so after Elder Biesinger and the
Fred Elders went to Hamburger Depot. A man followed them inside and
told them he and his wife were members, and that since they just moved
to the area they haven't been able to find the Church yet. As they
talked with him, it turned out that he actually wasn't a member yet,
and hadn't been able to get baptized with him moving around so much.
So Thursday I gave the interview to him and he got baptized this past
weekend. It was such an amazing story of the elect of God seeking out
the missionaries. Miracles do happen! One funny part is the Highway we
were on was 75 mph and I was going 80 and got pulled over.  I knew
there was no way I would be getting a ticket for only being maybe 5
over, and the guy just gave me a warning. Don't worry, I've been
driving the speed limit since then haha. The conversation we had with
the "Texas Ranger" was funny: "Is there any reason you boys are going
80 in a 75 mile n' hour area?" "Well, we are going to interview
someone for baptism" I don't think he expected that one! He asked
for my license and checked it and soon we were on our merry way again.

We took some fun pics this week, enjoy!

Love,
Elder Blackburn

A special treat

Elder Blackburn surprised us with this video - he was asked to sing in Sacrament Meeting so during one of the last practices, he recorded it for us - enjoy!

Happy May Day - a special mission visitor and bowling!

Happy May first everyone!! The stores already have tons of summer stuff and graduation stuff for the class of 2017.. Its weird seeing it everywhere because I saw all the same stuff a year ago and now it kinda freaks me out lol.


Anyways, we had quite the week this week. Probably the highlight that took it all was we got a special visitor to the mission this week. President Drake was all mysterious about it but it was announced a few days ago that David Archuleta was coming to visit the mission! It would be a missionary fireside, and in order to come you have to bring a Recent Convert or Investigator. We made sure we were able to go. So he came yesterday at 5PM and told us about his life and gave a great talk. Oh yeah and I guess he sang some songs too haha. One thing I thought was cool is David shared how when he was auditioning for American Idol he decided that if this was to go anywhere, he needed to make the commitment to read from the scriptures every day, make sure he prayed every day, and go to church. He was really committed to stay gospel focused. He did say that during all his touring as a 17 year old he kinda went "inactive" because his manager kept saying he was too busy to go to church and all that, but a year later his keyboardist who also was Mormon told him that if he wanted to go to Church, he shouldn't let others tell him what to do. So he starting coming back to church, he went where ever he was. He also went weekly to the temple. He also shared a few experiences from his mission. It was a great devotional. I should probably also mention that the reason he came to visit the mission his because his sister is serving as a missionary here and she finishes in a week. David said he came was because he was doing something for Deseret Book in Houston, but we all know the reason was to come visit his sister before she went home lol. He also wanted to shake everyone's hands so I shook his hand and told him he once sat behind my mom at one of his past companion's homecomings. He probably forgot about it by now haha.


We had some great missionary miracles this week. We had a booth on campus on Tuesday. With the booth we were able to talk to SO MANY PEOPLE! It was great! We have already met with a couple of the people we found at the booth a few more times. So we will have to see if any of them end up with potential. There's so much work to be done here at Lamar that with transfers looming around the corner next week I will be sad to leave if I get transferred. We had so much fun and talked to so many people we took a pic of us. I also took a lot of pictures this week because we did so much.


I should also mention we went bowling last pday. Yours truly ended up with the highest score. We took a fun district photo after.


More exchanges happened this week. I went up to an area that bordered Fred. It's called Woodville. There's a senior couple also serving up there, So I spent the day with Elder Fainga'a from Tonga, and his companion did splits with the senior couple. Quite a bit of missionary work got done. Let me tell ya, Elder Fainga'a is quite the bold Tongan. We knocked on a trailer and their investigator told us to come in only so he could tell us he needed to reschedule. Elder Fainga'a just grabbed a chair and asked if he could sit down. Elder Fainga'a is also intimidating, so the investigator said we could visit for a few minutes. After about an hour, we had taught a great lesson and put a new investigator on date for baptism. The investigator had a friend over, and she was super interested. It was great to see miracles that come from being bold. The spirit was also present, so it truly was a great moment to deepen their conversion toward Jesus Christ.


I also had exchanges with some Spanish Elderes this week. They committed me to learn more spanish�c I didn't think I did that bad haha.


Anyways, that about sums this week up!

Elder Henry Blackburn
Texas Houston East Mission

Elder Blackburn said he won the bowling with a score of 124...not too bad!

He also is "famous" for taking pictures of sleeping missionaries

More April!

Hey y'all!

This week had a lot of events tied to it. Quite a few of the days we
worked this week we were on exchanges with other companionships of
missionaries. During the evening of the first exchange I went on, we
visited this local minister who does an "Hour of Power" in a lobby room in her apt complex. 

She was hilarious. She's your typical Baptist minister with a great sense of humor.

The next exchange I went on we visited a local preacher who enjoys the
missionaries in Beaumont and takes them out to lunch a lot. He's a
really nice guy and loves that we talk of Christ, but doesn't believe
our way. We respect his beliefs and he feeds the missionaries so
whatever works!

Then I went to Jasper and Elder Biesinger went to Buna. We had some
great times up there in the North part of the mission. The district
meeting that day was in Fred so I got to go to my stomping grounds of
a year ago. I also got to say Hi to sister Odom since she was
practicing the piano over at the church. It was a great day.

Our investigators are progressing super well.  There was a YSA activity on Saturday where they
had a BBQ at the Branch President's house.  Our one student investigator was able to come and
we all had a great time playing hill billy golf and washers.

Both of our promising investigators should be able to get baptized in the next
few weeks. May is looking to be a great month for baptisms.

We also had some miracle finds this week. They weren't YSA age, but
they will do wonders with the family ward missionaries. We were out
trying a less active who ended up not being home. So we looked around
and saw a neighbor looking at some items their neighbor had put on
their front yard for the trash to come pick up. As we were talking
with her, some more neighbors pull up. One looks at us and goes,
"y'all are LDS right?" yep we are! His friend had never heard that
term before. He's worked with Mormons and knows them to be good
people. He mentioned he's done a lot of "Church Shopping" (a term
referring to when you don't like the church you're currently going to,
so you start looking around and trying other churches). He asked us if
we are another reformation. We answered in the negative and began
sharing the restoration. When we got to the BoM and how Christ visited
the Americas, he flipped out and said "No way! I just read in
Revelations this morning and thought to myself that God would have
Christ visit more people than just those in Israel!" It took some more
coaxing but he finally accepted a copy of the BoM. The family ward
elders have some great new investigators to teach!

On a side note, I am usually deathly afraid to accompany hymns on the
piano as people sing. IDK why I just have always been terrible at it.
But I was asked to accompany for SM yesterday (they told me in advance
that I would) and I agreed to do it. So I learned a SM hymn and
surprisingly accompanied pretty well. This is probably a super boring
story for y'all but playing 4 hymns in SM while people are singing
along is quite the accomplishment in my book.

Great things keep coming from this area! Transfers are in 2 weeks, so
we are going to work hard in the meantime!

Love,
Elder Blackburn

--
Elder Henry Blackburn
Texas Houston East Mission