Thankful for you

Hey Fam! I can't believe it's December! I wouldn't say that the time is flying by, but it is going pretty quick it seems! I hope you guys had a good Thanksgiving! I missed you guys out here but I had a great week! The beginning of this week was a bit rough. The Zone Leaders asked us to be the Family History companionship for this transfer and as missionaries, it's a job that nobody wants to do really because it's not very effective when contacting people. Only certain members are really involved in it. I had never even done it before but I knew stuff about it. But when they asked us to, Elder Longhurst put up a fight about it. He gets really stubborn about doing things someone else's way. I told them we would do it and he got all mad at me for accepting it and he ranted for awhile but eventually it passed. It doesn't even change missionary work that much though. All we do is invite people to that along with the other invitations we extend. So it's not really a big deal. On Tuesday we met with our Atheist investigator named John and he kept his commitment to pray! He feels like he hasn't gotten any answers yet and he is tricky to work with but he is praying and reading the Book of Mormon so I'm thrilled about that! Tuesday night was crazy, we got a referral and contacted her right away and she told us she needed us to come over ASAP. We had a lesson but it fell through so we went to her home and she told us that she needed a blessing on the house because she felt evil spirits. I don't know if it was because she told us and we were thinking about it or what, but the house did not have a friendly welcome and the Spirit was not there. We left a blessing on the home and left her with a Bible and so far she has said that everything is getting better. Then on Wednesday we had weekly planning and Elder Longhurst tested me again. It's tough to watch because he is so close to done but he isn't efficient with his time. We planned for hours and got close to nothing done. I just have to be that companion that always is trying to do something and sometimes be annoying about it but i don't want to waste time. Thanksgiving Day was awesome. We and the Spanish Elders we live with went to their church building and had a Turkey Cup. We call it that because it's like the World Cup. We played soccer for a couple hours and there were tons of non members! It was all Hispanics though. Some spoke English so we were able to fit in still! We had dinner with the Saulters family and they cooked up a huge meal! They also want us to meet their daughters boyfriend who is interested in the church! One thing that was way cool is when we got home from dinner it was about 4:45 and we hiked North Mountain. The view up there is incredible. I didn't realize that we are like 5 miles from the big buildings in Central Phoenix haha. But we could see Tempe, Scottsdale, Mesa was blocked by a mountain, and Glendale with the Cardinals stadium and everything! This weekend was super strange though and I street contacted an old couple who I think we're legitimately insane. It was interesting, then we talked with our Former Investigator who is involved in a gang around here haha. On Saturday I had my first Bible Bash. We went up to the Northern third of our area on the bus and we went to a name of someone we didn't know. They were friendly and invited us in and started laying down on us about all the Anti Mormonism. Then when I told them the Bible contradicts itself, they didn't like that and wouldn't let us pull up examples. They pulled up a website against Mormonism and we left. We also met a lady who has been through a lot in her life, a ex boyfriend who held her hostage, many deaths and other crazy stuff and she was still pushing on. She said she didn't want to convert but respected what we were doing. Saturday just strengthened my faith. People tried over and over to throw up objections and us and I had no doubts about our beliefs. Yesterday at church was the homecoming of a Sister named Kacey Bushong. She served in Honduras and knew Sadie even though they never served as companions or anything! And we had to teach Gospel Principles about the Second Coming, which I'm not sure why that is a principle for a class for recent converts and investigators haha. And then we taught the Relief Society and Priesthood about Missionary Work. 

This week has been great and I have had lots of learning experiences! Everyday brings something new! I hope you guys had as good of a week as I had! Love, Tevin

Helaman 5:10 for he said unto him that the Lord surely should come to redeem his people, but that he should not come to redeem them in their sins, but to redeem them from their sins.

We cannot be redeemed while we continue to sin. The lord can help us over some our sins and imperfections. But the Lord Redeems us FROM our sins. When we have committed to obey his commandments and to forsake our sins, the Lord can the redeem us and allow us to overcome our own imperfections and weaknesses.