Last Transfer!!!

6.27.16

It truly is crazy that I have now started my last transfer of my

mission! We learned this morning that I will be staying here and my

companion will still by elder Mohrmann:) I am very grateful for both

of these things. We are both excited to being staying together for 6

more weeks, because there is so much potential in this area. We are

both determined to keep running and working as hard as we can and we

know that we will continue to see miracles in Copperas Cove Texas.

        This week was one of the busiest/productive weeks of my mission! It

felt so good last night, to be able to look back at our week and know

that we worked hard. This Monday night we did a family home evening

with the Davis family. We had a lesson on the Liahona,and related it

to the need for divine guidance in our lives such as prophets and the

wonderful gift of the Holy Ghost. We then played that fun game where

you have the string with golf balls on the end of it and you have to

throw it over the pipe thing. It was a lot of fun, they are a really

good family. The next day we had an awesome lesson with a kid named

Cameron. He was the one that me and my zone leader found street

contacting. We brought a priest from our ward on exchange, because he

knew Cameron from school. My favorite part of the lesson is when we

were teaching the true nature of God, that he is literally our father

and has a body like ours. (perfected and glorified) You could see the

light turn on in his head, and you could tell that it made sense to

him. The beauty of teaching truth. We have another appointment with

him tomorrow night. It was also fun to have the priest with us, he is

excited to continue to teach Cameron with us.

        This week we also had a lot of time to hit the streets and talked

with everyone. I have such a strong testimony of talking with

everyone. We were able to meet some wonderful people. I'll share two

small experiences. The first one came right before we were going to

have dinner with a family. We got to their house 15 minutes early, so

we decided to go and talk to this guy we saw in his garage working

out. He told us that the doctor told him he was about to get diabetes,

and that he would have to start taking shoots. He asked the doctor to

give him one more chance. Well I can tell you he totally took that

chance! Every day he lifts his weights in his gym and runs up and down

this hill twice. He does his same little routine for 45 minutes! He

said he lost like 35 pounds in 90 days! On top of that he is over 50

years old. He was pretty motivated. We were able to share a Book of

Mormon with him. We then went to dinner, and told our dinner about

giving out the Book of Mormon to one of their neighbors. The wife

totally know the guy and was excited that we gave him a Book of

Mormon. She is going to be following up with his reading! Go members:)

Then this Saturday we were out street contacting and meet this amazing

lady named Brooke. We talked to her for about 45 minutes all about the

importance of families. Family was very important to her, she really

loves her family. She had a lot of similar values as us, she would

make an awesome member! We were able to share the Family: A

proclamation to the world with her as well as the Book of Mormon. She

expected both and told us that she would share them with her husband.

I really hope she will let us come back and teach her family.

        We also had a really good exchange with our new branch mission

leader, our relief society president and her sister who is a recently

returned missionary. They are all incredible people and are a lot of

fun to be around. For the exchange we had a list of people that we

wanted to visit and invite them to come back to church. The second

person we tried ended up being asleep, but his brother was home and

was not a member. He told us that he had been to church a couple of

times and had meet with missionaries before. He stared asking a lot of

questions and then eventually let us in. We talked a lot about the

importance of prophets and the importance of the Book of Mormon. We

also testified that this was Christ's restored church on the earth

today. He talked a lot bout what his goals were in life. He wanted to

get married and have a family and find a good job, both of which are

righteous desires. If he accepts the gospel, it will help him reach

these goals and allow him to achieve even more things that God has in

store for him. All he has to do is read and pray. It's that simple! It

was a really neat teaching setting, because the three members who came

with us are all returned missionaries and all bore testimony of the

Restoration and Book of Mormon. It was awesome! We have a meeting with

him next week.

        Well I am grateful everyone is having fun this summer and staying

plenty busy. What a wonderful time to be a member of the Church of

Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Yes the world is vey wicked, but we

have the truth. We know God lives and is very aware of who we are and

what we are facing. Trust him and look to His son. The world needs our

)This is brother Bruellisauer. He is super cool! He has a ton of sweet guns:)

examples! I love y'all:

Baking in Texas

6.20.16

This week I had the chance to go on two exchanges. The first one was with elder Everett. During our exchange we had a wonderful Book of Mormon study with a really nice lady named Grandam Helen. We read in Mosiah where it talks about wicked king Noah and Abinadi. It was a perfect story to read, because we were able to teach and testify about the importance of prophets. The second one was with elder Mcaninch. They were both great exchanges. It is a blessing to have two wonderful zone leaders. I learned a lot from elder Mcaninch. We had the chance to place 4 Book of Mormons while on exchange, as well as have a really good lesson with a part member family. We taught the doctrine of church. We also brought an awesome member with us. He has a really strong testimony and he knew his scriptures really well. It is always so powerful to have the testimony of a member in your lesson. We committed them to church and they said they would be there. 

This week we also had the opportunity to do serve a member in our ward. The opportunity was with the Coleman family. The family that Grandpa Griffin saw in the temple:) They were putting in a cement  back patio. It was super hard work and it was incredibly hot! I loved every moment of it though and was grateful that we were able to help this family out. There is nothing like the feeling you get when you are working hard. We also were able to serve at the library again and got to know a couple of the librarian ladies. They are all super nice and I am grateful for our developing friendship. 

We went to institute this week and it was a great success. There were over 25 people there! There was also a non member named Javan. We were able to share a Book of Mormon with him and give him a Plan of Salvation pamphlet. He had a family member die pretty recently and he has been looking for ways to cope with it. The gospel really is the only way to truly feel peace and get the most answers to our questions. I pray he read the Book of Mormon and feels the power of its words enter in to his life. 

Love,

Elder Griffin 

Weeding at the library

6.13.16

This last Monday evening we had an awesome FHE with our YSA group. We

got to go to a bowling alley with them. The event was a great success!

We had 41 people there which is really good. We also had at least 3

non members and a couple less actives:) It was the perfect activity to

fellowship. That is one of my favorite things about being in a YSA

branch, it's a lot easier for members to invite their friends too, and

that age group is a lot more open. We are hopefully going to start

teaching this guy name Christopher, who came to the bowling activity.

  This week we also had the opportunity to go and do service at the

library. It was a tone of fun. I love the feeling you get when your in

libraries, it's very peaceful and quite. Our job was to do something

called "Weeding". It's where you have a list of old books and you go

and locate them and take them off of the shelf, in order to make room

for new books. It was a lot more fun then actually weeding:) The

librarians are also very nice people, and we look forward to serving

more with them.

  The two people we are teaching are doing great! The nine year old

girl finally came to church this week! We got to church yesterday and

she wasn't there, so we gave her grandpa a call and found out that

something had come up. Well that didn't stop us from getting her to

church! We called a member that lived close to her and the member went

and picked her up. She had a great time at church and the ward members

were so good to her! The young women's president even order her a

Children's Book of Mormon and she loved it! She has a baptismal date

for July 2nd:) The other man we are teaching is also doing pretty

good. He has been meeting with missionaries for quite some time now,

but has always had trouble with take action and getting baptized. We

have had some really spirited filled lessons, but he still has fear

and has not committed to a date. Well the last time we taught him we

really focused on committing him to read from the Book of Mormon and

pray. The member we brought with us was awesome! We also had this same

member, brother Woods, follow up with our investigator during the

week. When we came back to teach him yesterday he had actually read

and prayed! He had a really open conversation with us and told us that

he was in the middle of making a lot of difficult decisions. We

focused on having faith and talked about how faith is a principle of

action. I also used that story you shared with me mom about the

firefighters and how God is always waiting for us, we just have to put

forth the effort to find him. We committed him to pray for the courage

to set a date and that we were going to set a date next time we meet

with him. He is so close to getting baptized! We are praying he gets

his answer. If he only knew how much happier he would be if he got

baptized and received  the gift of the Holy Ghost.

        I love you all and hope everyone has a safe week with all the

different activities!  Love, Elder Griffin

Youth Blitz & Title of Liberty

6.6.16

This week we were able to have a cool experience in our district

meeting. A member in our ward, who has cerebral pasly. He came and

shared his story of how he was able to over come this challenge. He

ended up going on a mission and now has a beautiful family. He is the

happiest man and is always laughing! It was a neat experince to be

able to hear his story. He testified over and over again about the

grace of Jesus Christ and how He was always their for him. He shared

some pretty incredible stories! This week we were also able to have a

youth blitz with our ward. We all meet at the church Wednesday night

and then split up into groups. One missionary went with a different

group and went to visit different families. It was great to see

everyone get excited to go out and rescue those who are lost. We also

had an awesome experince this Tuesday night with a less active family.

The family his really in to war and the freedom for our country, so we

decided to read in Alma 46 where it talks about the title of Liberty.

We went around the room and took turns reading, we would also discuss

different verses. As we finished the chapter their 25 year old son who

has not read his scriptures in probably years and does not take part

in churchy things, put his hand on his chest and said he felt

something! We quickly were able to testify to him that he was feeling

the spirit. It was so cool to see him get excited about feeling the

spirit! It might have been the first time he had really felt the power

of the Holy Ghost. It was a really cool experince and it helped build

my testimony of the Book of Mormon. It really is from God and does

continue the words of Christ. It continues a power/spirit that is

comparable to no other book. I love helping people see/feel the

importance of reading from its pages. We are going to have weekly Book

of Mormon studies with them. We are pretty excited!

Love,

Elder Griffin

A really cool senior couple, the Boyntons