Sharing Bible and Book of Mormon Scriptures about Christ

5.2.16

This week we had some good success with referrals we have received. The first one let us into her home and we were able to share a short message with her. Elder Meyers had a cool idea of reading a powerful bible verse about the Savior and then reading another powerful bible verse from the Book of Mormon. It was pretty awesome and the lady was pretty excited about the Book of Mormon. There really is powerful in the Book of Mormon and people can feel it! She has committed to read and pray about it. We set a return appointment to come and teach her the Restoration. She was so kind to us and thanked us for coming over. It is always a blessing to be able to go into people's homes and bring the spirit. We have also been doing a lot of less active work lately and are doing our best to keep all of our recent converts active and converted to the gospel. Luckily we have an amazing ward mission leader who magnifies his calling. He truly cares about every person we are working with and he is willing to do whatever it takes to help them. We have also had great support from the ward and have plenty of members who come out with us on exchanges. 
We also did quite a bit of service this week. We were able to help Ralph with his yard, I got to mow the lawn! We also helped a family in our ward move to a new apartment. We also went to a local food pantry and served at the animal shelter:) My favorite service we did was at a member of the Spanish wards house. He has a bunch of animals and we got to help him shovel dirt around a fence to keep out the critters. It was a full week, but I always enjoying serving.

         I want to share one more cool experience we had this week. We were trying to contact a referral to give her a bible she requested. As we were driving down the street we found the address and walked up to the door. A 18 year old girl answered the door and we asked her if "the referrals name" was there. She didn't know who that was. I looked at the side of the house and it was the wrong address! Well we started talking to her about the Book of Mormon and invited her to read. She also expressed that she believes in science and wasn't sure if their was a God. I read her a few versus out of the Book of Mormon and testified of the reality of a loving Heavenly Father. She was a really cool and we are going to be seeing her this week to teach her more about the Restoration. It was a small little miracle. I'm glad that we were lead to her house. I love you all and hope everyone is doing well!

Love,

Elder Griffin 

Exchanges and teaching truth to Chad, Zay & Maria

4.25.16

This week we were able to go on 3 exchanges! Two with our district

leaders and one with the assistants. I loved each one of them and was

able to learn a lot! I want to share a couple of experiences I had

while on these exchanges. The first one was on exchange with elder

Nielson. We had an awkward amount of time before one of their

appointments. I told elder Neilson that we should go out and try to

place a copy of the Book of Mormon. He said a prayer, and during his

prayer I felt the spirit and was confident that we would be able to

find someone to give the Book of Mormon to. We started biking. Elder

Nielson turned into a neighborhood and headed towards an open garage.

We started talking to a really nice man named Chad. He was working on

some sort of race car used for drag racing. We talked to him about his

hobby and then were able to share a Book of Mormon and a brief

Restoration lesson. It was a cool faith building experience. We had

expressed our desire in prayer that we wanted to place a Book of

Mormon, we then took action and God provided us with someone to teach.

The second experience I had was on exchange with elder Fowels. We went

to dinner at Subway, because I had been given a gift card (thank you

mom!) and our dinner had canceled. As we got in line to order our

sandwiches, I started making friendly conversation with one of the

workers, his name ways Zay. We eventually got talking about what we

did as missionaries. He were able to share a little bit about Joseph

Smith and the Book of Mormon with him and his co worker. Before we

left we shared a Book of Mormon with both of them and got down Zay's

information. It was a really neat experience and it taught me the

importance of being a full time missionary. That same day we were able

to give 3 more people Book of Mormons. One of the people we gave a

Book of Mormon to was a lady named Maria. She was a referral we

received. She was the most amazing lady! She bore her testimony about

the power of the Atonement and how Christ had changed her life. She

then shared several experiences where she had been a missionary to

those around her. She is also going to visit her brother soon who was

deported our of America into Mexico, due to drugs. She is going to go

and teach her bother about Jesus Christ, so that he to can experience

the change she went through. We gave her another Book of Mormon to

take to her brother as well as a Restoration and Plan of Salvation

pamphlet. She was so thankful. We are going to try and set up a time

to teach her when she gets back from visiting her brother:) Elder

Fowels was an amazing example to me during our exchange of being real

with people as well as being creative in our contact approaches. I was

very grateful for these exchanges. I always love to learn from other

missionaries and get new ideas!

        We were also able to go to a special leadership training this

Saturday that was lead by elder Foster of the seventy. As we were

shaking elder and sister Fosters hands, sister Foster recognized my

last name and asked if I knew any Griffins in Texas. I told her I had

and uncle named Gary and his wife Debbie. She got excited and told me

that they were Gary's mission President and wife! It was pretty sweet!

The training was amazing. He talked to us about what makes a leader,

and the importance of having a vision. I will share a cool chart he

shared with us. It was so inspiring to be able to be trained by him!

   It really was an amazing week that I will never forget! I love you

all and hope you are all doing the little things every day to get

closer to the Savior and to halved the spirit more abundantly in your

lives.

Love,

Elder Griffin

Pres Ames Interview, Rescue visits & Elder Cardon

4.18.16

This week we had interviews with President Ames. It was my last one

with him! I had a beautiful interview with him and I left with more

energy and a feeling of peace and love in my heart. He is an

incredibly inspired man and has so much love for God and for his

missionaries. I will miss him very much. He has played a big part in

my life and I will never forget him!

  This week we also had awesome rescue visits (where we go and visits

less-active families in the ward) with our ward mission leader and

another brother in our ward. I had the chance to go with our ward

mission leader. We first tried by a couple of people by had no

success. The success we did have came in between visits. The first

teaching opportunity we had came as we were walking back to our car.

We saw an older lady getting out of her car and we went up and talked

to her. We were able to share the Book of Momron with her as well as

pray with her. She was a very sweet lady and I hope she feels the

peace and hope that reading the Book of Mormon brings. Our other

opportunity came as we were driving to one of the families we were

going to visit. We drove by this house were a man was playing outside

with his dog. As we passed his house our ward mission leader said he

had a feeling that we should go and talk to the man. He said that he

had another Book of Mormon in his house that we could go and grab. We

stopped by one more person and then went and grabbed the Book of

Mormon. When we went back to his house it had gotten dark and he had

gone inside. We decided to knock his door anyways. He answered the

door and our ward mission leaders shared the Book of Mormon with him.

I was then able to bear testimony to him that this is Christ's

restored church back on the earth again. It was a really cool

spiritual experience to have with our ward mission leader. We are

hoping to teach him in the near future. I am grateful for the

prompting of the Holy Ghost and for a Ward mission leader who listens

to those promptings.

  We also had our stake conference this weekend. Elder Cardon of the

seventy came to our stake conference and was amazing! He was a

powerful speaker, and is very in tune with the spirit. He taught about

how important it is that we have true doctrine in our church, and that

having faith in true principles of the gospel and applying them is the

only way you can obtain real salvation. He also testified of the

importance of following the Holy Ghost in all aspects of our lives. He

told some pretty cool stories of how he taught his children to follow

the whispers of the Holy Ghost. It was such a blessing to be able to

hear from elder Cardon!

  Well I think that is about it for this week! I love you all and

testify that this really is the only true and living church on the

face of the earth.

Love,  Elder Griffin

Service and singing for Connie

4.11.16

This week has been one of the busiest weeks of my mission. Our zone has changed a lot this transfer, and we have a lot of new missionaries, which is really exciting. It has been hard to leave elder Thomas, because we got along super well, but I am going to do my best to learn what God needs me to learn from elder Meyers. He is from St. George, Utah and was originally called to this mission as a Spanish speaking missionary. This is his first English area, so he will have to readjust to the English culture:)He has been out for 21 months, and is a pretty solid missionary. Both of us have a little pride, so it will be a good opportunity for me to learn to be more humble! So far he has mentioned a lot of good ideas to help us find and teach more people.  I have a feeling like a lot is going to get accomplished this transfer! He has a strong testimony and is very obedient, two qualities that I really admire.

   This week we had an awesome zone council. There was a really good spirit present and we were able to council about a lot of important things, especially how we are going to reach our goals as a zone!  We have a lot of very capable missionaries in our zones, and I am gratful to be able to work with them.

       We also had an amazing Ammon like service experience as a zone this Friday. We took part in a community service project called CPR. This organization picks a number of houses in the metroplex that need fixing up and sends groups of volunteers to go and help fix up the house. Our whole zone got assigned to a house in Watagua. Our team captain was an amazing man named Jack. When we first arrived at the home, I was kind of worried that we would be able to find enough work for everyone to do, but as we got working everyone found a job. The home owner was a older single lady named Connie. She was a very sweet lady, who we all grew to love. We painted, put in stone and did yard work. It was a great bonding experience for our zone. At the end of it Connie, the homeowner, came out with her bible and read us a scripture about service that she had read at her mothers funeral. She got all teared up as she told us how grateful she was for what we did for her. It was a very touching experience. Jack also told us that we were the best group he had ever worked with. He was such a cool guy, who really understands what it means to be a dispel of Jesus Christ. We are hoping to get the missionaries back in touch with him this October when they do this service project again, so that the missionaries can be with him again! As we were leaving, one of the missionaries suggested that we sing a hymn for her. We sang "Becausee I have been given much", she was very touched. It was a beautiful experience, and it taught me the power of serving like the Savior would. Some of our sister missionaries got her informaiton down. I really hope she listens to the lessons, she really is such a sweet lady! Also from this service experience, we got more service opportunities. During our lunch break a lady pulled up into Connies drive way and asked if we could help her with her house as well. We took down her number. Connie also told us that a couple of her neighbors could really use some service as well. God poured down his blessings on us during this service project. My goals is to try and find more service like this project, so we can continue to have these kinds of experiences!

   I love you all and am grateful every day for the amazing examples you are to me! I commit you all to go back and start reading all of the amazing conference talks that were given this transfer. I watched elder Hollands this morning and it was amazing! Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Griffin