Monday, September 23, 2013
Weekly Challenge - September 23rd, 2013
I want to leave you all the invitation to get yourselves a journal, mine was a dollar at walmart and to use it to record revelation during your prayers. This means really making your prayers meaningful so that is like a side committment and then when you wake up every morning review the things that you learned at night and what it is the Lord needs you to be doing and then go and do those things. The Lord then can trust you with his precious secrets and more importantly his precious children. I pray that this challenge is one that you will take on. Lo Haran?!
September 23rd, 2013
Alright so another week has gone by here in Raymondville and we
didn't get hit by that hurricane I was hoping would hit us. They
apparently hit Mexico pretty good and we got some rain but that is it.
Still got some hope until November 1
so fingers crossed!! This week was pretty good, not the best week for
us but not the worst. I didn't really get to spend much time in my own
personal area because I had to see what was happening in the District.
The fire seems to be gone and I had to go find out why. So I threw down 3
exchanges last week, that is 2 more than I normally do in a week and I
think I have a bit of an idea as to what is going on. With time
sometimes we as human beings become complacent. When we get to a point
we sometimes plateau and are just content with whatever and that isn't
really acceptable. God's plan is that we are always increasing, in the
scriptures we learn that when we decide we have enough God then starts
to take away and I have seen that in the work of the Elders in the
District. They aren't progressing so they are in fact regressing. Not
good but all is well. I am going to do all I can to get them breathing
again.
So real quick, we have been working with a young girl named Tiffany
she is 15 and she came out of nowhere and she is looking great to be
baptized this Sunday assuming all goes well. Sunday
when we went to get her for church, no one answered the door. So we
asked her Friend Alma what we should do. Alma said to go knock on her
window. That didn't go too well. Her Grandma was pretty unhappy and we
felt really really stupid and embarrassed so we left...Raymondville.
Needless to say we need to go apologize to the family for having upset
them. Other than that things have been going well with her. She likes
the church and we made her a little journal to take notes in and write
questions in and such to help her stay focused at church and stuff. We
are praying for a miracle there with her.
We met this week a young man named Larry. Larry is 21 and wants to
be baptized he feels it is the next step. Now Larry came to church and
loved it and we are excited that he wants to progress and go back but
Larry is an interesting Fellow. He is pretty easily distracted and so he
goes off on tangents about some biology theories he has and things he
wants to accomplish in his life. One being using the regenerative
tissues and cells in his Knee, apparently his knee has some disease that
makes it heal crazy good, to trick other parts of the human body into
regenerating or aging in reverse. Like Benjamin Button. So that man
doesn't have to die. Hopefully knowing Gods plan will help him put that
idea to rest and he can go live a good life. He also thinks Obama is the
Anti-christ...but he is a good guy.
Joe Angel still is struggling with his Grandma, she doesn't want to
let up and in fact apparently when he asked if she would pray with him
she said no. He is 10 so you can imagine that made him pretty sad.
Luckily for him the Missionaries had a good ol' chastity lesson planned
for him in all it's awkward splendor to make it all better. We taught
him about the "No-No square" and found out he likes ladies and wants to
treat them nice so we are hoping to see a miracle with him as well. He
has understood all we have taught and is always at church so we know
that he is ready.
As far as reopening the branch we saw our first step towards
success when one of our priesthood Holders, Sotero, came to church!! It
was in English and he doesn't know English but he came! Luckily my
companion has been talking about wanting to be a translator so I just
told Sotero Elder Lloyd would translate the meeting for him. He loved it
a lot and it looks like we are at 7 of 12 now! We will keep it up and
hope to see a lot more success there. We have at least the English
Bishop on board and the Stake President and are now just waiting to talk
with the Spanish ward Bishop. We will keep things moving there.
This week on one of my exchanges I learned a lot about receiving
revelation as that was the focus. I was able to learn from section 138
of D&C the pattern of receiving revelation, it is the same as set
forth in Moroni 10 3-5. I was left with the committment to start a
revelation journal which just means that when I pray and as I ask
questions and such that I have a notebook to record my impressions and
thoughts and such. I realize that that has helped me to focus my prayers
a lot more and has really let the Lord teach me with his spirit. It has
been interesting for me to do my best to listen for the words of the
Spirit and grow in my understanding of how he works. As I ask questions I
wait until thoughts come and feelings flow and then I write. Then I
repeat. It has worked with all sorts of things and I know that is
because the Lord has set forth the instructions for receiving
revelation. I want to leave you all the invitation to get yourselves a
journal, mine was a dollar at walmart and to use it to record revelation
during your prayers. This means really making your prayers meaningful
so that is like a side committment and then when you wake up every
morning review the things that you learned at night and what it is the
Lord needs you to be doing and then go and do those things. The Lord
then can trust you with his precious secrets and more importantly his
precious children. I pray that this challenge is one that you will take
on. Lo Haran?!
Love you all
Elder Bassett
Weekly Challenge - September 16th, 2013
I would Invite you all to spend this week and try to live the scout motto and, "Do a good turn daily" Share your testimony of the Savior with your actions. Not your words.
September 16th, 2013
Hola mis queridos,
This last week has been pretty interesting for us here in South
Texas. Apparently some huge Butterfly hatching/migration takes place
around this time of year because on Thursday there were just tens of
thousands of Butterflies everywhere and it was just an amazing sight to
see. I know that is random but it was incredible, nunca he visto algo
asi en mi vida. Also it has been raining like mad here on our end. We
have had pouring rain on and off for the past 2 weeks or so and it has
become a muddy ordeal. Apparently there may be a storm hitting us soon
which could be interesting. I hope that opens up a lot of doors to our
service because the people here can be pretty hard at times. On top of
it all, Elder Lloyd managed to catch some sickness which I was able to
avoid for about 4 or so days and then I woke up this morning and to my
dismay I am a bit stuffy and such now. That is very unpleasant
especially at the start of a P-Day. We are supposed to play ping pong
today.
So last week we went to Brownsville with a Member to go to a bodega
and to go tie digging. We bought 5 pounds of ties for 5 dollars and out
of the 50 or so ties we got we found about 5 that were of pretty good
worth and that are pretty nice and we made a purchase for 5 dollars of
ties that easily equal a value of 200 plus dollars. It was fun and that
is one of the great things about the south of Texas. We also had
delicious tacos, but that is almost a daily ordeal down here. We also
had an Enchilada Party which was a lot like our Alfredo Party which was a
blast! I will send Pictures
This week was rough on the District, I am not sure what happened
but things didn't go too terribly well for some of mis ovejas. I am
going to go ahead and spend a bit of time with the Other Elders this
week and see what I can't do to pump them up. As a leader I have learned
the importance of really giving all you can to those under your
stewardship. If anyone goes unattended chaos follows and it really falls
back on the leader.We did see some pretty great miracles though, one
family the other Elders met and havent even taught that came to church.
That is huge because it shows real intent and desires to find the truth.
It is a family of 7 and they seem like a great family and I was excited
to see the Lord bless us so greatly. The Lord is trying to teach me a
lot and I have been doing my best to do all required of me but I feel as
though there is a lot more I can do and so I am going to kick it into
high gear and go serve mis queridos Elderes.
Elder Lloyd and I were invited to a funeral of one of the members
in our area. That of JJ Reyna, who I never got the chance to meet. He
was a great man by the sounds of things and he touched many a life with
his genuine care for those around him. It really caused me to reflect on
the kind of legacy I want to leave and the importance of using every
second of our lives for good. We always have the chance to change a
life, we just always have to be willing to do it. The Spirit took its
chance to teach me a great deal of things about the power of our
decisions and our dealings with others, and how our example says a lot
of who we are.
As for Little Joe Angel he wasn't able to be baptized his abuela
doesn't believe he is old enough or mature enough to make that decision
for himself. It saddens me a great deal because he has great desires to
be baptized and he understands and remembers everything we teach him. He
is at church 90% percent of the time and he definitely understands more
than I did when I was baptized so we are going to keep praying for him
and talking with Grandma to see if we can't ablandar su corazon.
Vanessa and her family have been pretty much M.I.A. this week and
that has made it hard. Their fire is dying and we don't want that at
all. She and her kids are great and are this close to joining Christ's
church and being recepients of one of the greatest gifts ever, The Holy
Ghost. We are going to go and do our best to help them continue to pray
and progress, we are planning on going over to visit Tuesday and
dropping a spirit bomb on her and the family to remind them of the
importance of this decision. A lot rests on it and we would hate to see
them lose those bendiciones.
We really only found one solid investigator this week, her name is
Tiffany and she is a young woman who is a friend of a less active member
of the church. She has a lot of potential but the girls have been
involved in some illegal drug use and that would be the only thing that
holds this girl back from being adopted into the church of Christ. Last
night we had a great opportunity to speak with her Friend Alma, the less
active, and us the spirit to persuade her to get rid of her "Stash". It
was a good sized stash by the looks of it but we won't have to worry
about it anymore. Thank goodness. Yesterday getting her to church was
the hardest thing ever because all of our members leave for church about
an hour and a half to two hours early and the church is 30 minutes away
so we had to call a member from a place near the church to come help us
out and the poor sister got lost. Luckily Heavenly Father always helps
those in need and was able to get them to church, even if it was an hour
late.
As far as reopening the branch is concerned we are still working on
it. The Stake President is really who we are waiting on. More on that
as we hear more.
This week I have been thinking about how important it is that we as
members of the church constantly strive to reach out to those around us
and to serve them. Service opens lots of doors especially in regards to
the Gospel. I would Invite you all to spend this week and try to live
the scout motto and, "Do a good turn daily" Share your testimony of the
Savior with your actions. Not your words. The power of Members in the
missionary work is profound and it is necessary so I would pray that we
all are constantly doing are best to "Abound in good works" I know that
as we do that hearts will be softened and lives can be changed. I love
you all and hope to hear from you soon.
Elder Bassett
Monday, September 9, 2013
Weekly Challenge - September 9, 2013
Pick someone you know, someone you love and make a list of their strengths, like 3 or 4 will be plenty and sneak that list into a place where they will find it. Make that list from your heart, make it anonymous. The reason being is that I realized this week the importance of focusing on finding the good in others as well as ourselves and sometimes it takes an outside source to help us find a strength we didn't know we had.
September 9, 2013
Hello Everyone,
This week was pretty uneventful but I did learn a bunch about the
power of prayer. I figured I would start there, this may be a little bit
of a silly story but here goes. A few weeks back I was to receive a
package that was a package of a bit of sacrifice and I wanted very badly
to receive it. Well time went by and by and it never came and as you
may imagine I was a bit worried but I prayed and prayed and asked God to
not let the sacrifice go to waste and I prayed and prayed and I
officially gave up worrying about it when I found out it had been marked
delivered and felt that worrying was a waste of my time and energy. One
night, my Zone Leaders just came up to me and said, "Hey we have a
package for you, someone loves you a lot." I realized in that moment
that someone really does love me lots. God had heard me and though it
seems trivial and silly to worry so much or look so much into the
receiving of a package, having received it made me realize that I hadn't
just received some snacks and shirts and whatnot but that I had
received an answer to my prayers. I feel like God takes times like this
to teach me just plain and simply because that is how I learn best. It
just made me feel great to know he cares even about the little things in
our lives even silly packages.
Other than that we had a pretty standard week, we had tons of rain
and that meant mud and that meant no one outside which makes meeting
people interesting. Rain here just sucks the life out of the world it
seems, people don't like it because it makes it humid as sin and that
just makes it like a rainy sauna. Like a shower kind of and that isn't
fun. However Elder Lloyd and I worked pretty hard to make things happen
and we saw some miracles even among a lot of trials.
George didn't come to church and I feel as though we are going to have to let George know we won't be going by anymore, that until he is ready to act we really can't help him. That is a hard part of missionary work but it is a huge part of it is knowing when you can do no more and I think unfortunately we have reached that point with George. He is a good man and I am confident one day he will accept the Gospel in it's fulness but not right now.
George didn't come to church and I feel as though we are going to have to let George know we won't be going by anymore, that until he is ready to act we really can't help him. That is a hard part of missionary work but it is a huge part of it is knowing when you can do no more and I think unfortunately we have reached that point with George. He is a good man and I am confident one day he will accept the Gospel in it's fulness but not right now.
Joe Angel needs grandmas permission and she isn't giving it yet, I
need all the faith for that miracle I can get so feel free to add your
prayers to mine that Joe Angel can and will be baptized this week.
Vanessa seems to be distancing herself from us which is hard
because she was doing so well. We aren't too sure what is happening but
we are going to work our hearts out to get her back. She has had a few
questions about the living prophets and that plus all the anti seems to
have turned her off a bit to the church but we know that the Lord can
help and that he will if this is her time. More on that as we can.
This week amidst all the trial we found a light, there is a less
active 16 year old named Alma, and her and her friends were doing some
not so good stuff and she wanted to change. So she and her friend
Tiffany decided that they were going to start going to church and start
being better and she told us all about her plans. Then they never went
through, this was all about a month ago. So after trying and trying to
meet tiffany we just kind of gave up, Alma wasn't helping things were
looking bad. Then all of a sudden yesterday they showed up at church and
now we have a lesson with Tiffany on Tuesday.
She seems like a good girl that has a lot of potential and that makes
us happy. Kind of like a light in a dark room that we were in. We hope
she will progress and that she will be baptized.
We spoke with the Stake president and have officially set some
things up to get work going to open this branch back up. Elder Lloyd and
I have been working hard to make specific plans and we feel that it
will be open very soon. We are hoping 6 months, neither of us will
really be here to see it but we want to make sure it is at least
happening. We just need to meet with all the bishops that would be
involved and get the members doing their part. If they do that and we do
ours we know the Lord will bless them.
Other than that there has not been a ton. Sorry it is short and
seems rushed, I had some emails that needed sending. I hope you all know
that I love you and want to leave you a challenge this week. Pick
someone you know, someone you love and make a list of their strengths,
like 3 or 4 will be plenty and sneak that list into a place where they
will find it. Make that list from your heart, make it anonymous. The
reason being is that I realized this week the importance of focusing on
finding the good in others as well as ourselves and sometimes it takes
an outside source to help us find a strength we didn't know we had. If
you really want, make several lists and be sure to extend the
committment to all those you make the lists for in writing. I hope that
makes sense.
Dale!
Elder Bassett
Thursday, September 5, 2013
Weekly Challenge - September 3, 2013
This week my challenge for all of you is to start reading from the New Testament. Simple but very important. There we find the life of our savior and all that he did for us and we read about the way his apostles shaped the history of the world and laid the foundation for the restoration of the Gospel
September 3, 2013
So happy Labor day to all, this week I get to email Tuesday
because no libraries were open. Things here are going well there hasn't
been a ton of special progress as far as our investigators but I will
give some information on that. Elder Lloyd and I are doing great still
and he and I have some high hopes for the area this transfer and have
actually decided to shift our focus just a bit from finding and
baptizing.
But first, Vanessa and her daughters did not come to church
and as a result we will have to move their baptismal date to later in
the month, that is definitely not ideal but you do what you gotta do
right?
We may also start a class on being member missionaries. More on that as it develops.
Anyway
this week my challenge for all of you is to start reading from the New
Testament. Simple but very important. There we find the life of our
savior and all that he did for us and we read about the way his apostles
shaped the history of the world and laid the foundation for the
restoration of the Gospel.Les Quiero
Weekly Challenge August 26, 2013
My challenge this week is to be sure you tell all those you love, that you love them.
August 26th, 2013
So transfer news came in, looks like I am staying
again with Elder Lloyd. This is good news, we have been having a good
time and finding a lot of success in an area that most people would
claim is "Dead". This is bad news because that means I will more than
likely be here for at least 3 total transfers and I know that one is
going to be a bit rough for Elder Bassett. Raymondville is a good place
but man I don't want another Mercedes. I also found out that they are
opening a new area in my District so that will put me in charge of
another companionship. That is going to bring a whole nother set of
challenges for me as I have to find time to do follow ups with them as
well as find time to go on exchanges with them. The missionaries that
are coming in are one that has only been out 2 transfers and the greenie
he is training so I am going to have to keep my eye on them because
they are pretty young in the mission.
This last week we as a district saw a lot of success, since I
have been here the most people the District had gotten to church was
about 3, but this last Sunday we had 6 investigators at church which is
huge considering the past performance. I am super happy to see that the
District is taking steps towards it's potential but just like my Zone
Leader Elder Bosselman told me Sunday, "Always happy, never content." He
was telling me that I should always be happy at our success but never
satisfied so this next transfer I will be working on pushing the
District to it's potential. Hopefully the new set of Elders helps us
push forward.This last week we went to Port Mansfield for the first time. It is far away and there is only like one member out there are apparently she hates the church so we went to go and meet her. We didn't find her, what we did find was the ocean and some deer. I sent pictures. Elder Lloyd loved it. We almost touched a buck on it's head but didn't want it to headbutt the car. I hope that is sufficient pictures for those of you who wanted pictures.
Elder Bassett
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