El Edificio Gran y Espacio (T1 W8?)

Hola amigos (12/3/18),

So I am going to try my very darndest to make this quick, since I am just about out of time.

So tomorrow, we will get our transfer calls. This has been an extra long transfer since I technically came in during week 5 of last transfer. So technically I'm starting week 8 in this area! I am most likely going to stay here and be follow-up trained by the one and only Elder Gibby. I'm excited to stay here, since we have people set up for baptisms already. I have been amazed at how the Lord has been pushing Elder Gibby and I to the limits. Every week we reconsider the way we teach and find so that we can have more success. After such a long time in this area, it looks like we're finally figuring out how to run a Spanish area. It looks like by the end of this transfer, we will have picked up (meaning we taught them, left commitments, and set up a return appointment) over 100 people! 

Here's a crazy story from this week! So I had the chance to go on exchanges with Elder Cleere from the Foothills area. He has been out for 4 transfers, so he is actually pretty green still. (Even though he's been out way longer than me). The Foothills area typically finds about 2 people per week. When we did our daily planning first thing in the morning, I promised Elder Cleere that we would find 2 people... that day. He thought I was crazy, but agreed to it. Throughout the day, I indulged in my favorite activity: tracting. We knocked door after door after door everywhere we went. Foothills was out of miles for that month already, so we were walking everywhere (they didn't have bikes either). After we had knocked around 20 doors in a certain area, I saw another open-air complex with probably about 20 doors. Not being able to restrain myself, I began to knock doors. The first door we knocked belonged to a young guy who gladly let us in. I taught him the Restoration and he was super interested, in fact, he said that he would be willing to be baptized if he knew it was true... I didn't even ask! We left him a Book of Mormon and set up another appointment. He was a miracle because the morning is a less-effective proselyting time and you will almost never pick anybody up. I'm so glad we decided to tract! But wait, it gets better! Towards the end of the day, right after dinner, we went to a place where there are a ton of complexes. They are all about two stories high and have maybe 8 doors each. We tried to visit a potential in one, but they weren't home, so guess what we did? Tracted! After knocking a few doors, I looked up the hill and had an idea. All these little complexes sit around a steep hill. At the top of this hill sits the eyesore of all nations, The Great and Spacious Building (the title of the email XD). It is a 13 story apartment complex with 10 doors per floor. It is extremely out of place and seemingly random. Can you guess what my idea was? That's right. Good ol' TRACTIN'. And so we did. As we got in the doors of the building, there was another set of doors that were locked. Elder Cleere sat down and told me that the only way to get in was to wait for someone to pass by and let us in. "Are there any members in the building?" He replied that there were. "Are they pretty chill?" He again replied that they were super laid back. So, I pulled out the Area Book and looked up their apartment number and telephoned them from the intercom. A mans voice responded. "Hey, what's up?" I replied "It's the missionaries." He said "'Aight, give me a second." Then he hung up. Before I could figure out what was going on, the doors unlocked. It was a miracle! Elder Cleere and I jumped in and hopped on the Elevator. We proceeded to choose and tract random floors. We would basically just close our eyes and choose one. We bounced up and down for quite a while. Then we realized that time was running out. I felt like I should ask Elder Cleere about the appointment they had tonight with a member who lived on the other side of the area. He told me he hadn't confirmed it yet, and so we decided to call him. The member told us that something else had come up and he had to cancel. It was PERFECT! We had the whole rest of the night to tract the Great and Spacious Building. We knocked door after door after door. A good amount of people actually answered, but nobody was interested. Time was running out. We had knocked every door on all but two of the floors. Floors 3 and 2. When we got on the elevator, I thought it would be clever to press both three and two at the same time and go to whatever floor it chose. I didn't realize that it would just highlight both of them and stop at three first. As the elevator stopped and opened to floor three, I didn't move. Something was wrong. Elder Cleere stood up and began to walk out but I said to him, "Elder Cleere, we aren't supposed to go to this floor." He looked confused, but walked back into the elevator. The doors closed and we descended to floor 2. When the doors opened, we walked out and began knocking doors again. After 9 doors that either didn't answer or weren't interested, we knocked on the last door. A lady opened the door and let us in. She was super nice and told us to come right in. Right as she turned around to try and pick up the stuff on her couch, I turned to Elder Cleere and said, "we need to take off our shoes" Something I have never done at somebody's house without them asking us to do so. We took off our shoes and talked a bit with the lady. She was so prepared to receive the gospel. As we talked, we connected really well, and she told us a bit about her life. As it turns out, she was touched that we had taken off our shoes, which, in her native culture was a sign of great respect. She was incredibly impressed with the way we presented our message and the feelings she felt as we shared with her the message of the restoration. She was super interested and we set up another appointment for that week. As we left her apartment, Elder Cleere and I looked at eachother in amazement. That had been the craziest day ever. The promise I had made Elder Cleere at the beginning of the day was fulfilled! We found 2 people!

I know that God is in the details and that he is directing us in the work. Thanks so much for your support and prayers! I hope you all have an awesome Holiday season!

--Elder Davis

Loco Jose and Other Interesting Characters (T1 W6)

What's happenin' amigos?

So, I'm going to try my very hardest to keep this email shorter than the Bible... but nobody's perfect, right?

JK I will, I promise.

So allow me to tell you about a wonderful gentleman named Crazy Joe, or Loco Jose, if you prefer. 

We met him on Thanksgiving Day, a day when average missionaries visit members or stay in.

We are not average missionaries. So we decided we were going to knock doors. Crazy, I know.

It was about midday when we came across the apartments where Crazy Joe lived. We had parked the car and begun walking towards the building when I spotted a man sitting in an old truck, doing absolutely nothing. I walked up to him and said, "Hey! How's it going? Do you have a second real fast?" He looked at me and cracked a smile, "Well, I haven't been doing anything all day, I'm retired and I've got all the time in the world!" We laughed and I told him about who we are and asked if he would like to hear a message about God. He jumped out of the truck and waved us over. "Come right on in!" he yelled. He introduced himself as Crazy Joe, and we shook hands with an old lady sitting in a chair, who introduced herself as Tip. We began to talk to them about the Gospel, but were quickly pushed off track when Crazy Joe started speaking. When he spoke, he walked around the room, waving his hands in the air, practically yelling as he did so. He told us all sorts of stuff about how much he knew about the bible and how much he had learned in prison. Usually, we would have tried to either get the conversation back on the Gospel or try to get out the door, but today was thanksgiving, and we had all the time in the world. Crazy Joe told us about his life, while making less-than-Christlike comments to Tip. Turns out Tip's sister and his brother were married... so that makes them siblings-in-law?? Anyway, he told us all about the Chicano movement of the 60's. Something I had personally never learned about. Sounded pretty interesting at most, but now I know more than I did before, right? At one point, he pulled out some poetry he wrote behind bars. It was... interesting to say the least. He then decided he would like to pray with us. We held hands in a circle and he gave a very passionate prayer of thanks to God for sending us to him so he could teach us the ways of the Lord. After what seemed like ages, we finally left, knowing more about things we didn't never thought we needed to know more about.

We run into a lot of very interesting people out here in the city. So many people we run into are in circumstances so humble it makes me wish I had something to give them. Last night, we ate with a family that had just enough to make two meals for us. It was so hard to eat and know that they wouldn't be having much that night. It inspires me to see that Humility and the true Christlike character of so many of the people we meet. These experiences inspire me to be a better person and to not take for granted anything I have. That being said, I am so thankful for all of you and the support that I receive from you all. I am so truly blessed to have the privilege to wear the name of our Savior, Redeemer, Messiah, and Lord on my shirt every day. I know that he lives, and I know that he wants nothing more than for each of us to return to him and experience true joy. I know he is present in our everyday lives. I love the work, I love the people, I love the language. I hope you all have an incredible week and an incredible holiday season. 

Con amor,

--Elder Davis

¡Beverly Hills! (T1 W4)

11/12/18 ¡Hola Familia!

How's life going? This week was pretty crazy, but I am beginning to think that crazy is normal around here haha. 

So let me tell you a little bit about this week! So it started off pretty normal... As far as missions go... We tracted a lot we talked to a lot of people and taughta lot of lessons. 

So I don't know if I've mentioned Omar before. He is somebody I OYM'd on our first week out here. He seemed relatively interested and we set up a return appointment. He didn't have service to his phone so we got his Facebook. He never responded to any of our texts and our appointment fell through. Then when I was on exchanges with Elder Nadybal last week, I decided to knock his door. He was busy but he let us set up a return appointment. When E' Gibby and I showed up for the appointment, he turned out to be super solid! He had been reading the book of Mormon (A miracle in and of itself because literally nobody reads when you commit them to). Even better, it was with a member, Hermano Buenrostro, our ward mission leader, present. He just sucked up the Plan of Salvation lesson and the spirit was so strong. We put him on date for baptism on December 8th. We have such high hopes for him. We've only taught him twice, but honestly that's a lot more than we get with a lot of people. Buuuuut... There's a catch. We had invited around 12 people to church, 5 of which who gave us solid yes's. And guess how many showed up? Zero. Again. That means that Omar is now off-date.  We brainstormed for a long time just trying to figure out what we did wrong. We had Double-wall committed Omar in the lesson, confirmed with him Saturday night, and we were on his doorstep Sunday morning talking with him... And he didn't come! Each other person had also committed Saturday night and none showed. So, together, we came up with the 13-step program. Basically it involves 13 contact attempts from the lesson until Sacrament Meeting. There should be absolutely no way that they can say yes and not show up. It's intense, but at this point, we are going to do everything we can do to get people to church. Also, we couldn't call people Sunday morning.... More on that in a bit.

So Friday night to Saturday night, I was once again in charge of the area for an exchange. I got to work a bit with Elder Turville. His area is Front Range/Platte River. That is the farthest area from Denver in our district. It's also the farthest west part of the Spanish area. We never go out there though because we have quite limited miles. (We get 1000 per month and we have to do 8 exchanges in far off places.) Anyway, Elder Turville is a pretty funny guy, thus is his first transfer as a senior companion. He came out at the same time as Elder Gibby. He and I taught José Bonilla again. The funny thing about that is that I have only taught José on exchanges, so Elder Gibby still hasn't met him haha. He had so many questions about the book of Mormon and we had a super good discussion. My Spanish has improved dramatically from when I first came out, it's incredible. I still miss a lot of grammar, but with time I believe I will figure it out. Elder Turville and I went tracting for a good part of the day, it was strangely warm, like 50-something degrees. Elder Turville never tracts in his area, so it was something foreign to him. I would have loved to give him a chance to do a door approach, but A) we didn't run into any white people, and B) nobody stinking answered the door. Anyway, we had a few good lessons and visits.

The title of the email comes from the fact that I like to name groups of apartment complexes. One is called Mexiplex, another is BING BANG BOOM and, if course, Beverly Hills haha. 

I also had an interview with President Gifford this week. That went really well. He told me that he was confident I could run an area and be an effective missionary. He also told Elder Gibby our futures. Looks like I am going to be here for two transfers and then be transferred out west and E' Gibby will become a zone leader here and Denver 1st will become a zone leader area. How crazy is that? This means I will be here until past Christmas.

Speaking of Christmas, there has been snow on the ground here for about 2 days. Looks like it's not going anywhere either. Winter is here and it is so weird! I get to go on exchanges with the Zone leaders tonight. I'm actually pretty stoked. Hopefully I don't do anything stupid haha. The mission office probably thinks I have though. Elder Gibby broke his TIWI card (driving card), so he uses mine and he has now gotten several violations on it. Hopefully I can explain that. 

I love the people here so much and we are teaching so many amazing people. We picked up two people yesterday and they are actually super solid. One is from Perú and the other from Mexico. They are both older ladies and are very interested in the gospel.

The gospel is true and I love every moment of missionary work. Our ward relief society leader basically grilled everybody in Ward council yesterday and now our meal calendar is a lot more full haha. I can't wait to hear from you guys, this week and on Christmas! Good luck with Thanksgiving!! My ward has a Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday because most people are living in part member families and their relatives are all in Mexico. Pretty cool idea! Anyway, love y'all! Have an amazing week! 

Love, 

--Élder Davís

(PS Light the world came out today and they have a really good program this year of how we can light the world, our community, our families, and our faith. Check it out lighttheworld.org )

What the... Snow? Outside the apartment views lol

Exchange with Elder Turville