Life is Amazing!

 

 Life is an amazing thing. I am so grateful for the many blessing I have received in my life. My testimony of the Atonement seems to grow stronger each day. It has been such an amazing experience for me to be a missionary. I have really felt a change within my heart. My desire to do good and the feelings of peace, comfort and love are so much more present in my life. I am grateful that I get serve others, I think about the people we teach all the time and I love these people so much. I think some of the hardest times for me as a missionary is when our investigators are not able to act upon the message we share.

 

 I have been so blessed with the opportunity to of serving other missionaries. I am so grateful for the assignments I have been given. Leadership is such a blessing and it has given me so many opportunities to progress as an individual and as a representative of Jesus Christ. I have been able to develop so many attributes that I know will bless me so much throughout my life. I cherish the moments I have with my companion, my recent converts, my investigators and with the missionaries I serve. I try not to take this time for granted because I know someday I will look back and wish I could be a missionary again. there is nothing in the world like serving the Lord. So I have been doing all I can to serve to the best of my ablity. I know I'm not always perfect and there are many ways I can improve but the Lord is by my side.

 

 I am so excited for the missionaries in the zone. We achived our goals as a zone and as a companionship for Baptisms this month. The missionaries are working hard and many of the missionaries have been able to achive their goals. The Lord is truly blessing the people in this area and I am so excited to see the progress and success of the areas in the Antioch Zone. 

 

 I hope all is well! have a wonderful week!!

 

Love,

 Elder Blandon

Member Missionaries

Thank you for the letter. How did you like conference last week? It was great right!? I am really grateful that God loves us so much that He has called men and women to guide us and direct us on the earth today. This life of mortality can be difficult at times. I know that those men that spoke to us are called of God and that they speak His Gospel and truth. God's kingdom is established on the earth. This Gospel is literally an extension of His kingdom. We had some really cool experiences watching conference last week. I'm really excited for the conference edition Ensign to come out. I love studying the words of the prophets! I also buy the CD set from the distribution center and listen to the talks. It's really awesome!

My companion and I are doing really well. We have a pretty good number of investigators that we are currently teaching. We feel really good about the progress of our investigators. In our area we have been working really well with our members. In fact, all of our investigators are taught in members' homes. We have created relationships where the fellowshipper is the main source of support for our investigators. It has been amazing! Our Members are AWESOME! They have been so supportive in our efforts. Really, it seems like we are just supporting our members in their missionary efforts! They basically set up the appointments and we just go to lessons and teach!

When you first become a missionary that relationship with members is the hardest thing to understand. Naturally, we just want to be friends with the members because they are so awesome! As representatives of Christ and full time missionaries we are here to strengthen the faith of the members and help them share the gospel. It is such an amazing thing to see members bring another one of God's children into the church. Anyways, there are so many wonderful people in this area. I am so grateful to serve here.

This church is so amazing. I really am so grateful to be a part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Later-Day Saints, God's kindom on this earth

I love you ALL

Love,

Elder Blandon

A Wonderful Baptism

We had a wonderful Baptism yesterday with Jabari Albert. Everything seemed to go smoothly. Jabari is such a wonderful person. He is very charismatic and after investigating the church for 1 year and 10 months he has made a big impact on the ward and his friends and family. There was a lot of support and the Baptismal service was wonderful.

Elder Killpack and I were giving the presentation during the time that Jabari was changing. It went really well! The Spirit was so strong. When we got to the First Vision I started off with the quote and everything was so quiet and the Spirit witnessed with such power the truthfulness of what we were sharing. As I was quoting Joseph Smith I remember thinking to myself "WHOoo! everything is so peaceful and quiet.." It was truly an incredible feeling... right in the middle of the First Vision, right when the Spirit seemed to be the strongest...RING RING RING!! the peaceful silence of the Spirit was broken by a cell phone!! I couldn't believe it!! The first thing that came to my mind was - the Gospel is true. Time and time again the adversary does all he can to interrupt the Spirit and Revelation. I know God lives and that He loves us and with the help of our Father in Heaven and Jesus Christ we can protect ourselves from the adversary.

I miss you all and hope you have a wonderful week.

Love,

Elder Blandon

Busy!

Anyways, this week has been great. Super busy. Coming up we have Zone Conference and Stake Correlation meeting, both of which are pretty intense. Things are really going well, though I have been enduring well and my love for missionary work grows deeper each day. I have really been able to feel the love of God more and more each day. It has been a really awesome experience to really see and know how the Gospel works and how I can apply it in my life.

Anyways I miss you and love you all! have a wonderful week.

Love

Elder Blandon

I Am a Child of God

Hey Mom, and Family!

Thank you so much for the package!! It made my day. I really felt the love from the letters and gifts. This week was great and I got the package at the end of the day on Sunday so it was a really nice finish to the week. Well, my companion and I are really being blessed in the area. We are finding lots of people to teach! Last transfer it seemed like we would never find people, but we just kept working faithfully and the Lord has been blessing us.

This week I had a really awesome miracle! I think I told you about the Reynolds family - well this last week we set an appointment to go and teach their family, it was Saturday in the morning. We had set up so that another family from the ward would come to the lesson with us. This same family was also going to give the Reynolds a ride to church. It was all set up. The arrangements were all made. We were going to visit someone just before our lesson with the Reynolds when the phone rings. I take the phone out of my pocket... it's sister Reynolds! My heart sank.. the only thing that kept going through my mind was "please don't cancel, Please don't cancel.." I picked up the phone and she was just informing me about something to do with church. Then I asked her if we are still good for her appointment in 15min. She said " oh yeah you can come over" A HUGE SIGH of relief.. anyways it was about time to head to their house. We get there and my companion and I anxiously waited for the member to pull up.. anytime now.. anytime.. Ok well the member is about 10min late so we give them a call.. no answer. Then we get a text message saying that Sister Gulbraith (member) went to the emergency room for apendicitis!!! WHAT!!?? awww maaan. So we knocked on the door and told Sister Reynolds we would be back in half hour and she said ok. So we are now frantically looking for a member that can come to our lesson (we couldn't go inside without a 3rd male because Sister Reynolds is a single mother) SOO we found someone to come out with us.Wwe picked him up and headed over.She invited us in and the kids all gathered for the lesson. We started by singing "I am a child of God' and started the lesson. We were teaching the Plan of Salvation! it was a great lesson. but the best part was at the end when we got to pray. We got to kneel up with all 6 kids (the cutest little African American kids you ever saw!!) and I had the opportunity to teach them how to PRAY!! It was awesome! I reallyLove this Gospel so much. there is nothing like seeing a family come together and pray with one another. It was awesome..

I love you all. HappyValentines Day.Happy Birthday Wendee!! Have a wonderful week

Love

Elder Blandon

Choose Eternal Life

Things are going well on the mission. I am really learning to love the area that I'm serving in. The members are wonderful and I am really getting to know the members well. We have only been in the Marsh Creek ward for a few weeks now but the ward has really given us a warm welcome. These last few weeks have been pretty difficult as to find new people to teach but we were really blessed yesterday and we found a new person to teach. His name is Abraham. He is planning on attending FHE with the singles ward tonight. Serving in the singles ward is a unique assignment because we find people to teach mostly through members. In my last area we had a few college campuses that we could contact but here in this area there isn't really anything like that. BUT things are going really well.

The missionaries in the Zone have been working really hard! as a Zone we have been able to really achieve some great goals!

My reading of the Book of Mormon has been getting better and better each day. I am doing a really awesome challenge and as I have really been diving into my reading, my testimony of the Book of Mormon has strengthened so much!! It makes such a big difference as I really study the things that the book is teaching us! It has been really awesome.. I was reading in a talk the other day and I found a really awesome quote..

"Am I seeking divine direction through daily scripture study, pondering, and prayer, or have I chosen to be so busy or apathetic that I don’t take time to study the words of Christ, ponder them, and converse with my Heavenly Father?

-Am I choosing to follow the counsel of living prophets of God, or am I following the worldly ways and the opposing opinions of others?

-Am I seeking the guidance of the Holy Ghost daily in what I choose to think about, feel, and do?

-Am I consistently reaching out to assist, serve, or help rescue others?

Your eternal destiny will not be the result of chance but of choice. It is never too late to begin to choose eternal life!

anyways I hope you all have a wonderful week!!

Love

Hiking and Whatnot

Things have been going really well. Today we had a Zone activity - we went hiking near some old mine shafts.. it was really fun. This last week we have been focusing alot on finding new people to teach. We have been doing alot of tracting and its been really great. We are teaching some recent converts in the area that are really awesome, so that has been fun.

I started over reading the Book of Mormon at the beginning of the month and it has been really wonderful to see my testimony grow of the power of the Book of Mormon! Each day I have been keeping a journal of the things that I have been reading and the scriptures have really come alive for me. Its funny, ever since I have been a young child I have attempted to read the Book of Mormon, I must have read 1 Nephi chapters 1-10 a thousand times! But this last time I started the Book of Mormon it was different. The familiar words of those first few chapters have brought so much more meaning to my life as I have pondered and tried to understand the messages they contain. I really Love the Book of Mormon so much.

I have a new companion.. ( I have had a new companion almost every transfer! ) His name is Elder Killpack. He is pretty great.

Anyways this week was really great for our Zone. We had a goal of finding new investigators this last week and the missionaries did a great job of focusing on our goals and we were able to achieve and surpass our goals!!

Anyways, I'm really grateful for all the Love and support from home!! I really love this Gospel alot. I know that this is Gods kingdom established on the earth today. I am grateful to be a servant of the Lord. it is not always easy but it is worth it.

Love,

Elder Blandon