We were happy to be able to go up to West Jordan and hear Wes Bowen report his mission. He shared experiences that illustrated the points of his talk. After the meeting we went over to his home and met some of his family and friends while having a delicious lunch.

Well you can take me out of the Fort Lauderdale Mission but you can not take the mission out of me. I know how much pictures means to families so i asked Sister Boice, another camera buff, to please take as many pictures of new companionships as she could at transfer meeting on Wednesday.

These are the great pictures she sent me. I think most of them are much better than the ones I took. I hope that you enjoy the pictures and I will try to put names to them sometime tomorrow.

Elder Orullian will be trained by elder Kafton down in Homestead zone. Sister Amiolemeh’s trainer is sister Hymas and they will serve at the opposite end of the mission up in Stuart zone.

Elder Benitez seems to be happy to have elder Levy as his new companion and they will serve in Stuart zone. Two missionaries that we got to know well, elders Brimley and Grant, are now companions and will also be serving up in Stuart zone. BTW Elders Smoot, Rockwood and Pond – sorry no picture – are now serving as a threesome as zone leaders up there in Stuart.

Elders Call and Urmston will serve together in the Miami Beach zone. Sisters Chiou and Espinoza, who I believe came in just a few weeks apart, are now serving in the Fort Lauderdale zone.

Senior missionaries elders Collins and Boice bookend elder Gutierriez and Whitney. Sister Fletcher, who served with us in FL ward, and sister Hansen who regularly read this blog after she got her call, are now companions. They will serve this transfer in Hialeah zone.

Sisters Garcia and Meiling are new companions in Hialeah zone. Elder Gust and elder Plowman said goodbye to elders Shipley and Stewart and now are the APs with elder Torres…sorry no picture of the new companionship yet.

Here are elders Gutierrez and Whitney with out the senior elders – they will serve together in Hialeah zone. Elder Harris is now companion with elder Van Wagenen. Elder Van Wagenen is the missionary elder Smoot tried to eat at our last Last Supper back in April. They will serve in Fort Lauderdale zone with elder Harris being the district leader,

Sisters Jackson and Ware are serving in the Miami Beach zone. Elders Marcussen and Brockbank are in Fort Lauderdale zone.

Sisters Holyan and McKay will serve together in the Hialeah zone. Elders McMullin and Winslow are now serving in the Coral Springs zone.

I was happy to see a couple of shots of the parking lot ballet…missionaries moving their luggage and bikes from one car to another as they say goodbye to one group of friends and get acquainted with another group. I really wonder who is under that Mexican sombrero. Elder Richardson is behind elder Rivera. He is going to serve down in Homestead with elder Mackley. In the second picture sister Holyan is just coming up to elder Plowman and sister Espinoza is moving some of her  luggage – where are the elders who should be helping her? I think that is elder Bay I see – he is going to serve with elder Allen down in Homestead zone.

Elders Pattberg and Page will serve up in Stuart zone. Sister Rogers is going to be trained in Fort Lauderdale zone by sister Bean. If she has a birthday while serving with sister Bean she will get a great birthday cake and maybe a mustache straw.

Sister Schneider will be training sister Biggs while they serve in the Palm Beach zone. It was great to see that sister Stegelmeier and sister Dougal – two of the new Sister Training Leaders – are serving together while staying in the Fort Lauderdale zone. I am hoping that I get a picture of sister Merrill with her new missionary sister Karl soon so I can post it. They are also serving in the Fort Lauderdale zone.

I have no idea how sister Stegelmeier managed to get into a picture with sisters Espinoza and Chiou but she must have gotten down on her knees to be that close to their size. Elder Taylor is now serving with elder Loucks in the Coral Springs zone where elder Loucks is a DL.  

It is good to see elders Webb and Williamson will serve together in the Miami Beach zone where elder Webb serves as a DL. The Lord finally moved elder Thorne out of the Fort Lauderdale zone and he will now serve as DL up in Stuart zone with elder Woodard.

Last but not least elders Skousen and ever smiling elder Hall will serve as zone leaders together down in Hialeah zone.

Darn but I miss being at transfer meeting and getting to see all the great missionaries we came to know and love. Hopefully we will be able to stay in touch with some of them through e-mail and FB.

If anyone has pictures of new companionships – or old ones for that matter – that they would like me to post here, please send them to me with any comments you would like to include.

Remember, after humbling ourselves we must be diligent:

 â€œOne amazing thing that happened this week was all thanks to my amazing companion. After a food appointment we came out to the car not starting. As we were waiting for Elder Bare to find us and help fix the problem, we realized we were near a park. The thought of going and contacting came to my mind but I brushed it out with the fact that we were in a really rich area, and we didn’t know how much time we had. But my companion then told us he felt like we might as well harvest, and then we went. As we headed to the park we got each other excited and went contacting. The first prayer was amazing and the man accepted baptism and church on Sunday! Then the next one too! After that we had to head back to the car but afterwards I couldn’t believe we had just found two amazing people in less than 10 minutes! It was such an amazing experience and a testimony builder. Now I love contacting in parks!”

Remember, after humbling ourselves we also need to exercise faith:

 â€œI saw a guy working on his car. He looked up at us and stared as though he knew us or wanted to say something. So I walked up to him and asked him if he needed help on his car. He declined, but we offered a prayer and he accepted that. We said the prayer and immediately after that he said that he felt a change and that he wanted to have a renewing in his life. We invited him to be baptized and he said he would even though he had been baptized before. Then he told us that he had had a vision a few days earlier where God had sent two guys to help him change his life and renew his commitment with Jesus Christ. We were sent to him. My companion and I were so stunned walking away from that experience… We both felt we should talk to him and we saw an amazing miracle!!!! What great things does the Lord do for us!!!”

Remember, after humbling ourselves we must “give heed”; we must be obedient:

“We applied what you trained on with teaching the how of repentance to our investigator. She is an incredible young lady who has problems with pretty well every commandment; from the law of chastity to the word of wisdom, she has broken them in almost every way possible. We’ve been teaching her for about two weeks now and had taught her all the commandments but she hadn’t wholeheartedly committed to live them. On Thursday night we taught her how to repent and a new light entered her eyes. As we testified of the steps of repentance and how she would feel as she went through those steps her smile got bigger and bigger. Repentance no longer appeared to her to be an insurmountable wall, but a bright, clear path. We invited her to go through the steps right there and she did it, recognizing, asking forgiveness, and forsaking. She was the happiest I have ever seen her! We then decided to set up her baptismal interview even though she hadn’t been to church yet. In the interview her confidence in being able to keep the commandments continually was very low. The Zone Leader though, taught her that keeping the word of wisdom and law of chastity was part of her repentance process. When she heard that, our investigator was beaming and so excited to keep the commandments! She came to church yesterday and boldly announced to everyone how she was going to be baptized next week and become a member of the church!”

Last week President Anderson held four zone conferences. Here are the pictures of all the great young men, women and couples of the Florida Fort Lauderdale Mission.

Homestead and Miami Zones

Hialeah and Miami Beach Zones

Fort Lauderdale and Coral Springs Zones

Palm Beach and Stuart Zone

After a week of Zone Conferences President Anderson shared these missionary experiences in his letter of May 12…

Repentance will be a great joy for us and them, It only take seconds for them to feel it:

“About 8 days ago we were harvesting in a complex.  A man walked down the stairs.  We contacted him briefly, testifying that the blessing could help change his life. He just kept on walking, but we were able to get him to shout out his apartment number to us as he was walking away.  We didn’t think too much of it, but we were impressed to pass the referral to the YSA sisters even though we didn’t have too much info, saying something like ‘And if you want, you can try Dwayne in f9’.  Eight days later he was sitting in front of me in a baptismal interview, talking about the many ways that his life had changed in just a short week as a result of the sisters’ teaching and of having the spirit in his life.  He had obtained a strong and sincere testimony of the truth and was so happy! He was smiling the whole time. My favorite part of the interview was when he said ‘The moment I heard you guys testify that day as I walked past you, I felt something.  I knew that now was the time’.  I resolved in that moment to never let a chance to testify and invite to pass me by again. A 10 second contact has now changed the eternal course of his life!”

They will feel the Spirit and the desire to change from you and their new surroundings:

“A couple weeks back we harvested into a guy named Bruce, kind of a rough character, wouldn’t give us his name at first and acted real suspicious about what we were doing, but boy his composure changed after the blessing. His heart melted and he had tears in his eyes. He knew we were guided there for a reason. Later in a lesson we asked how work was going (he’s a construction worker). ‘Going good, today we were working over on this church on the 75’. That piqued my interest. ‘The 75 and what?’ ‘Griffin, you know, it’s got the gold statue of a man blowing a horn on top?’ Wow, Bruce is working on the Fort Lauderdale temple!!!! He saw my companion and I light up, and he did too . We then taught the significance of the holy temple, that it’s not just another church, our hearts filled with the holy spirit. Bruce told us that everyone working out there recognizes that it is a holy holy place, and they stay on their best behavior. No smoking, and they all watch what they say and are extremely careful in the work they do – if any part of the temple is dented, dinged, or cracked it is reported immediately. Bruce told us how blessed he is to be working on it, and then we told him about the worthiness requirements to enter into the temple and the high standards you must be living… he was speechless that he had seen and been inside such a holy place. We told our friend about the purposes of temples, how families can be forever together, and about temple marriages. Our eyes got a little moist as we told him how God wanted this for him and his family. He didn’t allow Bruce to work on the holy temple that wasn’t 20 minutes from his house and then guide us to his door for nothing. He knows this too and said, ‘God has something here for me, and I’m not going to let it go’. We invited him to prepare to attend the temple by being baptized, and he accepted. That was the best lesson of my mission. Isn’t it a miracle?”

Repentance will be evident, and you will be inspired to help them:

“A great experience we had this week in our personal area was with a man named Isaac.  Isaac is an older man who was happy as can be and accepted baptism from the start. The only obstacle that we encountered during the teaching process was his addiction to coffee, which he said, like most people do, that it would be impossible for him to give up.  We taught simply and testified powerfully about the blessings that come from repentance and living the WOW, invited him to live it, and left.  The next day as we were driving over to his house to follow up, I felt prompted to stop at a supermarket and pick up a $2 package of Hot Cocoa to give to him.  We showed up at the appointment and followed up.  As we asked him about the coffee, he said ‘I’ll give you my coffee if you give me something to replace it with’.  I smiled as I pulled out the hot cocoa and gave it to him.  As we were about to leave after the lesson, Isaac smiled and said ‘Now, don’t forget to take my coffee!’  He was baptized on Sunday.  This experience was great for me, and really taught me once again the importance of following prompting of the spirit, as well as the great changes that the spirit can bring to people’s lives.  His attitude and motivation completely changed overnight, and I know that it was because he felt the spirit.”

We have a responsibility Missionaries, to redeem God’s people through the Power of our calling as representatives of Jesus Christ. We are His “authorized messengers” to do this.

While we may not still be serving in Fort Lauderdale, part of us will always be there. It is wonderful to be able to read the President’s weekly letters to the missionaries.

“I can’t help but think that this was a great example of an “open your mouth” experience as the Savior spoke to those who did “not know him”. The miracle and result of the Savior testifying of His purpose was that the Spirit bore witness to these men and their hearts did burn within them when He testified of truth. We need to be aware of the great power and Spirit we possess as we share our purpose to those who do not know us. They are being prepared to have their hearts burn with the Spirit:

“We prayed about where to go, and then we each chose a place on the map to harvest. We went to the first spot to harvest, and it was a more wealthy area. We started opening our mouths, and we got 3 awesome blessings through opening our mouths! We talked to a guy who invited us into his home to leave a blessing. He said that he had always been interested about our faith, and he wanted to learn more. We came out and immediately went next door to a man named Alex who was washing his car. We offered him the blessing, and after some testifying, he invited us into his home to give him a blessing. He felt the spirit super strong, and accepted baptism. He also told us about how when he was a child, his grandmother would take him to our church in Columbia. He also said that he wanted a Book of Mormon before we left! It was super cool. After we left his house, we saw a lady and her daughter across the street, so we decided to go talk to her. Come to find out, she recognized my companion from his last area! It was awesome. We left a prayer with her, and then went and said a prayer of gratitude to our Heavenly Father for blessing us with soo much success in soo little time. After that, we went to our second harvest area. Again, it was a little rich. We started knocking doors, and we saw a family outside, so we decided to go and talk to them. Turns out, they are a part member family! They really want to come back to church, and they are super nice. We are really excited to start working with them. It was really a day of miracles when we decided to let the Lord guide us to the places that He wanted.”

Open your mouths, they are praying for us and expecting us:

“While unlocking our bikes an older man walked by and I felt impressed to follow him so I went. We walked with him for about half a block and at the end he didn’t accept. It might have seemed a failure at first but we decided to just keep going. We stopped where we were at the front of a home and prayed to confirm our next plans. After the amen, the person who lived there came pulling up in her car. Without a second thought my companion said hello and told her God sent us there to leave a prayer with her. She looked a little surprised and said yes. She readily accepted the blessing and afterwards accepted baptism, church and a solid baptismal date! After we left the blessing with her she was so happy and thankful to God. We asked what made her so happy and she told us the night before she had a dream that two people in white shirts on bikes were standing in her lawn and she had no idea what it meant or why they were there. After that evening she knew that Jesus Christ sent his representatives to help her come closer to him.” 

We wish we could have been there for the first ever Mission Leadership Council for the Fort Lauderdale Mission which included four very above average sister missionaries. The MLC replaces the Zone Leaders Council.

President Anderson wrote the following comment for this picture…

“Doing things that have never been done before! We now have an MLC (Mission Leadership Council) in place of ZLC! There are four amazing sisters in this great council and we are so excited! With this next transfer there will be 55 sisters in this great mission! We love you!”

We finally have an internet connection in our house so over the next week or so I can catch up with  our travels and President Anderson’s letters…Here are the experiences from his letter of 4/28.

The fourth principle is “serve the Lord with love”. I know no greater example of this than the Savior himself who served the Father with love as he taught His Gospel. Love will allow the Spirit to touch hearts because it shows the Children of God that you care, that you are sincere, that you are heartfelt, and that you truly represent and emulate Jesus Christ. I love how you show love in your work because you love them:

“One miracle we saw is last week while we were harvesting we knocked on this door that had a window in it. A lady looked through the glass and told us that she wasn’t interested and that she was ok. I told her that we were representatives of Jesus Christ and that we were there to leave her with his blessing because we loved her. When I said we loved her, she immediately started smiling and you could tell she was happier. My companion then told her that what we wanted to see and that we were there to make her happy. So she then opened the door and we left her with a powerful blessing. And after she was crying she felt the spirit so strong and she accepted to be baptized.”

I love how you plan with purpose and how you magnify that purpose with everyone:

“My companion and I were Harvesting in this area and after a few doors my companion told me that he didn’t think that we should be there because he didn’t feel the Spirit very strongly. We left the area and started making our way to another appointment we had. On the way we saw a man standing out all by himself in a soccer field quite a ways from the road. We decided to go talk to him. We rode our bikes out across the field and introduced ourselves to him. We asked him what he was doing out all by himself in the field and he told us he had been praying to God for help because his life had fallen apart. We testified and asked to leave a blessing with him. As we prayed with him the Spirit was so strong. Afterwards we asked him how he felt and invited him to be baptized. He said yes! He told us that we ‘had hit him right here’ pointing to his heart. He knew that we had been sent by God.”

I love how you teach the truth with your testimony and how you pierce their hearts with the Spirit:

“My companion and I had a couple of follow-ups mixed in with a day full of finding.  Our day went well.  We were able to bless 11 people, but what really stood out to me about the day was that the 4 most solid blessings all came from opening our mouths.  We contacted a kid sitting by the pool, a lady walking up the stairs, a lady sitting out on the stairs, and another guy walking past us in the hallway, and all 4 of them lead us back to their houses and let us pray with them.  In the past couple weeks I’ve increased my testimony of the importance of opening our mouths, and how it allows us to fulfill our purpose at all times.  It is a great way to increase our faith, internalize our purpose, and demonstrate to the Lord that we truly do want to find the elect.”

Our members, the Book of Mormon, and testimony become powerful tools as we admonish others to search the scriptures:

“This past week as we were harvesting we took a recent convert out with us and he carried a book of Mormon with him. We told him to give the book to whoever he felt prompted to. As we continued to knock we found this lady and we left the blessing with her. After the blessing she was crying and so thankful and we invited her to be baptized and she said yes. Then our recent convert whips out the Book of Mormon and says ‘Here, I want to give you this.’ Then the lady recognized that we were Mormons and said to him ‘You don’t really read this Mormon book do you?’  His response was amazing! ‘Yes ma’am I do, It has changed my life and kept me off the streets and has brought me lots of peace and happiness!” As he said that the spirit was so strong and Tina kept the book and told us that she will read it and come to church.”

Well we made it home safe and basically sound. But we will not have internet until Wednesday. I am writing this in a stake center parking lot. Will catch things up to date soon.

We stopped tonight in Farmington NM. If we had not told the wonderful couple that has watched over our house for the last 17 months and our family that we would not be home until Saturday afternoon, we could be home in time for dinner tomorrow. But instead we will probably drive home via the St George area where we can say hello to some of the couples we served with in the FFLM and other missions.

I want to share an experience from a blog of one of the amazing above average missionaries serving in the Fort Lauderdale mission that illustrates one of the reasons it is having so much success. The combination of faith, exact obedience and hard work makes the missionaries close to the spirit. We were indeed blessed to have the opportunity to get to know and serve with such missionaries.

“I also saw a huge miracle in our area, as I was on exchanges in our area with Elder Faniaka. We were going to an appointment that we had, but we turned down the wrong street. Then I looked and saw this man on the side of the street and the Spirit absolutely prompted me to pull over and talk with this man. I kept driving, but then I heard the Spirit tell me the same thing a second time. So we stopped the car, parked, and began heading to this mans house. We knocked on his door, because he had gone inside. Then his whole family came out, we prayed with them, and they explained they had been praying for more peace and strength and this prayer brought that. Then they all accepted baptism! It was amazing to see the Spirit guide us to this amazing family.”