El Milagro de Moroni

Even though we have iPads, there's nothing quite like the feeling of
marking up your paper scriptures. It's like a piece of art that shows
your knowledge of the gospel slowly growing. :D

I was very impressed at the very consecrated white handbook Sister
Alley was rocking in her pics last week. All marked up and everything. In response, I wanted to show you my marked up iPad missionary rule book that we have to
read every day, as well, since we are an iPad mission! #consecration

August 24, 2015

These weeks are going by so quick now that I hit Monday and I have no idea what to say to y'all.

Well for starters, a post shout-out to Mom and Dad for hitting their 26th anniversary! You guys are the best parents a lil missionary could ask for! We'll be sure to party hard for your 27th next together ;) and then a pre-shout out to Aubz for her birthday this week! Dang, 14. I feel like you've actually aged like 5 years worth already. You had braces when I left, for goodness sake! Enjoy the cumpleaños and eat some pie for me! (Cuz pie is better than cake).

Other than that I guess I'll just throw out some cool stuff from this week. We had tracted this house about a month ago. The person told us we could come back later so we occasionally stopped by over the following weeks to try and set up an actual appointment. One time we were talking to them on their porch and they told us that there was someone else that lived with them named "Moroni". We were like, "Moroni? Ok, he has got to be a less active member or something." We eventually got to meet Moroni and he is exactly that! He grew up in Mexico in the church but when he got older he wanted to party with friends and all that and eventually just fell away. One thing led to another and he found himself here in Vegas living with his friend and his wife (who were the original people we contacted). 

This is the awesome part. We had a lesson with them yesterday and afterwards he came outside with us and was talking to us. He said that he had felt super lonely recently and knew he had made the wrong choice leaving the church. So he said a prayer two weeks ago and specifically asked God to send him the Elders. And then a day or two after the prayer his friend told him about how these 2 white guys both named "Elder" who randomly spoke Spanish were going to come over and meet with them. He told us that in that moment he knew it was Heavenly Father reaching out to him! So our plan: reactivate Moroni, bring them all to church, teach them the gospel, and then Moroni baptizes his friends. BOOM!

It was a super cool moment to hear that. To hear that one of God's children pleaded to have the elders sent to him, and I got to be one of those elders! 

Also, funny little thing we are doing. We are teaching this other guy and he is super into basketball. So we are coming up with basketball references for all the characters in the Book of Mormon. Tonight we are teaching Him about how Nephi is the Tim Duncan of the Book of Mormon.....

Now that you've tried to figure it out, basically our connection is this: Tim Duncan is an all star because he is one of the most fundamentally sound players ever. He isn't flashy, he isn't a show off. He is the best at the basics. Nephi was the most obedient of all. His catchphrase was, "Let us be faithful in keeping the commandments of the Lord." The commandments are the basics, the fundamentals, of the gospel so therefore Nephi is Tim Duncan. DOUBLE BOOM!

It's really fun being a missionary. :)

So that's the week. The transfer is winding down. We have a temple trip this week and then we are meeting with the AP's right afterwards to give our transfer suggestions for our zone. I REALLY REALLY REALLY want to stay one more transfer here, but.....it's whatever the Lord needs done. Still, feel free to pray for me to be able to stay one more :D

¡Les amo muchisimo!

-Elder Alley

Out Here Bible Bashin'

At Zone Conference
Front row: Hermanas Lucero, Rodriguez, McAfee, Ramirez, Sanchez
and Carvajal
Back row: Elders Celestino, Anderson, me and Beltré

We went to get pizza to celebrate Hermana Sanchez's last week in the mission. 

That is a 30 inch pizza and a member kindly paid for it all!
#tendermercies #missionaryblessings 

My growing watch collection

Elder Walker's homemade jambalaya

August 17, 2015

John 3:6 "That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit."

So we are over half way through the transfer now....freak. I'm already getting a little nervous for the next round of transfers because I REALLY want to stay for one more. I'm loving the area and being with Elder Walker and getting to serve the missionaries in the Las Vegas Zone...but every time I start getting too comfortable the Lord has a tendency to change something in my life. God's funny that way.

I've been truly trying to live with the mindset that Elder Holland talks about in his "For Times of Trouble" DVD. He says, "God is always going to give us what we want, or something better." I love that! He is perfect and has an eternal perspective. As our father He naturally wants only the best for us. So with everything that we have in life, we are going to always get what will be the best for us in the grand scheme of things even if in the moment it is not exactly what we were praying and asking for. Got to keep that mind set always!

So you might be wondering about the title to this week's email. Ya know, as I prepared for my mission I had envisioned that just about every day I would have people pulling out their Bible and trying to fight with me and tell me that it is impossible that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is everything that it claims to be. As I've been out here though, I've been shocked that it really hasn't been that common. Nevertheless I have studied up to be able to respond to people's questions and I feel pretty knowledgable with my Bible now haha but this last week Bible Bashers were out more than ever!

We had lots of people wanting to have a scripture war and see who could pull out more Bible verses to defend their side. We always try to avoid those situations because it is impossible to have a spiritually enlightening conversation with a person with whom you are arguing. So we usually will make our point and leave or just let people say what they want to say.

However, we were visiting a less active member in our ward who we have been helping to come back to activity and he is genuinely the nicest man ever. As we were visiting him, though, his brother-in-law came over, and then he started getting on us and really drilling our member friend and just not being very pleasant. He said it is blasphemous that we claim to have another book that is just as important as the Bible, etc. He said he has read the Bible twice all the way through and has never read anything about the Book of Mormon or Joseph Smith in there.

We had already been there a little bit by the time he got there, so I didn't want to get wrapped in another lengthy discussion so I simply told the man, "Sir, we are going to come over next week and we will show you just where in the Bible it talks about the Book of Mormon. (Ezekiel 37: Stick of Judah, Stick of Joseph, among others). So we have that lesson this next week.

That lesson got me really fired up because I could see how bad our member friend felt. He felt embarrassed by his brother-in-law and bad that he didn't know the doctrine to be able to defend himself. That got me mad so when we got home I studied all night and all the next morning all of the biblical references that support our church. I took notes and drew diagrams and everything. (I've got a whole book of material I've come up with to show y'all when I get home if you want.) And especially I studied a talk by Tad R. Callister entitled, "What is the blueprint of Christ's Church?" in which he shows us perfectly, using the Bible, how ours is the only church that teaches all the same doctrine, has all the same ordinances, has the same structure, and yields the same fruits as Christ's original church as described in the New Testament. I highly recommend it. It will destroy any doubt you have that the Mormon church isn't the same church Christ established.

But this was the interesting thing. I went so hard studying up this stuff, and then the next day we had a lesson win a guy who was very well versed in his Bible. And he just kept talking and taking and was going off about all this stuff. So, I literally asked for his own copy of the Bible and using it I showed him several references to apostles and prophets and the importance of having them on the earth and how God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and so therefore He would have apostles and prophets on the earth today. Then I asked him if he knew who those men were today? He said, "No", and we talked about President Monson (our prophet) and the Quorum of the 12 Apostles and all that. Then...he just sat there for a sec. He literally admitted that we were probably right and that it was insane how we used his own Bible to prove it. But, he said that it really didn't mean much to him because he was still very set in his ways and that we needed to not focus so much on little details like that and teach more about faith and repentance and that stuff.

We left his house, and I learned a very valuable lesson. Yes, I technically "won" that Bible bash with that man...But...nothing had changed. The Spirit wasn't there because of the contention and so his heart wasn't touched and he wasn't changed at all from what we shared.

I guess it just goes to show, that the Spirit really is the most important thing in conversion. We can sit here and Bible bash all day, but unless someone has a broken heart and a contrite spirit and is truly searching for the truth, and we as missionaries teach with Christlike love and power and authority, people are going to stay exactly as they are. It was a good lesson to learn this week.

It was a good week! We are working harder than I ever have on my mission and teaching lots of people and helping all our missionaries. We hope to finally see some baptisms come out of all this work we are putting in, but that will come in the Lord's time. I truly know I'm working as hard as I can, so the baptisms and things like that are all just up to when the Lord wants them to happen. God is good!

Love y'all!

-Elder Alley

Watch Me Burn

Highlight of the week: carne asada at an investigator's house. Testimony bearing,
good food and good times and just everything I love about a mission all wrapped
up in a burrito.

Mis hermanos: The Spanish speaking missionaries

August 10, 2015

I can't believe it's been a week already....time is absolutely flying!

So this week was full of a lot of little tender mercies from the Lord. The couple we are teaching invited us over for dinner and we had an awesome experience there talking with them and the man's sister (who is actually a member of the church.)

Zone Conference was awesome and it was super fun getting to host it. President talked to us about faith and Sister Ahlander talked about hope. She used a clip from this DVD Jeffrey R. Holland has out called, "For Times of Trouble". If you haven't seen that DVD yet, I HIGHLY recommend buying it and watching it. I have used what I learned from that man's words in that DVD to help so many missionaries out here in the field who have been struggling. And, then the Assistants gave us a training all with the purpose to get us as enthusiastic about the work as possible. My favorite part of the training was a quote from a former pastor who was famous for his energetic sermons. When asked how he got so many people to listen to his speeches he responded, "With the word of God I light myself on fire and people come to watch me burn."

THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!!!!!

Their training got me super pumped and so that is my plan for the next couple weeks, no...the rest of my mission! Vegas better be ready because this desert is about to get even more blazing!

We also had a really cool experience seeing one of our prayers get answered. Elder Walker wanted to test our faith one day so we told Heavenly Father in our prayers that we were going to go out and find and talk to as many people as we could today, and we tasked him to prepare a family for us. A family that we could begin to teach. We were feeling good all day and did a lot of tracting and chatting (as much as we could with MLC being in the morning) but we worked as hard as we could with the time we had. The very first door we knocked had a Peruvian family inside! I was certain from the faith bursting inside me that this was going to be the only door we would need to knock. I talked to them about my cousin who is in Peru right now serving as a missionary and explained what we do and talked about how families can be blessed eternally from the message we have to share.....and they weren't having it......fetch.

However! We left unphased determined we would still find them. We worked the rest of the day and got some potentials who said we could come back later. I was content. We had worked hard. I knew there wasn't anything extra we really could have done and accepted that one of those potentials was the answer to our prayer. 

As we were about to make the trek home we thought maybe we could stop by one lady we had talked to like 2 weeks earlier and try and set something up for later in the week. She answered the door! And then she let us in! And we sat down, and then next thing you know her husband came and joined, and then her son! And as they were all sitting there, it hit me: This was the family!! Heavenly Father had answered our prayer, just not in the way we thought. It was such a cool moment when it hit me there. We taught them the 1st lesson and they liked it and we have another appointment with them. God is good!

I may be on the downhill slope now of my mission, but get ready to watch me leave a blazing trail these next months! 

WATCH ME BURN!

-Elder Alley

Hot, hot, hot.

If you have the "Meet the Mormons" DVD go to the bonus features and you'll see that there is a 7th story that didn't make it into the theatrical release of the movie. It's titled "The Artist". Watch it and you'll see that this woman now looks familiar. She lives in our mission and her Las Vegas Rescue Charity Service is in our mission. We got to go and help her charity out. And since we got our picture taken with her, Elder Walker and I are now practically movie stars. True story.

Look, Ma! Pictures for you!

Me and Elder Sefcik 

Sefcik, me and Walker

Hermana Jaccard, who was in my CCM district sent me an email with this pic. She
is a super awesome girl and it was uber nice of her to meet up with Sister Alley there!
This is what she wrote in her email:
Hey! Look who I found on Wednesday! I am training another missionary, and when I
went to pick her up I met your cousin! She's awesome and her trainer is, too. She got super
lucky! Hope all is well, keep on keepin' on. Que Dios le bendiga.

August 3, 2015

Elder Walker and I have been making a conscious effort to try and spend at the very least 1 hour tracting houses everyday. That doesn't seem like a lot, but with meetings, and Zone Leader stuff and lessons and all that it's actually a challenge to fit it in. It is super hot still down here and it is very uncomfortable sweating profusely in a shirt and tie and slacks, but I'll be honest, I love tracting because I feel the most like a missionary while I'm doing it!

It's exactly what I thought I'd be doing on a mission and it's fun talking to people. Plus it's really the only thing about missionary work that is saved only for those wearing the name tag. As home teachers we can sit in people's homes and teach the gospel and the church has plenty of meetings to go to, but knocking doors and talking to people in the street is the most unique thing we get to do!

So we had a fun week where we got to meet someone from the "Meet the Mormons" movie and give some service. We taught some good lessons and this last Sunday was the fullest I've seen the chapel in a long time! I'm hoping that it's been empty just cuz of people on vacations and such, but whatever it was, it was full this last week!

I often have these moments where I just have to stop and ask myself, "How did I get into this situation?" That happened on Friday night. It was about 8:45pm and we were out and about, but I really had to go to the bathroom. So we went to the nearest store we could, which ended up being Buy Low Market (the sketchiest, most ghetto grocery store you ever did see.) And so I go into the bathroom, which is the least sanitary one I've ever seen, and I'm doing my thing and then out of nowhere this Mexican guy just busts through the door and without a break just starts yakking it up in Spanish with me. Like, how did this guy even know I speak Spanish? So we talk about everything from the mission to Mexico City to the cartel to tacos and all in Spanish and in the world's jankiest bathroom. After leaving and going out to the car and actually giving the nice man from Tijuana a pamphlet and getting his info, we went home. Man....How'd I get here?? Missions. They be cray sometimes. Yupp, Yupp.

This next week is looking real busy as we have MLC on Wednesday and then Zone a Conference on Friday which Elder Walker and  I will be hosting. It should be a lot of fun!

Spiritual thought to end. My favorite quote by Ezra Taft Benson.

"The Lord works from the inside out. The world works from the outside in. The world would take people out of the slums. Christ takes the slums out of people, and then they take themselves out of the slums. The world would mold men by changing their environment. Christ changes men, who then change their environment. The world would shape human behavior, but Christ can change human nature."

The beauty of life is that we CAN CHANGE who we are. The world would have us stay the same and call it "tolerance" where as Christ would have us develop and call it "progression."

Much love from Vegas!

-Elder Alley

Note from Elder Alley's mom: He showed me the schedule for their upcoming zone conference and there is a "Sewing Room" that the Relief Society sisters have at each conference. It's set up with sisters and their sewing machines and the missionaries can bring things that need to be mended or slightly altered (hemmed, etc.) What a great idea! I need to find out if our stake does that and, if not, recommend that they do. What a blessing for the missionaries! Thank you, Las Vegas RS sisters. :)