Week 74

Mom☺️

This week has been crazy busy, but overall pretty good! I was sick most the week throwing up, but I managed. It was kind of cool to see that when I was teaching a lesson my sickness seamed to go away, but right after the closing prayer, it came back! Haha I knew Heavenly Father was helping me so I could focus and teach the things I needed. J is getting super super excited for her baptism coming up!! And so are we! 😃😃😃 This family has been changing soooo much!! J used to be the most quiet and shy little girl I've ever me! But now, we can't get her to be quiet and calm!!😂😂 Its been one of the best experiences to watch her grow in this short amount of time.

Talking to you guys was awesome!! Things seem to be going very well at home which makes me happy!! I miss you so much, but I'm SOOO happy to be out on my mission!! So many amazing experiences still to be had out here! The one thing I am also excited about though is being able to apply all these things I'm learning to life after the mission! When I study and learn things in the morning I always get so excited to go out and apply the things from the scriptures or from PMG that I've learned that day, so I'm excited to apply the things I'm learning now!

This week I came across something in the scriptures that intrigued me.In Alma 21:23 Ammon is teaching a bunch of King Lamonis people and this is what he says. "23 And Ammon did preach unto the people of king Lamoni; and it came to pass that he did teach them all things concerning things pertaining to righteousness. And he did exhort them daily, with all diligence; and they gave heed unto his word, and they were zealous for keeping the commandments of God." And it made me think if I'm zealous about keeping all the commandments. Zealous also means diligent, zealous, fervent, initiative. Are we the ones to Initiate keeping the commandments around family, friends and coworkers? Or do we kind of go with the flow. That's really what I want to work on, I gaining more Zeal in keeping ALL the commandments!

Love you sooo much!! Thank you for all you do for me! Thanks for all the support and love you show!! It means so so so much! I hope you have a great day and week! Talk to you soon!

Love Elder Ashworth

Week 73

Mom!! I’m excited to talk to you on Christmas!!! We're planning to Skype at 6pm your time.  This week went well to say the least! L, our recent convert has found over 50 family names and is going to the temple on Wednesday and we're pumped to go with her! We got to go on a temple tour with R
before her baptism and she LOVED it! Then she got baptized and it was a great service overall! The man who baptized her has been returning to re-activity. Right after the baptism we were checking up on him outside the font and he came out crying and said "Thank you for giving me this opportunity, I didnt think i would ever be able to do this" The spirit hit me strongly and i felt like it whispered "He needed this just as much as R needed this" and it was a great experience.  Its awesome to see how Heavenly Father works. We were pondering a lot at first of who we would bring to her lessons to have her become friends with in the ward, and now we all know why the spirit put his name into our heads. We then got to go to do an endowment with a recent convert and that was amazing as always! I received a lot of answers on things and feelings of peace. I definitely needed that this week! We also had the Christmas devotional and so we got to see all the missionaries in the mission which was a blast! J is SOOO excited for her baptism on the 30th! A lot of non members should be coming so it should be a great opportunity to find some awesome new people! Overall it was a good week. Thanks for the Christmas packages!!

Love your son,
Elder Ashworth

So CRAZYYY story behind this!! To make it short, Elder Langston and I were at the church preparing things for our baptism in the afternoon and we had some garbage from our lunch. Well the cleaners had just come and taken out all the garbages so for some odd reason I insisted we go out to the dumpster to take out our trash. Usually I wouldnt care, but for some reason this time I did. Well we walked out there and right next to the dumpster was this 60' Flatscreen TV!!! E. Langston was almost positive it didnt work, and i was guessing it didnt, but i found an iPhone in the garbage earlier on my mission that ended up working, so i basically begged him to help me carry it in to the chapel so we could plug it in and really see if it worked. Well we plugged it in, and then i connected my iPad to it, and low and behold, it works!!! I had to hold the reset button for a second but after that it turned right on!! It glitches a tiny bit but it still works great!! Haha so we left a note by the dumpster saying to call us if someone was looking for it. So if after a week or so nobody has called we're going to go sell it to the pawn shop and secretly give the money to one of our investigators so they can buy a ring to get married!! Talk about manna from heaven right?!!!

Week 72

Mom,

This week was great! We had a lot of cool miracles! R is getting baptized this week and she is beyond excited! She came to another persons baptism this last Saturday and loved it. The spirit was so so strong and she could feel it. J the 9 year old is also extremely excited for her baptism coming up! L, the one we bought the coffee pots off of is doing better. Their schedules are just so busy so it's tough to get on a good schedule with them. We've got some good plans tho this week to help them progress so we're excited! We have the Christmas devotional this week too which should be fun! Our recent
convert L is going to the temple to do baptisms for the dead and we will get to go with her so that will also be great! Overall, things are going great!

I think one of the highlights of my week was hearing how well Steven and the team is doing! It made me tear up a little when I saw that video of him! I'm just so excited for him! His hard work is paying off and he's reaching his goals which makes me beyond happy!

I love you Mom! Thank you for all that you do for me! You can just send all the packages to the office :) I don't exactly know our schedule for Christmas but ill let you know ASAP! :)

Love Elder Ashworth

anelee likes to race me after each lesson... She thinks she's fast... But I beat her ;)

Week 71

Mom!!  I'm so so so excited for Stevo!! Super pumped his practice is paying off! So excited for him!

So this week went really well! We went on a couple of exchanges which was really fun! I got to go on exchanges with Elder Chidester from high school which was super super fun! He's a great leader, I learned a lot on that exchange. We were able to see a bunch of people that day as well here in Hunter's Creek which was obviously a plus. We had a great miracle with finding a new baptism this week! The two Sisters who work in the employment office went to the post office and had this less active lady come up to her and tell her that she wants to come back to church! So we went and visited her that day and it ends up that she has a 9 year old daughter who hasn't been baptized who really wants to be! So they came to church and she's gonna get baptized on the 30th of this month!! We're excited to work with her! We then had the baptismal interview for our investigator R and she passed! R was also a miracle, she just walked into church one Sunday because she said God told her to! Haha and she loves everything about the church, she's been reading the Book of Mormon everyday and she loves it! So lots of cool little miracles this week! We then had a couple lessons with our investigator L, her husband is a member, and those went well! We somehow ended up buying her two coffee pots off her for $15! Haha we bought them so they'd quit drinking coffee and it's working well!! Overall we're being blessed tremendously! All these investigators have basically fallen in our lap. We just work as hard as we can and God will place the prepared ones right in front of us and it all works out. I'm really really excited for the next couple months here in this area!

Thanks for the Christmas tree!! I appreciate that a lot! I love you! Thanks for everything!

Love Elder Ashworth

Elder Chidester giving our investigator a nice little haircut!
Haha we serve in many different ways here! ;)

Our investigator in her sweet PJ's! The Christmas party was "Polar Express" themed so everyone
 wore their PJ's...We obviously couldn't do that so we just wore some dope sweaters!! Haha

Took some Christmas pics at the Reisings after exchanging back up in Eustis!

#class

Week 70

Mom,

I'm super glad you guys had a great week and a fun time in Gunlock!  Erin said she loved it!

I'm glad that all the boys had fun hunting and driving the rhinos and things like that! I miss that stuff! I'm glad you guys were safe! Hope Stevo’s game goes well this week. So this week we again had a good amount of meetings and things we had to do. We did go on an exchange with Elder Crismon and Egan and that was a lot of fun and was a great learning exchange. I went with Elder Crismon and we just talked about missionary work and Preach My Gospel basically the whole exchange and it was awesome! Elder Crismon was
here in Hunter's Creek when I was here before so we became really good friends during that time. We were able to teach a lot which was great! One really cool experience I had this week though was we were over
teaching a recent convert and his little step brothers were there who were 6 & 8 so we invited them to sit in with us. At the end of the lesson I thought it would be a great opportunity to teach the little kids how to pray so they could pray on their own later on in their life. So I taught the 8yr old how to pray and he said an awesome, heartfelt, sincere prayer that nearly brought me to tears! I then asked the little boy how he felt after he prayed and all he said was, "Loved" We left the house and I couldn't help but just ponder how simple the gospel is. When we pray, when we read our scriptures, when we go to church, when we go to the temple, when we go home teaching, we should feel "Loved" Heavenly Father always has his loving hands extended, we just have to reach out ourselves most the time to feel it more. It was so awesome to see that even a 8 year old boy who doesn't even know the gospel could tell that the feelings he received while praying were feelings of love. Another great thing that happened was that we had a less active lady who we both didn't expect to see just show up to church! As she was partaking of the sacrament you could tell she was pondering her life and the things she wanted to change. You could tell it was a spiritual experience for her. I mean it was a spiritual experience just watching her. She's committed to get back on track to come each Sunday and read her scriptures everyday and we're so excited to start working with her!

I love you Mom!! Thank you for EVERYTHING!! You're the best!

Love Elder Ashworth

Week 69

Hey Mom!!! This week felt the exact same way for me as well. Short, but very long!

One amazing thing that did happen though was that this Husband and Wife randomly walked in to church and wanted to learn more! We had them sit through sacrament and then afterwards we answered all of their questions. It turns out she was doing a school project and had to visit a church that was not of her faith and so she decided to come to ours! She was actually on vacation here from Pennsylvania so we got all of her info and are going to send it to the missionaries up there. So that was pretty awesome. Another cool thing that happened was we had one of our investigators who has been in and out of town for about a month finally come to church with his grandson!! It was awesome! They loved church and are excited to keep coming! Our members here are just plain awesome and it's made all the difference!! Overall things are just going really well here which always makes missionary work more fun :):)

I miss you a lot too mom!! I hope you guys have a great week!! Be safe and have fun in Gunlock! Have a happy happy Thanksgiving!! I can't wait to talk to you guys on Christmas! :):)

Love Elder Ashworth

Week 68

Transfers are today and we have to go pick up the newbies so I don’t have as much time to email. Sorry. So this week was really good and busy!! Our investigators are all doing pretty well!! R, who randomly showed up to church last week, came again this week and she LOVED it again! She knows her scriptures well and seems to be very in tune with the spirit which makes our job a lot easier. We feel like we really found the right person to fellowship her and that has made a big difference as well. N came to church and to a musical fireside last night and loved it as well!! We're hoping to set her on date this next week which will be great! Overall everything has been going great! Our other investigator L is also doing really well! She's starting to quit smoking to be ready in December for baptism which we're really excited about as well! Elder Langston and I are really excited for this next transfer together and for the miracles we're going to see! I'm just so so so happy right now!! Things just always seem to fall into place. The areas I've served in just always seem to grow so quick and I know it's not by what I'm doing, but just Heavenly Father blessing me tremendously! I'm so happy to be serving right now. I wouldn't change this time for anything in the world!

I hope you have an amazing week!! I love you soooo much!! You're amazing mom❤️❤️❤️ I'm sooooo lucky to have you in my life especially as my mother😘😘😘

Love Your Son
Elder Ashworth

Week 67

Hey mom!! I miss you! Thanks for the pics of you and Erin and the boys! ❤️❤️😘😘 Haha that's
crazy that it snowed!! I miss snow right now!! It's soooo stinkin hotttt right now!! I'll get over it tho!

This week was great!! One great thing was one of our investigators named J quit smoking and you can already see the difference it's making in his life! He said it's been really hard but he said it's definitely been worth it. Now we just need him to get married which he's doing in a month! We've been praying that he would be able to find the means to buy her a ring and propose and when we went to our lesson on Tuesday he said he got this amazing side job in a couple weeks that will pay for the ring so we were all excited about that!

Our recent convert L who just got baptized two weeks ago is going into the family history specialist on Wednesday to find some names so we can take her to the temple to do baptisms which we're also ESTATIC about!!

Then our investigator L who's husband is a member basically taught us the Restoration this week and explained the importance of authority which was awesome! We've been working real hard on teaching as simply as possible so they can't not understand it if that makes sense. And for her, it seems to be paying off! She and her husband both love church every time they come so we see her progressing pretty quick.

We also had an investigator who kind of fell off the face of the earth show up to the stake party on Saturday and come on Sunday because she kept hearing her member friends voice tell her to come to
church! Haha choosing the right member friends is extremely important for investigators. They need to be socially converted as well as spiritually. Then we had a lady who met with missionaries like 17
years ago show up to church because she said the Holy Ghost had been telling her for a while every time she drove past the church that she needed to come... So she did and we're teaching her now and she LOVED the message of the Restoration! So ya, things are falling into place here which is awesome! Heavenly Father is blessing us a lot a lot right now and I feel beyond blessed to be in this area while all this success is going on.

How are things for you?? Any fun photoshoots lately?? Are we gonna go strait from the airport to your studio and the field and the Newman’s arch to take lots of pics? 😏😋😋😘😘 Haha I miss you mom!! I hope you have a great week!! 😘😘❤️❤️

Love Elder Ashworth!



Week 66

Mom!!

May I start by saying you looked amazingly young and pretty In the pictures you sent! Like how do you stay so fit and fad? 😉 I also loved dads and especially Stevos costume!! He was looking fresh... Kinda like me ;) Haha Soooo I hope you had a really good week and a great Halloween! We didn't do much Halloween night.... We had some awesome appointments and then just went to the office to prepare a training that we're giving to the mission in a week or so!! We did have a fun trick or treat in the church and all the missionaries in the Ward decorated a door and handed out candy which was a lot of fun!
On Tuesday we had to help some elders pack up their apartments because a branch was formed in one of the stakes and so one of the areas is being dissolved so we had to form 2 trios and drive them up to their new areas with all their stuff so we had a truck and trailer full of beds and all that kind of stuff! It was quite the adventure driving 4 hours there and back.... We then got to take more beds and desks to two other areas that are getting some new Elders that are coming back tomorrow so on Saturday we spent about another 4 hours driving around delivering stuff!! Just call us the FOM Moving Crew ;) Haha Elder Langston and I had some awesome discussions about life and missionary work and how to improve and help the mission improve so we saw all the driving as a little blessing even tho it took a while! Even tho we drove a lot we still planned our days just right so we could teach in the morning and the night! We saw a lot of investigators and less active and returning members and we saw a lot of success!! In some of the car rides we even called our investigators and prayed and read with them and had good gospel discussions with them over the phone! Just trying to use technology to the best of our abilities! The best part of the week by far tho was the confirmation of L!! It was sooooo awesome to stand in that circle and participate in her receiving the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost! The spirit was soooo strong in that circle. It was a busy, fun, eventful spiritually filled week to say the least!! I'm glad to hear your week went well!! Thank you for all the updates and pics!! I love getting those!! :):) I hope you guys have a great week again! I miss and love you :):)

Love Elder Ashworth