Week 100

Hey mom!!☺️☺️

This week went well! We continue to see awesome miracles. Bryce Duff our investigator who is a recent converts son is doing well! He came to church, has been reading and praying, and is excited to be baptized on July 16th! We also had Jackie Fernandez come to church again who is the girlfriend of a member and we're meeting with her again on Tuesday and should set a baptismal date! Another Recent Converts boyfriend came to church and we're teaching him so that's also cool! The less actives are becoming more and more active right now which is also cool! The ward council is starting to respect us more. Past missionaries really lost the respect of the ward so we're trying to gain it back! I also gave a talk this week in sacrament and felt like I did ok! Probably the last talk I'll give before my homecoming which is weird to think about! The coolest thing that happened was that we got an Elder named Elder Hernandez emergency transferred with us and he's the funniest little Mexican kid I know!!😂😂😂 I started a list in my notes of all the funny things he's said and I've already got like 20 one liners!! He's like 5'3 and he's the most sincere and Christlike Elder I've met. He teaches from the heart and follows the spirit well. But he also is HILARIOUS and says the most crazy things ever and we just are crying laughing almost 80% of the time 😂😂 We call him "chancho" and he loves it! We made sure he knew we just call him that cuz we love him and not to tease and he is totally ok with it. Haha it's going to be the best 4 weeks of my mission with him!😂😂 Half of the lessons we walk into his zipper is down and I have to tell him to zip it up!! I don't know how it always is down but it is pretty hilarious! He's known to be the sloppiest missionary ever. But I've already fixed that. Just little loving reminders to pick something up or just to do it myself goes a long way. He's already becoming a lot more organized and it's been cool to watch! I wish I was more patient and loving when I went about trying to help the Triplets become more organized. That's one thing I've loved about my mission, I have become a lot more patient with others over time and it's helped me a lot. Anyways, he's the funniest and coolest kid I've served with so its gonna be a blast! Other than that the work is progressing, I'm happy, the ward is happy, and the Lord is happy! What more can you ask for?

Super exciting that you had the Powell planning night! Wish I could have facetimed in!! 😏😉 Haha things are well! Elder Olson is really cool and nice and the days are going by fast so things are well :) How are you?! I miss you! What fun things do you guys have planned soon?? Anyways, I miss you!

I love you!
Love Elder Ashworth!

Mowed a less active ladies lawn... It was literally 3 feet long! And she had a junky mower that
you had to push manually so we had to go over it twice in different directions so it could cut it all!
Good thing it was a cool 101 degrees outside when we did it!!

Cat Lovers UNITE!! Jk, I hate cats. Hahah but this person obviously loves them
so much that he painted his cat on his mailbox #majestic

Temple tour with Sarah Siever! Went well!
She just needs to accept all the answers Heavenly Father is giving her!

I guess all these people know Grandma and Grandpa Ashwworth.
The lady on the far left taught school with Deanne Ashworth in Vegas I guess! Small world

Funny name for a street

Stopped by the old Eustis home on our way to pick up Elder Hernandez and happened
to catch Elder Crismon leaving right when we pulled up!
He's lost like 70 lbs on his mission! Super excited for him.

Fist night teaching with Elder Hernandez! Aka "CHANCHO"

Bye bye Elder Tredinnick! It's been fun man!

This is Sister Daniels! She is our meal coordinator!
Whenever we don't have a dinner she'll take us to Burger King!
She is convinced it's not fast food cuz they use peanut oil to cook

First day with Elder Olson!

Sharing a video to go a long with our lesson with Sister Wilcoxson!
  She's been less active for a while but has came the past 2 weeks!

Funny story behind these two pics! So we were eating at her house and I looked at her calendar
and this is what it said. And so I said, "Sister Bush, are you prepare for the Hurricanes?"
And she said "Prepare? Don't you mean prepared?" And I said "idk, that's just what the calendar says"
And so she started to crack up laughing that she forgot the "d" in prepared and
so I had to take a pic with her by It! She kept saying "no wonder no one is preparing! I forgot the D!"

Week 99

Mom!!

So this week was awesome!! We saw some really cool miracles! Our less actives are all coming back to church which is awesome! Lots of them are starting to text us when they read and pray and don't even have to be reminded to come to church! They just come on their own and it's awesome to see them be self sufficient! We had another amazing miracle where a member from the Lake Mary stake brought his non-member girlfriend to church and she lives in our area!! She is super solid too! Another cool miracle was we only put 16 miles on our bikes cuz we had members each afternoon and evening to come to lessons with us. The members are telling the other set of elders in our ward "Man, those South Elders are wearing me out" 😉 Haha they say it in a good way tho! They like that we're trying so hard to get members out and fellowship these less actives and recent converts. But in those 16 miles we got rained on 3 times... Don't know how we always seem to come out of a lesson RIGHT when it starts to rain and we're on our bikes! But Satan isn't happy with all the work we're getting done is how I would like to see it ;) One thing we need to work on this week tho is setting solid dates with all these new people so we can get them baptized and progressing towards the temple. This stake has a rule that the wards are in charge of getting all recent converts to the temple within 14 days with their own family names! It's been amazing to see the difference it's made in retention in this stake! Heavenly Father can trust this Stake more now so baptisms are highest in the mission here in this Zone which is cool!

Overall, lots of great things are happening right now! I get to stay here and be with my new comp Elder Olson which will be super super fun! He has back problems and can't bike so I'm gonna have to
get one of those baby carriages to pull behind me as I bike. President offered to give us our own car with unlimited miles but I turned him down cuz I want to make this the hardest but most fun 5 weeks of my mission! There's lots of dirt jumps and drop offs that we're gonna catch sweet air off of while biking! Haha jk, I accepted the car with open arms!! #NoMoreBikingInTheHeat/Rain/Ghetto! Haha so that will be nice too so we can visit more people since it takes longer to bike places!

Can’t believe the trips are 13 today 😱😱😱 Haha I sent them and dad cards so they should get there soon! I love you!

Love Elder Ashworth!

Got to ride home in the rain without shoes! All my shoes are soaking from getting rained on and
I HATE wet shoes! So I took them off and put them in my backpack so they'd stay dry 😂😂
All those gangsters were looking at me like "what the heck is this white boy doin" 😂😂

Week 98

 Hey Mom❤️

This week was another hot one here in FL! We were able to find some cool new people and work with those who came to church from last week. We weren't able to meet with R this week cuz of how busy we were but our member brother B really pulled through for us and still invited him and brought him to church! We're gonna start teaching him on Tuesday! The recent converts husband and so came again which was awesome! The recent convert was even home sick but her non-member husband and non-member son still came on their own!! It was super cool! Another great one was Sister S who met with missionaries for 2 years and went to church that entire time in Texas! We had some awesome member present lessons with her this week and she came with her son and the members were BOMB at fellowshipping and making her feel loved and at home! It was so cool to watch! Things are really picking up nicely here. It's the hardest area I've served in cuz no one we meet wants to keep commitments, but Heavenly Father like usual has placed people in our laps that are ready to progress and keep commitments! He has been so good to me my entire mission in that aspect! We had many members come out with us this week and we were able to set up a member for every night and almost every afternoon for this next week! We basically had to call everyone on the ward roster to get it all set up but it will pay off. Member fellowship and support is key in lasting conversion. We have many less actives here who say that once they start getting actual visits from their home and visiting teachers rather then just post cards once a month that they'll come back. Now they are using that as a crutch and are making dumb excuses for not coming back, but who cares, we should still be willing to go out of our way to do anything we can to help even one member come back. That's a big problem is that wards focus too much at times on the big things and events and principles, rather then mastering and taking time to focus on the simple and basic ones. I'm not trying to complain about wards here, but if we would all do better at focusing on helping the low hanging fruit come back, it would do a lot. But sometimes we focus too much on other things like getting everything ready and prepared for Ward activities, rather then focusing on who we're gonna get to these activities who are recent converts, less actives, or non-members. Cuz that's really what the activities are meant for, is to retain, re-activate, and find new investigators for the missionaries to teach. Overall the ward I've served in have done pretty well at that, home and visiting teaching. Overall tho things are going great and I'm excited for the week ahead.

I was so so so excited to see that Tanner won 3on3 and that Stevo won everything besides ball at B
BYU basketball camp. I'm super super proud of him!!!

I love you so much!

This member has a bunch of weird swords and things that he showed off to us before dinner!

Elder Jennings (Middle Elder on the right of me) had his birthday dinner this week!
This member cooked a ton for food for him!

Week 97

Mom!!

So this week was a good one! We were on bikes and probably almost got hit by crazy drivers just about everyday, but Heavenly Father seems to always protect us! We're seeing a lot of miracles right now which has been awesome. Yesterday we had a couple non members show up that were just strait miracles! We had a guy from Mexico who met with missionaries there ride his bike over 2 hours to come to church! He lives in a different stake but we were able to teach him and take him to Gospel Principles and priesthood with us and he is super excited to meet with the missionaries up there in the other stake! We also had a recent converts non-member husband and son come to church who we've been trying to work with and they said they'd both be coming each week from now on which will be awesome! So we're pumped to work with them. Another cool one was that our two investigators Deshawn and Christelle came and both enjoyed it! They're both getting pretty close to baptism so keep them in your prayers! Last was a guy named Ron who this member brought. Ron is from the Philippines and really really loved church and is excited to meet with us this week! I've been praying for miracles like this to happen for over a month and this week Heavenly Father just let the floodgates of miracles open up to us! We have been working very hard in my opinion so it was nice to have a little it of a pay day on Sunday with all those people come to church. We also had a few less actives come to church and one of them bore her testimony about how grateful she was that the missionaries haven't given up on her. It was nice to hear that. We found some really cool investigators this week as well which was cool! One of them was a lady who went to church for over a year and a half in Texas but never joined the church because basically she was never committed to pray to know if this was Gods church... Haha so we committed her to do that and she's coming to church with her two sons this week! We had the YM president come over with us to that lesson and he clicked well with her! So we have the bishop and his wife coming to this next lesson on Tuesday and it should be awesome! One bad thing that happened this last week was on Sunday we got DUMPED on on our bikes and then my chain got stuck and I was peddling super hard when it got stuck and so when it got stuck it got bent because I was trying to peddle so hard. So we called a member with a truck to come pick us up and come to our last two lessons of the night with us and then drop us off at our apartment. Other then that it was a pretty cool week. I got a new chain and now my bike is good as new again!!

Have a great week!! I love you so much!!! you so so so much!

Love Your Son Elder Ashworth