December 28, 2010

December 28, 2010

Hey everyone. I need to start off by telling you that numbers on your mission do not matter. They don't reflect at all what kind of missionary you are. You can be the best missionary in the whole world and never get a baptism. It is all about running into the right people at the right place and at the right time. I am trying my best to simply prove to God that I can be trusted with running into those elect and prepared souls.

Now, I would like to announce that I have my first baptism scheduled for January 15. She is a lady who showed up at the Spanish Branch Christmas Party, and she immediately got transferred to us. We met with her once, taught her the first lesson about the restoration, and she accepted our invitation to be baptized! She spirit was very strong. She has been to church a few times, and things are looking good. We are actually teaching her again tonight, so keep us in your prayers. Today I am on travels with our District Leader, his name is Elder Call. He is going home at the end of next transfer, and has already been a Zone Leader. He is super solid, and I am excited to see how he does things. Hopefully I can learn a whole lot from him today.

I honestly don't have much to report this week. I'm just doing my best, working hard, and trying to have a good attitude. If I had to say one thing this week it would be to simply never lose faith. God will put us through whatever he needs to to prepare us, and mold us into the people we need to become. Even God, having all his power, cannot force us to change. We have been and always will be co-existent with God. He does not have power over our conscious selves, and he never will. It is all up to us whether we will heed to his promptings. He will do all he can to clear the way, but he will never force us down the path. It’s all up to us. So I guess just simply never lose faith, and it really will all be okay in the end. A scripture I memorized this week was Ether 12:6. It says "...I would show unto the world that faith is things which are hoped for and not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith." You need to put forth and SHOW your faith before you receive an answer. We need to make the leap BEFORE we see God waiting below to catch us and lift us up higher than we were before. Never let your faith falter.

With much love,

Elder Porter

Wow. I am a missionary. I'm on my mission. I don't think it'll ever sink in completely. These are the days I will hopefully come to love, and talk about all my life. I can't believe I'm actually doing it. I'm legitimately growing up. It's so weird and amazing. If I didn't know that God is on my side, I don't know how me or anybody else could possibly ever get through life. It gives us such good perspective and motivation. Without feeling God's love and Christ's spirit, I do not know who people make it through life. I am so grateful for the testimony and knowledge I have of the gospel. Understanding Christ's atonement is everything. He went through what I'm going through; He's felt what I'm feeling right now. I am never alone. And if people chose to follow this same path, neither are they. I pray every day that God will lead those who are prepared into our path. The work will go forward and proceed at His pace. I know it will. I hope and pray more than anything that the spirit will transform me into the missionary, and into the man that I am supposed to be.  It's the only way I or anybody else can even come close to achieving our potential. Striving with all of our human strength to follow Christ's example is so inexpressibly important to our development as Heavenly Father's children. It is the only way we can leave this life knowing we've done enough. My young and unlearned mind doesn't know words that can substantially express the amazing amount of joy that my heart and soul feels every single time I bear my testimony of the simple truths of the gospel that I have an unshakable belief and strong conviction of. The spirit testifies to me every day that the things I as a missionary boldly declare to the world are true and endlessly sustained by God himself. God sustains his missionaries in their calling. Even I do not know the magnitude of this promise and truth. I know that on my mission, I will have amazing experiences. I am so new to this. I know nothing, as I talked about at my farewell. I really don't. I am worthless without God and his spirit. So many missionaries have so much more experience than me. I hope to be half the missionary that some of them are by the time my time is done here. I'll be honest. I was not humble when IA left on my mission. I was overly confident. I relied on my natural gift of talking with people to be enough. I was beaten down and humbled in the MTC. I have come so much farther than anybody reading this could possibly understand in the past month. I have learned so many important things about myself. I have already been changed forever in more ways than one. If I came home right now, I would be so much farther ahead in my life than I was a month ago. For anybody wondering if a mission is for them or not, for anybody who does not know with an unshakable conviction that God lives, and loves us so ridiculously beyond our comprehension it is unimaginable, I urge you to sincerely humble yourself before God in heartfelt prayer. Plead with Him to feel his love for you. Pray to know if Joseph Smith is the man of God that I right now, am claiming him to be. Show God your desire is sincere by reading the Book of Mormon. And I swear to you before God that you will gain a testimony of this gospel. You will come to know that there is a modern prophet on the earth that right now holds priesthood authority straight from Jesus Christ. You will know by the heart piercing power of the Holy Ghost that you must serve a mission. God has looked at your individually, and has prepared people for YOU. You are the only one that can present the message of the gospel in a way that they will open their heart and accept it. And if you do not accept your calling, you are mocking God. You will be judged and justice will be served for the good that you did not do, but could have if you served a mission. Don't do that to yourself. If you don't know if you will serve, or are doubting any aspect of the gospel, then simply read the Book of Mormon. Moroni 10;4-5 states..."And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost. And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things."...I testify that this promise is real! I have felt the only true converting power brought to me by this promise from a prophet of God. Do not assume that a mission isn't for you. Take that decision before God for him to make for you. If you don't do that, then you're being real stupid. Straight up. I don't know who this testimony is for, but it is for someone. I felt strongly impressed that I needed to say these things for someone. Whoever you are, you know what to do. Bring it to God. Follow his commandments, and trust in Him that no matter what happens, it will all work out the way it is supposed to in the end. God has trusted you with so much knowledge and power. All this truth comes with responsibility. You know what to do.

Wow. So anyways. This week was real good. Lots of work and lots of freezing cold finding hours--almost 30 this week. We did teach 13 investigator lessons, which is very good. Yesterday we simply focused on getting our member lessons in for the week. I love getting to know the members. We stopped by someone who gave us some really good advice as missionaries. It really is all about understanding the atonement. If you understand that, and your need to share it with people, everything else will fall into place, I know it.

This week we got a perfect "golden" investigator. She's gone through lots of tough times, and is searching for something more in her life. She came to church with us, and she stayed for the whole 3 hours. We make sure she was smothered with love and attention in relief society. It went really well, and she wants to come again next week, and she is bringing her 14 year old son as well. She is so ready. We are teaching the restoration on Wednesday, and we are going to try to set a baptismal date. Pray for us to have the spirit with us. If she feels it I believe she'll instantly recognize this is what she is looking for. The gospel can bring people so much happiness in their lives. I wish everyone was humble enough to listen to our message. Oh well, God always provides. Those who are ready will be lead to us, or we will be lead to them. All is well. Keep praying for me, I can literally feel your prayers and the extra strength they give me every day. I'm not even kidding. It's crazy. Anyways. Love you all. Emails are better than mail. Mail takes like a week and a half. I'd love to hear from everyone.

Love,

Elder Matt Porter

December 13, 2010

Hello everyone! I want you all to know that it is freezing today! It is currently -16 degrees C in downtown London, Canada. The wind is somewhere around 40 km/hr, and it is 98% humidity. For all of those in summy warm mild wintered Utah, it means you have no idea how cold it is! Woohooo!! No no, but Ontario is wonderful. I like my mission a lot thus far. It is a lot different than Utah, thats for sure, but all is well. As of tonight I will have hit my official 1 week mark in the field, haha! I'm catching on really really fast, its great. Whenever the AP's or Zone Leaders call to check on Elder Lee and I, Elder Lee always says "Man, training is sooo overrated. I haven't had to do anything yet! Elder Porter is already a seasoned and trained missionary!" Haha, so it makes me wayyy happy to know that some legitimate missionaries already have a good opinion of me. But lets be hoenst, none of us missionaries would be anything without the guidence of the spirit. We would just be nerdy annoying teenagers trudging through subzero temperature and blizzards wasting some of the most valuable years of our life. I want to start off by saying that the spirit is there. And if you don't  think the spirit is guiding you in your life, it is simply because you don't know where to look for it. You simply haven't recognized it in your life. I challange everyone reading this to take just a few seconds and think about how your prayers have been answered, or how you have been blessed by the guidence of the spirit. We just don't all know how to recognize the Lords hand in our life. I feel like if we really spent time learning how the Lord has blessed us, then our appreciation and understanding of the gospel would skyrocket. That is one of the best things I have done while I've been here. I've learned how to recognize the Lords hand in my life.

Saturday was a good day. Our numbers lookded great. We had 2 new investigators on Saturday alone, and taught 4 investigator lessons, all to strangers on the street who decided to stop and listen to us. Our goal is 10 investigator lessons a week, and 3 new investigators a week, so this was a real good day. We stopped by a former investigator who has been dropped lots of times over the past few years. He simply hasn't decided to keep his commitments or to come to church or admit that he knows he needs to be baptized. Elder Lee and I decided to visit him. He  graciously let us in, and was real nice to us. He started talking to us, and it was our time to respond to his questions and statements, and I looked at my companion because I wasn't quite sure what to say. Elder Lee started to say something and then stopped. He turned his head towards me and gave me the "missionary eye." It is the look you give your companion when you don't know what to say or get stuck, haha. I was really confused as to why he gave it to me, becuase I knew exactly what to say. So I started replying to this mans questions and things he said. Elder Lee didn't say ANYTHING for honestly 20 minutes. I was super confused and a little frustrated that he wasn't helping me out at all. The conversation went really great. He ended telling Elder Lee and I that he had been meeting the the Jehovah's Witness missionaries again, and that he felt like he was at a crossroads in his life. He needed to chose their church or ours. I told him my own personal spiritual conversion story, about the difficult times I had as a sophomore in high school, trying to decide which direction I wanted to take my life in. I related it to his situation, and opened the Book of Mormon to Moroni 10:4-5. It is Mormoni's promise at the end of the Book of Mormon. He tells us to pray after we have heard these things, and the truth of it WILL be manifest unto you by the power of the Holy Spirit. For by the Holy Spirit ye may know the truth of all things. I bore powerful testimony to him that this promise can work for any quiestions we have in our life. The spirit was sooo ridiculously strong, and he didn't say anything the whole time I was talking. He just sat there pondering what I had said. I felt like we should hurry and close with a prayer and leave. I asked him to say it and he accepted. He sincerely prayed to our Heavenly Father to please recieve an answer as to which church he should join. Elder Lee and I then quickly left so he could feel the spirit that he had while we were there. The second we got outisde, I turned to Elder Lee, slightly frustrated, and asked "Why the heck didn't you help me out or say anything at all?!" Elder Lee replied and said that he felt prompted not to say anything, and that that was the first time he had ever seen a missionary present the spirit or the gospel in a way that it got through to that man. He felt like I had in me what that man needed to hear. It made sense. And I'm so incredibly grateful to my Heavenly Father for blessing us with promptings, and with the spirit. It makes our work possible. We as misisonaries have done everything we can for this man. It is completely up to him now. He is accountable for whatever decision he choses. That is as far as my job goes. I obviously hope and pray that he choses what he knows is best. I know he will experience more happiness and blessings if he choses to be baptized.

I have another cool story from last night as well. Elder Lee and I had prayed to know which street in specific we should try tracting. Tracting is usually very ineffective. So we were wanting to recieve inspiration as to where EXACTLY we should go to find one of God's elect children that had been prepared to hear our message. After our prayer we both looked at the map. And absolutely nothing came to me. Nothing at all. Elder Lee pointed to a street. He said, "I didn't feel much, but I think this is the right direction we need to head in". That was good enough for me, so we made it our plan for Sunday night to tract that street. Sunday night finally came, and we headed out for that street. It was about an hour walk, and on the way, I just felt like that wasn't the right street. I felt like we were going in the right direction, but not to the right destination. It was kinda weird. We we kept on walking, and as we were getting closer to the street we had decided on, we passed a street on our left. I felt a super strong impression, or had a really strong and persistant thought that we needed to knock on this streeet instead. I felt like us going in this direction had simply lead us to this street. God wanted to show me what it is like to have specific spiritual promptings, because I had been asking him for specific promptings all in my prayers during the last week. I stopped Elder Lee and yelled through the wind that we needed to go down this street instead. He agreed, and sure enough, the first door we knock on, a super nice looking lady lets us in and has a wonderful chat with us. She invited us back to learn more, and I feel like success is definately a possibility. Especially with the Lord on our side. All it took was ONE door. Haha! The spirit is the greatest thing ever. I know that Heavenly Father will lead us and guide us through the spirit as we strive to become tools in his hands. If we humble ourselfs, and agree to do His work in His way, why would he withhold miricles? He wouldn't. I've said it before and I'll say it again. If we sincerely do all we can to do His work in His way, we are invinsible. Unstoppable. The spirit will guide us and tell us to do things we wouldn't be able to do on our own. I know that the power of prayer is real, and that God loves us as individual childre, and wants to helps us succeed. He is always with all of us. We just need to be at a place in our lives that we are willing and able to hear his promptings and tender quiet voice of guidence. I love my mission and the gospel so much. Whenever I get discouraged I just think of the Saviors atonement. He sacraficed everything for us. He has gone through everything that we have. And so much more. He understands how we feel, and he wants us to keep going. All is well. God will bless us. Please keep praying for me, and for all the other missionaries. We feel your strength that you command the heavens to grant unto us. It is real. Love you all so much. Thank you for all the love and support that you send me.

With all of God's love,
Elder Porter

First days in Canada!

Wow. The only way to say how things are is that they are absolutely crazy!

I am going to start off with the funny/negative and say that during my first full day in Canada, I have honestly never been even close to as cold as I was in my whole life. Not even kidding. It was something like -14 C, with 10 k/h winds and 90% humidity. The humid wind cuts straight through all your clothes and chills you to the bone. Not fun. It is really funny that I have to walk around in it all day. It makes you laugh as you are walking on the sidewalk freezing about to die. You just need to make things funny or you would want to die. But its okay, things are good here.

I guess I should start off my saying that my P-day is actually on MONDAY. It used to be Wednesday a year ago or so, but it has been changed to Monday since then. My trainer said I could e-mail my family and everyone else as soon as we could because I hadn't been able to do it for about a week. So expect a regular update every Monday. The reason I wasn't able to update it until now is that there was too much snow. Seriously. So check this out...

Dad, remember how you were joking around, saying how they would ship me off to where we got the most snow in the whole mission? Well guess what? They shipped me off to where they get the most snow in the whole mission! Woohooo! I'm living in a city called London. It is about 3 hours West of Brampton, which is our mission headquarters. Branpton is about 15 minutes West of Toronto. So it is just on the outside edges there. So the day we flew from Salt Lake to Toronto, we had our flight cancelled, and then got a new one that was delayed twice, so it was real tough getting here. The reason it was so hard is that it snowed A METER AND A HALF in London. Do you realize how much that is? It is like 4 feet. Over 4 feet in some places. Absolutely ridiculous. Driving here was wayyy sketchy, but we made it alive luckily. Toronto didn't get as much snow at all, but that is why our flight was delayed.

I live in an area that is called "The Snow Belt". Haha, isn't that funny? I think it is funny. And the funniest part is that we do not have a car. Every other companionship in our area has one except for us, which is way awesome! We litterally get to walk for 2 hours through 4 foot deep snow to go teach investigators that sometimes end up ditching on us. But that is alright, more street contacting hours for us! It is extremely hard to find people that are willing to stop and talk to us when it is around 5-10 degrees F. The wind is what makes it absolutely unbearably cold. I am proud to report that my winter gear will be adequate. My garments, thermals, shirt, sweater, coat liner, and coat are enough to keep me bareably warm. My boots are great and keep my feet warm most of the time. So that is a lot of exciting things already! To sum it up, I live in London, it is called the snow belt, it snows unimaginable amounts, and things are very hard, but good. It snowed so much that the busses were cancelled, and the whole city shut down. No busses, no library, and no government building were open in downtown.

We get an hour and a half to do emails out in the field...which is sooo excellent compared to the 30 ridiculous minutes we got in the MTC. This is like heaven. So I will be able to write home again on Monday. But normaly it will only be once a week. And I get to call home on Christmas which is excellent.

So I'm sure you are excited to hear about my first few days in the real missionfield! I got through customs and everything alright. We took a real sketchy tiny propellar plane from Detroit to Toronto. It was kinda scary going through the giant storm in it, but we didn't die so that is good. President Brower picked up me, Elder Nash(companion from MTC, he's from Ireland), Elder Silva (He is from Brazil, and I didn't know him in the MTC), and Sister Cheng (she is from HongHong, and I had met her once or twice in the MTC.) We were the only 4 new missionaries this transfer, which is a pretty small group. So President picked us up from the airport on Monday night, around 8 or 9, and we drove with the AP's to the mission home in Brampton, about 15 minutes away. The AP's are Elder Messik, and Elder McKee. They are both amazing teachers, and they somehow make you have a desire to be like them. They are both awesome and super nice guys. We got to the mission home in Brampton and we had a nice big turkey dinner made my Sister Brower. She is an amazing cook! She is the sweetest and funniest lady ever. I really like her a lot. After dinner, it was pretty late so we just took a few pictures and Elder Nash, Elder Silva, and I went with the AP's to an appartment in Brampton to stay the night. They call it the Mission Mansion! It is no mansion or something, but 6 missionaries live in it, which is pretty much unheard of. It is always 2 or 4 living together. But 6 live here. The AP's, the Brampton Zone Leaders, and the Spanish speaking missionaries in Brampton. There are a ton of extra beds in the basement for new missionaries to stay the night like we did, so the 3 of us stayed there that night and got to sleep in until 7:30 which was amazingly wonderful. We had gotten up at 3:00AM to go to the airport the day before so sleeping in was amazing. We got ready real quick and went back to the mission home with the AP's to meet the 3 trainers. We weren't assigned to anyone yet, but we got to meet them. We had some quick training from the AP's, and some meetings and interviews with President Brower, and then we were assigned our companions. I love President Brower so so much. You can just tell that he sincerely and genuinely loves and cares for you so so much. It is such a good thing. Because moving to another country, away from your family and friends that you love, to somewhere where you don't know anyone, and it is always cold is really scary. This whole thing is extremely nervewracking and horrifying in some ways. Everything will be okay though.

So after my interviews and things, I was assigned my trainer companion, who's name is Elder Lee! He is straight up asian, and is origionally from South Korea, but he has lived in Alberta with his family for a number of years. He is a GREAT trainer. He has said some really nice things about me. When the AP's called him last night to see how I was doing, he said "What? Elder Porter? Oh man don't worry! I feel like he is already trained. Seriously. He's got it." So that was really really nice to hear him talk about me like that. It gives me some more confidence. And confidence is super important.

He is really good at street contacting which is kinda scary at first. You can tell people don't want to talk to you in the freezing cold wind. Some people are actually really really rude to the missionaries. I have been cussed out more than I ever have been in my life in the past 3 days. For real. But it is all okay when you find people that are interested or are really nice to you. I have already talked to hundreds of people, and it is great to talk to people and hear about their lives. Last night it started snowing again, and we stopped a man who proclaimed to be an athiest. He was extremely persistent in his belief that there could not be a God. I firmly held my ground and bore my testimony, and he didn't really know what to say. No progress was made, but a week ago there is no way I could see myself doing that. It is great to see myself growing and getting better so so fast. I feel like I will do really well once I catch on to the trends of the work and really get into a solid missionary mode. It will take some time, but it will come. I totally respect all the missionaries for hanging in there. I didn't realize how much of a sacrafice this all really is. I had been in the happy magical MTC land where everything goes your way. That is in no way how the mission field actually is. People say things and ask questions that would stump you unless you had the spirit with you. Without the spirit you would be eaten up by people in the world. Most people are not happy to see you, and even for a nice guy like me it is hard to keep smiling and tell them to have a nice day after they cuss you out or tell you to go to Hell and stuff. Please keep praying for me. I need it so much. This is impossible work without the Lord and prayers. I know we can do it if we always stive to do His work in His way.

The discouragement is overshadowed when you have success. We visited a semi/not-active member yesterday. She absolutely loves the missionaries, and has a testimony, but she doesnt go to church much. It makes no sense at all. She is a funny lady with a really strong personality. She is the kinda person that gets things done. We visited her and Elder Lee put me on the spot and had me share a spiritual thought. I talked about leaving my home that I love so so much, and leaving my best friends that I thought I could never go without, and I talked about how we simply need to put faith in the Lord and everything will happen how it is supposed to. I also talked about the Plan of Salvation and how we will always be with our famililes again. And she started crying! It was amazing. She told me in 19 years of meeting with missionaries all the time, I was the first missionary that made her cry. It took her 17 years to get baptized, so I was extremely proud of myself. I know the spirit told me what to say so I could touch her heart in the right way. Her 13 year old daughter Samantha is not baptized, but she loves us and gets along with us too. I think Elder Lee and I have a really good chance and presenting the Lord's message in the right way to help Samantha see why she needs to be baptized. I really think it could happen. I found out that the average baptism numbers for my mission in 2 years is about 5-6. I know numbers don't matter, but it is still nice to know.

Oh, I forgot to say. So I know when I lived in Utah I thought places like south Orem and South Salt Lake were ghetto. Well let me tell you. Any of you soft people living in Utah have no idea what a ghetto is. We live around LEGIT ghetto's. The chinese missionaries in our district have had their car shot before! They said they had to file a really strange accident report, haha. Also, you can hear gunshots sometimes in the apartment complexes around our area. Lots of druglords and drug deals. There are a few places where we aren't supposed to tract a lot. But don't worry, the Lord will keep us safe. It will all be okay. Elder Lee and his past companions have had success acting off impressions they had to tract in those complexes before. The Lord will always provide as we strive to follow his promptings. Especially as missionaries. Anyways, I will try to keep you updated with how my progress and the work is coming along here in the Ontario, London 2nd ward. Elder Lee and I are going to work miricles here. I can feel it. We are both missionaries with great faith, and I know good things are going to happen here. I love you all so so much! My new address is...

45 Pondmills #207
London, Ontario
N5Z 4W5
CANADA

Pray for the Lords work to go forth, and for the missionaries to find his elect and prepared people! Miricles happen in the mission field. Love you all so much!

Elder Porter