Monday, August 3, 2015

Good morning Brothers and Sisters,

I guess everyone has seen the escalator video cause that's all everyone was talking about in their emails this week so I'll just give minor details of that. It surprised me.

Anyways! I've finally made it out into the mission field! Y'all are probably just barely able to deal with the suspense of knowing where my first area is...I have been assigned to labor in the Branson,Missouri area! People keep calling it the Las Vegas of the South but the big differences are that here it's wet, green, and family friendly. I've loved this area a lot so far. The people in our ward, Branson 2nd ward, pretty much all perform at some show here so I've met some interesting people. My trainer is Elder Chapman. He is a really great guy and a good missionary. He is from Mesa Arizona. I've already begun to get close to him and we get along just dandy! I think we really got close after we pulled up and talked to some guys who were having a Confederate gathering at a local McDonald's. I'm not Lying, there had to be 25 cars there just completely covered with Confederate flags. I love these people!

So I must tell you about Dominique!!!

It's really hard to get investigators here because unlike Vegas, people actually respect religions. So we went on a visit to a less active member with our Ward Mission Leader, Andy Hughes. He has a big show here with his family like everyone else. The less active member was Kim Hicks and her son Dalton. They live in a trailer so this was my first "trailer visit." Kim wanted to watch the Restoration video with us so we brought it over with a couple of Books of Mormon. This guy Dominique is a really close friend to the Hicks family and he is about 20. We started talking to everyone and Dom started asking all these questions about us and what we believe in. He said that he has been to a couple churches but hasn't felt completely right about any of them. So we watched the video with them and afterwards Dom just kept on saying how it all made sense! How everything we were saying just clicked with him! He asked for a Book of Mormon so we gave him one and he was eager to read. He told us that when he found out that we were coming over that he was bashing us for not being Christian and about how our church isn't true and he apologized to us and has had a complete change of heart. The Lord works in miraculous ways! He said he was going to go to church yesterday and he was really excited to, but his girlfriend said she was uncomfortable with going to the church cause she wasn't there for the lesson. I'm hoping we can teach both of them soon cause Dominique is a soul our Heavenly Father has prepared to receive this glad message and I hope we will get to meet with his girlfriend Crystal too.

I'm really happy serving here and can't wait to gain more of these spiritual experiences as I continue to help the work progress onward ever onward! I love all of ya and hope to hear from all of you Soon! Help your local missionaries! Trust me, they need it :)

-Elder Leavitt

President and Sister Loveland

This is one of the first things I saw when I got off the plane. We don't see those back home!

Amazing airport welcome!

My trainer Elder Chapman