Monday, February 22, 2016

Yep, we got our transfer calls this past Saturday and I'm staying another transfer in Fayetteville. That makes 6 months here and I can't complain about that at all. I seriously love this area and there is still so much going on so I'm excited to stay here for a little bit longer. Sadly, Elder Greenwood is moving on. He is going to Salem, Missouri which is in the middle of nowhere but he is going to kill it there. My new comps name is Elder Rooto (Row-Tow) and the rumor is that he is from Fiji and is learning English as a second language. He has been out for about 4 months now. I'm really pumped for this next transfer.

This past week was petty incredible. Our whole zone had those high goals set and we got to witness some pretty remarkable miracles. I wish I could just type them out for you. I don't know how to even begin typing it into words so just remind me the next time you see me to tell you about it. Basically, God blessed our efforts beyond measure. We got to have Elder Christofferson come and speak to us on Saturday and we got to walk through and shake his hand which was a really cool experience. He spoke a lot about miracles in the latter days and about faith and all this other stuff that I wrote down and then he opened it up for questions. It's funny to see that the Apostles are human too because he was joking around with everyone and had to think about questions for awhile sometimes.

I'm looking forward to these next 6 weeks and I'm excited to see the progress in Fayetteville. I love you all and hope you all have an amazing week!

Love, Elder Leavitt

We had a fun Marshallese party

They gave us new backpacks. We look like its our first day of third grade :)

Pday swag at one of our favorite places

Dinner with the stake Presidents family

Monday, February 15, 2016

First off, I would like to send my love and best regards to the May family. My heart aches along side everyone back home for the passing of Brent May. Give their family as much love for me as you can please.

This week we are preparing for an Apostle to come to Tulsa, Oklahoma and speak to the whole mission on Saturday. It's going to be D. Todd Christofferson and we are all pretty excited for that. We have been asked to prepare spiritually and to come pondering on some questions we have. That's going to be a really uplifting experience. We are pretty excited for this next week because the whole zone has set some pretty high goals. We have been fasting and praying that the whole zone will be able to accomplish them. It's going to take effort on everyone's part but I feel like we are going to be witnessing some miracles this week.

This past week has been pretty normal. We are getting transfer calls this week and I'm hoping to stay in Fayetteville. There is still so much to do! But as the old song goes, " I'll go where you want me to go." Love you guys and I hope everyone has a great week. I'll be keeping the May family and the whole Valley in mind and prayer this week. I hope you all might recognize the Lord's hand in all things this week.

Love, Elder Leavitt

We went on a great hike on pday

How can we compete with that??!

Taco night

Monday, February 8, 2016

It's been a pretty insane week. So the Marshallese couple that I was suppose to baptize on Saturday, the wife had a stroke a couple days before the baptism. They don't have a phone so they didn't tell anyone so we thought they had just fled the country or something because they really didn't want to get baptized but all is well after we finally found them. We are going to wait until she is feeling better and then we will get them baptized. We had interviews with President Loveland this past Friday which was really great because he is just an awesome potato farmer from Idaho that knows what's up. It was good to get to visit with him and talk about the area I'm in and what's been going well and what needs to be worked on. 

Also, I love Old folks homes. We go visit one every Sunday afternoon to play dominoes with some of the ladies and we are practically celebrities there now. I've been teaching this older lady named Tina how to do a secret hand shake for the past 3 weeks and she forgets it every time. That's okay because every time I try to give her a fist bump she just stares at me and then laughs and says," Wow, you sure are a good looking. Lord have mercy!" Hahah! if you ever need a self esteem booster, go to an old folks home.

This past week, we couldn't get any appointments one day so we decided to go tracting at this apartment complex. We felt like it would be a good place to knock some doors. We only knocked 4 doors and out of those 4 doors we got 3 return appointments that we saw on Saturday, gave away 2 Books of mormon and two pass along cards. Now we have 3 new investigators that we can go teach! We have been praying for some new people to teach because our area hasn't seen any new investigators in a long time. That was a huge blessing for us and it all came out of tracting which is amazing. It's really cool to see the Lord's hand in our work. It's always there, we just got to have our eyes open enough to see it.

Everything else was just business as usual. We got to see a lot of good come into our area and we are hoping to keep the momentum going. I love you all and thank you so much for the emails this week. I hope you all have an amazing week.

Love, Elder Leavitt

Monday, February 1, 2016

This past week has been pretty interesting! Our whole zone has been doing really well. Our Mission President has challenged us to set goals within our individual districts to help us improve the work in our area. We have set some pretty good district goals that are going to help us out a lot. We have a goal set to hit the Standard of Excellence as a whole zone on the fifth week of this transfer. The Standard of Excellence is a mission wide goal for member present lessons and referrals and other things like that which are set to help us strive for something each week. We are preparing to achieve it here in a couple weeks. We are setting goals now that will make it easier for us!

We have a branch in our Stake for the Marshallese people because there are quite a few people that move here from the Marshal Islands for some reason. A few days ago I was asked to give a baptismal interview to a couple that the Marshallese sisters have been teaching. Oh, and they don't speak a lick of English so we had to have a translator come in a tell me what they were saying the whole time. Even though I couldn't understand a single word that they were saying, the Spirit was still so strong when I asked them to bear there testimonies. It's crazy how the Spirit knows all languages and it will testify of truth always and even if you don't understand them verbally, you can understand them spiritually every time. Well, after the interviews the sisters were talking to them about who they want to baptize them and they both asked if I would baptized them. So now I have to learn the baptismal prayer in Marshallese for this upcoming Saturday! I've been working on it but I still sound super white when I say it so I'll continue to work on that.

Kommol Tata (Thank you in Marshallese) for all the love and support in my behalf. I am thankful for all of you back home and for all the work that you do behind the scenes of missionary work. I hope you all have an inspired week. My sister is going home this week. Say Hello to Erin for me!

Love, Elder Leavitt

The south is full of their symbols of devotion to Jesus Christ.
We all can rejoice in His resurrection!