Monday, December 26, 2016

Hope Everyone had a great Christmas!

It was good to talk to the family and to celebrate the season with a ton of people I've grown to love. What made this Christmas even better though is that we had the Baptism of James Clay right after church and it was amazing to be a part of that. He is so ready for these next steps in his life and I'm happy for him.

Jorge came to the baptism too and right after the baptism he got interviewed and is ready to be baptized next week! The little girl that was suppose to be baptized this week got super sick so we had to push it back a week so hopefully she will be getting baptized this coming week as well!

I can't think of much else that is going on but I'm loving it still and I can't believe that it's going to be 2017 this week! What the heck??? It's exciting to start a new year and to see how far you have come but also set goals to work on. I hope we all choose to look forward to progress instead of looking back on weakness. Love ya!

Love,
Elder Leavitt

 

A white Christmas! James was baptized!

Christmas eve with some members of our ward.

Service at a shelter

Some of the missionaries I came out with. The sisters will go home next transfer...crazy!

Hot cocoa

Monday, December 19, 2016

Hey Fans!

I hope everything is going to well back home for everyone. It's actually super cold here it got down to 3 degrees  and it started snowing so everything was shut down for a little while church actually got cancelled because the roads had so much ice and we couldn't bike so we started walking around which was a ton of fun.

James, one of our investigators, was interviewed for baptism and he passed so he is going to be getting baptized on Christmas!  Also, a part member family with 3 kids agreed to be baptized on Christmas. Unbelievable! So we might be having a white Christmas this year *bum* *bum* *tsh* haha sorry bad joke.

Sorry, I'm short on time today but I'm loving it here and hope everyone has a great Christmas! Love ya!

Love,
Elder Leavitt

Merry Christmas, from Arkansas!

We got snow

Surprise visit from former Elder Constandse

Wednesday, Decamber 14, 2016

Hey everyone,

It's another one of those transfer weeks again which means a lot of crazy changes going on! I'm actually going to be staying in Bentonville for the Christmas season which I'm super pumped about! Elder Czirr is going to be staying as well and we are excited that we get to spend Christmas and another transfer together here so it should be good!

Some pretty crazy news though: Elder Robert C. Gay of the Seventy came on Monday and had a huge conference with everyone and taught us a whole lot. He gave us a lot of advice and got us all excited to go out and improve our areas. He also told us that the first Presidency just approved a change of our mission boundaries. We are losing the 3 zones that we have in Tulsa to the Oklahoma city mission. This is super sad! I'm glad I got to serve there while I could but that means we are going to have to move a whole bunch of missionaries out of those zones into other areas in the mission. That whole shuffle is happening in 3 weeks so it's pretty much going to be a super short transfer.

We met up with George again this past week and taught him some more on tithing and I seriously love this guy! He agreed with everything we talked about and after we asked him what he thought about everything and he said,"It sounds all good to me and I'm going to go home and pray about it just to make sure it's right." Well, he prayed about it and it was right! He is still on track to get baptized at the end of the month so we are hoping to end the year on a solid note!

I'm so happy that I get to stay here in Bentonville. It's starting to get cold again and I saw it actually snow the other day which was super cool! Everyone here is really involved in the Christmas initiative and I hope you are as well! It's been amazing to be able to reflect the life of the Savior this time of year and to be miracle workers in small ways in the lives of others. Have a great week!

Love,
Elder Leavitt

I was asked to be a shepherd in a parade

The whole posterity was together! My dad, brother, and 3 sons!

White elephant exchange at Presidents house. It you look closely you can see Elder Chapman scored a black and white of me modeling my new suit. HA!

Ugly sweaters!

Monday, December 5, 2016

To those that still read this,

Hope all is well wherever you are! Things have been really going strong here in this area the past week so let me tell ya about it! On Wednesday our mission president called us to talk to us about something random and before he got off the phone we asked if we could do anything for him and he said,"Well, some more baptismal dates would be nice." He said it as a joke but we took it to heart. We were able to set 5 more baptismal dates since he said that and it has been amazing!

George: Super cool lesson with him... We met up with him this past week in our WML's home and he had some questions about prophets. We talked about all of it and he said it all made sense. Bro Wise (our ward mission leader) started to talk about baptism with him and he asked the best question ever,"How do I know when I'm ready to be baptized?" We testified to him that he was ready and he can know by looking back on all the experiences that he's had then he asked,"So what should I do now?" We set a date for December 31st and he is super excited about it. He came to church again yesterday and read the lesson before hand so he had some insights. I love this guy!

We also set a date with James one of our other super prepared investigators for December 24th and that's going to be great! He has been talking about how much his life has changed for the better ever since he's started reading the Book of Mormon and keeping the commitments. He's excited to take that next step in his life.

I have grown to have such an appreciation for the scriptures. When you think about it, they really are such an amazing tool that has been given for our benefit. They have been constructed perfectly by our loving Heavenly Father to help us learn what we need to learn when we need to learn it! I know that they are true. I hope you are all enjoying the Christmas initiative from the church. It is truly inspired and will bring true joy to your holiday season. Love ya!

Love,
Elder Leavitt

#lighttheworld

Monday, November 28, 2016

Hope everyone had a great Turkey Day!

We had a really amazing day. It started off with some serious Turkey bowl games going on. We played one with our ward first off in the morning and then later we got together with all the missionaries in our zone and the missionaries in the zone next to ours and had a zone vs zone football game. It was a ton of fun. We had dinner with the Welch family and they were really good to us so it made the day so much better.

Some quick highlights for the week!

We taught George this past week again! He texted us in the middle of the week and said,"I have a couple questions about baptism. Could we meet up?" So we met and answered all his questions and had a super good talk with him! We invited him to be baptized and he told us that he can't say yes yet but when he knows that it's true, then he definitely will. We are still working with him and we are excited about it.

Yesterday in church, President and Sister Loveland spoke and all the missionaries did a musical number for it and it actually wasn't too bad! We saw some wet eyes in the congregation so we know it was a success. We had a couple of investigators there too and it was a good meeting to have them at.

All is well in Bentonville. The church just came out with the new Christmas initiative so everyone's homework is to go on and look at it. It's the season for service and I know that if we reflect on the life of the Savior this Christmas season, we will witness miracles. #lighttheworld Love ya!

Love,
Elder Leavitt

We went on an awesome hike

Turkey Bowl with our crazy tights