S12 E3: There is room in the Inn

 (Elder Cummings)

So we have our boy Rich. Rich is awesome. About a month ago the previous elders met him at Walmart. Next week, he gets covid and is straight out of commission, it hit him really hard.

We've been keeping in contact with him because he wants to attend church with us. We've been texting a lot because he hasn't been able to muster the energy to have a real lesson and discussion yet. This week he is finally healthy and feeling up to church. And he comes.

Afterwards, we asked how he liked it and he took us aside and was like "Y'all have to understand. I grew up and was forced into religion, and it left a bad taste in my mouth, but I never gave up on God. I feel like He is still there. Coming here today, what I felt, this has been the closest I have ever been to what I feel I need in my life. So thank you. I will be coming back next week."

Mic. Drop. We gave him a Book of Mormon and he texted us afterwards and was like "I plan on coming every week. And if y'all would like, I would love to talk about the Book yall gave me. I'm gonna be reading it shortly". So hype.

I know that there is room in the Lord's Inn for everyone. His Kingdom is on the earth, and it is His Church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

God bless

Elder Cummings

Photos:

NOLA and folk

 (Sister Putnam)

Hey everyone!

Sorry for not writing last week, it was a little crazy.

Transfer texts came out this week and Hermana Shupe and I are staying together and we are super pumped about it!!!  I finally get to keep a comp for more than a transfer!

This week we did a lot of door knocking in the rain and nobody answered.

We had a lesson with José and asked if he was still interested in being baptized.  He said yes, and shared that us visiting him and teaching him gives him strength to follow God's commandments. Before we said the closing prayer, he said that in the following weeks he would say the prayers for lessons, because if he is going to be baptized he will need to Spiritually prepare! We are super proud of him and his humility. Please pray that he will continue to progress!!!

We've also found a lot of people online interested in learning English and so that should be incredible!

Also we were at the store just now and Hermana Shupe heard some people speaking Spanish. We went up and asked to practice our Spanish with them, and so we talked with them for a bit.  They asked why we wanted to practice and we said we wanted to learn spanish. And one lady said "oh you should come to my house and I can practice English and you can practice Spanish!"  She gave us her address and phone number and we just texted her, so please pray that she will respond. We will knock her door this week.

Pictures: a billboard we found funny, a sign we found while door knocking, Hermana shupe and i out in the rain, and a killer sunrise!!

Hermana Alyssa Putnam

Last Week!

 (Elder Slade)

To the best friends and family a person could hope for.

Well. Here it is. This is CRAZY! This is my last week. I go home Wednesday and it's the weirdest feeling. I am pretty sad it is coming to the end. I've loved every second of my mission. I havent enjoyed every second, but I have loved it! 🤣 I wouldn't trade my mission experience for anything. I've met so many amazing people, and have had experiences that have changed my life. I've come closer to my Savior, and I love Him for everything he's done! He literally means everything to me.

This last week has definitely been a week to match my mission experience! It was filled with highs and lows. A high of having Nicole being baptized! She is the definition of prepared by the Lord. She is amazing! Their have been lows of people we are teaching rejecting our message and choosing not to be baptized. Their has been the high of finding a new person to teach named Gianna. She has some amazing potential to change her life. Their have been lows of knowing it will end soon. It's been quite the week!

Thanks for all of your support and love! I look forward to talking to you all! I'll be reporting on my mission in church Sunday morning January 30th. Their will be a reception after with food. I'll send out another email with all of the details! I'd love for you all to join if you are able! 😁

Love you all!

Pictures

1. My entire two years in Idaho, I never cooked a baked potato. So I did it for the first time! Shout out to Howard and Sue for providing the Potato.

2. A cat made me it's bed in a lesson.

3. The igloo collapsed. 😭

4-5. Nicole got baptized!!

Happy New Year and Snow!

 (Sister Putnam)

Hey everyone! Sooo I forgot to write last week, so sorry!

Not sure if I shared but we had snow and that slowed down the in person work but we were able to do online work and do a snow photoshoot and offer to shovel driveways for people!

We met with our friend Jose Felix last week for new years and he is such a nice man! He has things to work on but we will work with him on them.

We knocked doors and have gotten a lot of referrals and we are super excited to work with these people!!

Love you all!!

Hermana Alyssa Putnam

Great Week!

 (Elder Slade)

To the best friends and family a person could hope for!

It's been another great week! Cynthia and Annabell got baptized on Saturday! It was an amazing experience, and we talked with their stepdad at the baptism, and he said he is interested in learning more! Two other people we are teaching, Grant and Nicole, are scheduled to get baptized this week. Please pray for them that everything will go smoothly for that.

I also went to the temple this week for the first time in about 23 months! It was an amazing experience. Afterwards we went to a local restaurant named Big Juds and several of us tried the Big Jud's challenge, which consists of a one pound burger with a huge bun and a case of fries which you have to finish in 30 minutes. I unfortunately was not able to finish the challenge, but it was worth the try! 🤣

The lord's really been blessing us recently! The Lord has really been directing us and strengthening us. That's one for sure of the gospel, God loves His children and will help them out!

Love you all!

Pictures (I'll have a picture for Cynthia and Annabell's baptism next week!):

1. Exchange with Elder Bluth

2. Exchange with Elder Elder Powell

S12 E2: Some great salisbury steaks, and an even better week

 (Elder Cummings)

So our legends, Steven and Morgan(who are the father and daughter who just started attending church completely on their own two weeks ago) came again yesterday. Super awesome.

We were making our way over to talk to them when we saw that our Bishop was already sitting in the pew chatting up a storm until sacrament meeting starts. In the middle of the meeting we just get a text from Bishop Solouki: "So I just talked with Morgan and Steven, and they asked if they could keep coming and asked how they can become members of the ward..."

We were just floored. We had only gotten a chance to say hi to these guys for like 2 minutes last week. We were able to catch them again after sacrament meeting and turns out that Morgan is a national champion for golfing and will be out of town the next weeks but wants us to come over and teach them everything they need to know and do to get baptized. It doesn't get better than that. Please keep them in your prayers. Please pray for Lavette, Ricky, and Nikkia as well!

Anyway, some food for thought that I heard this week: "Christ leads and is at the head of this Work" but also "Christ is in the middle of this Work". Hm. Ponder.

Have a blessed one!

Elder Cummings

One of the most amazing lessons ever

 (Elder Slade)

To the best friends and family a person can hope for!

We had an amazing experience with someone we are teaching this week! We are teaching a couple from China that has had almost NO experience with Christianity. It's crazy. They have almost no understanding shout God. We taught him God's plan for him, and taught him how to pray. In the lesson we prayed first to show him how to pray, and then we asked him to say a prayer. He said his first prayer he had ever said, and it was one of th most sincere amazing prayers I've ever heard. The spirit was so strong! It was amazing!!

It has been crazy busy though combining two areas. It's been great being in a trio though. We've just been having a ton of fun, working hard and seeing miracles. Our third companion is Elder Swartz who is such a smart guy. He's fun to be around.

Love you all! Keep being amazing!

Pictures (sorry, don't have too many)

1. Just a picture waiting at the stop light for like 10 min for the train which was just sitting there.

S12 E1: WHO DAT NATION

 (Elder Cummings)

Howdy y'all!

First week in New Orleans and it's just as crazy as it was. The first day I was here we walked by a car who's engine had literally blown up and there was once melted car metal just all over the street. Kinda crazy.

My new companion is Elder Jacob Smith and he's a Texan so we got that going for us. We've been working hard to revive this area and find people to teach and there is so much potential here. Literally people everywhere, it's so awesome.

Other than that, there has been so many little mini miracles:

1)some Elder texting us asking if he had to be at this stake meeting(when he didn't) but we did have to be there and we had no idea until he reminded us

2)us running into a guy who said he is just having the worst time in his life right now

3)there was a nonmember family who attended church last week with a visiting family. This week the visiting family is gone, but the nonmember family came this week cause they loved it so much and now we're teaching them. They really just planted seeds and dipped

4)We get to drive the night before for MLC so we can ball up with everyone at 6am tomorrow which is hype

5)I'll be able to go to the temple with my companion this week too!

Anyway, I'll leave it at that, but it was a good week, just like always. Love yall have a good one

Elder Cummings

Snow Storm!

 (Elder Slade)

To the best friends and family a person could hope for!

It's been a great week! It's been snowing for an entire week straight! It's been in the negatives as well. Pretty epic! I've been loving it, my companion Elder Auelua, from Hawaii, not as much. 🤣 The snow have made the roads pretty atrocious and I have been all together too tempted to drift everywhere. Don't fear, I have restrained myself. Mostly. 😉

The Lord has still been blessing us with many miracles. We started teaching a couple from China this week who have a lot of questions. We also started teaching a new couple named Victoria and Samuel. They are amazing! It's been amazing despite the business of the season how God has still been blessing us.

This next few weeks just got a lot busier though. Due to an emergency transfer, there will be two areas in Shelley combined. So for the next few weeks we will be covering 2 areas. It'll be exciting! I'm looking forward to this new year though. It'll be a time of change, and hope, and happiness, if we make it that way. I'd invite you to think what you can do to make that happen. For me, I will continue to build my foundation on Christ. He has brought me so much happiness in my life!

Love ya!

1-4. A few pictures from another snow cave we made today as a zone!

3. Zone activity playing a game called Secret Hitler!

S11 E6: Going back to my roots

 (Elder Cummings)

I got some transfer news this week that I'll be getting transferred to Metairie, Louisiana on Wednesday. That means I will have been in 6 different areas the last 6 transfers of my mission. All I know is that I am either part of the problem or the solution.

The cool thing is that I'll be 10 minutes from New Orleans, where I started my mission. I left New Orleans almost a years ago, so i guess it's about time I go back.

I could've sworn I sent an email titled "A Cajun Christmas" but I don't know what happened to it. Either way. I had a great Christmas and I hope yall did too.

Anyway story time:

Elder Weatherston and I hurry out of church to get to a lesson with our man James. Elder W and I met him the first couple days we were in Oak Grove and hadn't had much success with getting in contact with him. We knew he didn't didn't on Sundays and that the football games started at noon so we has to hurry. 

We knock on his door 3x, call him, go to his side door and knock and we get nothing. We see his truck in the driveway and start walking away when he opens the door and gladly let's us in. 

We sit down and one of the first things he says is "My Christmas was terrible. On Christmas day my auntie passed away and my nephew was found dead in his apartment". We just sit there and listen to him to a while and then share our testimony of the Atonement and Resurrection of our Savior and His Wonderful Plan of Salvation. Afterwards he just sits there and is like "I wasn't gonna let y'all in at first, but I'm glad that I did". We had a wonderful oppurtunity to point out that he was feeling the Holy Spirit and what he was learning was of God. He's a stud. Pray for him.

Have a blessed one

Elder Cummings 

 (Sister Putnam)

Feliz Navidad, everyone!!

Wow, so a year ago I never would have thought that my second Christmas in the field I would be serving in a Spanish Branch. But looking at my track record for the last 7 years.... *looks back on moving to Saudi Arabia for 5 years, then my first year of college which was switched to online cause of Covid for the last part, my online MTC experience, and the first 6 months of my mission which were mostly in quarantine* I have absolutely no reason to expect my life to actually stay on the logically expected course, and that includes my mission 😂

This week people mostly ghosted us or cancelled for lessons so that's great...we will be knocking their doors to see what's up this week.

Aside from that we got to attend Zone Conference which was awesome, we had a full day conference center to celebrate Christmas together as two zones and that was super fun! Hermana Shupe did a lovely Christmas rendition of Hallelujah that she posted on her profile, you should definitely check it out! 😉😉All the Spanish missionaries sang silent night in Spanish and all the Sisters sang the Nativity Song from the children's songbook and we all had a good Christmas dinner together.

Today we had a pday and celebrated Christmas and called the fam, we had a christmas dinner at around noon and will go to another one at 6, its all super fun 😀

I love you all!!

Hermana Alyssa Putnam

Merry Christmas!

 (Elder Slade)

To the best friend and family a person could hope for!

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you had a fantastic holiday! This week was an awesome week. We spent Christmas and Christmas Eve visiting families and caroling to them. We got some people to make 60 plates of cookies for us to deliver as we carol! It was amazing!

We had some amazing Miracles this week! While we were caroling to one family with some other missionaries, they let us in and we shared a Christmas message with them. After the message, the mom said that she wanted to work towards baptism! The other Elders are now working with them. Another miracle we came as we visited a recent convert family, and they had invited one of their friends. We started teaching her as well, and she now wants to work towards baptism as well!

These were some real Tender Mercies the Lord had given us. None of which surpass the feeling of joy and peace I felt as I realized that I was able to serve my Savior Jesus Christ, during the season where we think about him the most! I truly want to give my entire life to Him! That's my gift for him, in response to all that he has done for me.

Love you all! I wish you a happy new year!

1. Some Christmas pajamas some members made for us! People are so kind here! It's overwhelming.

2-4. We made an igloo today with all of the snow we got! It was SO fun! We made a fire as well, and it gets pretty toasty in there. I'll send some more pictures next week!