How to fit in...

Hello Family and Friends!

Attached is Elder Troy’s latest letter.  He writes to us privately and is seeing lots of miracles and having great experiences in Houston.  

The people are really kind and loving to him and his companion.  He has found that they are humble, teachable and generous.  This video (on Facebook) is silly.  Although they use words like “ghetto” and “‘hood,” please know they say it with all love and appreciation to the people they serve and live with, certainly not in a derogatory way.  He LOVES serving in Westfield, Houston!

As always, thank you for loving and supporting our son!

Love, 

JD & Terri

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Hey everybody! It was another great week in Houston Texas. The work

here is going pretty well, and the rain is subsiding!

I got a few questions about what a 'soul shake' is last week, so Elder

Mattson and I created a video that we think will be very educational.

It's attached.

So the key to work in this area is, as we understand, finding a ton of

people and 'dropping' 99% of them. So every week we shoot to find ten

people who want to investigate the gospel, and anticipate that most of

them won't progress much further beyond that, so we 'drop' them (stop

meeting with them) if they don't show very much initiative, working

with them again potentially in the future.

Finding ten people per week in the bible belt is pretty high for most

places outside of a college campus, but we have high expectations to

match. So when we find someone, we sometimes ask if they would be

baptized in our very first interaction. We use this approach if we

suspect that they're unlikely to keep their return appointments.

But this week, Elder Mattson and I were AGAIN running behind on our

commitments. We wanted to teach 15 lessons and find 10 new

investigators again this week. Sunday night (our last night in a

missionary week) we were at 11 and 5. We were on splits, but neither

of us really could find anybody. Feeling defeated, Elder Mattson and

the priest (16 year old young man) he was with headed back to our

meeting point after only finding one new investigator for their two

hours of effort.

My companion and I, however found 4 people in 3 households. The Lord

in his mercy saw fit to give us exactly what we needed for two weeks

in a row. 'Tender mercy'!

This week in my studies, I was thinking about the comparison people

often make between the love and blessings of our Heavenly Father and

light. The properties of light are really interesting in that analogy,

and I think we can learn a lot about the creator from the laws of his

creations.

There is a formula in physics (stay with me!) which tells us how much

more or less light an object will receive when it's distance from the

source changes. The formula is L=1/(dˆ2) Where L is the relative

amount of light you receive after moving and D is the change in

relative distance. So when D is 2, you're twice as far as you used to

be etc.

Let's say you start one step from a candle. When you take a step away,

you're twice as far from the source, so it would make sense that you

receive half as much light. But this isn't what happens. You actually

receive one quarter as much light.

If one person is standing one yard from a candle, and someone else is

three yards from the same candle, they will receive just one ninth as

much light.

I think that with the gospel, many people who are mere yards from the

light become satisfied with where they are, not recognizing that just

a few steps will brighten and bless their lives tremendously.

Conversely, when people who are very distant from God want to see

blessings, they make very small steps towards the light, and are

disappointed when they don't see miracles. They don't understand that

each step we take towards our Heavenly Father adds more light to our

lives than the last.

I hope you all have a great week, and I want to thank the Lexington

ward relief society for the package I received! I appreciate you all,

and wish I could write you all personally.

Much love from Texas

Elder Derek Troy