June 6, 2016
New transfer, but still in Centreville! I love this ward so much and I'm grateful that I'm able to spend a lot of time here. Had to say bye to Elder Shelley this week! I'm going to miss serving with him. He's become a brother to me and we became great friends, but I'm excited for the future!
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| This is Elder Shelley and Elder Duvall with Greg Dolla$ right before Elder Shelley said bye to him. |
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| Always a good time at the Koroma's house with Amy, Kadija, and Omar! |
On Tuesday and Wednesday we went around for Elder Shelley to say bye to different people. Amy Koroma always gets emotional saying bye to the missionaries she gets close to. She was super sad saying bye to Elder Yeager and now again with Elder Shelley, but she said "you're doing the work of the Lord, and I know there's people that need you wherever you're headed to."
I was slightly nervous when I found out I was going to be training a new missionary, but I'm super excited to be with my new companion, Elder Chu! He is fresh out of the MTC, and it's my pleasure to be his trainer! Elder Chu was born and raised in San Diego, so I was excited to find out my companion is another Californian! He is a convert to the church and was baptized just over a year ago on March 28th, 2015! He's grew up Buddhist and has a pretty cool conversion story! He graduated from SDSU with a bachelor's degree in economics, but decided that he needed to put his career and education on hold to come out and serve a mission. It's interesting being a "trainer" to someone who is about 7 years older than me, but I'm excited and he's going to be an excellent missionary! His parents are from Taiwan and China, he grew up speaking Mandarin Chinese along with English. So on his first day here, I took him to this Chinese lady's house that Elder Shelley and I met a few weeks ago and he had a 10 minute conversation in Chinese with her and was able to give her a Book of Mormon. I just stood there and smiled at the small Chinese women as they talked, it was pretty funny to watch.
The first lesson that Elder Chu taught was to William! We went more in depth through the restoration lesson with him, because we didn't fully cover everything with him last time. Elder Chu did a great job and he has a really strong testimony! He's going to be able to help out a lot of people brought it the course of his mission. William said he would come join us at church, but ended up not coming. We'll keep on working with him though. He has a 3 year old son, Dominic, who loves seeing us ride on our bikes every time we go over, but William gets mad at Dominic for always interrupting us when we're trying to teach him. He's a super cute kid though!
We had a quick lesson with Megan and her Mom this week about temples and eternal families. And they both said they'd love to go up to the temple visitors center once high school finishes in a few weeks! The last time Megan was up there at the temple was during Christmas time, and she said she felt the spirit there super strong, even though she was only able to walk around it outside. So she looks forward to eventually being able to go inside soon!
A quote that stood out to me this week was about having hope. James E. Faust stated that "The unfailing source of our hope is that we are sons and daughters of God and that His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, saved us from death." Elder Dallin H. Oaks visited Virginia a little over a month ago and filmed one of our "Small and Simple goals" that we do each day. It was a pleasure to open up this "Small and Simple" goal in my email one morning: It's such a small thing to remember who we are, sons and daughters of God our Eternal Father, but remembering that can make the world of difference in our lives. If we keep that perspective in mind, we'll be more likely to resist temptation and make decisions that will not only please our Heavenly Father, but will bring so much more peace and happiness into our lives.
I also just wanted to say good luck to my twinner, Hermana Duvall, who is now in the Mexico Missionary Training Center! I’m super excited for her to learn Spanish as she prepares to serve the people of Minneapolis, Minnesota! It's so crazy to think that we are both out serving missions now, but it's exciting at the same time. I'm grateful that we both have this opportunity to serve the Lord! I know that she will make an excellent missionary!
Love you all and hope you have a great week!
Elder Duvall
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