October 30, 2017 Overcoming the World

Hey everyone!

Lunch at our favorite Mongolian grill,

called Ghengis Grill.

Elder Ure and I had a pretty good week! This week was pretty busy. We had three different exchanges with different sets of zone leaders on three different days. I feel that doing so many exchanges each transfer keeps me on my toes and helps me to keep working hard and helps me to avoid just “going through motions.” Trying to help some of these younger missionaries, helps me to make sure I give my best effort as we are out talking to people, teaching and finding. I’m also able to learn a lot from them.

With Elders Baldwin and Baxter on exchange.

He’s got some pretty long arms

Our ward had the Halloween trunk-or-treat, chili-cook-off activity this past weekend. Pam came to the activity and had a great time and was able meet a lot more members. She even brought her own candy to pass out to all the kids with us. It was fun! She fit in well with everyone and is getting more and more comfortable with everything.

On Saturday, the Sister missionaries in our ward had one of their investigators get baptized. Pam came to observe the baptism, to get an idea of what hers will be like soon. She even drove our other investigator Dorothy to the baptism. It’s the coolest thing when you have your investigators fellowshipping each other and helping one another out. While driving back home, Pam was expressing some nerves and uneasiness about her baptism and if she’s ready, but Dorothy assured her that she is ready! It’s been up and down this week with Pam, one day she’s unsure about everything, then the next day she’s committed. We hope to help her feel that she is ready! We will be seeing her again tonight.
Pam then also drove Dorothy to church on Sunday, which was cool to have them both there.

We also had one of our Ghanaian investigators, named Kwadwo come to church yesterday. We met him three or four weeks ago and have been teaching him quite a bit. We have some solid members of the ward from Ghana that befriended him really well.

Another exchange with Elders Smith and Nielsen.

So we had 3 investigators at church, and of course the service was bit different than usual. The bishop of our ward got released and we now have brand new bishopric! So there were testimonies given by the former bishop, the new bishop, and their wives. Our investigators enjoyed church though!

As for our lessons with Dorothy, she is making great progress on living the word of wisdom. It’s cool to see her, as she has made effort to quit smoking, she is able to understand everything we teach much better. The scripture D&C 89:18-19 is so true; “And all saints who remember to keep and do these sayings, walking in obedience to the commandments, shall receive health in their navel and marrow to their bones; And shall find wisdom and great treasures of knowledge, even hidden treasures...” Dorothy’s understanding has increased rapidly since she has been trying to follow the Word of Wisdom.

I’ve been reading through some of Elder Neil L. Anderson’s Conference talks in preparation for his visit to our mission in a couple weeks. I really enjoyed his talk from  this last April, which was about “Overcoming the World.” Here are a few things he said as he defined what it means to “overcome the world”:

“Overcoming the world is not one defining moment in a lifetime, but a lifetime of moments that define an eternity.
Overcoming the world means treasuring the greatest commandment: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.”
Overcoming the world is keeping our promises to God--our baptismal and temple covenants and our oath of faithfulness to our eternal companion.
Overcoming the world will always mean that we will have some beliefs that are ridiculed by the world.
Overcoming the world is being less concerned with our online connections and more concerned with our heavenly connection to God.
Overcoming the world is remembering, even when we are discouraged, the times we have felt the love and light of the Savior.
May we each try a little harder in our efforts to overcome the world, not excusing serious offenses yet being patient with minor slips and falls, eagerly hastening our speed and generously helping others.”

There is so much opposition in this world, and so many things that we have to overcome. I’m grateful for the Savior and the heavenly help that He can give us as we strive to  overcome the world. I recommend reading through this talk!

I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Elder Jeremy Duvall
Washington DC South Mission

October 23, 2017 By Divine Design

Hey everyone!

At the mission home with the new
missionaries, and Daniel and Ellie,
two of president Huntsman's children

Every missionary gets to sign the "Endure to the End Flag"
towards the end of their mission.
 I signed my name inside the D of D.C. South

We had a busy first week of the transfer! We had 26 new missionaries, with only 12 that went home, so we had numerous areas open up throughout the mission.
Since we have new senior couples in the office, they always have lots of questions for us on how certain things should be done. I'm grateful that we are able to help them out. It's been a busy transition for them over the past few weeks!

President Huntsman does a special meeting a couple times a year for missionaries that are in the final few months of their mission. He calls this meeting the "Endure to the End" meeting, and we discussed things we can do to make sure we continue to work hard every day and stay focused to the very end. I really enjoyed the meeting! He started the meeting by playing a brief video clip to the group of missionaries. The video he showed was of me, opening up my mission call over two years ago! He had all of the missionaries think back to the day they opened up their mission call, and reflect on the reasons why they decided to serve a mission, and then think about all of the experiences we have had over the course of our mission. Then he had us think of specific things we can do and that we can change over our final transfers to make sure we finish strong. I really enjoyed watching that video of me opening my call! It felt like it was yesterday. But it was cool to reflect on that, and I hope I can continue to work hard each day to the end!

 This picture is in the basement of the mission home.

We've taught Pam all of the lessons and she passed her baptismal interview this last week! We will continue to teach her and read out of the Book of Mormon with her over the next couple weeks and help her continue to be ready for her baptism. It will most likely be on November 4th or 11th. She continues to tell us that we have "saved her life" and that she is so grateful for everything that has happened. We found out this week that she has a coworker that she's been working with for a few years that is a member of the church that lives in a different ward. She told her member friend that she was meeting with the missionaries and is planning on getting baptized. This news surprised her friend, but she is very happy for her and has been a good support in encouraging her! Her friend will likely speak at her baptism. President Huntsman did her baptismal interview and she's thinking of asking President Huntsman to perform her baptism, so that will be pretty cool!

We ran into Eshetu at the airport last week.
He's a recent convert in our ward that works
 there, so every time we pick up the
missionaries we try to find him.

Our investigator Dorothy is doing really well! We had a lesson where we had planned to teach her about the Word of Wisdom, and before we even began teaching the lesson she told us that since she's been meeting with us she's felt much more positivity in her life, and she's felt the need to make changes. Before us ever teaching the Word of Wisdom or ever encouraging her to try and stop smoking, she decided that she was going to work on quitting. She said that it felt like the right thing to do, even though we had never brought it up before. It was cool to see her act on those promptings, and it allowed that lesson go really well.

We were invited to a lunch/meeting this week with our Stake Presidency, the high councilmen over missionary work, and President Huntsman. They wanted to discuss the progress of the missionary work in the Mt. Vernon Stake, and brainstorm ideas on what the Stake and Ward leaders, and members, can be doing to better support the missionary work in the Stake. I've really enjoyed over the course of my mission being able to interact with different leaders in the different Stakes in our mission and have learned a lot from them. Our meeting with them was at the Army Navy Country Club in Arlington, VA, because one of members of the Stake Presidency is a member there. It was a neat experience.

In really looking forward to the next few weeks! On November 11th, we will be having a special mission-wide conference, where we will be having a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles visit our mission! He will be joined by the Presiding Bishop of the church, Bishop Gérald Caussé and a couple other General authority seventies. They were going to be here that weekend for other meetings, and decided that they would try to fill their time here and add a visit to our mission.
The following week after that we will be having two, half-mission Conferences with Elder Mervyn B. Arnold of the Seventy. This had already been on the calendar for a long time. The night before the half-mission conferences, Elder Arnold has requested to spend the evening with President Huntsman and his assistants in their proselyting area. So he will be coming with us to visit an active member family in our ward and possibly one of our investigators. That will be a pretty neat experience having a general authority, along with our mission president, both come out with us for an evening in our area!

One of my favorite talks from Conference that I re-read his week was Elder Rasbands talk, "By Divine Design." I liked this paragraph from his talk.
"Through the experience of my own life’s journey, I know that the Lord will move us on that seeming chessboard to do His work. What may appear to be a random chance is, in fact, overseen by a loving Father in Heaven, who can number the hairs of every head. Not even a sparrow falls to the ground without our Father’s notice. The Lord is in the small details of our lives, and those incidents and opportunities are to prepare us to lift our families and others as we build the kingdom of God on earth. Remember, as the Lord said to Abraham, “I know the end from the beginning; therefore my hand shall be over thee.”
There truly are no accidents when we are going about the Lord's work. It's cool to see how the Lord places different people or experiences in our lives, not by coincidence, but for a purpose. I know that what Elder Rasband said is true. I know that "the Lord is in the small details of our lives" and that he is constantly preparing us for what lies ahead in the future.

I love you all and I hope you have a great week!

Elder Jeremy Duvall
Washington DC South Mission

October 16, 2017 BIG NEWS!

Hey everyone!

Last week we met this lady from Ghana who owns
her own clothing store. We went there and started
trying on different shirts and things. I found this
 African man-dress thing and thought it was
pretty cool, so I bought it. We meet men from
Ghana all the time that walk around wearing things
 like this, in all different colors. But we spoke in
Twi to her and had to sing her a couple African songs,
which helped me to get it for close to 50% off!
It was pretty sweet!

I've got some pretty sweet news- something I didn't expect at all. Surprise! Elder Ure and I will be doing a 4th transfer together!! Neither of us will be getting transferred! Last year, I did 4 transfers (which is about 6 months) with Elder Judkins. Now this year I'll also be doing 6 months with the same companion. It's extremely rare for a companionship to stay together for 4 transfers. In fact, the last time President Huntsman did it was with me and Elder Judkins last year! I guess you could use the saying "Why fix something that's not broken?" Elder Ure and I are working well together, trying our best to continue to work hard in our area, and trying our best to be of good support to the missionaries in the mission.
We have some pretty special things coming up in our mission this next transfer, with some General authorities visiting the mission, and President Huntsman felt that it would be best if he kept us together for one more transfer. He was struggling trying to discern who should stay, who should go, and who should come in to replace one of us, and he didn't know why it was such a hard decision to make. But he told us the reason why he was struggling to make a decision was because he realized that neither of us are supposed to go but that he wanted us to stay one more together.

Elder Ure has a good sense of humor.

"No better place to receive revelation than 

on the toilet."

I couldn't believe it initially, but I'm pretty excited about it! This is Elder Ure's last transfer too, which makes me assume that I will probably finish out my mission here in the Ft. Belvoir Ward, because I go home the following transfer. So I will end up being here for about 6 transfers (a little less than 9 months).

This past week was great! We had a couple exchanges. For one of them, I was able to go to another ward for a day, that covers Old Town Alexandria. It was fun biking around there talking to lots of people.

We had two more lessons with Pam, teaching her more of the commandments. We've pretty much finished teaching her all of the required lessons for baptism, now it's just a matter of having her come to church a couple more times and she'll be ready! She sent us a text one day that was super awesome! She told us how grateful she was for us and how big of a difference we've made in her life in the past month. She explained that at the beginning of meeting with us she was having some doubts and concerns, but recognized that those were from the adversary, and decided she needed to ignore those thoughts. We have her baptismal interview scheduled and her baptism will likely be on November 4th.

Our investigator Dorothy came to church again for the second time yesterday, it was the primary program and she really enjoyed it. The testimonies of little children are the best!

Two of my favorite converts that I've helped on 

my mission. Michael and Chris are both preparing 

to go to the temple since they've almost been 

members for a year!

We had another New and Returning Member Fireside last night. This one was great! I was able to introduce the 5 speakers. The first was a recent convert from Ghana that was found at a bus stop by missionaries on a cold day, and baptized a few weeks later. The second was a man from Louisiana, who searched his questions about salvation on google and wound up on Mormon.org, and then showed up at the local church building in Annandale. The third was a lady from Samoa who went to the LDS church as a little child, but the family went inactive for a long time, and she just recently started coming back to church and was baptized a couple months ago. The fourth was a Mom from China, who gave her conversion story in Mandarin and one of the Chinese elders translated her talk. She grew up Buddhist, and had a 25 year period of time learning about Christianity before she finally felt that she found the right church and was baptized into the church recently. And the fifth speaker was a man who works at the Pentagon, and whose wife and kids have been active, faithful members of the church for 20 years. He talked about how his daughter going on a mission to California and returning home was a huge factor in his decision to finally be baptized after many years of attending church with the family.

 Elder Ostendorf and I at the new
Member Fireside with Michael.

It's amazing how everyone's stories are all so different, but the joy and the spirit that the gospel has brought into each of their lives is the same.
I love how every single one of us have our own conversion stories. Some happen really fast, some take many years. People from all different backgrounds and from all over the world, can receive the same blessings of the restored gospel in their lives. And once that initial conversion takes place, we can continually become more and more converted to the gospel throughout our lives.

One of the talks from the recent General Conference that I enjoyed was by Elder  Stanley G. Ellis. The title of the talk is "Do We Trust Him? Hard is Good." He gave many example of different stories where people faced adversity and trials but that the "hard" was what allowed them to grow. He said "we see that hard is the constant! We all have challenges. The variable is our reaction to the hard."
There's no question that each of us are going to go through hard times in our lives. That's a fact. What matters most is that we can choose how to respond and react to the trials that we face. We can choose to exercise faith and make decisions to keep moving forward, or we can choose to back down and give up. If we respond correctly, then we'll be able to learn what God wants us to learn through adversity, and make it out on top.

Today we will be at the airport again picking up another big group of new missionaries! I'm excited to meet all of them, it's always fun being with them on their first day.

I love you all and I hope you have a great week!

Elder Jeremy Duvall
Washington DC South Mission

October 9, 2017 Love the Lord thy God

Hey everyone!

Another busy week here in Fort Belvoir! Every week just seems to fly by!

Elder Hastings, one of the Zone Leaders,
and I, with the coolest recent convert Eshetu.

We were able to teach Pam a couple more times this week and she made it to church on Sunday! We taught a really good lesson on obedience to commandments in general, emphasizing prayer and scripture study, as well as a lesson on the Word of Wisdom. I love the scripture from Matthew 22:36-40 where Christ explains the two greatest commandments.
"Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."
Every commandment that we're are given by God is an opportunity for us to show our love for Him and our love for others. When teaching any commandment, whether it be the 10 commandments, tithing, the word of wisdom, Chastity, etc., I love sharing this scripture first because it sets a good foundation. Every commandment ties back to showing our love and gratitude towards our Father in Heaven. As we taught the Word of Wisdom, Pam agreed with it all! She understands the importance of the commandment and is willing to start trying to live it. There are a couple things she is going to need to work on, but I know she can do it! She had a great time at church yesterday and the testimonies that were given were perfect for her to hear. She's excited to come again next week!

Elder Ure and I with our investigator Kwadwo.

His name means he was born on a Monday. 

Each day of the week has they're own name. 

I am Kofi, which is Friday, and 

Elder Ure is Kwasi, which is Sunday

We also found a sweet new investigator this week named Kwadwo. He's from Ghana and just barely moved here to Virginia about three weeks ago. We met him at the beginning of last week and we have already taught him three times! He is so humble and receptive to everything we've taught him. He believes everything we've taught and keeps every commitment that we've extended to him. He's in his mid 20's and is a good friend. When we see him we call him "mah damfo," which in Twi means "my friend."

We were able to teach an awesome lesson to a Nigerian family that we found last week! I can't pronounce their native Nigerian names, but they go by Paul and Amanda. They have three of the most respectful and kind little kids ever! It was fun teaching them. In the middle of our lesson, their 3 year old was trying to be welcoming to us, their guests, so he went to the refrigerator and grab a Corona Light beer and wanted to give it to me. I thought it was super funny! Paul felt really bad about it and apologized, and told his son to grab us some water. It was nice of the little boy to do that for us, it's the thought that counts, right? Another funny part of that lesson was when Paul randomly cut us off and said "Your church is Jon Huntsman's church right?" We said "Yes, he is a member of our church." That comment caught us off guard and we started laughing, and had to explain our connection to the Huntsman's. We told him that we'd be seeing his brother later that evening and he was surprised. Paul is really into politics and stuff. We're thinking of getting President Huntsman to come join us in teaching him a lesson.

President Huntsman up frontat the amphitheater speaking to all of us.

President Huntsman decided to have our Mission Leadership Council meeting at Burke Lake, which is nearby the mission home. We did it at the little amphitheater near the lake. He said that every time he goes there it reminds him of the Sacred Grove. The first part of our meeting was having everyone share an experience or story about the Prophet Joseph Smith, or a revelation, quote, or teaching that he gave. It was a great meeting at a beautiful location! I am so grateful for the Restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and my testimony of it increases little by little each and every day.

Here are all of the Zone Leaders and
Sister Training Leaders in our mission right now-
a great group of people!

Well, this is the last week of the transfer! It's hard to believe that I've already done about 6 months in this area! Elder Ure and I have been together now for three transfers, and we are assuming that I'll be getting transferred to another area, since I came into this area first. But President Huntsman hasn't told us yet whose staying and whose leaving. We do know that one of us will be getting transferred though, we will find out within the next couple days who is leaving and who is coming in to replace one of us. This week will be busy in preparation for the new transfer!

I love you all! Hope you have a great week!

Elder Jeremy Duvall
Washington DC South Mission

October 2, 2017 "Light"

Hey everyone!

We went to the George Washington Masonic Memorial museum today. I went outside of it once last year, but today we paid for a tour to go inside and to the top. It was really intriguing learning more about Free Masonry!Some interesting similarities, that's for sure.

Cool statue of George Washington,one of the most prominent Masons

From the top of the George Washington Masonic Memorial Museum.

With Elders Bryson, Benard, Dunn, Jones, Ure and myself

One of the upper floors,
which had some cool stained glass windows.

A picture from the top, looking towards D.C.

 A panoramic looking into downtown Alexandria, with King Street right down the middle.
D.C. Is on the far left on the other side of the river.
You can also see the Free Mason symbol down in the center of the picture

 









We had a pretty busy week, with 3 exchanges with different sets of zone leaders. We always seem to meet and find some cool people on exchanges.

We met a really awesome guy named Samuel this week. Samuel is from Liberia. I don't know what it is about Liberians, but out of all the different Africans we teach, they probably have my favorite accent to listen to. Anyways, we parked our car and got out, and Samuel was one of the first people we street contacted. We ended up walking with him for about 20 minutes towards his house, teaching him the entire first lesson as we walked with him. By the time we got to his house and finished talking to him about the Book of Mormon, we found out that his cousin is a less-active member of our ward who we've been trying to work with. Samuel didn't even know that his cousin was a member of our church, but once we found out they had the same last names, we made the connection. Samuel is excited for us to come back this evening to teach him again and to meet his wife!

 With Elders Medrum, Ure, Smith, and Williams.

They were in a trio and we had an exchange

with them this week.

We had two really good lessons with Pam this past week. We taught her the Plan of Salvation and Gospel of Jesus Christ lessons, and she is progressing really well. In both lessons we brought different members from the ward that were able to connect with her really well. She was really curious to hear their testimonies and asked them herself how they came to believe everything. Listening to her, I can tell how genuine she is with her desire to learn and to come to know if what we teach is true. A lot of people we teach seem to be really interested in simply learning about what we believe, just to increase their knowledge. But Pam is different, and is committed to finding out for herself if it's true. In our second lesson with her she brought up how excited she was to come to church on Sunday, but we had General Conference, so she was a bit disappointed that we weren't having our regular church service, but she was excited to watch some of the conference. She's awesome!

Had to pick up some Krispy Kreme

 donuts in between sessions of conference on Saturday.

I really enjoyed General Conference this weekend. It's hard to believe that this was my 4th General Conference as a missionary! I always receiving revelation from the Lord through the leaders of His church. I learned a lot from all of the different speakers and look forward to reading and studying all of their talks again in the coming weeks.

One of the talks that I particularly enjoyed was President Uchtdorf's talk from the priesthood session, where he talked about light.
He said "Darkness is not an indication that there is no light. Most often, it simply means we are not in the right place to receive the light. …
It is up to us to be in the right place to see and feel the divine light and truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Even when night has fallen and the world seems dark, we can choose to walk in Christ’s light, keep His commandments, and courageously testify of His reality and His greatness."
I think this is a pretty cool analogy. Just because the sun goes down at night, and it gets dark outside, does not mean that the sun has stopped shining. The sun is still burning brightly, but we are just on the wrong side of the earth to receive the light. This is such a great metaphor. The love of Jesus Christ, who is "the light of the world" is ALWAYS there, but in order for us to be able to fully embrace and access that light, we need to be in the right places, doing the right things. When we mess up, and we don't feel the presence of His light, does not mean that He has stopped shining. It just means we need to reposition ourselves to be in a place where we can feel the warmth of His light again.
When I first heard him say that "darkness is not an indication that there is no light" I first thought about the Light of Christ, which "is given to every man, that he may know good from evil” (Moroni 7:16). Sometimes we may meet people who we initially might think "wow, this person is just full of darkness". But rather than having a perspective of them being full of darkness, we should realize that instead, it's just a lack of the presence of light. But whether or not it's readily recognizable, the light of Christ is still within them with the potential to burn brightly once again. Once we can realize that everyone has the light of Christ, then we can do what President Uchtdorf says when he stated that "[we] are instruments in the hands of the Lord with the purpose of bringing light and healing to the souls of Heavenly Father’s children... [and that] Christ’s light brings hope, happiness, and healing of any spiritual wound or ailment."

I am grateful to have the light of the gospel and the light of the Savior in my life and I hope and pray that I can continue to be an instrument in the hands of the Lord to bring more of that 'hope, happiness, and healing' that comes from Him.

I love you all and hope you have a great week!

Elder Jeremy Duvall
Washington DC South Mission

Elder Meldrum!
We were in the MTC together,
but sadly he went home this morning because
he blew out his knee playing basketball a couple
weeks ago and isn't going to be able to finish
 his 2 years here. I'm going to miss him!