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