HOME.

Return Home

Well my mission has come to a close. It has been a month since I packed up my clothes, passed by some recent converts, including the family of Wendy and Marcos (who have become just the strongest mormon family ever, they have like 20 book of mormons in their house, temple pictures taped on the walls, and have weekly noche's de hogar in which they invite the whole neighborhood!) in San Juan, Satelite, and then had our farewell dinner with President and Sister Klein. Then I boarded the plane, survived a 9 hour layover in Miami, talked on the plane to a fire dancing scuba diving harpoon fishing yoga instructor a little about God while debating in my mind following the same career paths as her, and then finally landing at 10 pm in good old Phoenix Skyharbor airport in Arizona. My family and some good friends where waiting for me, including the Sister Hilton, The Martins, Sara Prokop, Matthew Dickens and Mr. Dickens, Isaac Miller, and Bella Roig. I was pretty overwhelmed, tried to give handshakes to everyone like a good missionary but everyone made fun of me and made me give them hugs. Oh well.

The adjustment is pretty hard. Getting back to english wasn't that hard, but it was hard finding a purpose. As a missionary our purpose is so clear and so defined. Invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and his atonement, repentance, baptism, the reception of the Holy Ghost, and endure to the end. That is what you do all day every day. Why do you wear a tie? To Baptize. Why do you eat? To baptize. Why do you shower in the mornings? To baptize. Everything is centered on helping OTHERS. And now, I have to worry about myself again. What am I going to study? Work? MARRIAGE ?  :O And how do I arrive at those points.

It is also hard being in Babylon. But I can do it and will do it. With Christ, all things are possible and are worth it. My mission is just starting, and I hope to always have that missionary spirit and be worthy to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with all those that surround me.

If you ever want to chat or have a question, my email is admoffitt15@gmail. com. I would love to hear from you!

Hurrah for Israel!

Sincerely,

Adam Moffitt

Best parents ever

My sister Jessica!

I HAVE FRIENDS

My little sister clara

Mi familia! Together for the first time in 2 years

The new temple in Gilbert Arizona that was dedicated while I was gone. It is so beautiful!

Presents for the family! Bull horn trumpets, machetes, coconut purses, what more do you need?

ITS GOOD TO BE HOME.

THE END.

Tarantulas, Off, and Baptisms for the Dead

Last big email of the mission - May 25 2015

 I have to write a double email this week because I didnt write last week. These last two weeks have been really full of awesome happenings. Last week was the week of the family. IT is a tradition here in latin america, I dont know about there in the states, but the church really capitolized this week because of the focus we have in the family and helping families become eternal and happy. Every day in the church we had an activity. Wednesday, my companion and I were in charge and we taught about how to protect our families from the attacks of Satan in a turbelant world like the one we live in today. we read efesios 6, and then organized the members and investigators into 4 teams, and then each one made their own set of armor in a competition. It was a great success and everyone had a great time and learned a good lesson.

  On Friday, there was a stake wide activity that was really  cool. The leaders of the stake invited all of the major officials of the governement and other leading positions, including the leaders of other churches, and had a presentation about the family and its importance in society. They showed several little skits about the programs that the church uses to strengthen the family like scripture study, family nights, and family prayer etc. 

They had this part where they explained the doctrine of baptisms for the dead and the vicarious temple work that we do for our ancestors to help them leave spiritual prision and go to paradise and be able to be saved (1 cor 15:29 1 pedro 3:18-19 1pedro 4:6) and I felt the spirit really strong. I know for myself that this doctrine is true and I believe that it is one of my favorite doctrines of the church. 

YES WE MORMONS BAPTIZE FOR THE DEAD.

no, we dont dig out corpses drag them to rivers and baptize them. come on. 

but we do perform baptisms FOR AND IN BEHALF OF those family members that have died WITHOUT the ability or opportunity to accept a valid baptism in this life by the power of the restored priesthood of Jesus Christ. That is a glorious doctrine because it explains that God is not a respector of persons. He taught that all men must be born of water and of spirit to enter into the kingdom of God (john 3:5), so that means that jonny who grew up and died on an island where he never learned the gospel is not condemned for not doing something that he never even knew or had the chance to do! Someone can, in a holy temple, be baptized in the place of him, and he, in the spirit world, can accept of reject that baptism. Every single human soul that has lived or is living or will live will have the opportunity to accept or reject the saving ordinances of the gospel of jesus christ such as baptisms for the dead. 

No. other. church. teaches. this doctrine.

This week we have helped recent converts do family history and have helped converts prepare 11 names to bring to the temple to have the work done for them. 

Anyways, the spirit was very strong and testified to everyone who was paying attention to the truthfulness of temple work. Because the activity was of the whole stake, I was also able to see  several recent converts that I was able to teach and baptize from La Sarrosa, including my favorite family ever, The Archaga family, as well as miguel tome, who is preparing for a mission this year and is in charge of family history now in ward. Also, I saw my mission son Elder Navas, who was my companion in la Sarrosa. This was very special to me because it meant alot to see that these people are still active in the church and are enduring to the end. I felt a joy equal to or greater than they joy I felt baptizing them seeing them enduring to the end. It was also cool because these people have been sharing their testimonies and have in turn brought other people into the church to be baptized. Miguel, has baptized two of his brothers, The archaga family has baptized their 21 yr old niece, and other converts have also been the means of bringing more of their family to the gospel. What joy to see some of the fruits of my work and what gratitude to God for letting me teach these people. Truly he did all the work.

What else... Oh yeah. So my companion one day this week stuck his hand in his shoes before putting them on and yelled and I look over and this big tarantula just crawls out of his shoe and starts running around our house. There is really only one thing to do when this happens, other than curling up in a ball sobbing and pleading for mercy.

Grab the bug spray, OFF, and aggressively soak the wild tarantula in OFF.  as it slips and slides around, grab a match, light it, throw match in slow motion at tarantula, and watch it explode. 

This is the only way to effectively kill a tarantula. Trust me.

There were many other amazing experiences that we have had these weeks, including many miracles here in the field. We are seeing Gods hand in the work even in spite of the adversity that there always is.

I love you all!

Elder Moffitt

ahhhhhhh! Kill it!

Luke, God. is. your. FATHER!

May 15th 2015

Well here I am in my last change of my mission! After 6 months in Tocoa, Colon, and on the verge of lung cancer, I was changed to Barrio Berlin in Progreso, Yoro, Honduras. I was on the verge of lung cancer because I hadnt rained in 2 months in Tocoa, and the streets are all made of dirt, so when vehicles and or wind and or small insects pass the street, all the dust flies up . So there is like this chinese pollution factor of pure dust that makes the sunsets look like starwars epic becuase of all of the dust in the air. Every time that a car passed us my companion and I would have to take a deep breath and squint like arab traders. We were going to get darth vaders masks and prosylte like that but it probably would have scared people off even more. 

¨(kuuukeeekuuukeeee...Pedro.... God... is your FATHER!!!!)¨

But anyways I will finish my mission here on the outskirts of Progreso, a big city with wendys, pizza hut, and all the rest. There is even a dunkin donuts and a baskin robbins I think! But dont worry I am going to stick with rice and beans for 6 more weeks and then I will pig out. My goal is never to touch rice for at least 248 days upon returning home. My companion is named Elder Monroy, he is this chubby little guatamalan guy that is a real jokester. He is really funny and is just starting his mission, so I am finishing up his training with him. 

The ward here is so cool! The members are really dedicated and really have a desire to work. I am not sure if it is just my worn collar but we have recieved a ton of references from the members and we even passed the young womens group on sunday going to visit all of the less actives in their organization!!! They asked us if we were teaching any young women that they could go visit. I had to grab my jaw and stick it back on before responding. That was the first time someone had asked us if they could go visit one of our investigators. 

When I got here we had a total of 4 investigators, so we have spent the majority of this week just contacting like crazy and trying to find people that are chosen and have been prepared by the Lord to recieve this message. It is always super fun to contact because you never know who you are going to find. It could be someone really wierd, or some really apostate person, or the next general relief society president. who knows? Yesterday we had 15 minutes before our next cita so we contacted a few houses and this one guy came out bald and super smiley and invited us in and I thought he was a jehovahs witness cause his smile was super creepy and was getting ready for that but turns out he was baptized in the church like 6 years ago and is a air force sergeant for Honduras that was super excited to find the church here and wasnts to go back. We left him the war chapters in Alma to read for homework because I think those are so cool and can teach us alot about how to conquer Satan in the spiritual war that each of us is part of.

Today we had a zone family history activity and I really got to figure out how to use the system and could really feel the spirit testify to the truthfulness of the work. I love the work of the temple and the obra vicaria, not sure how to say that in english, but the work for our ancestors. It is so cool to see where I come from and feel the spirit of the work of slvation on the other side of the veil. I am totally going to work in family history a lot more when I get back, or at least help others do it cause my family history is pretty well done haha.

Pretty much I am just determined to finish strong my mission. This is not a time to slow down but to really give it my all until the last day and then have the rest of eternity to think about it and relax. I was called to serve for 24 months, not 23, or 22, so I still have plenty to do.

Endure to the end is much better expressed at USC. Fight on!

I love you all and will see you soon enough. Plan cool things for us to do when I get back, cause I dont really have time to think about it. 

Love you all!

Elder Moffitt

Life is Hard for the Best People

This week was great but hard. SO MUCH APOSTASY! But it is good. we cannot expect to be representatives of Jesus Christ without dealing with harden hearts and blinded eyes and ununderstanding ears. It is incredible to me to see how traditions of ones fathers can just completely mold and hardens someones form of belief. That pattern is so visible in the jews of the bible, the lamanites of the book of Mormon, and people here. People only want to believe what is familiar to them, and there are so few that really understand the import of our message and the weight of the invitacion to really pray and ask God, the fountain of all truth, for an answer and a confirmation. 

The guy we found milacrulously in Trujillo on divisions, remember, that is our neighbor, has been progressing. He is really open, and always tells us the errors that he commits. He has talked to us about his challenges with the law of chastity and the word of wisdom. He has problems drinking and really has a desire to change and is starting that repentance process of recognizing his errors, and feeling godly sorrow for them. I hope to be here when he is ready and repentant enough to wash away his sins in the waters of baptism.

I found this quote today and it hit me pretty hard. As I am nearing the end of my mission, it seems like I am working as hard as I can but not having the same results that I would expect. Here it is: 

If for a while the harder you try, the harder it gets, take heart. So it has been with the best people who ever lived - Jeffrey R. Holland

I think the Lord is just giving me those last few trials to be able to pass with courage and steadfastfulness (is that a word?) to be able to then enjoy the last few miracles of my mission.

Hurrah for Israel!

Elder MOffitt

Changes a'Comin'

Hi Mom! 

Thanks for your cheerful emails. Nice to always have emails waiting for me on Monday. 

Changes are this week, on Wednesday, and I am still not sure if I am staying here in Tocoa or leaving. It would be nice to have a change of scenery since I have been here over 6 months. But I will go where the Lord wants me to go. To describe how changes work, is that they call us Tuesday morning with the change information, who is leaving the zone, we work normal that day, and that night we frantically pack up and write letters to leave behind with recent converts and friends and then Wednesday morning the tell us where we are going and with who and we head out. Sometimes it feels like we are recieving nuclear missile codes or something for the secrecy levels and how they tell us the change info last second and little by little but that makes it fun.

Love you!

Elder Moffitt

Sorpresa!

Well, hello everybody. Kinda tired this week so my weekly message is just summed up in this scripture:

3 John 1:13-14:

13 I had many things to write, but I will not with ink and pen write unto thee:

14 But I trust I shall shortly see thee, and we shall speak face to face. Peace be to thee. Our friends salute thee. Greet the friends by name.

See you in Phoenix on June 11 at 9:57 pm!

Love,

Elder Moffitt

General Conference in Tocoa

Hello all,

This week was great because of General Conference, or in other words the biannual opportunity that we have to listen to the prophet and 12 apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ in these times. I know that these men are called of God and have his priesthood and are guided by revelation in what to tell us.

My favorite talks were by Elder Holland, about the meaning of the atonement of Jesus Christ and how it saves the human race from spiritual freefall. 

Elder Uchtdorf talked about the meaning of Grace and how it saves us after all we can do, not because of all we do. We cannot earn our way into heaven, but understanding how the grace of God opens the heavens to us fills us with the desire to do the right and obey. 

My all time favorite talk was by Elder Ringwood of the Seventy, who talked about selfless service and being truly good and without guile. I felt the spirit very strongly listening to that talk and the importance of ignoring dominion, titles, and authority as motives to help and serve and be rightous. Why does it matter if others see us if God is always watching?

I learned so much from the conference and received a flood of revelation for what to do with my life during and after the mission. Nothing to do with what major I should study or anything of course, that is way too practical for God to guide me in right now it seems. But pretty much the overlying message of every apostle was "get off your phone and get married" -- progress spiritually!

It is amusing to me that only a few years ago I had difficulty enduring one session of conference without being sleepy with my head cleverly angled so that you couldn't see me snoozing on the floor, Dad, or pleading pitifully for backrubs during the talks. And yet these 10 hours of conference passed so quickly and I filled pages on pages with notes. Truly great parenting is teaching the principles and showing by example and letting the children get to that point by themselves.

Love you and and I love the work. 

Hurrah for Israel!

Elder Moffitt

While in Trujillo, I was able to visit the first young lady that I taught the gospel to, Yaneli. She is still active in the church in Ceiba, and came to Trujillo on vacation that week that I was also there. She later got a boyfriend, this massive handsome guy, and invited him to church and he was baptized. They are planning on getting married in the temple. This was a very neat experience for me as I haven't seen any of the other converts
that I taught after leaving those areas.

Sometimes you just have to be silly in the jungle.

Fruits of the Spirit: Peace, Love, and Joy

This week I really learned a lot about the Spirit. Here are some miracles of the week:

On Sunday last week, we passed a man sitting on the balcony of his house alone at about 7 at night. One tradition that I have is that I always like to contact males when they are sitting alone. It is usually the most spiritual part of their day and they are usually pondering or meditating or thinking about something so I always like to just ask them how they are what they are thinking and if they are sad and need someone to cheer them up. The two elders I was with and I passed the house and I thought, "naw, leave him alone. no talk to him. naw leave him alone. no come on talk to him." Never sure if they are my thoughts or the spirit, I sighed and, like I do 93% of the time, turned around and walked back to ask this guy what he was thinking. Always better to err on the side of the spirit. He chuckled and said he was fine, just tired. Surprisingly, he responded by asking me where I lived. I told him Tocoa. Long story short, turns out he lives in this wealthy house RIGHT in front of our apartment. I had tried to contact that house several times but it was surrounded by massive walls and no one ever came out. So here I am 50 miles away from my area and find my neighbor! I asked him when he was going back to Tocoa, and put an appointment with him. 

The next day, we went in the night to go visit him. He is about 25 years old, let us in and told us that he has made a lot of mistakes in his life and wants to change. We challenged him to be baptized, he accepted. 

This Sunday he came to church with us. Coincidence? No. God finds ways to get inside even the highest walls.

Made quacamole for an investigador family that we are teaching for family night. Nobody died. SUCCESS!

On Thursday we were in Saba, and our 2 citas cancelled, so when a kid tried to talk to me in English (they usually do and then run away laughing), I called him over and asked where he lived. He pointed to the distance and we asked him if we could visit his family. He said, sure, and started to guide us to his house. We passed by a school on the way there, and all these 6-8 year olds were at recess and when they saw us pass by. One of them asked us for a pamphlet, and then literally the whole entire 1st and 2nd grade came running and threw themselves against the fence asking and begging for pamphlets. It was pretty hilarious because it was like they had never seen missionaries before, which is probably true, but I only gave out 2 pamphlets, one to the boys and one to the girls, because I only had so many. I half expected them to rip each others arms off trying to read it but they all ran over to the shade and started reading. Awww.

Anyways, we got to the house of this kid who is 12 yrs old and turns out his mom went to the church before when she was young and is the neice of the only active and endowed member in all of Saba! What's more, turns out the dad (they are not married of course -- welcome to Honduras) is actually a member of the church. He was baptized as a youth but now has problems with smoking and is abusive and stuff. You have to believe that God guided us there because we are talking about finding her in a city of 20,000 people with no church members. 

Another miracle. On Friday, we went to Sonaguera to do divisions with the district leader there, Elder Dickson from Utah. We went to visit someone, no one was there, so we contacted a house and out came a 12 year old that had gone to the church once and was a friend of the recent convert we had gone to find. He let us in to teach him, and we asked him if he wanted to be baptized. He responded, yes, but in 13 years. Why so long? we asked and we explained what baptism is and why it is important. What if Christ comes before 13 years are finished? He understood perfectly, but was still unconvinced. So we asked him is he would pray and ask if he needed to be baptized in the church. He nodded with the faith of a 12 year old kid and prayed simply to know if he needed to be baptized in the church and thanked God for sending the missionaries. He paused, and then said the same thing over again, and finished the prayer. We looked up and tears were streaming down his face, and when we asked him how he felt, he said, Tranquility. Peace. He said firmly, I want to be baptized.

The fruits of the spirit of God are peace, love, joy. It is an enlightening influence that opens the mind and fills it with light and understanding. It touches the soul and makes the heart burn. It is real, true, precious, and  beautiful, and to be sought and prayed for diligently. Strong spiritual experiences are few and far between, but they cannot be denied. I wish to be able to teach more with the spirit, because the lessons in which the spirit is present are so much different than lessons that we are only teaching with our own understanding and knowledge. When the spirit is not there, everyone is bored. When the spirit is there, there is hunger to learn and understand. I love the spirit. I like the scripture in Heleman 5:30 about the influence of the spirit.

All those who sincerely and humbly pray to know if the church is true will feel that same influence. The same thing for those who pray about the Book of Mormon or to know if Joseph Smith really was a profet or a fraud, and everything else. God doesn't use visions and dreams when he can just whisper to our heart. If you don't feel an immediate answer to your prayer, keep looking and keep asking. It will come.

Other than that, had many other cool things happen, we had a baptism this week that was a complete miracle, but I will tell you all about that later. Love you all and please pray for the missionaries here in Honduras. 

And don't forget that I am in the murder capitol of the world. 

Hurrah for Israel!

Elder Moffitt 

Our Tocoa District

Our Zone. Yep, I coordinated the shirts. It's a thing we do here.

Just keeping us safe here in the jungle.

Book of Mormonopoly

Sorry guys, but I like never have time to write you all. Not that you are second priority but, yeah, actually you kinda are. I have to be focused on the work of the Lord here and am always so busy designing teaching aids, helping missionaries, sending datos, and other missionary things I just don't literally have time to write you all. 

This week started good with a lesson on Monday with a youth who just straight up told us he wants to be a member of the church so we taught him about baptism and he accepted. Cool. 

I have learned how to walk here in the mission. I fly. Honestly we don't have bikes or anything. We just walk dusty streets all day so we have to go fast to really get a lot done. 

Thursday we went to Saba again, that city we are opening, and had several people come up to us and ask us about the church because they had had contact with it beforehand. I love it when people ask us how much a Book of Mormon costs. FREE!!!!!!

I went on divisions there in Saba with a returned missionary that I knew in San Pedro Sula that moved here to Saba and pretty much the whole time he was just philosophizing about marriage and how to find and choose the perfect spouse. yeah...

But it was good and we had a lot of good lessons. It is hard trying to get people to show the faith necessary to travel an hour to go to church, and to get them to understand that there is something so special and important about this church, that it is literally the Church of JESUS CHRIST, that it deserves traveling that far instead of going to one of the many churches here. But Sunday we had 3 men investigators come to church from Saba. It was sweet.

Saturday night, we went crazy and called like every number we had written in our agendas to try and get people to go to church the next day. On Sunday, we went extra early and passed for like 50 people to go to church with us, and no one wanted to. You get used to stuff like that in the mission so I wasn't that affected by it, but it is always pretty sad to know that you have the pearl of great price and that people don't want it.

Sunday afternoon, we grabbed our lunch and hopped on the bus to go to Trujillo and do divisions with the elders there. Can you imagine eating rice and beans on the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland? What about Space Mountain? Well, combine those two and you get the bus ride to Trujillo, and me trying to eat my lunch on the bumpiest road in history. My rice kept messing with me and jumping off my fork right into my eyeball.

Trujillo is beautiful and after a hard day's work on Sunday with the elders there, we woke up Monday and helped the elders deep clean their house, which was really quite exemplary in its dirtiness. The toilets were, impressively enough, the worst I have seen in my entire mission. I bought muriatic acid and showed them the power of the holy destructor, aka muriatic acid. That stuff is so powerful you put it down and it literally shouts a war cry and gives a quick battle speech and then goes and slaughters every germ within a 10 foot radius. It literally smokes and sounds like cooking bacon. I don't even know if it is legal in the U.S. but this stuff goes hard. Then, after the spirit once again could enter their house, we went and studied the scriptures on the beach on the perfectest day ever. So I'm not super jealous for your Rocky Point trip family -- I was on the beach too, just didn't go swimming. and it was only 2 hours, but still...

So I had 2 brilliant business ideas this week -- one was Book of Mormonopoly, or a Book of Mormon themed monopoly game if you couldnt figure that out for yourself. BRILLIANT!!!!!! Put that in Deseret Book in the family night section and it is gone. Can you imagine the Black Friday crowds?

2nd brilliant idea came this morning. We had doused and scrubbed the shower floor with muriatic acid so you literally couldn't enter the bathroom without a Darth Vadar mask. But I wanted to shower so I stuck the fan in the bathroom and went for it -- freezing cold bucket shower of course. But as I walked out, a wonderful wall of air hit me and I just dried off with the fan. So my idea was this sort of high velocity air jet body dryer thing that you stand on and it just shoots air up in this wind tunnel and dries you off in like 30 seconds. I was so pumped about it and already had my degree in mechanical engineering and then an MBA in business just to launch this business called Cyclone with this crazy body dryer planned and was already making advertizements for it when I told shared my idea the person here in the internet and they looked it up and turns out it already exists.

So.

Depressed.

Back to the get rich quick drawing board.

The church is True, Christ is our Savior. We are working with several families to get married and trying to keep all of our recent converts active and strong in the church, enduring to the end.

Some scriptures for you all:
 - Mom:  Acts 9:34

-  Dad:  Romans 16:18

- Jessica:  Lucas 14:26

- Chris and Clara:  I'll look for some for you guys this week!

Hurrah for Israel!

Love,

Elder Moffitt

Zone Conference coming up!

Quick message as I have to prepare for a zone conference tomorrow and try and review the USC class options that you sent. Please communicate my love for the family and that I will write next week. This week we had a special conference with Elder Neil L. Anderson. Shook his hand. Cool deal. Will write more next week.

Thanks for the help with college registration. If you could, please send me a list next Monday with several possible major requirements and some commentary for why it would be a good major for me. Let's see how good you are, missus college counselor. :) That way I can print it out here and read it and ponder and pray about what major I want to firmly decide on and pursue. Thank you!

Love,

Elder Moffitt