Nov. 10. 2020 -- The Day a Bunch of 19 Year-Olds Organized a Giant Citywide English Learning Program

Lots of awesome sights in Las Vegas, such as the police helicopters flying around with their spotlights searching people out most nights. 

Meanwhile, my companions have whole-heartedly jumped into Christmas music, which I am not sure if I personally support until December, but I did relent and buy some egg-nog. This week the weather switched up suddenly too and got pretty cold and has stayed in the 50s. I haven't been cold for like a year and a half, so that's funny. Love some sweater weather!

Yesterday we visited a middle-aged member who is super energetic and nice. In the first 5 minutes she gave us each a fake Gucci mask. And then asked us what kind she should get us next week. Within another 5 minutes she had liked our Facebook page and made us a post to put up, and then she gave us dinner to take home, frozen garlic bread to heat up later, and some yogurt. She then offered to bake a cake to bring to the ward talent show, and in the space of about two minutes, she also asked what day we get haircuts, called a friend at a haircut place, and hooked us up with free haircuts. She then gave us each several handfuls of Halloween candy, and we were barely able to dissuade her from pouring the entire bucket of candy into the bag she had already put our dinner in. Haha, she was so so nice. We had to get out of there, though, or she probably would have given us her whole house!

There was another member that came to help out with a lesson with a couple we are teaching. Right after the lesson was over, she asked us to help bring in some extra food she had brought for the people we are teaching. Before we knew, it she was suddenly cooking up a storm of Mexican food in the kitchen of these people she had just met. We have some crazy awesome members. 

We have been working crazy hard at getting valley-wide english classes up and running. The vision is that each chapel will become like a community center, where loads of Hispanics will come and the church will just grow like crazy. We now have english classes in about 8 or 9 chapels across our half of Las Vegas, and there are lots of others in the West mission. So when anyone anywhere in Las Vegas wants to learn English for free, we just point them in the right direction, and everything is already set up!

We have been advertising the classes like crazy, and I am probably going to drown in notifications. We put up some ads on Facebook, and have had roughly 100 conversations started with a ton of people wanting information about English classes. Just yesterday we sent out like 8 referrals in an hour. I have like 25 unread messages right now, so sometimes I think I might explode keeping track of all these people, but it will be awesome. Our ward has 4 sets of missionaries, and just our area has 17 nonmembers so far that want to come to the english class. It will be something really big.

One fun thing we did was go and hang up flyers all over our area about the class. We put them on lamp posts and things, but the most fun was going into all the spanish restaurants we could find and hanging them up. Almost all of them were okay with it! We put one on a chicken truck, at a grocery store, in a barber shop, and a ton of restaurants. One super cool thing that happened was a text we got from someone that had seen the flyers. She said she that she is a less-active member of another ward, and she saw us come in and put up the flyer. She hasn't gone to church because she works on Sundays, but when she saw us, she thought there might be a church close by where she could go before work. She then came to church with us on Sunday. It was really cool to me that God could work things out so that not only were we working on this english class project, but also he cared enough about this one less-active member that he had us go over at just the right time, that she would see us and want to come back to church. It is amazing.

So anyway, last week was our first english class and we are gearing up for round two. Last week we had one member and four nonmembers. One that came was a guy we had never met before. He was a big guy with ear gauges and lots of tattoos. I was helping him during the class, and he told me a little about all the hard times he's been going through. He said, "I don't know if this is the time to talk about it, but I really want to come to church and be closer to God again." Then, on this Sunday, he came back! He may have looked a little different with his hoody and tattoos (and sipping his coffee the whole time, haha), but is hard to explain how happy I felt to have him there. I think it is awesome to get a little glimpse of how much God just wants us all to come to him, no matter who we are, or wherever we are on the path of life. We also had another guy come in that we just met and invited on the street, so that was another huge blessing. 

Our main man from Guatemala gave us a scare. We had a lesson at a member's house where we watched the restoration video. After the video, the member asked him when he was getting baptized. He said, "Well, I was going to on the 27th, but I don't think I want to anymore..." We were trying to look calm but inside were like, "Oh no! What happened? What went wrong?" Then he said, "...I think I would rather do it sooner!" He gave us a little scare, but we are so excited for him. He has his date on the 22nd now. The other day he invited us to his house and cooked for us, and introduced us to his whole family. They were all super nice and invited us back for Thanksgiving. 

One last story was a member we visited. They are less-active, but the daughter suddenly had started feeling like she wanted to set things straight a little bit. She mentioned that the missionaries hadn't been in touch in a while, and right after that was when we called them and set up an appointment! They seemed super grateful to have us there. 

I am constantly amazed at how God guides us blind little people down here. All we have to do is walk!

His work is not finished.

Till we meet,

Elder Harris

Pictured is us enjoying some of the first sweater weather of the year and a five-minute rain shower, new Christmas lights, and my second picture with the Clark County fire department!

Nov. 3, 2020 -- Poppin Eggs

Experience of the day: We are cleaning out the car we just stole from the other elders, and I heave a half full waterbottle towards the distant dumpster. It bounces of something inside and comes out. Just then a shirtless old man cruises around the corner on an electric wheelchair thing, and yells, "You tried!" before whipping by. So I did. So I did. Only in Las Vegas.

Well, I do believe that this has probably been one of the craziest weeks of my mission. Very busy! Let's jump in...

The night before transfers, Elder Parker and I had a cool lesson with a less-active member we hadn't met. She told us a little about how her sister had recently passed away, and it had been really hard on her. We were able to share a little bit about Christ's atonement, and how He knows what we're going through and makes it possible for us to be together again. She teared up a little as we talked and told us how every time she hits a hard spot, the missionaries always show up at the right moment. We're just out trying to help people and do good. I don't know if I've ever felt a strong prompting that I need to contact certain people or go certain places, but I have seen many times when we are just trying to be about God's work, and He takes us where we need to be. 

To celebrate our time together, we broke out some glass bottle root-beers to end the night. Just as we did, our neighbor we made cookies for knocked on our door and brought us some ribs! It was awesome. 

The next day, we headed over to the mission office and got there at 8:00 AM, where I bid a fond farewell to my son. I also met up with my previous zone leader and new companion, Elder Gastelum! We spent the morning helping with transfers. We were also going to be in a trio, so we had to get another bed. We first scooted our seats alllll the way up so we could fit the bed parts and mattresses in the back of our car and managed to get everything inside. When we came back, our brand new trainee was the first of all of them to show up! He is from Arizona and just drove here with his family. His name is Elder Shepherd. After a new missionary training meeting and shuttling more missionaries around, we drove home where we immediately had to fill out several reports, build our bunk bed without any tools so we could sleep that night, and go to several lessons. Luckily a member let us borrow some tools and we made a nice, wooden bunk bed.

My new companions are both great. Elder Shepherd did his work in the home MTC and has some great Spanish. He enjoyed theater before the mission, and was Crutchy in Newsies. Elder Gastelum went to Davis High, not too far away! We all get along really well. We've been trying to compact closet and dresser space and everything, because it's a little tight, haha. Right now Elder Gastelum has a little end table that's just below knee-height that he uses for his desk. I gave Elder Shepherd my office chair with the missing wheel in favor of a metal folding chair. At least no more falling out!

Being a zone leader has been crazy busy. I don't know if it's just the first week of transfers, or if it's always like this, but it's packed. I haven't had a morning without a meeting this entire week. With all these meetings and reports to fill out, it is hard to fit in all our lessons, studies, and things, and also try and give Elder Shepherd his extra new missionary training. As a result, we rarely have a meal that lasts over 30 minutes or so and we do lots of improvised study and planning sessions in the car while we travel. It makes you feel a little spread thin, but I like thinking about when Joseph Smith was in jail, trying to guide the church, away from his family, with the saints being driven from their homes. Sometimes I think we, like him, probably wonder, "If I'm doing the things I'm supposed to, why is it sometimes so hard? Why doesn't everything just go right?" And I don't know the answer. But in the end, Joseph Smith was able to have success leading the saints. Everything worked out, and he left a powerful legacy. I think there's a lot of growth that happens when God gives us a little more than we think we can handle. We learn to rely on him more.

On my first full day as a zone leader, we had a mission-wide zoom meeting, and the Spanish speakers all stayed on afterwards. The mission is making a big push to increase the Spanish work in Las Vegas. About 1/3 of Las Vegas is Hispanic, and there is a lot of work to do. The plan all the stakes and mission presidents are working on is to start doing english classes in every chapel across the entire valley, so we can run english class advertisements, and refer responders from anywhere to the missionaries that are already running an english class in their local chapel. It is a massive organizing effort and requires a lot of training. President asked if he could have the training video on teaching an english class by Sunday of that week. I thought to myself, "Wow, the poor elders that have to make that! Haha, that's no time at all." Turns out . . . we are those elders. So we spent a night planning the script and video filming for an entire training video so we could just show up, film, and get out. We went to a chapel in Henderson (incidentally, the SAME chapel where the recent inspirational message about ministering one on one was filmed) and filmed it all. It took like 3 hours to do, but we came home exhausted and ready to be done. Right as we sat down, we looked at the videos, and the microphone hadn't been plugged in correctly, making all the videos just pure static. We had to go all the way back and do the entire thing over again. It was kind of crazy, but we got a good english class training video made by the end, haha!

Elder Gastelum found some pre-hard-boiled eggs in our fridge and decided to try them out. He stuck them in the microwave while we were at our desks, and then as he goes to cut one open, we hear what sounds like a massive balloon pop. We turned around and egg is on the ceiling, the floor, the other side of the room, everywhere. It was super funny. I guess the lesson to be learned is that heated eggs can pop.

Halloween honestly didn't feel like it even happened. I didn't see any costumes or anything, and it was just a normal day. But, that night, this super awesome couple we are teaching invited us over for dinner and gave us a ton of pasta. Then, at the end, they gave us some ice cream and a piece of candy each, so we didn't go entirely without tradition! They were super nice.

Today we went to the store, and all the Christmas stuff is already out! I did enjoy seeing egg-nog and things. Feels pretty festive. You had better believe that I bought myself some limited edition snowflake Ritz. 

We also went to SeaQuest again to show Elder Shepherd. I love going there for free. It's awesome. There's this one tank that reminds exactly of the fishing game on Wii Play. If you know what I'm talking about, kudos to you. The fish all look exactly like that. There's even a big old scaly one that's super long that's like the king fish. 

So anyway. I only write about a couple things a week, but every second we are always calling people, teaching, and visiting members. We stay very busy. I love Dieter F. Uchtdorf's quote about "lift where you stand." We are all already in a certain circle of influence, and no matter how big or small or whatever calling it is, if we just try to strengthen and help those that we are in contact with, we will be doing our part to make a difference in the world. Being a missionary definitely makes me want to be a better member. There are so many people in every ward that just need a little love and support.

I know more than anything that this gospel is true. It is what is important. It stays the same in El Salvador and Las Vegas, English and Spanish, with giant pandemics and without. I know that the closer we stay to God, the better things always turn out.

Till we meet,

Elder Harris

Pictured is us with our late night movie writing, setting up on the new bunk bed, and celebrating Halloween with some awesome masks from Aunt Kathy.