June 27, 2106 Killing it in Ocean Springs

Hey Y'all,

Sorry for slacking and not sending out a group email in a few weeks.  It has been pretty hectic down here and me and Elder Prater have been working really hard and doing some good service for the community and we are starting to see the results of all the hard work and all the hours of tracting.  We started the week off by seeing some of our investigators that we have already had, Cheryl and Alana and Clint and those both were some good lessons and we see them progressing and it is nice to see some benefits come from your hard work.  Later in the week though me and Elder Prater really wanted to go find some new investigators and see if we can have some success tracting and so we went to a trailer park that is managed by someone in our ward and so we knocked four doors the first day... and four lessons and two hours later we left the park.  We had some sweet lessons with a few people in the area like a young lady named Lauren who is pretty interested and grasped the concept of the restoration pretty darn well.  We also met a girl named Laurie who had her boyfriend over who happened to be a member of the church in the Pascagoula ward which is a neighboring stake and it turned into a Member Present lesson.  Things like that just continued to happen this week and we had one of the best weeks for teaching that this area has seen in a long time.  

Besides the lessons, this week was a week that was filled with the spirit due to our Zone Conference held in Gulfport.  We talked a lot about the Spirit and the power of prayer and the culture of this mission and it was a spirit filled meeting.  At the end we had a testimony meeting and some of the testimonies of the missionaries were so strong and it was just a motivation to work and bring some more souls to Christ.  

I hope that you all are having great weeks and see as much success as we are seeing down here.  Keep staying awesome and I hope to hear from y'all soon.

With Love

Elder Crouch

Hey Mom and Dad
Those Pictures are pretty crazy to think that Mitchell leaves in a week and a half.  I bet he is stressing out a bit and is excited at the same time.  How was the trip to Vegas.  Mom said it was super hot one but was there any success in finding some homes or anything like that?
This week was a pretty good week for us.  Me and Elder Prater were able to find a bunch of new people and teach the people we already have in our teaching pool.  We tried tracting this one Trailer Park that some members manage and that place in is way good for teaching.  The first day we went there we knocked four doors and it took two hours because they all let us in.  One person was a senior in high school and her name was Laurie and her boyfriend named Kenny was at the house and he was the one that actually let us in.  He is a less active member at a different ward just down the highway a bit and it turned into a Member Present lesson and that was pretty dang cool.  We also taught a pretty solid girl named Lauren and we taught her the full restoration and she was pretty interested.  We also had two lessons this week with Shirelle and she is progressing pretty well and she is interested in the Book of Mormon and understands it pretty darn well.  We also taught Alana and Clint and they had a bunch of Anti Mormon material for us and they wanted to question us on it all and we cleared up all of their questions and that made our relationship a little more smooth and hopefully we will be able to continue teaching them and letting them feel the spirit.  

We had a Zone Conference this week and President Olson came down to Gulport and it was an 8 hour meeting on the Spirit and Culture and Prayer.  It was a way good meeting and we learned a lot.  I chimed in a bit and at the end there was a testimony meeting and I bore my testimony and President Olson came up to me and said that he is really impressed with how much I have grown in the past 9 months.  And then on Sunday we were at our Stake conference and Sister Necaise (i have been working on her non member husband) spoke and she like praised me to President Olson and he called me later that day to say that he thinks that I am turning into the Ammon of the mission haha.  Kind of weird but it was nice of him.

We also had our Family History class which was a big success.  We had one of our investigators show up and 7 non members and we were working with all of them One on One and it is always cool to break down the barriers of Mormons and the world and so they really appreciated the class and they all said that they would come back next time and so hopefully we continue to see success in our class as we continue to work in it.

 That is about it for me.  cant wait to hear back.  Love ya.

Elder Crouch