Massachusetts Boston Mission-Elder Cameron Rasmussen

Good afternoon,  I'm currently sitting in a New Haven Firestone writing this. While driving in the high wind and rains on the freeway, we hit a piece of debris and now we've got a flat tire. Nice little inconvenience to our pday plans.  Sadly, this is Elder Barbee's last week here. As he heads up to Lawrence, I'm staying here to....(drum roll please) ... BE A DAD!  That's right, I'm training!  This week, the work all of the sudden picked up. On Sunday, after two weeks of not having contact, we met with the Heredia Family (These are the ones that want to be baptized).  It was super cool, they are practically missionary-members already. They invited both their parents and sister who live in Equador to a Bible study video call. Towards the end, Fabian's father humbly admitted that they didn't know everything and trusted that we were there to help them. So cool!  Today, we went on a hike in the rain with our friend Keith. He's a 64 year old retired frien...

Good afternoon friends and family, This week our mission hosted a (virtual) tour with Elder Kelly R. Johnson of the seventy. He recently gave the talk "Enduring Power" in the October General Conference and we had a wonderful up-close and interactive opportunity to have him give us council and guidance. Him and his wife shared lots of insights on how to improve our efforts of our missionary purpose. This took up the majority of our time this last week so it was a nice spiritual vacation from the work.  I'm not going to hype up the rest of my week because, quite frankly, there's not a whole lot going on. We keep up on the usual daily contacts, lessons, and member visits.  We've also made a lot of content for the area Facebook page so you can go check it out with this link: https://www.facebook.com/ChurchofJesusChristNewHaven/ Also, go tune into Pres. Nelson's message of peace this Friday: https://fb.me/e/3Sj973IBb I hope you all are staying healthy as we get to ...

Hola, qué tal?  There is a very special place here in Waterbury known as The Holy Land, USA. Supposedly, it was constructed in the 70's and now is a run down replica of Jerusalem's Holy Land. It's pretty funky. It's nothing short of magical and mystical. Apparently, teenagers go up there after hours to party. Kinda defeats it's purpose.  Anyways, onto more important things. This week, I was finally able to meet with the Heredia family. It consists of Hector, Jenny, Shmuel, and Cher. Shmuel is 5 and Cher is 2. For our lessons, the sisters took half an hour to teach Jenny and Hector English, while Elder Barbee taught Shmuel piano. Mind you, it's probably been 5 or 6 years since I've been taught piano, let alone teach someone else...in Spanish. So, after some trial and error, Shmuel could play Twinkle Little Star which was pretty impressive.  As we got to the gospel portion, we focused a lot on the Doctrine Of Christ. They are practically members because they f...

Saludo,  I hope you had a nice snow-filled week.  New England also got a few inches, nothing too impressive though.  To start, we recently started teaching a girl named Linzey. She was a self-referral and to be quite honest, she's one of the most solid people I have met on the mission.  Within the first call and getting to know her, we read some verses from the Book of Mormon in 3 Nephi 11. When we read about baptism, she stopped and immediately said "I've always wanted to be baptized". Elder Barbee and I looked at each other for a second completely in shock.  When we called three days later, she had already read the introduction, the testimonies/witnesses, and got to 1 Nephi 3. We decided to share the Restoration, and wow she was asking good questions. When we got to the First Vision, we paused for a moment to wallow in the spiritual manifestation. Before we continued, she stopped to share an experience with us. Long story short, it was a time when she hadn't p...