Fudge Ripple 2

Hey fam! These last two weeks have been pretty exciting! A lot going on! So we are doing a lot of finding a lot of teaching, so Gladys Knight did a concert for the area and she is a pretty famous gospel music singer that converted and so now she does these fireside performances. A ton of people requested tickets so we spent a lot of time taking those to people and talking to them. We took Issac to the showing on Sunday night. It was really awesome she was really good and her husband gave an awesome speech awesome giving up the tradition and that eternal life is so much more important than tradition and just giving the Book of Mormon a chance. He killed it. They also talked a lot about being a true christen means not caring about skin color and that goes for blacks and whites. Also on the program they gave everyone they had a little like referral paper you could fill out and they had pens under everyone’s chair and if they filled it out they got a free Gladys knight cd a Book of Mormon and a restoration video. So hopefully so good stuff comes from that. I have never seen a Mormon chapel so lit a lot of amens and  singing and drums and guitars a lot of standings and raising a hand it was awesome! Remi is doing great we meet with him twice a week he’s on fire we are
hoping he will get baptized October 7th he’s just awesome and understands it all so well He can’t wait for his family to be able to come to the states and hear the gospel he loves it! Things are going well in the area things have slowed down a bit but still rolling. Well I love you and all and know that the Book of Mormon is true and can bless your life!

The Blessed

Hey fam! This has been a pretty awesome P day we woke up at 6 and with a member,
we biked down to the national mall and then biked around the monuments and he knew a ton about the so he told us a lot of stuff about each one which was cool. So that was pretty awesome. These last two weeks have been fun of miracles! So this area hasn’t had a baptism for over a year so it’s been pretty dead. But we now have three awesome investigators that are on there was to baptism. The First Lady is named bola she is from Nigeria she feeds us every time we go over and it’s pretty crazy I eat so much African food. My new favorite dish is cow feet, mushrooms and eggplant soup hahaha I have  eaten so many crazy foods! Bola is way cool she is the sister of a member named maybel but maybel is a little crazy and she doesn’t really like maybel so things have slowed down a little with her I think I talked about her before.

The next guy is remi he too is from Africa he is from Siena Leon, he is honestly one of the most golden people I have ever met. We went on splits with Bishop and we were checking on less actives and elder decides we should go check on this one guy so we go he doesn’t live there but remi does!! He’s awesome he takes notes during lessons he like gets everything we teach he read the scriptures and knew the whole js story form the intro and testimonies he also got the plan of salvation down perfectly without us even teaching him he just understood so much from the scriptures. He’s super cool and way nice. His family is still in Siena Leon and he has two little girls and a wife he is sending them money and working on getting them here. The third is Isaac he’s a way cool younger guy he came from a referral from salt lake he went online and wanted a Book of Mormon. He just had a baby and wants religion to be apart of his family life. He was really solid our first lesson but didn’t show up to church but we are meeting with this week so hopefully it goes well. The work is going great I have been really blessed and am excited for the opportunity to teach the gospel each day. I love you guys and hope you have a great week!

Cat Food

Hey everyone! This week has been a pretty good week! Like I said last week I am In laurel, this is the largest area I have ever been in size wise so things are pretty spread out we do a pretty good amount of driving so that’s a little lame. Part of our area is pretty lower middle class and then on the other side, we have some upper middle class we have a pretty solid mix of people. We have a ton of Africans here a ton! Really all of the D.C areas has a lot of Africans and all around diversity.

I am with elder Brown that has been super awesome Amy met him on the train haha. He is from Richfield Utah. So he is used to pretty small towns. He’s an awesome guy and super nice! We live right next to the University of Maryland so we went and walked
around campus a little bit today that was a lot of fun and pretty interesting. Also, yesterday was Why I believe and thurl bailey came and spoke it’s funny because his son is in the mission. It was super cool because Mai and Pauline came so I got to see them and Stevie Franks came so that was super cool I got to see a lot of people from passed wards which was awesome.

The work in the area is going really well we found this lady named bola and he daughter Moriah they moved here 4 months ago from Nigeria they are awesome super nice they came to church on Sunday which was great they made us dinner on Saturday and it was pretty good but super spicy I’m pretty good at spicy but my limits have been recently
tested! She also fed us cat food lol. We ate with this other guy named Solia he is from Haiti he made some super good Haitian food palatines are now a staple of my diet haha. We have done a lot of tracting here and a lot of checking on referrals. The weather has been brutal lately like all day it’s been super hot and humid and then crazy rain and lightning storms around 4. I’m just as wet in rain and when’s it’s not raining so it’s nbd. Life is good I love the mission! This week I have been read D and C and studying Joseph Smiths life a lot I have actually learned so much about him so many things I never knew. I know from personal experience with the Book of Mormon that’s Joseph Smith had to be a prophet and restored the gospel of Jesus Christ. I love you guys and hope you all have a great week!

 

Can Can

Hey Family! Sorry I have been so bad about writing my p day have just been really busy and I have been kinda lazy about writing. We had a disc golf course in our area so we spent a lot of time doing that on p day haha.
Things in month one village were going really well we were working a lot with a lady named Suzanne and a big named Nathan those were our main two. We also tracked a ton I had never tracked so much in my life. Why guy let us pretended not to be religious but I saw new age translation of the Bible in his house. He was also asking all the questions a jdub would ask like about war and heaven and Jehovah. But anyways we answer all his questions and then he just comes at us full-blown with all of this anti stuff and tried to Bible bash. Elder Vance just quietly and calmly read the scripture that contention is of the devil and then he freaked out even more. But that one was pretty entertaining because he tried to pretend like he didn’t know anything. Another time a guy came out and yelled at us for awhile then tried to chase us down that was exciting. I have gathered a couple of good tracking stories in this area! Unfortunately, I was transferred on Wednesday to Laurel to be with elder brown, I was with him in the MTC so it is pretty cool to be with him again we have always wanted to be comps. It’s been awesome so far! Things are going great I love the work I love the gospel! I love you guys and hope you have a great week! Love Elder Davidson

Moville

Hey fam! These last couple of weeks have been some pretty good weeks, we seem to have a good amount going for us so that is good. We had a baptism on Saturday for mike that was super awesome he is the one that married aminaty a girl that I used to work within Anacostia. It was super awesome to see everything come full circle! He’s a super cool dude I am really excited for the both of them.

We are also working a lot this girl named Suzan from Sierra Leone she is super nice and really wants to get baptized but she has to go to this class in Philadelphia every weekend till the end of August. She is on date for September 9th ways out there but she is super cool and is really excited to hear about the things we teach her. Also, this less active lady names Michelle moved into the ward and she wants to her son baptized so we are working on getting her to church.
She is a major hoarder so we tried a to help her clean up a little I wish I had some after photos but it looks way way better we got rid of sooo much crap. It’s crazy because she just moved in, someone in the last ward moved in all of her crap this way.(a little disappointing they let this happen). The time of the video she had been living there less than a week. Dad would have not allowed her to bring so much garbage haha. This area has been pretty interesting as far as foods good this place just has everybody we had a very traditional Moroccan meal one night a very Korean meal the next day the lady literally didn’t speak like any English we had to use google translate a lot to communicate it was pretty funny. The following night I ate fish head including the eyeballs that one was pretty wild but seems to be kinda the norm here.

We do way more tracting in this area then I have In any other area that has been kinda exciting sometimes kinda boring but overall pretty good experiences and a lot of funny interactions. Life is good I am loving the mission and all the different experiences I love you guys and hope you have a great week!

The Village

Hey Family! So this week has been a really good one! So transfers happened and I am up in Montgomery village it’s actually the town right next to Germantown where I used to serve so that’s kinda funny. I am with Elder Vance and I was with Elder Carroll for 10 days he was leaving today so he just rode out the last 10 days with us. So actually today we took Elder Carroll to the mission home to meet up with his family and have lunch with the Johnson’s. It was fun but kinda sad to watch the emotional moment of him seeing his family and seeing them reunite. Sister J then invited to stay for lunch so that was a nice time to just kick it for a while with President and Sister J we just got home we were there for like for 4 hours.
So now it is just Elder Vance and I. Elder Vance is a super great guy he’s from Irvine California he’s older he’s 25 which sometimes is odd that he is older than Spencer haha but he’s a super awesome hard working dude! The area has been pretty good so far I definitely miss the excitement of DC but this area is super culturally diverse I ate fish head and eyes one night (African) the next was pupusas (el Salvadoran) then we has some weird lamb dish and meatballs one night that was a Moroccan food. It’s been cool to be getting fed 3-4 times a week and getting some Interesting dishes. The work in the area was great on Saturday there was a wedding for Mike and Aminata, the crazy thing was back when I was in Anacostia Aminata was in that ward and really struggling and we worked with her a lot and we became close, she is awesome! Anyways and then I come here and find she is living here and about to get married and that her husband is on date to be baptized it was just awesome to see it full circle! I have done a lot more door knocking in this area then other areas but it’s been fun and have defiantly had some good experiences. I love you Guys and hope you have a great week!

 

Bluh

This week was not a good week it did have a few bright spots but not a good week. Monday was really good but Tuesday I woke up feeling really cruddy my body hurt and I had a throbbing head I just lived with it the first half of the day but it a wall around 3 and just had to lay down I was like getting delusional I had never been sick like this before. Well I just laid in bed until the next day when I was even worse my body hurt more like not a muscle in my body had any strength
I even fell over trying to shower my head was going nuts and I had a fever of 102.4 that was the worst day by far defiantly one of the worst sick days of my life. I also had a super sore though I had sores everywhere even on the side of my tongue. Thursday pretty much same thing so I finally decided to go to the doctors they didn’t really know what I had so they did some blood work and gave me a prescription for antibiotics just in case that would help. Friday I started to feel better my fever was down and my body felt a little better still didn’t do much that day. Saturday I felt much better so went out. That was a good day we went to Mais graduation at the Verizon center that was cool. Side note that is actually maybe really cool. So a lot of her family from Burkina Faso was in town for the month and Mai and Pauline have already told them tons about the church and they were all super interested and currently, the church isn’t in Burkina Faso. So I mentioned it before but Pauline’s brother was the president of the country when he was assassinated and a dictator took over and the country has struggled for a long time and recently as in 2014 they overran the dictator.
The people that worked with and wanted what her brother wanted are now in charge of the country and her brother is kinda seen as a hero in their country. But anyways there the last name carries a lot of weight and they have a lot of strong good ties in the government and they think they could help get a church started in Burkina Faso. So that was really cool that all of Pauline’s family already loved the church that much they want one in their country. We are going to talk with our mission president and had them look up the area authority that covers closest to that part of Africa and they are gonna write him a letter. We will see if anything comes from it but seems cool. on Saturday we contacted two girls from Brazil that were from Porte Algrea area they said they lived in a city 20 min away they told me the name but I forgot the name maybe spencer once talked to them hahah. They were really nice and even came to church on Sunday but sadly they are only 23 so we are passing them off to the ysa sisters. But that was the miracle of the week to find 2 people that actually showed up to church the next day. That was pretty much my week I had a lot of time just laying in my bed so I got to read a lot from the Book of Mormon this week and it was definitely a blessing. I know that the Book of Mormon is true and that it is the word of god that Joseph Smith was a prophet. I love you guys and hope you all have a great week! Also, transfer call outs are tonight so I may be somewhere new next week!

Blessed

Hey Family! This week was a pretty good one, summer is defiantly here there has also been a lot of cool lightning storms and rain and way humid!!!

So we have been finding a ton lately like all day just contacting and knocking doors and we have been a little bit of a slump finding new investigators. So we decided we needed to switch up our finding method. We played some pros ball that was a lot of fun and we made some good friends but nothing too promising came out of that. So we decided we would go through the area Book and check on past investigators. We picked 20 names we thought were the most promising and decided to go to there houses. So we started biking house to house most people had moved or just weren’t home but at the 14th house in the route a lady named Caroline Jackson was thrilled to see us she was so nice to us invited us in gave us water and watermelon! She was excited to tell us that she recently found her Book of Mormon and had been thinking about the missionaries that used to come and then here we show up. We had an awesome lesson with her and she agreed to come to church wasn’t quite ready to commit to baptism but was excited about the idea. She came to church and loved it and made some good friends! She is such a nice lady! That was defiantly the miracle of the week it felt really good to have someone be excited to see us after so much rejection!

We also met with G this week he is doing great he spoke at a Why I believe on Sunday so we went over his talk and what he was going to say he was super excited about it and did awesomely. He bore an awesome very powerful testimony. It was way cool to see him testify of the church of Jesus Christ of later day saints and of his savior!

Mai and Pauline are doing well also, I am sad we didn’t get to meet with them this week they have been really busy I was sad not to see them. They were at church on Sunday and she graduated on Saturday with her master in public health so she was really excited about that!

This week we had Elder Nielsen of the 70 he is the director of the missionary department he shared a lot of really awesome stuff. It was a four-hour meeting and he spent 2 hours talking about the church’s recent efforts with Google and the way we can target certain houses and just this new way of getting names to check on and a new thing called smart search. Pretty much if we are at a location it will show us the closest house or area it thinks we will have the most success. It was pretty cool because I already knew what he was gonna say and he gave Elder schank and I a shout out and an air 5 hahah.

This Sunday was awesome one of the best moments of my mission it may
sound really small but for some reason, I had never felt better in my whole life. This Sunday Mai taught gospel principals class! I was sitting in class next to G and Darlene and Stacy a less active we had been working with she came to church! And Pauline and mais 2 kids. It just hit me like halfway through I remembered knocking on Pauline’s door 4 months earlier then later meeting Mai and know she was teaching a class to this room if people that I feel like I had a huge influence in coming to church and being in that room it was just a great moment to reflect how great missionary work is how much joy it
can bring you!! Also, that night G spoke at why I believe that was awesome he did so well and even threw in “started from the bottom now I am here” you can ask Spencer if you don’t get the reference. He was awesome! I love G so much!

Also today we went to the national basilica it was a really cool building and really interesting we went to noon mass then after ran into a less active member at the Basilica who took us to lunch at the basilica cafeteria we talked about eternal families and he said he wanted to come back to church and he knew it was true and that he would be at church this Sunday with his family we are meeting with him again on Thursday. It was a crazy cool miracle. Kinda funny that we taught a lesson in the national basilica haha but way cool and we were definitely meant to be there! I love you guys and hope you have a great week!

Bingo

Hey everyone! This week was a really good week! Today a member of our ward named brother Armstrong took us to lunch at the Capitol grille right across from the national archives it was pretty cool and way nice! We are now at the postal museum haha.

This week has been a good one on Tuesday we had zone conference all day literally 8-6 longest meeting ever! Then afterward we had fhe at the church building that was really good! Darlene came and really enjoyed it she is doing great really likes the church is just struggling with a few things and feeling prepared to be baptized but it will come she has been to church 4 weeks in a row now. Also a less active named Christine came she has been through so much and is such an inspiration to me to just hang in there. She has a lot of struggles with coming back to church but came the last 2 weeks she is really cool I wish I got a picture with her. She’s leaving for Florida for 60 days but hopefully she connects with the missionaries when she gets back.

Mai and Pauline are on fire they have helped clean the church both have called have started doing family history and are excited to go to the temple this Saturday! G is doing well also he is going to speak at the “who I believe” next Sunday so we are excited about that! Neither G or Mai and Pauline have missed church since they have gotten baptized so that’s great! Things in the area have been good we have seen a lot of cool little tender Mercies as we are able to connect with people and meet really cool people. We have been biking every day I really liking biking I decided! It’s finally starting to feel like summer this week it got up to 100 I’m getting flashbacks to last summer and just the killing heat and humidity. But it will be good!

Also this week we met with Google on Friday and had a super good lunch and talked with them about there meetings with elder Bednar and elder Anderson. It was interesting for them to talk about how they do business and Interacted with people. Everyone at the meeting said they were some of the nicest guys they ever worked with. Matt one of the guys from Google told us how he just had a causal 20 min conversation with elder Bednar about BYUi and we are just like wow and he doesn’t even realize how cool that is. Also, they all talked about how he always introduced himself as David and it threw them off because they like studied them before the meeting and knew him as Elder Bednar I thought that was Interesting. It was just really cool to here about the apostles doing business and stuff and see some of the minutes of the meeting. Chrissie said she told them how she was meeting with us so that’s cool!

This week was a great week I love you guys and I know that Heavenly Father is excited to bless us all as we continue to follow him and do what’s right. I hope you all have a great week!

Cooking

Hey everyone! It was fun to talk to you all last week hope you all had
a great week! This week was a pretty good week but the hottest week in awhile this
the place is crazy because it can only be 90 but it feels like 100 and you
are just gross and sweaty like 4 days in a row it was super super hot
it brought me back to last summer I can’t believe I have been out for
a year then the next two days it was rainy. I’m a firm believer if
they would have settled the west coast first the east would be empty
haha.

Anyways this week we had a few really great recent convert lesson with
G, Mai, and Pauline. They are all still doing fantastic and can’t wait
to do baptisms for the dead and serve in the church. Our investigator
pool is a little down now that they got baptized but we are still
working with James he’s been kinda difficult which is frustrating
because he knows so well the Book of Mormon is true. We found this
girl T artist she’s is really nice and has 4 kids and her husband was
recently murdered she is really cool but not super into it! We also
found this girl named Darlene she’s pretty cool she came to church on
Sunday and really enjoyed it she is struggling a little bit of
understanding the priesthood and she is really busy so she is hard to
meet with hope we will become a little bit more a priority!

We have been biking a ton this week that’s been fun I ripped my pant
in the chain I was wearing a strap but somehow my pants still got
caught. Haha this week has been fun these guys tried to bible bash
with us and tell us we weren’t Christians and one raised his voice and
Elder schank just threw down the spirit of the Devil was
contention. And they both just walked away. Also another funny one
this week was these black Israelites told us that because we were
white we were dammed and we get harassed by black Israelites all the
time. I was kinda sick of it so I just looked at him was like man I
think you might be in our same boat you don’t look like you have pure
lineage, then put my arm up his and just kept going on that he and I
was in the same boat and even felt his hair and said yeah man not
wool. It was pretty funny except the guy got really mad so I felt bad
but I thought it was really funny.

Also on Friday, we had Interviews with the president and he told me a
really cool story. So he was at the mission president seminary so like
when all the mission president get together. And what they are doing
with Google came up and like the had guys of media or something said
that they had been meeting with missionaries and they had a really
positive experience and so president Johnson stood up and was like
yeah I was actually in one of those meetings that was my missionaries
and they talked about like what was said and stuff. So I thought that
was super cool we were talked about at the mission president seminar.
President was pretty excited to tell me about it I think he felt
pretty cool that he got to stand up was like yeah I was in that
meeting haha. I love you guys and hope you have a great week!