The Gospel of Jesus Christ truly changes lives

Querida Familia,

I looks like I will be staying for six more weeks in New City with my companion! Very excited to stay! I have not received grandmas and grandpas package yet but received a card from them. I have not taken a lot of pictures but I will start to. This week we taught 21 lesson with four new investigators! It was a great way to finish off the transfer. Thank you for sending the birthday package! Excited to receive it! This is how our investigators are doing:
Dora: She came to church yesterday with her husband and absolutely loved it. We visited him right after and tried to teach the restoration but would get distracted by our member which they connected very well which is good. We got her and her husband on a baptismal date for October 12th! We are beyond happy. So we picked up her husband as a new investigator. It was a great Birthday gift for my companion yesterday.
Freddy: We had a good discussion on the restoration pamphlet he just read. He has also read a little of the BOM and had some misconceptions we cleared up. He still had his mentality that all church are of God, but we promised him as he read and prayed about the BOM, he will receive a sure answer. The spirit was very strong and we committed him to do it.
Rosalino: Found him by a street contact a couple weeks ago. He is from Peru and has been here in the states for about three years. We had a great "How to begin teaching" and a restoration lesson. We found out that he has been reading every day when he comes back from work and has felt a good feeling as he has read the BOM. We invited him to be baptized and said he wants to keep searching and preparing before he does so. He is so humble and Golden. Very excited for him.
Milton and Family: We found Milton a couple weeks ago by a street contact. We met with him for the first time last Wednesday. We met his mom named Naomi who has recently arrived from Guatemala who is really nice. We also met his sister Wendy who has shown a little interest but wants to keep listening. They are very new to the US and Milton and Wendy are going to stay while their mother will be going back this October. We taught them twice this week and first introduced the BOM and the next time taught the restoration. They are very receptive and humble and Naomi said that when she goes back to Guatemala she would like to keep receiving the lessons! We invited Milton and Wendy to be baptized right after we had a very spiritual lesson on the BOM. They accepted and we are now working with Naomi. They are an awesome family.
Sulma: We taught her Wednesday night about Eternal Marriage and my companion taught her while I taught her son Luis. She also said that she does not know if she wants to go to church or be baptized because she does not want to separate from her boyfriend. She still wants to keep reading and praying about the BOM.
Natalia: We had a good discussion about what she wants out of life and said she wants to live in peace. We transitioned that to how the Gospel of Jesus Christ can bring that to her. She said she did not know and asked her what is stopping her from progressing? She said she does not have time to read a pray because she needs to take care of her five grandchildren everyday almost all day and it is hard for her to read because of her bad eye. We promised her as she set some time to pray and read what she can, she will receive the peace and the strength to give up coffee. She said she will try.
We had set some appointments with Mario, Adriana and Rosa. For this week. They were very busy but we try to stay in frequent contact.
It is cooling off here in New York mostly in the lower 70s which has felt really nice. I will keep an eye out for Elder Walker. Grateful to be a missionary and have learned a great deal so far! The Gospel is so real life and truly changes lives.
I love you Dad, Mom and Tanner and Mckay. Sure appreciate each one of you!


Elder Plummer

Tender Mercies of The Lord - September 8, 2014

Hola familia?
Como les ha ido? I am very glad you all had a great time at the family reunion! Congratulations Dad on getting your Woodbage! Excited to visit that lake when I come back. I did not get abuelitas email yet. I decided to keep the Costco GPS because it has this great feature where it programs your route to avoid traffic and has a traffic and weather receiver. It is really cool and has helped us alot. It was the more expensive one but felt we could utilize very well, but what do you think? I can't believe my birthday is coming up! One thing I have seen on the mission that I have really liked is this belt that adjusts to any size of your waist. I sometimes feel that my waist gets thinner and then my pants start falling down because my belt will only go to a certain length. My companion has it and said he bought his adjustable belt at Mr. Mac. If you could check that out that would be great! You could send anything if you can send some fun colored ties like light blue, yellow, orange or red. We can have a broader style of ties while proselyting but what ever style or color you think looks good. :) It also has been approved that we can watch "17 Miracle" and "Ephraims Rescue" if you want to send those but not sure when I would have time to watch them but I could watch it on a p-day or something. But whatever you want to send I will be happy with anything! Thank you mom for all you do for me!
Also do you know by any chance Grandmas and Grandpas new address in Washington DC? I would like to write them a letter. This last week was great! We earned three new investigators! Here are the progress of our investigators:
Natalia: We had a great conversation with her last Friday. We asked her what was her vision for herself? When we asked that she really opened up and talked about her very serious blood/heart disease and how she feels like she is not getting better. We told her that she can find the peace she is looking for in Christ and in the scriptures. We promised her as representatives of Jesus Christ that her health will improve if she gave up coffee. She said she does not know and after we offered her a substitute called Ozro that has the same jumpstart as coffee but without the coffee bean. She said she has tried it and has not really worked. She knows she needs to be baptized but does not want to give up coffee and go to church. We really love her and are praying what to do next.
Cesar: He is one of our new investigators that we picked up Saturday from Guatemala. We found while we were street contacting last week and said we could come back. He said he would like to start attending a church again and really enjoyed our lesson. We introduced the BOM and was very curious about and was excited to find out more. He struggles with reading so we are going to bring by the BOM on CD. We told he that this is a history of his ancestors and started to get more curious about it. He said he will try to read it and is going to pray about it. He had great questions like why are there so many churches on the earth? He is very prepared and had a spiritual lesson. We have a return appointment with him next Saturday.
Mario: His wife was giving birth at the hospital the night we visited and had a short lesson with Marios father about scripture reading. They are both interested to learn more and we are excited to see them progress more in the gospel.
Moses: When we visited him yesterday, he had two of his friends were over and had a great lesson about mutual. They are all under the age of 14 and were really good boys with good Catholic values. We explained some of the fun activities that they do and also brought our 18 year old Haitian member to help explain more about it. They said they would like to go! We got the information of the two boys and said that we could come over and talk more about the gospel with their parents.
Adriana: We visited her for the first time yesterday and told us she was visited by missionaries back in December. We started talking about the BOM and told us that she has read and prayed about the BOM and knows that it is true! We then invited her to be baptized and said she feels she needs more time to prepare herself and gain a stronger testimony of the church. We urged her to continue her strengthening of her testimony. We set a returned appointment. It was a great spiritual lesson.
We had a cool experience last night, we just got out of a lesson found out that we were at 18 lessons for the week and wanted to meet our goal of 20 lessons. I said a quick prayer asking if we could found someone to teach. The first house I saw and told my companion we should try it. We knocked and this fifteen year old Guatemalan boy opens the door smiling named Ivan. We introduced ourselves and asked if we could share a quick scripture. We shared 1 Nephi 1:12 about reading the scriptures and being filled with the spirit. He really liked it and as we were teaching him his mom came down and joined us for the closing prayer and we asked if we could come back and they said of course. It was a great miracle! Our last lesson that night turned out to be with this minister that really likes how the Mormon church operates but did not agree on a lot of our doctrine. We talked about the spirit word and spirit prison and how the bible is the only word of God. We testified that we knew the Book of Mormon is true and invited him to read it. He said he will try and wanted to speak with us another time. Grateful to be a missionary and to see all the tender mercies of the Lord. I love you Dad, Mom and Tanner and Mckay so very much! Thank you for your continuing support and prayers.
Love,
Elder Plummer

I have felt the Lord in the details of our lives- September 1, 2014

Family,

How has school been so far for you Tanner and Mckay? I am excited for you! Thank you mom so much for the package! I got it last Monday. The granola and the bars were great! We actually had a great experience with a Haitian man that contacted us.
We were walking to visit a former investigator when this Haitian man beckoned us to speak with him. He looked as if he was in his early 30s and had just gotten out of church. He asked if we had anything for him to read. We gave him a BOM and a Bible in English and also wanted a BOM in French as well. He saw my companion had pamphlets and asked if he could have one from every topic. We gave it to him and took down his information and referred him to the sisters. The sisters had a great lesson with him and invited him to church and he showed up yesterday! Our ward did a great job making him feel welcomed and explaining the services to him. He really enjoyed church and wants to try to come back next Sunday! We found out from the sisters that he had read all of the pamphlets we gave him and is currently reading the BOM. He even underlined a lot of what he read in the pamphlets. Our mission president promised us as that if we are obedient, faithful and doing the things we are supposed to be doing we will see miracles and even people contacting us. It is very true! it was a very spiritual experience. I also gave a talk yesterday on "preparing for the second coming" and shared scriptures from Doctrine and Covenants and Timothy explaining about the prophecies of the last days. I also shared if "if we are prepared we shall not fear" and explained by doing the small and simple thing, great thing will come to pass and staying true to our covenants. I felt good about the talk. Our ward just got a new councilor who is actually from Haiti. He gave an amazing talk about the parable of the 10 virgins and of his conversion story. We are excited for him to be joining the bishopric. This is how our investigators our doing:
Sulma: We visited her yesterday and my companion had a great lesson on counseling with the Lord from Alma 37. She wants to come back to church. She has a seven year old son that is very distracting, so while one teaches Sulma, my companion reads BOM stories with him. So this week I distracted Luis and then the next week I will be teaching the lesson. It is a fun system and Luis is awesome.
Mario: I was actually on exchange when my companion and our district leader taught him. They had a great lesson on the Word of Wisdom and taught him how to pray correctly. He has been reading and is progressing very well. The father who we gave the blessing to my first week is now more interested to listen because he has been in less pain. We are excited for them!
Natalia: We taught her last week about priesthood authority and the validity of the BOM. We were going to connect it to coffee how if the BOM is true that means that Joseph Smith was a prophet and had the key for this dispensation and that the revelation he received regarding the Word of Wisdom is true. She said she will think about but did not seem very invested.
Maria: She is a referral the sisters gave us. We visited her last Friday. She is from Ecuador and we had a great lesson about the BOM. They also had good questions like "why do we need religion?" or "how worthy do we need to be to partake of the sacrament?" We gave her a BOM and said that she will read the intro. We also invited her to church which is very easy for her because she lives across the street from the chapel! She ended up not coming but we are going to visit her next week.
Rosa: She was very busy this last week and did not get to see her. Her daughter has been progressing very well though.
Filadelfo: We taught him the importance of baptism and having faith. We invited him to baptism but said he needs some more time to pray and think about it. He is a great example and has gone through many trials in his life. He has a hard time reading but we promised him if he reads the BOM every day for three months he will have no problem reading and will read almost perfectly. We are excited for him.
Nancy: We shared a mormon message called "Hope in God's light" which is a great video and highly recommend it! We talked about how the Lord has blessed our lifes and how by doing the small things such as reading and praying brings us closer to Him. There was a great spirit and we got to get all of Nancy's family to listen. It was a great lesson.
I love my area and loved the members and their willingness to serve the Lord. I love you Dad, Mom, Tanner and Mckay so very much! I have felt the Lord in the details of our lives.
Love,
Elder Plummer