Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Elder Condie is returning home!

Elder Mitchell J Condie will return home from serving in the Guadalajara East Mission in Mexico November 21, 2016 He will speak in church November 27, 2016 at 9:00 a.m. in the Enoch Homestead 2nd Ward Chapel. We are very excited to welcome him back home and we are very happy for all of his accomplishments as a Missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints! Well done Elder Condie! Love your family

As a missionary I have learned many things and I am so thankful for this opportunity I have had!

Hello Everyone, Well this will be my last email to all of you in my mission. How quickly it seemed to have arrived for me. I simply want you all to know that I love you and I am extremely grateful for all that you have done for me while I have been here serving as a missionary in Mexico. I know that this is the greatest thing I could have done for myself and for my family and greatest of all for the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ with the last two years of my life and I am incredibly thankful for the decision I made to come and serve as a missionary. I remember my first interview with President Camarillo and what I said to him. I said,"I want to be the best missionary I can be. I want to serve Him with all of my heart." Inspite of the difficulties throughout my mission and the trials and all of the challenges I have faced I feel I have done the best I could and I am thankful for the strength the Lord has given me! I know that without Him and His sustaining hand I could not have done half of what I have done as His servant here. As a missionary I have learned many things. I have learned to trust in His guide. To trust the Holy Ghost and the inspiration he sends. I have learned not to doubt the strength we can receive when we confide always in His divine strength. I know that as we strive to follow Him all is possible. I know more than any time before in my life now, that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the path safely home to our Heavenly Father, and the only way to true happiness and joy. I hope that all of you will too find the joy that comes from living the commandments and inviting others to come unto Christ. I have found greater joy now as a missionary than ever before. I know that only greater blessings await me throughout my life but I will forever be thankful for His blessing in letting me, allowing me, to serve Him as a full-time missionary. I will miss the days full of teaching and preaching and contacting people in the street. I will miss a full-time companion and the meetings and the interviews with President. I will miss all of the laughs and the funny times and the great joy I have experienced here, but I am so excited to return home to be once again with all of you! I love you all! Never forget that this Gospel is true and that living the commandments of God is the only way. I am so sure of it, I am not so sure of anything else. I know it will save us in His kingdom of Glory. I know that Jesus Christ lives and that He loves us and that He is our Savior and Redeemer. I know that Thomas S. Monson is our living day prophet and I know Joseph Smith was the Prophet of the Restoration. I know that the Temple is the House of God. I know that these things are true and will bless our lives if we live them! I love all of you and I hope you too know these things are true. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. Love, Elder Mitchell J Condie

Thursday, November 10, 2016

It's hard to believe I only have two more weeks!

Dear Everyone, Hey I hope you are all doing well. I am doing pretty well. Only two more weeks and I will be back in Cedar City, Utah. That is such a weird feeling. That has never seemed so close my entire mission and I really never thought it was going to arrive. Many times I hoped for it to come but it never seemed like it was going to get here. Now that it is so close it seems like it isn't really true. I am excited to come home to see all of you again and I can't wait to see how much you have all grown and changed and to see you all and hug you all again. But to me it still seems as if I am a missionary like I always have been! Really here we have just been working as we always have and I feel like we have been making a lot of progress in our area. I am excited for the new people that we have found and for the progress that they have been able to make. We haven't been able to have a lot of people attend church lately and Joshua didn't attend yesterday either which means that I won't get to see him be baptized, but at least I know that I have helped find some great people that have been waiting for the Gospel of Jesus Christ in their lives. We have been focusing a lot on being more productive as missionaries lately and it has given us some good results in the zone and I feel like we have made some improvements in our efforts. I am thankful to know that when we give our part the Lord adds his. I know that the Lord redoubles our efforts in all that we do and when we strive to be better in everything that we do everyday that we can become more than we ever hoped for! I hope that you will all trust in what the Lord and Savior can make of you! He can make of you great people, strong disciples and defenders of truth. I know that He has made of me much more than what I could have ever made of my own self! I hope you will always let Him make more of your own selves! I know that He can do it! I hope you all have a great week this week and will take really great care of yourselves! Love you all a ton! Love, Elder Mitchell J Condie

I have a testimony of doing the little things!

Hello everyone, This week was a pretty good week for us and it went pretty crazy. We had a lot of lessons and a lot of things to do. Today we had our zone activity and it seemed like we had no time at all today. Anyway it seems like time is just flying by way too quickly for me anymore and I can't get everything done that I need too! Unfortunately, Joshua didn't come to church this week so that means his baptismal date will have to be changed. He can still be baptized while I am here if he attends the next two weeks in a row. Hopefully he will. We don't know why he couldn't come. Hopefully he will be able to continue to progress. We have a couple of other investigators that seem to be progressing little by little. Miguel Angel is Ricardo's brother and he came to church this week and seems super excited to learn more about the church. Hopefully with him we can help him to progress and learn as we work with him more and more. Really we are still just looking for more people to teach and how to help them all out in increasing their faith and coming closer to God! I spoke in church yesterday and it was pretty fun. I spoke on the importance of doing all of the little things because through the little things great things are brought to pass! I have a testiomony of doing the little things. I know that many times we forget to do the little things or we just stop doing them because of laziness, or lack of time, or lack of interest in those little things. I know that many times we feel like those little things aren't worth very much but in reality they are worth so much in our lives. We must always strive to live those little things and do them everyday so that we can be blessed and so that others can see our example of obedience. I know that the little things like prayer, scritpure study, church attendance, fasting, and temple attendance are all things that will help us come closer to the Lord and know his will for us. We should strive as much as possible to do these things. Prayer and scripture study should make up a part of our daily lives so that God can have presence with us. I know these things to be true. I love you all and I hope you can all strive to do the little things! I hope you have a great week! Take care! Love you! Happy Halloween and DIA DE MUERTOS! Love, Elder Condie

Monday, October 31, 2016

We had a good week and found some new investigators!

Hey Everyone, This week was a really good week for us. We were able to find a few new investigators and teach a lot of lessons. Our only investigator that is really progressing right now is Joshua. He attended church yesterday and has a baptismal date for November 12th. We are hoping to help him a lot towards being baptized. He is a great kid with a lot of desires to follow the Lord and do as he wishes of us. He arrived yesterday at church an hour and a half early, he is that excited about learning about the church. I love his excitement to learn. All of the others are lacking the desire to live their commitments and attend church. We are trying to help them to do so but it is a great challenge. I have learned throughout my mission the importance of keeping commitments in order to become as the Lord wishes we will become. I know that the key to becoming better is being commited to changing and living up to the promises and covenants we make to God and the Lord Jesus Christ. If we make up our mind and put our will to following Him all is possible unto us. We must just follow Him and decide to live His will in every moment. Once we take that determination nothing can stop us but our own limits that we ourselves set. I know that we can do amazing things with His divine help, but we must simply trust in His ability to make wonders of us. Of this I am sure. I am certain of His power and ability to make of us great things, wonderful things, powerful people, and strong disciples of the Lord. I love you all and hope for you a wonderful week! Love, Elder Mitchell J Condie

Friday, October 21, 2016

We worked hard this week to find some new investigators!

Hey Everyone, I hope you all had a wonderful week this week. I was able to have a pretty good week. Elder Hernandez and I worked pretty hard this week together looking for new investigators to teach. We were looking for the way to find people, and we just started to talk to a ton of people in the street. Honestly that has always been a really difficult thing for me to do. I don't really like just going up to whatever person, randomly and telling them that we are missionaries and would like to share a message with them. I have done it my whole mission, but I have never liked it all that much and I haven't done it very happily. This week though my companion has been helping me to get over that fear. He is pretty fearless which is good for me and I think it is just easier for him to focus on looking for others easier than it is for me. We talked to a lot of people this week, so hopefully that means that in the coming weeks as we go contacting all of those future investigators we will find some serious investigators. We were able to find a new investigator this week through a referral. His name is Miguel Jimenez. It is the father of Ricardo (our convert). We have taught him twice and he seems pretty interested in learning about the gospel. Unfortunately, he didn't attend church yesterday as he said he was going to, but hopefully in the coming week he will. He is a good guy with a desire to become better. He has had many challenges and trials in his family. His wife left him and his family for another man and many things like that and he has an addiction to alcohol. Hopefully as we work with him we can help him to build a testimony of the gospel and he can learn the importance of living the commandments in his life. Our other investigators are doing alright. With Dayana we haven't seen her for over a week and it seems she has kind of lost interest in learning about the gospel. It has been awhile since she last attended church, so we are trying to decide if we are going to continue teaching her. Joshua didn't attend church yesterday either. I am not exactly sure what is going on with him. We talked to his mom this week and invited her to listen to our message and set an appointment with her and she seemed interested and open to listening and learning from us, but then she wasn't home. We haven't been able to have a lesson with Joshua for some time now, so it is kind of a frustrating situation there too. Hopefully we can help him attend church and continue to learn because I would really love to see him be baptized before I have to come home! Anyway, overall the work is going pretty well. We have been trying to focus a lot on finding new people to teach because the majority of the people we have been teaching really haven't been progressing so there is a need to find others. We have a lot of really great prospects so I am excited. The saddest part now is that the majority of them if they do get baptized will be baptized after I come home. 🙁 Oh well at least I can say that I helped to find them and had a part in planting the seed of their conversion. I just want all of you to know that I love you that I have a testimony of the truthfulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I know that there is now other way to find true happiness now or in the future than to continue firmly on in our journey as His disciples. If we follow Him with true purpose of heart desiring always to serve Him and His children we will find joy and happiness in the journey and even in the trials and challenges. I am certain of the joy that can be found because I have found joy in my own journey. I know that these principles and doctrines are true. There is no other thing anywhere to be found that will give us greater joy. Of this I am certain. We must serve Him with all our heart, might, mind, and strength so that we might receive in Him our gift. I love all of you and I hope you are all well. Take care and have a wonderful week. Love Elder Mitchell J Condie

My week was full of spiritual and uplifting experiences and another companion change!

Hey everyone, I hope you are all doing well and that you were able to have a great week this week. My week was full of many things to do but also full of spiritual and uplifting experiences. We were able to have our zone meeting and also able to establish a new focus for the mission during the leadership council. During our leadership council we were discussing the needs of the mission and the things that are lacking in our mission with the missionaries and what could help us to improve our efforts in the work. We were looking all for things that would help the missionaries become more effective servants of the Lord and also work towards building up their abilities as effective teachers. As we were in that meeting we decided that we needed to focus a lot on Discipleship, Establishing the Church, and Teaching the Doctrine of Christ. It felt so inspired as we were looking for what would inspire the missionaries to work hard and give a greater part of themselves in this work. I am so excited to focus on these things with the missionaries in the coming months. Well my companion Elder Ramon ended his mission today. I am kind of sad because he was a super great companion for me and I am going to miss him. It was a good last week together getting to teach the missionaries in the zone meeting about the need to represent the Savior in all that we do and follow Him in every footstep. I learned so much from him and he inspired me to work harder everyday. I will definitely be missing him by my side as my companion but I know he will continue to bless many lives as he returns home. My new companion is Elder Hernandez. He is from Cancun and has 17 months in the mission. I don´t know very much about him except that he has been a zone leader already for quite awhile so I am sure I will be able to learn a lot of things from him. I am excited to see what I can learn with him and what we can accomplish together here. Right now not much is happening in the area. Our investigators didn´t come to church yesterday. Joshua couldn´t go because his mom grounded him. Kind of frustrating. But hopefully we can continue to teach him and help him prepare for baptism. We are still looking for new people to teach. I am excited to work with Elder Hernandez I am sure he will help a lot. I just want you all to know that I know that as we follow Jesus Christ in all that we do we can truly become true disciples of Him and become a light to others. We must strive to do as He did and love the way He loves. I know that as we strive to bless the lives of others our lives will be blessed and we will become closer to our Savior and our Father in Heaven as well as others that surround us. I know that as we strive to obey Him and bring others unto Him we can become truly happy and find true joy in the journey here in this life. I know that there is no greater path than the path of true discipleship and as we seek Him, we will find ourselves. I love all of you and hope you have a great week. Take care. Love, Elder Mitchell J Condie