Elder Riley Layton

Dear Everyone,

It has been a great week here in Dallas Texas! We have had a lot of great experiences.

To start off, we had a training meeting from President Durrant. That was incredible and really helped us put things in perspective. He has been changing things up a little in the mission, but in wonderful ways! Just one example is the 14 points. That is no more! For those that don't know what the 14 points was, we had a goal to talk to 10 people a day, per missionary. So each day if you talk to 10 people you get a point. At the end of the week, you are supposed to try to have 14 points between you and your companion. Well, president Durrant decided to do away with that. The 14 points was a wonderful thing, and helped me make sure I was out talking to people every day, but President Durrant has raised the bar and just invited us to talk to EVERYONE. It is a lot harder to do, but there are a lot of blessings from doing it. He has just changed things like that to try and help us reach our greatest potential! I love President Durrant, and think we are so lucky to serve under him!

This past week we got to teach Angela, Ray Rowell's wife for the first time. Elder Hansen and I went together so that he could teach her in Spanish while Elder Duke and Elder Willman went and taught some lessons for them. Well, I didn't understand a whole lot, but Angela had basically one concern that she waited until about the end of the lesson to bring up. That concern was about Joseph Smith and the idea that we put him above, or even equal with Christ. Once we explained that that is completely false she took a big sigh of relief and opened up a lot! Angela is a wonderful woman. She even gave Elder Duke and I haircuts a few weeks back. A GREAT lady, and even though our hair is a little too short we feel it a blessing to know her and be sharing this message with her!

On Friday, a few funny things happened. While we were biking to the church, we heard someone shouting to us. It took us a few minutes to realize where it was coming from, because it was a lady standing inside her home shouting through the blinds. She asked us to leave some literature on her doorstep. So we did, and set an appointment for the next day. About 30 minutes later, at the church we got a telephone call from the same lady, telling us that she didn't want to meet with us anymore because she read the pamphlet we left and realized we weren't Jehovah's Witnesses. We then just told her we wanted to just go explain the pamphlet, she agreed. Then the next morning she called us to tell us she changed her mind again, and didn't want us to come over. Well, we told her that it would only be about 15 minutes and there would be no pressure, no commitment, nothing. She agreed. Then about an hour later, she called again and... You guessed it. She cancelled. So we just decided to leave her alone unless she called us. Well Sunday afternoon she called us and asked us to take her name off of our list... we are still not sure what list she thinks she got herself on, but we obliged.

Then Friday afternoon we knocked on this man's door, and he answered (a little bit buzzed) and talked to us for a few minutes. While talking to him, I noticed he had a tattoo of a lawn mower on his foot, I didn't really think much of it, and just kept talking to him. as we were about to leave we asked his name, and then explained that his friends called him "Johnny 9 Toes"... well, I looked down at his foot and sure enough, on the foot with the tattoo on it, there was a toe missing. It didn't take me long to put 2 and 2 together, and realize the significance of his tattoo.

This week was wonderful! And we are looking forward to another great one!

Elder Riley J. Layton