The Beginning

Hey Hey everyone!! Sorry for not sending an email last week, we had a temple trip and that moved our P-day to Thursday, so I just decided to wait until today to send an email. We started to get to work on this area this week and it's been going great so far!!

We have been teaching a guy named David. He's awesome, he is super understanding and a lesson hasn't fallen through with him so that's a good sign for the future. He was the guy that came and watched General Conference with us!! We have had a good couple lessons with him in person but he recently sold his car and hasn't been able to meet up at the church (where we normally meet), but he was more than happy to do video calls so he is continuing to progress. So overall I think we are going to go ahead and put him on date hopefully this week or at least put baptism in his mind. 

MIRACLE:

This was amazing, Saturday we had a lesson with Elizabeth, idk If I have already talked about her but she has 3 kids and a husband, we have taught her about 4 times and the husband has never been there because he is working and doesn't have a set schedule. BUT HE WAS THERE!!!! So we finally got to meet him and he is absolutely amazing!! We taught one of the smoothest lessons I think I have ever taught, it felt like  a complete conversation but we were actually talking about principles and things we had to hit and it was so natural. We ended up inviting him to church which would have  been the next day.

Miracle continued:

So we invited Cesar and his family to come and they said yes!!! Which was awesome!! We also had invited David as well.... Well they didn't fall through with their promise, Elizabeth and Cesar brought their 3 kids to church, and David came, and actually brought a friend which is seriously amazing!!! I cannot be happier with that!! We are in an English ward and had to translate sacrament and second hour, which is helping my Spanish, but man, to have that happen just brightened everything up!!

Temple!:

We had a temple trip with our zone which is always an amazing experience!! We all went and drove the 2 hours to get to the temple, in a minivan full of elders which was super fun, and got to do an Endowment session which is such a blessing. The temple truly is the Lord's house and brings so much peace and happiness just being inside of it.

Everything has been going great over here in Fort Pierce, the one struggle we might have is getting the members involved in our lessons, there just isn't a lot that speak Spanish. For example this last Sunday we had 2 Latin members show up, and they work a lot so it's hard to try to get them involved and goin' with the work but it's all good!! We are doing the best with what we got and trusting in the Lord. I'm really seeing some great progress with the people we are teaching and have super high hopes so let's get it!!!

We have been playing so much pickleball every day and having tons of fun doing that. We are getting super close with the Creole Elders that live just a couple minutes away from us. For P-day and we played some dodgeball, got some Mexican food, played some basketball, grabbed a football and kicked some field goals, kicked the soccer ball around, basically all the sports ever lol. It was tons of fun.

So far on my mission, I have seen my relationship with my father and heaven grow so much. Being more in tune with the spirit, having that constant companionship, and studying the scriptures and constantly praying has just amazed me on the strength, warmth, peace, and comfort from the spirit. This truly is the restored new testament church of Jesus Christ. He is at the head, looking to help us around every corner, guiding us. 

Wanted to share a scripture with you guys, I was asked about my "Why", on why I'm on a mission by my mission president. As I reflected I thought of the true joy and blessings this gospel brings. I have felt that increase so much more the harder I work. Looking back on my life and seeing the Lord's hand in every little moment has made me want to help others. Help others to have the opportunity to feel the true love of Christ, and to have true, real happiness in the horrendous world we live in. The Lord truly loves each and every one of us, I know that to be true. 

I think King Benjamin said it best when he stated the 

"blessed and happy state of those that keep the commandments of God. For behold, they are blessed in all things, both temporal and spiritual; and if they hold out faithful to the end they are received into heaven, that thereby they may dwell with God in a state of never-ending happiness."

We are so blessed to have a Mediator named Jesus Christ, who suffered every pain and hardship, every feeling and heartbreak, every depression and feelings of guilt, lowliness, hopelessness, and stress we have ever felt. He died for us, and even through all of that, he is still forgiving to those who torture him and crucify him. That Christ, is standing by our side at all times, loving us, helping us, and always there with his arms stretched out wide with an eternal love for you, and for me, and for every person to walk this earth. 

He Lives.

Elder Harbertson

Pictures:

1-4: Temple Trip

5. Got booted. :(

6. Peacock wandering the street

7-8. Mom may have DoorDashed us some food ;)
9. Sleep over with the Creole Elders

IT’S A GIRL

Tonight we did a gender reveal to find out what Cam & Melanie are having! I was so blessed to find a Mom in Trevin’s ward (that he’s had dinner at once and she sent me a picture of him there), help me get some cupcakes to him too with the right “color” inside so he could FaceTime and do this with us! It was so fun and we’re so excited to have more pink in our family!

Easter Sunday

“My name is Dawn Knupp.  Had the privilege of meeting and feeding your Missionary tonight.  He was showing me pix of the puppies you have….OMGOODNESS, they are seriously the cutest puppies ever.  Hope you had an Amazing Easter. The other young man in the picture is our son Josh.”

Alrighty.....WOW

Holy moly everyone. I got so much to tell that I definitely forgot to type about last week.... Aka this is going to be the longest email of my entire life so I'm sorry to everyone, lol.

Patricia:

We are starting off strong, but we had an amazing lesson with Patricia, we answered a million questions that she had. And I'm not quite sure if I said this before, but a pastor a little while ago asked her to teach a Bible class, and she wasn't sure what she wanted to do. So after that lesson, we decided to invite her to our English class and share a spiritual message at the end of it, and she said yes!! So late that day, we bought her an Uber because literally not a single soul in our ward could take her, and she pulls up to English class. We taught English and she was participating and having a great time, and then the spiritual message came up, and we passed the time over to her.... And she shared the best message I have ever heard. She bore her testimony for 15 min, and it was so Spirit filled. She quoted Moroni, talked about Joseph Smith, prophets, the Restoration, the Book of Mormon, church, and prayer. I was in complete aww the entire time. Every person in the class was completely captivated, and every single person in that class came up to us and talked about how they could learn more, come to church, and get a lesson. It was absolutely amazing. We got so many new contacts and people to teach which really was just a miracle!! 

Big Change:

After that, Elder Medina and I were at an all time high, and then p-day rolls around. We were headed home from the church when we got a call from our Mission President, and we both thought we did something, lol. For a quick little context, the northern most part of our mission reconstructed the Stake boundaries, and now we are adding 2 new areas to our mission which is super cool. And our Mission President called Elder Medina and I to tell us that he would like to have us open up the area called Fort Pierce!! And that we would leave on Wednesday (in 2 days plus a week before transfers). So we ended up packing all the next day, and it was a ton of work, but we did it!!

Orlando:

So we pulled up to our apartment and met the Orlando missionaries (this area was part of the Orlando mission before we took it over), they were super sick. We spent most of the day with them and got to know the area and the people they were teaching and it seems like there is a ton of potential here. The members are super involved and the Bishop and we're ready to get stuff done, lol. So that's super awesome to see. And we are also in a Spanish/English and Creole Ward, which is pretty crazy. It's mostly English so everything is in English and we are going to have to translate for the Spanish members. Also we have a carpet gym in our building that I have never heard of, but that was pretty interesting, lol. Literally every member in this Ward wants to feed us like every single day lol, so that's super nice of them!!! 

David:

We started teaching this great guy, and his name is David. He has a rough background and he is trying super hard to change which is amazing to see!! The first lesson we taught him the Restoration and he really liked it. The next lesson we taught him was about Prophets, and we invited him to watch General Conference with us. He is a pretty busy guy but he said he could come to the morning session on Sunday, and he came!!! So we went to the family history room in our building and pulled up Conference in Spanish and watched it with him, which was great!! He ended up asking how he could watch the other sessions so that's super exciting and we can't wait to continue teaching him!!

General Conference:

General Conference was great!!! I absolutely loved it!! I have appreciated Conference so much more since starting my mission. I loved so many of the talks and took a million notes which I honestly haven't done before.  But hey, I did this time, lol. President Nelson's talk really hit home. I love where the Lord is directing us during this crazy time.

There is a member in our ward that owns a restaurant, and all of the servers know that anyone with a black tag (missionary obviously) gets to eat completely FREE. So we ended up going there for dinner and it was super good!!! The restaurant is like one street away from the beach and it is so crazy how close I am, and how badly I want to go in the ocean, lol. 

Anyways, I'm super excited for this transfer, I'm staying with Elder Medina, if that wasn't clear enough, and we are excited to pick up where the Orlando Missionaries left off. Problem is, is that we don't have area book right now so we are just trying to get everything figured out. We are trying our best though.

I want to talk about so much more but I don't have any more time, I hope you all are doing super well!!! Love you all and have a great week!!!

Cya next week!!

Elder Harbs

Pictures:

1 & 2. Mission President Wife's FB post about the two new areas being added and Trevin & his companion going.

3. Costco food court food!

4.The restaurant who feeds the missionaries for free.

5.General Conference

6. New Apartment in Orlando