A couple of missionary letters from Erik

The Tempest Is Raging (June 24)
New comp, same area. This week was fantastic, had transfers on Tuesday. My new comp is Elder Tempest "Big Storm." He is my first Utah companion. He is the man. He's been out for 5 months and was trained by Elder Grant in Minneola right after I left. Him and I are going to get along super well.

We had a great week. Elder Tempest got to meet all our investigators in his first week. A lot of them are progressing and the 4 on date are still on track.

Karen is doing better with her Word of Wisdom problems. She also came to church and heard me speak yesterday. She said she loved my talk. It was funny because I went up to the pulpit and said "good morning" and from the back row she yelled good morning back to me. She is progressing a lot, thank you all for your prayers this week. She has definitely made progress since last Monday.

Jen is also still preparing for her wedding and her baptism. She has stopped smoking and is vaping instead. She and Jon are both vaping and are lowering the nicotine levels on it gradually to quit. I think that's a great plan for them. Quitting smoking is a huge step forward for her, because the vape had less nicotine and can be tracked easier. We are super happy for her.

Cathy is another lady who wants to be baptized but has Word of Wisdom problems. She was having coffee every morning, but over the past 2 weeks she had quit completely. She also smoked whenever she drank coffee, but since she had stopped the coffee she has also been able to lessen his much she smokes. 

Last week I asked for you all to pray for these people to overcome their problems. Each of them have made significant improvements this week. Miracles happen through prayer. Thank you all so much.

I'm super excited for this transfer. I know big things are happening here. I also have a great district and there's some of the best basketball players in the mission here in the zone, so it will definitely be a good one.

We got drenched a few times this week. It's been dumping rain. You can't really tell, but it dumped rain on us while we were at the beach last Monday, luckily we found a pavilion to take shelter under. 

🚲🚲☀️🔥☀️🔥☀️(July 1)
It's been a super hot week. The weather has been about mid-nineties all week, but the "feels like" temperature is over a hundred every day. I'm not used to the heat and the humidity. It never cools down and the shade doesn't help at all, plus we have been on bikes. It's either blazing hot or dumping rain, so it's been hard getting around on bike. Luckily we have an amazing ward here that gives us rides places, so that's been nice.

Not too much has changed this week. We still have 4 people with a baptismal date: KK, Jen, Jake, and Alyssa. Jake and Alyssa are on track for their baptism on the 13th and shouldn't have any problems. Yay for them.

KK has a few more problems. She has set a date to quit smoking and drinking by the 18th and get baptized on the 27th. She has a plan to lower her daily smoking by half every few days to accomplish this. We will see how well she follows this. It's up to her at this point, all we can do to help is encourage her and pray for her.

Jen is also progressing towards her baptism. She is doing better with the smoking, but needs a little more work.

The one new thing that happened this week was KK is having one of her struggling friends, Tanya, stay with her, so we are now teaching her as well. Again, though, there are some Word of Wisdom issues there. We will talk to her about baptism this week as well, though. We have had a few lessons with her already and she seems solid.

Something fun that happened this week was we had a nonmember take us and the Viera Elders to Cocoa Beach for a dinner. We got permission to leave our area and the dinner was super good. It was a little Mexican restaurant that he had found and it was amazing.

Jacob 4:4 "For, for this intent have we written these things, that they may know that we knew of Christ, and we had a hope of his glory many hundred years before his coming; and not only we ourselves had a hope of his glory, but also all the holy prophets which were before us.

   6 Wherefore, we search the prophets, and we have many revelations and the spirit of prophecy; and having all these witnesses we obtain a hope, and our faith becometh unshaken, insomuch that we truly can command in the name of Jesus and the very trees obey us, or the mountains, or the waves of the sea."

We are blessed to have many witnesses of the truthfulness of the gospel through prophets, the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and the spirit. As we listen and study these things, our faith can be unshaken and we can work miracles. Have a good week y'all.