Elder Mason Holman

  Christmas 3!!!! It was a very good week this past week and we were able to get a lot done and work hard in order to invite others to hear about Christ this Christmas season. We were very fortunate and people were so loving and accepting during the holiday season. We were able to see a good amount of success setting up and having appointments with people this past week. We focused all of our visits on bringing the spirit of Christ into these people's homes during the Christmas season. It's so awesome to see the effect His light has on others when they remember the true reason for the season.  As many of you know due to the unique course of my mission I have had three separate Christmases here in Arizona. It truly has been a blessing to spend this time here serving others and remembering Christ. It has really shown me why we celebrate Christmas and what makes this season so special. I've noticed that the two biggest reasons I love Christmas are because of Christ and becau...

  It was a very special week this past week having Tommyee's baptism. She is the sweetest lady and is so excited for the path that lies ahead for her in the church. The baptism went really well. The talks were wonderful and she has so much support from the ward it's amazing. She seemed to happy as it all was going on, she's awesome! Her husband David who is not a member spoke at the baptism and wrote out his words on a piece of paper. He just recounted their story of how they came in contact with the members and then the missionaries and how it has changed their lives. He expressed such sincere gratitude for the support that they've felt and the love everyone has had for his wife as she's taken this step. Her nephew who converted to the church 3 years ago and is the only other member in her family came and bore a short testimony that was very sweet. The spirit was very strong in the service.  We had a pretty busy week other than the baptism. A lot of good times and ...

  Tomorrow I will hit one year since I first arrived in Tucson. It's crazy to think about and process that. I'm very fortunate that I've had this time back in the mission and I truly would not trade it for anything. It has been some of the best times but it has also been some really hard times in this past year. Never have I been brought down to my knees with no where else to go than in these past 12 months. Prayer has been such a great support to me in this past year. I don't know what I would do with out it. Being able to communicate with heaven gives me so much hope. Prayer has calmed so many of the storms that I've confronted in the past year. It reminds me where i place my faith, who I believe in and who I trust in each day. Life is not an easy task but we do not have to make this journey alone. Each day that I pray I invite Gods presence into my life and ask for His guidance. I have felt that power each day that I ask for his help. Often it is a small assuranc...

  This week was really good! We were able to get a lot done, saw some miracles, and had some good times along the way! This week we had a lot of success setting up appointments with different people and had a few good lessons as well.  This week we had interviews with our mission president which is always good. I was able to talk with him for a while about some questions that I had, my companion and our area. Towards the end of the interview he asked me what our plans were for that night and we had a lesson planned with our friend Tommyee and some of the members of the ward. He didn't have any plans for the night so he asked if he could accompany us on the lesson! It was a really cool opportunity to be able to teach with him and Tommyee is literally the coolest lady and had some amazing questions for us. She has been preparing for baptism and we read in D&C 20:37 the Lords requirements for baptism with her. She came to the realization that she's ready and we invited her to...

  This week went really well! I'll throw down some highlights from the week and some of my thoughts from what we learned!  ︎We had some Elders in our zone stay the night with us in out apartment because they got bed bugs in their apartment and we didn't have any bedding for them or cloths so they slept on the ground in their missionary clothes, pretty sad but it was pretty funny as well.  ︎we had zone conference and it was super good. We talked about Alma 26:22 and some specifics about its message.  ︎exchange with Elder Soifua and it went extremely well! We had so many great contacts and also some crazy ones. This lady told us we were gonna die because we got the COVID vaccine:( We taught this awesome family from Samoa that didn't know anything about the church and set up a time to visit them this week which was awesome! We learned alot together and saw many mighty miracles!  ︎we had the east zone vs north zone frisbee game that we've been preparing them for thi...

  I will be fairly brief with my comments for this past week but it was a good one. Elder Jensen and I are working hard and really starting to see the work begin to move forward.  Some cool experiences that we had from this past week was that we had prayed one of the nights on where we needed to go and decided that we should go to this apartment complex and visit some members that we had not been able to visit yet. We had tried about one or two and we saw this woman names Monica and decided to try and visit her next. We knocked the door and she answered and she didn't seem too ready for a contact at the time and seemed a little embarrassed that we had stopped by unannounced but then we started talking with her. She opened up to us about how she had prayed the day before for the first time in over a year and listened to conference and started reading in the book of Mormon again. She told us that in her prayer she had asked that the missionaries would come an...

  Week 1 in east zone. It has been a really good week and I'm already getting along really well with my new companion elder Jensen. It's a very different area than any area I've served in in the past so it's been cool to see the little differences. We are living in what is one of the wealthiest areas of Tucson and the members are really strong here. It seems like everyone in the ward either is a doctor, engineer or own their own business. It has been cool to see how the gospel has influenced their lives.  We had many meeting this past week and one of those meetings was a visit from Elder Soares and a few other general authorities that were in the area and spoke to all the missionaries and they all had a very special and specific message for the missionaries. Elder Soares's message in particular stood out to me. He talked about Faith. He was super straight forward in his talk, in no way did he beat around the Bush but he also showed an increase of love and compassion...

  Dear family and friends, I received news this past saturday that I will be leaving Sahuarita and Elder Mortenson and heading back up to Tucson. We have 4 tucson zones in the mission and this will be the last one I need to serve in, east zone. I'm excited to for the change and am very optimistic about the area! I was only here for 6 weeks in this area and with elder Mortenson during his training so it will be sad to leave it all behind. This has been one of my most challenging transfers of my mission thus far and the Lord really refined and humbled me in the process, he has a way of doing that to us. I have never pleaded more for heavenly help for something beyond my own personal needs than I have in this past transfer. It truly brought me down to the lowest depth of humility and made me stand back multiple times and say, "I dont know what to do, take my hand and guide me." Each time that I was humble enough to utter that phrase the Lord guided everytime, sometimes it wa...

  It is crazy to say that it is already the last week of another transfer. This past transfer with Elder Mortenson has been one of the must humbling and trying of my mission thus far but we made it to the last week and were starting to see success little by little as we put in effort and use creative means to find those that are prepared to receive our message.  Yesterday we had a refreshing discussion with this elderly Spanish man named rusio that we had met this past week. When we first met him he did not seem very interested but said he would let us in if we came over. We sat with him briefly and he turned to me and asked me one question. He asked with his whole soul, "how do you feel the holy ghost?", I bore a brief but true testimony of how I have felt the spirit in my life. It broke my heart that this man well stricken with age responded with, "I've never felt that in my whole life." We then were able to share with him how he could feel that same spirit an...

  Dear Family and Friends,  I don't know who reads these anymore but hopefully someone does (if you do shoot me a text). This week was really good. We were starting to see some light in the journey that we have been embarking on as a companionship. Elder Mortenson and I got transferred into the area and shortly afterwards our other companion was needed elsewhere and now it is just us so we came into this area fairly blind and since that point we've been trying our beat to figure out how to best do the work. I don't know if I have ever prayed more earnestly in my entire mission but this week it finally all has begun to pay off and we've started to see some success with some people that we've met.  This week we had a member who offered to come and work with us for three hours in the afternoon on Thursday and we thought AWESOME, but what are we going to do with him? We really tried to plan out some good things to take him to do in order that he could have a good ex...

 This week has been a crazy ride and I will include just a handful of key things that happened and then I will have to be through. As I mentioned in the title we lost elder Holt this week. An elder down in Nogales ended up needing to go home due to some medical problems so elder holt went to replace him. Now it is just Elder Mortenson and I here in Sahuarita in an area where we aren't exactly what is going on so we are learning together and Elder Mortensen attempts to learn about how to be a missionary.  This week the morning that elder holt left we decided to play some sports as a district and while we were playing I attempted to thread the needle on a throw and ended up hitting elder Mortenson right in the mouth and it knocked out one of his front teeth (I'll include a picture) he took it like a champ and luckily a member dentist had a son just leave on his mission that day so he was so kind as to give this elder a new tooth no charge haha.  This week I studied a lot in...

 This week was really great and so much has happened! We had zone conference and I was able to go on two exchanges, one with Elder Otuafi who was actually trained by Hunter and an Elder named Elder Boswell who leaves to Equador this next week.  First off, zone conference was amazing. We received some really great trainings and just some of the stuff that President Grisel shared really spoke to me personally. He talked about full commitment to the cause that we are supporting as missionaries and talked about how we need to decide today that this is where God needs us to be and to not doubt but look forward with faith and trust in him. I have enjoyed being in my current zone and being able to live so close to him and his family and having the opportunity to see him as he really is. Today I got a hair cut from sister Grisel and he talked with us about a mission wide devotional that were having tomorrow and it was just awesome to see how much inspiration he receives but also how h...

  This past week was so busy and so amazing. We have been working so hard and have seen so many little tender mercies from God as we have been diligent, patience, and obedient. We went over on our miles so three days in a row from this past week we only used public transportation and walking. The first day was honestly pretty rough and we did not see too much success with our contacts and we were away from the apartment for 9 hours and it rained a good percentage of the day. Then, the next two days were amazing. I've seen that a lot on my mission it's almost as if the Lord tests our motives on why we are going out to do his work to see if we will endure hard times in order to find those that are really prepared for this message. Those two days we met so many amazing people who really are searching for guidance in their lives and saw some amazing miracles.  In those two days we were able to talk with people from 5 of the 6 inhabitable continents, people from over 15 countries, ...

  Start of another transfer here in Tucson and it came with a lot of different changes. I had to say goodbye to my best friend Elder Riches as he and my past companion finished their missions and I said goodbye to all those that I started the mission with and it leaves me as the last one standing. I got a new companion Elder Girgenti who is from Houston, Texas.  He is a really hard working elder and loves the Lord and desires to work hard. He was actually in this area this past year and was trained by Elder Riches here in the thick of COVID.  We started off the week with having elder riches and his companions and another companionship come and stay the night at our apartment since we are close to the transfer sight. It was a great send off with him and he was able to give me some sage advice of a dying missionary. He  really has been a great influence to me as I have served my mission and my love and respect for him has grown a lot.  I picked up my new companion...