#BecauseHeLives

Happy Spring!

The surprise that I had for this week cancelled last minute, so hoping that we can make it happen sometime soon... 

This past week was fantastic. The weather is warming up, which means more walking and talking, and we have been so blessed, and seen so many miracles. God loves His missionaries. And, everyone else! 

The church has a new initiative for Easter! #BecauseHeLives. I would encourage everyone to check out: http://www.mormon.org/easter and watch the video "Because He Lives." There are different methods that you can share the video with friends and family, and we are trying to share it with as many people as we can!

I'm so grateful for the Resurrection of the Savior and for the time that we have to reflect on that this time of year as we look forward to Easter Sunday. I know He lives!! Because He Lives, we too will live. We can be happy, we can be filled with light, we can grow, and change, and become better. As children of God our potential is limitless, and Because He Lives we can access that. Because He Lives I have become a different person, a better person, and that would be impossible without Him. "I know that my Redeemer lives! What comfort this sweet sentence gives! He lives!" (Hymn 136).

Find Him!

He is Here!

Love,

Elder Horne

Team Canada!

New companion!

Elder Froc is from Canada! Yay! He has dubbed me an honorary Canadian (like I still needed that...), and we love Canada, so life is grand.

Although, despite loving Canada, I still wasn't very happy to see snow, again. When just a few days prior it was 60s and sunny. Happy first day of spring!!

Usually you take your pictures before you start driving, but you never get as great a shot...

Free Rita's for the first day of spring! It was cold! And snowy! 

But hey, it was free Rita's...

Thankfully, the weather has again warmed up and the snow is gone, again. Hopefully for good.

Surprise for week #1: new companion, and snow for spring. I know, not super grand, but next week's surprise will be fabulous!

One of my favorite scriptures this past week (I'm still on track, by the way; don't fall behind!) is found in 2 Nephi chapter 1, verse 15: "But behold, the Lord hath redeemed my soul from hell; I have beheld his glory, and I am encircled about eternally in the arms of his love." Does it get any better than that?

We are having a blast. Warmer weather means more people outside, including us, which means more people to talk to, which means happy happy happy. Oh my goodness, I love talking to people about the gospel, it's the best. Seriously. So, everyone just needs to come to New Jersey as missionaries. You'll love it!

Love,
Elder Horne

Book of Mormon Challenge!

Here we go!!

The last six weeks! For the last transfer there have been some changes. Elder Lake is being transferred, so I will be getting a new companion tomorrow! I'll be sure to follow up with who my new (last) companion is and where Elder Lake has gone.

Before Elder Lake left though, I was able to take him to get his first Rita's water ice!!

It's been a lot of fun training Elder Lake, I'm excited to see where he goes next. He's a good elder.

The weather this week has been fabulous, spring is here and I am so happy! It's warmer out, the sun goes down later, and life is perfect. Seriously, things are great. The other day we were out finding some new investigators, and realized we were right next to the river, so we popped over somewhere I could get a better picture. Sadly my camera missed both the sunset, but it was pretty and I just really like water and bridges okay.

Anyway, we have so many exciting plans for these next few weeks, I AM SO EXCITED. They'll come as surprises though, so stay tuned to see the things that I post for these last few weeks. 

As I mentioned last time though, the Book of Mormon challenge! So, I will be reading the entire Book of Mormon in 6 weeks. It's not too bad, only 5-6 chapters a day. I'll attach a chart that you can print off that has each of the days marked so you will know where  you should be at. Although you'll be starting a day late (it started yesterday) I would still encourage you to go for it! The first few chapters aren't very long.

I just love the Book of Mormon and the Spirit that it brings. I stand with Joseph Smith when he said "the Book of Mormon [is] the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by it's precepts, than by any other book" (Introduction to the Book of Mormon). 

It's true!

Love,

Elder Horne

Here's the chart I mentioned:

Snow, snow, go away

The snow continues...

We had the biggest snowfall so far this year this past Thursday. It threw everything off, so that wasn't super exciting. I'm not sure what it officially was, but I'm thinking it was around 6-9 inches in places. We couldn't drive at all, and nobody lives that close by, so we decided we would go and shovel all day! It was really neat. Just by helping them to shovel their walks or their drive ways, we met a lot of nice people, we got a lot of hot chocolate, and someone who invited us in so we could teach them about the Restoration! There were a lot of miracles, and a lot of snow.

It's warming up now, it's around 50 degrees outside and all the snow is melted or melting. Hopefully spring is finally here!

Earlier this week we also got our new iPads. I guess it's nice having a new iPad. Having to re-download and configure things hasn't been extraordinarily fun, but the training videos that they have for us are pretty neat! Different apostles and church leaders talking about digital devices, and to think we are the very first missionaries to be watching these videos, that was pretty cool.

The temple is still on the horizon! We are figuring out if we can make it some time in March, but we will certainly be going there in April!! Everyone just needs to go to the temple and be happy.

This past week we also got to go to the bishops storehouse to help out there, so that was pretty sweet. I hadn't been to a bishops storehouse since I was in high school and I went to the one in Seattle. It was awesome being able to help out there, and be involved in that aspect of the church that we don't see very much. It was also incredibly exciting because Elder Murphy was also serving there, and he's the best. A lady took a picture for us, but I still haven't been able to get my hands on it.

Something I really liked in my reading this past week (I've been just studying out of 3 Nephi, since I finished the Book of Mormon again a couple weeks ago, and will have a fun challenge/activity for you guys next week) was this: "How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings unto them, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings unto them of good, that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion: Thy God reigneth." (3 Nephi 20:40, see also Isaiah 52:7, emphasis added). I loved pondering on the statement: "Thy God reigneth," but more so on the repetition of "bringeth" and "publisheth." I want you to think about that repetition, and why the Savior stated it that way.

Love you guys!
Elder Horne

Next Month...

So, there is another elder in the district who goes home the same time I do, and he has been so kind as to frequently remind me how many days we have left... It's all just numbers though, so I haven't really paid much attention to it. Until yesterday, when he said, "hey, we go home next month."

Ya. That's not okay.

March, go home.

Anyway, not a whole lot has happened since last Tuesday. We are continually battling the weird weather, we had freezing rain on Sunday. I always think freezing rain is really pretty, although it did make things more difficult for us, and the YSA ended church right after sacrament meeting. So, that wasn't the most fun.

However, I did get another plant... I know I was trying to stop, but it's so difficult! They just grow out of the earth like it's nobody's business! This one I got from a very nice member family. His name is Chai, since this family also answered my prayer and helped me out with some lemon ginger tea because my throat was trying to kill me.

We have been experiencing awesome miracles, and all the best of everything (despite the weather), and have rescheduled the temple trip for April, except this time we'll be going to the Manhattan, New York temple! If I don't get transferred, that is (fingers crossed).

And just for an awesome quote because it's awesome: "Pure Christlike love flowing from true righteousness can change the world." Elder Holland

Love,
Elder Horne

"White As Snow"

And I thought I had a lot of pictures last week...

SO, this week was slightly different than expected, but still tremendously awesome and great.

Destiney's baptism was Tuesday, and it was such a wonderful experience!! There were so many people there, and everything went perfectly. Except that Elder Lake forgot to bring a change of shirt, so I had to mummy wrap his sleeves in paper towels before he would put his suit jacket back on. Other than that, it was perfect.

Than, we were preparing to go to the temple with them on Saturday, and we had found 47 names for baptisms from their family! We were so excited! Everything was ready and perfect and happy! Until they cancelled the trip due to snow and rescheduled for September... immediate sadness. We'll figure something out so we can go soon.

We also had a mission conference yesterday! This is the first time our mission has all met together in at least 5 years! Elder Evans of the 1st Quorum of the Seventy, and Elder Allen of the 5th Quorum of the Seventy came and presented training to us on using our digital devices! We will be getting new iPads next week (maybe later) and they'll be rolling out all these new updates in stages. It's exciting stuff. They were awesome.

And... I took a lot of pictures... this is only like, 10%.

Destiney's baptism!!! 

So... we never take selfies, and so when the roads are bad and I'm sliding the car everywhere,

that is when we take seflies. 

And even when I'm taking distracted photos I still manage to be super squinty...

Yay, driving in the snow! 

I made a little snowman outside our apartment! Finally!

I also finally made these cupcakes that my family sent me mix for. 

They turned out pretty good, I messed up the frosting, so it was a little runny...

...as you can probably tell.

Driving past Philly on our way to the Mission Conference!

My "daughter" Sister Johnstone and "grand-daughter" Sister Gomm!

Elder Hunsaker was my zone leader in Downingtown, and then also here in Jersey

Now he is in Linwood!

TEAM SEAATTTLLLLE!!!!

Oh, and someone gave us a painting of the Last Supper,

so that was pretty sweet.

Love,

Elder Horne

Snowy Valentines

I have pictures.

This week was a lot different than I thought it would be! That's one way to put it. It's been really cold, and we went on exchanges, and just lots of things to keep us busy.

Valentines weekend was great! Just before Valentines day, we decided to go to the college campus and hand out a ton of pass-along card valentines! We basically just wrote on a ton of pass-along cards, and tied some ribbon and a Dum-Dum to each one and walked around campus passing them out. It was a lot of fun! We met some awesome people, most of whom wanted us to learn that it was singles-awareness day and tell us their sad story of being single of Valentines Day, but it was still great!

The family sent me this awesome awesome package. I was blown away to see something incredible. An orchid!!! It still doesn't have a name yet, but we're getting there. We've had a busy week okay.

She makes our bathroom look prettier, that's for sure. 

Also in the package was some mix for Red Velvet Pancakes. So, for breakfast we made those. I promise that they were actually really good, but in this picture they kind of look like beef patties... The eggs also look awful (they had red food coloring in them). I thought about taking a picture with different lighting to make the food look good, but I thought it was fun how unappetizing they look in this picture!

Yum.... 

Oh, and in this picture the pancakes might look slightly burnt, I don't know why that is.

They were perfect.

The bacon on the other hand, ya that got a little burnt...

Most of Valentines day we went and stopped by a lot of the widows in our ward and gave them some Valentines cards, which was a lot of fun. I don't know if it's because I'm a missionary, or what, but all these older ladies in the ward just love it when we stop by. Especially when we have cards and candy! Well, who wouldn't want that???

The night of the 14th however, things took a turn. We walked outside of the church before heading home, and we stumbled upon this. (Note: everything was clear an hour beforehand) 

We were so surprised! All this snow just came from nowhere, and it was falling fast and heavy. I had the enjoyment of driving home through all the snow (none of the roads were plowed by this point), which hasn't happened in a long time because we either are told not to drive, or the roads are clear. We made it home safe though, so all is well.

Until...

Both of our church meetings are cancelled for Sunday and the baptism is rescheduled. Come on snow! That wasn't too fun, I'll be honest. The snow wasn't too bad in the morning when we woke up, it had stopped overnight. It was really really windy though, and cold.

See? Not bad.

Now it is still really cold, and we are waiting for more snow this week. Hurray for hot chocolate!! The baptism will be on Tuesday, and we'll be going to the temple on Saturday, so be prepared for even GREATER pictures next week! Happinesss!!!

On random notes: I had a service for my dead plants. Luke has been dead for awhile now, Leia followed soon after (twins!), Bonsly had been struggling, and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was doing just fine until recently! He still looked okay, but his roots failed and he fell over... Meg is fading fast, so you might see her soon...

Buried in their own dirt... 

"dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return" (Genesis 3:19)

On another random note! I rearranged my desk. I wish I took a 'before' before. It was messy, and I had all my stuff up here, but I decided I wanted to go for a more concise, sophisticated desk. Minimalist.

There is still quite a bit of stuff, I know, but at least it is slightly more organized and clean!

That's all.

Love,

Elder Horne

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