Tracting with the fearless Elder Ellett

On Tuesday night I went on splits with the missionaries. We went tracting. I was okay with going tracting until they told me we were going to West Hollywood. That's when I got a little worried. For those of you who don't know, West Hollywood is very gay. I am pretty sure 95% of the people who protested at the temple last November are from West Hollywood. So I went knocking doors with Elder Ellett from Loa, Utah. One important piece of information: Elder Ellett has only one arm. Surprisingly the tracting went well. People were courteous and polite. They weren't interested but no one slammed the door in our faces. An Iranian Jewish guy named Jacob with brothers named Abraham, Isaac and Joseph told us it was too late to be out knocking on doors. So we went up to Sunset Blvd and started street contacting. Yes this is the famous Sunset Blvd with all the clubs, music venues, and scandalous billboards.

This is when Elder Ellett really impressed me. He was totally fearless! He talked to anybody and everybody. He stopped people while they were smoking outside of clubs (you can't smoke indoors in California). He stopped joggers, he stopped a girl who was listening to her iPod and had to take out the ear buds to hear him, and he loved bus stops because as he said, "they couldn't go anywhere." The funniest part was when he contacted people in front of Hustler! Sorry no picture. So on the way back to meet up with the other guys I asked Elder Ellett how he lost his arm. He said he fell off a truck when he was four years old. He told me I could read about it online. He didn't have time to give any details. So I went home and googled "Ellett" (I didn't ask him his first name). This is what I found.

He was on the cover of The New Era in February 2008 here is the link to the story.
New Era article






The Porter Ellett Story

The following link is from Good Morning America
http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=4377838

He was also on The Today Show.

The following is from CNN.


One Armed Basketball Player - video powered by Metacafe

Missionaries don't come any better than Elder Ellett.