Dear family of mine,
That is very exciting that everyone is out and serving
missions and doing well. I am sending an email to Ryan this week. I sent him the
picture of the Romero Family last week, but I will send a letter to him this
week.
This week has been kind of weird now that the Romero family has been
baptized. It got quiet. Also, it was really tough on teaching too, due to
Halloween and having to stay at home and clean and then having exchanges all
the way in Concord.....almost 50 miles away. We are not complaining though because
we found 8 new investigators and 6 of them in one day!
The Holiday season for
missionaries can be interesting, not as hard for us though because Elder
Cardenas and I have been having a great time though and we made a Zone Focus
this week about opening your mouth. We set a goal to have 1540 times as a zone where we open our mouths and talk to someone about the gospel. That is
a lot, but we know we need to work on that a lot. Elder Aidukaitus, the general authority, promised us
that if we talked to 20 people every day of our missions we would baptized twice as
much.
Last night when we did the indicator calls and tallied up all the "OYM's" (open your mouths) we only got 541, but one companionship talked to 75 people which is pretty
decent for where they are serving! We set a new zone focus for this week of Opening Your Mouth but a goal of 800 and the criteria is gauged to help
the missionaries work on the skill of being persistent, testifying and asking
questions. We are really excited because the District Leaders last night were
telling us that the missionaries were really excited and the talking with so
many people really changed the way they work. These zone focuses have been
really inspiring.
This week was also the week of stake report. We finished it
in the wee hours of last night. That was the longest day of my life. Due to the time change, it felt an hour later and then we were doing the stake report
and the key indicator calls. I was tired by the end of last night. I will have
to agree, a mission is one of the most mentally taxing things I have ever done
but the most rewarding.
I am sending in a heart report tomorrow. Don't worry.
Monday: We visited one of our less-active families that are
also part members. We are trying to reactivate the parents so we can baptize
the kid. The lesson was for the dad. We made an addiction recovery plan with
him but it didn't go to well. The member was getting a little out of control
and the dad wasn't really willing to give up smoking. It was a hard lesson and
we can't change him if he doesn't want to stop. We then started exchanges with
our district leader. I stayed in the area with Elder Sage.
Tuesday: We have been trying to talk with everyone but it is
harder than you think it is. I love talking to people though because of the
responses we get. We gave a blessing of health to one of our less actives that
has been struggling with every health issue you can think of. Afterward we
visited another recent convert in the area and taught her about temple work and
baptisms for the dead. She was really excited to be able to prepare for that
and also to look for her parents and grandparents genealogy information. We ate dinner
with her afterward and she made so many papusas. I love papusas and I learned
last week how to make them. I am learning quite a bit on how to cook. It is
hard to believe but it is true.
We taught afterward another focus fifteen
member who just moved in. That night we found a new investigator from
Guatemala. It was a good lesson but I don't know how committed he is to all of
this. We will find out tonight in our lesson with him. We taught the Romero
family though that night and it was awesome. They were so happy. We taught them
about missionary work and they were so excited. We left them with a bunch of
pass-along cards to give out to their friends. Also the dad Antonio said that
the baptism was another answer to his prayers and that he is feeling closer to
being baptized. He is so close but he won't commit to a date!
Wednesday: Today we talked to quite a bit of interesting
people. We received a referral and went to contact it, but the address didn't exist. While we were there we talked to everyone that was in the street. We
asked one of them if they knew anyone that was interested and they said that
their neighbor was a member of our church. We didn't know that so we went over
and knocked the door. We found a Mexican guy married to a Tongan lady and they were
pretty off the wall. The member we had with us knew them from when they were
baptized. It was interesting. They started to somewhat bash the church and
started to talk about things that sounded pretty anti-Mormon.
Afterward we
taught another one of our recent converts that we hadn't seen for a while. We
also taught Jaime again the uncle of Alvaro. He loved the baptism and really
wants to learn more from us. We were then knocking some doors afterward and a
girl came running to us yelling help and hid by the boat that was in the
driveway. She was panicking and said that some guy was hitting her and she ran
and asked us to protect her. It was pretty crazy and it all turned out
well. (NOTE from Mom: Really? That's it? What in the heck happened?)
Thursday: Halloween!! We had a really good district meeting
today. Elder Macias taught about the need for the Holy Ghost to be our third
companion. It was very powerful. We taught another one of our investigators
named Margarita. She is really prepared and we taught her about the
spirit world. We also added her niece as an investigator. Afterward we had the
most powerful contact I have ever had on my mission with a man named Anthony. He
wasn't interested when we tried to talk to him but then I said, "We know
this can bless you. " He stopped and came back to us and asked us what we
share. I asked him what the greatest blessing he has ever received in his life
and he shared an experience with us and began to cry. We testified to him that
God loves him it was a very simple contact but the spirit was so strong.
That
night we ate with the Chacon family. They made some great food and pizza and
noodles and everything. They told us that this next week they are going to call
us for an appointment with a referral they have for us. We also when we left
ran into the mom of a family we had found a while back that had dates. She said
that she really wanted us to come back just her husband didn't understand everything
about being baptized and got scared. What a miracle. We hope to add them this
week as new investigators again. That night we spent the night cleaning the
apartment and re-organizing things.
Friday: Today we had another very long weekly planning. I
love weekly planning though because it helps us see the end from the beginning.
This isn't a very interesting letter but its what it is. That afternoon I
interviewed two more baptismal candidates for this last Sunday. I did both of
them in 30 minutes, the fastest I have ever done interviews before. That night
we drove out to Concord and started our exchanges with Elder Cutler and Elder
Vawdrey.
Saturday: I was in our area with Elder Vawdrey. I have to
stay in my area the majority of the exchanges because of all the bike areas and I have to have a car.
This morning though we picked the Elders up and headed to Oakland for their two
baptisms. It turned out well other than having the Tongan members having a
baptism at the same time. ;) Some members brought one of our investigator families.
It went really well and they loved it a lot. We added the mom as a new
investigator.
We then met with Elder O'Farrell, my old companion, to get some papers from him and
he is doing well. It will be interesting to find out what happens to us on our
last transfer. When we got back to our area we taught Jaime again, he is really
depressed but when we were teaching him we mentioned about the priesthood and
blessings and right then asked us if we could give him a blessing of health. It
was really powerful. He had a lot of faith. Afterward we found a new
investigator family also. We added 3 new investigators and then went to dinner. Below are some pictures of the dinner and party afterward.
Dinner was interesting. It was the after party of the baptism and there was a
ton of people. There was also 3 pinatas that they had. That was pretty great.
It was funny for my companion that had been out for 2 weeks. He was a little
surprised. That night we also found a new investigator that is a referral of
the Romero family. He is so prepared. He accepted a baptismal date for the
first of December. We then ended exchanges in concord.
Sunday: Today we confirmed the Romero family and then the
other two recent converts. They are so awesome! We also had randomly the cross
country team of BYU Hawaii in our ward today. A bunch of them spoke
Spanish so they joined our ward. It was great though! The rest of the day we
finished planning and then the stake report.
We have a lot of work going on and some great things
happening.
Thanks everyone! I love you all!
Elder Hill
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