June 25, 2012

Hola Familia!

Oh no Mom!!! You broke your ankle!!! I am so sorry to hear that, but good work toughing it out in the youth conference! I bet all the kids are impressed. Just be more careful... did you fall down then fall down again?... ha ha

Ok, this Sunday the attendance was a little bit low. 110. But in San Marcos they have a SIMI of about 300 members maybe. The average every Sunday is about 120-130 it was going up but I think the rain discouraged them. The youth group is cool, but there aren’t enough worthy young men to do the sacrament alone. But there are lots of adult priesthood holders here.

No, we don’t usually go to youth activities, Mom. We are working on getting the ward more excited to help out in the mission work.

What do we do when we don’t have appointments? Well, the night before we always plan what we are going to do for the next day. And for all the hours that we do not have a fixed appointment, we put someone we are going to pass by and teach.

There is always an investigating family to pass by. And we always put a back up plan in case they aren’t there. It can also be a recent convert, or a less active family, or a member family we want to teach and invite them to help in the mission work with their neighbors and family.

If all else fails we go tracting. But references are ALWAYS more effective. But for example last night we had some time before the last appointment and we had previously decided we needed to contact all the houses that are on the same block as the chapel... you’d think we would have thought of that before... ha ha and it seemed to have results with a few new families. Ha ha especially the family of 7 that lives literally touching the fence of the Church.

Last week we went on 2 splits. Tuesday we went and worked with a younger companionship that needed some help. It went great. Those were divisions of 24 hrs. Then Thursday we went to work with the Sister Missionaries of Masatepe. Mainly to go to a Rescue 911 with two families they are teaching.

We were able to interview the two families and it was Awesome. We felt the spirit very strongly in the interviews and they are prepared to be baptized in the first weeks of July. We are thinking we like doing divisions Tuesday and Thursday with our Zone. Mainly we need to do divisions with the District Leaders.

When you say splits, do you mean with the other missionaries or with members? If it is with members, we have been having a little bit harder of a time being able to do lots of splits with members. The pilas Ricky who always left with us already went on the mission ha ha to Mexico. And we have another future missionary named Julio who always helps us.

Well, Saturday we had a lesson with a new family. They are awesome and super chosen. I think I might have commented once to you guys when we first contacted them sitting on their porch and he told us about how he was talking to his pastor and his pastor told him that all scripture stopped with the Bible. He didn’t like that and told us he thought it would be nice if God kept reveling to us today too.

Well, we followed that prompting of the spirit and shared with him a Book of Mormon. But that was a week or two ago. Saturday we had a great lesson with them, he expressed to us that he really felt good about what we have been talking about and had a desire to learn more and that he felt like he wanted to get baptized when he was ready (before we even asked him).

The problem is that he has worked every Sunday for like a year in his current job. And he already tried to convince his boss to let him off Sundays. But after the lesson Saturday and  after reading 1 Nefi 3:7 he said, "I’m going to Church next week, I don’t know how but I’m going" It was really nice to see someone with that kind of faith.

Well, it sounds like you guys are all doing good. Except for Mom´s ankle. But when you have the Harmon´s electric shopping cart chairs who needs ankles? Ha ha

I love you,

Elder Hardy

ps. I love you

And yes, Hannah, I still have the green silly band, that still appears to form the shape of a Seal I think.