It has been a great birthday today! Elder Tetedoux bought me a delicious cake! Also, Presidente LaPierre called me and sang happy birthday over the phone. He is awesome. For the first time in my life I feel older than I actually am haha I am so glad that the age for missionary service changed. I know that this is where I need to be and I have already learned and grown so mucha and I am so grateful for that! I am grateful that we have a prophet who can receive revelation to guide the church. We are very blessed.
Well, the language is improving at an accelerating rate. Especially, since we started to do language study with the other two elders who are in our house. Elder Tetedoux took like two years of college before the mission and so knows a lot about grammar and also learned some English at the university so he is a huge help. He is helping me to not sound like gringo haha. I hope that when I get back that I will have a Latino accent! We are also starting to teach them more English and they are way excited and motivated to learn. Today I asked them why they wanted to learn and they said that it was because they can use it when they go back home to help continue edifying the church when they get back. I thought that was way awesome that they had that vision because I hadn´t even thought about using my Spanish for church service when I get home but that would be so awesome to be able to do. I want to keep learning even when I get back home!
The other day we met the family Vazquez. The sisters who are in the area next to us found them because they were in our area and didn´t know it haha So we stole them back and they are awesome. They have been through a lot of missionaries and we had our first lesson with them (they have 6 kids so it was a bit wild, but we brought them suckers to get on their good side and also so they would be good) and during the first lesson we asked about their beliefs of the church and everything. Oscar (the dad) said that they believed in basically everything and really loved the church but didn´t feel like they needed to be baptized because they were baptized in a different church already. He was very strong about this. And so we taught about the Restoration of the gospel and I am not sure exactly when it happened, but he was touched by the Spirit and now the family has a baptismal date for the 4th of January! He may have changed his mind when we asked that if he believed it all was true then "wouldn't you want to be a member of Christ´s church". It was pretty awesome! Though the problem is that they aren´t very committed, and so they did not come to church Sunday. But we are going to start working on that to help them out.
Also, we had branch conference and president LaPierre was there and he started his talk by calling all the missionaries up (there are 4 elders and 2 sisters in total) and we sang Silent Night, Holy Night. It was pretty cool. He gave an awesome talk and a really cool training to the leaders. He and Sister LaPierre bore powerful testimonies of Jesus Christ during the first meeting and in the second Pres. LaPierre introduced a challenge that I am giving to you all. In Elder Ballard´s talk in conference he gave the challenge to reach out to one person about the gospel before Christmas. The challenge is to receive 4 "no"s before Christmas. Which means that if you ask four people to somehow act on the gospel (invitation to church, sharing a Book of Mormon, etc) and they all say "no" then you are successful. And if someone says yes then you have to keep asking until 4 people say no. It is kind of changing the measurement of success. So I am giving that challenge to all of you and I would like you to report to me your progress. But what a great present that would be to the Savior before His birthday. I promise that if you really try to do this and pray for opportunities the Lord will help you and he will open your mouth.
Well, I love you all and thank you for your birthday wishes! I am way excited top continue the work here in Oberá and to keep building the church here. I love this work and I am so happy to be a missionary!
"Abrid vuestra boca y será llena" D&C 33:8
Con amor, Elder Hawk
 |
| Happy, Happy Birthday Elder Hawk |
No comments:
Post a Comment