Dear Family,
Alright so this week was Christmas! Sounds super exciting
right? haha. Its pretty weird over here...They celebrate Christmas but not very
much here. Everyone is more into 3 kings day or something like that. That's when
they receive most of their gifts. It was kind of interesting on Christmas, while
they don't really celebrate it like us, they do celebrate. The bad thing is that
everyone is in their houses drinking. Which leads to one of my investigators.....she drank alcohol. SO no we are going to have to wait a
little bit more time for her baptism. She's a really good person, but she's still
human. We are just gonna pick her up and keep going. She knows what's right, but
sometimes its harder to do what's right. She will make it to her baptismal date,
we are just gonna work hard with her.
Then, we had a pretty cool experience the
other day. Yesterday we had 11 investigators in the church. That felt pretty
good! We had never had that happen before. Its mostly from 3 families of 3 but
still that's 11 investigators. One of our investigators, Flor, was having
problems with her health. She couldn't go to the bathroom and was suffering from
whatever the disease was. She asked us if we could give her a blessing(not sure
how she knew we give blessings but she did). So, we talked to her and told her
how a blessing was and that through her faith she would be healed. Then my
companion gave her a blessing. It was awesome and I truly felt the spirit in
this small blessing. But then we finished and i thought nothing about we left
the room and we went to the next class. She kinda disappeared but we didn't
notice until after a while. She then came back and told us that everything was
better and she could use the restroom. It was truly a blessing to see the
priesthood in action. And the best part is that it was for an investigator and
she told us "I know that this church is true and I will do everything I
can to be baptized". It was an amazing thing to hear from the mouth of an
investigator. With that, we also gave a blessing to her daughter Isis who was
having some other problem. Her hands and feet would get super dry and she was
always tired. We gave her the blessing at the end of church. So we haven't been
able to see her yet. But regardless it was awesome to see that with Flor. The
hard part there is with her daughter Jorbelin. She has been doing her prayers
and reading the Book of Mormon, but feels like she hasn't received an answer and wants to
stop. That was tough to hear but we talked with her and shes going to keep
working at it. I shared a scripture in Mosiah 2:15 or something like that right
now I don't remember but its talking about the People of Ammon when they were
captive. That they wanted to be free and were praying to be free. But the Lord
was slow in responding or something like that for their iniquities. I told her
that sometimes the Lord is slow because we aren't doing all of our part and that
rather than just reading and saying a prayers isn't enough. We have to do what the
Lord has commanded to receive an answer. She's gonna keep working at it and she
will receive her answer soon enough.
Sincerely I feel like all of the
investigators we have right now are all very prepared and chosen of God. They
truly have desires to learn and to do what the Lord commands. I truly believe
that all 11 of them will be baptized by the end of this month. This work is
amazing. and there is only one way to do it, the Lord's way. The Lord's way is
with members and missionaries working together. That's what we are trying to do
right now as missionaries. Find ways to include members. The Lord has told
through our beloved prophet, "Now is the time that members and
missionaries are to work together shoulder to shoulder". That's probably not exact, but the Lord has told us that this is the way to work. I ask that as
members of this church we do our tiny part of simply inviting others to come
unto Christ, to repent, to be baptized by someone holding the authority to do
so, receive the gift of the holy ghost, and endure till the end. That is the
life plan for happiness. It's simple, but yet so hard for us to do it. If we can
do the simple thing of invite others then everything else I listed will come to
pass. Search between your friends. Someone is waiting for the gospel. And if
you find no one then invite all inhabitants of the world to come unto Christ (2Nefi 2:8).
Do our part and the Lord will do the rest.
I love you guys
always do whats right.
Love,
Elder Hakes
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