Parker thought it would be funny to duplicate a picture Ethan took with one of his companions! Love both boys sense of humor! Small in stature, big in spirit!
Here's an excerpt of each of their letters this week!
Another day another dollar!
"It is never to late to strengthen the foundation of faith. There is always time. With faith in the savior, you can repent and plead for forgiveness. There is someone you can forgive. There is someone you can thank. There is someone you can serve and lift. You can do it where ever you are and however alone and deserted you may feel" Henry B Erying
Monday: Was another normal P-day! Went re-stocked on supplies. They reimbursed me with the 50 dollars from my luggage fee. They put it on to my card. So I still have like 60 bucks for this month and it ends this week. I figure it will come in handy when I am running low in the future months! Then after that we played ping pong at the church and then headed back to the apartment. We talked with our neighbor who is a super cool guy. We talked to him about his motorcycles and laughed with him. He keeps on inviting us over to watch movies and stuff like which is funny, because i don't think he fully gets the missionary concept haha. He isn't much older than Ethan. Then after that we went back to proselyting! We visited a part member family who has a little ginger headed boy who is like 10. He is so adorable and is always asking us to come over and say hi. We also helped fix his toy helicopter that stopped flying haha. After a few less actives weren't home it was nine so we had to head in.
Tuesday: We had greenie meeting before district meeting. It is just for new missionaries and there are two of us in the Zone. So the Zone Leaders just talk to us for an hour. They give good adivse and teaching lessons. We then had district meeting. Elder Goff is such a stud. He gives the best lessons and taught about finding new investigators. He absolutely hates the numbers part of missionary work. I think that is why he has not been a zone leader because he doesn't want to be. After district meeting we had training and comp study. We ate dinner with the nelsons. They are leaving on their mission in like a week. Sister Nelson practically emptied their cabinets and brought over there food for us that night too. They are a really really nice house. Brother Nelson was my one shot to go golfing because he absolutely loves to golf ahah.
Wednesday: Wednesdays we have the least amount of things going on with regards to meetings and things like that. So since I am new still we have an extra hour of training so really we spend three hours of the day just studying and training. We focused on the plan of salvation. Everyone including Elder Goff say that I know and act like I have been out for like 9 months already so I guess that is a complement! Then we missed a ride from the Zone leaders and had to walk from our house to the church which is way far. Oh an we had to walk at like 2 in the afternoon in like 116 degree heat. It was so hot we were just like zombies walking. I barely remember the walk getting to the church I just remember leaving and then laying on the floor at the church covered in sweat. I got the white shirts that mom sent me. With how much missionaries sweat here, white shirts aren't white for long. We then went over and taught a lesson with Jared. He is such a stud, and his baptism is this up coming Saturday, so yay my first baptism! We taught him about the commandments and had some of the young men come and help teach. It was probably one of the best lessons I have taught so far.
Thursday: We had Zone Interviews/training, so president toone was with us that day! He stood up and said he would be brief with some announcements and stuff and he ended up taking like an hour and half haha. It was about how now we are supposed to teach all 5 lessons before baptism instead of the first 4 and then laws and ordinances after. We are also supposed to stay in contact with recent converts more to help retention and help them not go inactive quickly. Then I met with President Toone. He has such an awesome heart. A big heart for a big man! We talked about adjusting to missionary life and he gave some advice and things like that!. After that Elder Goff told me that in his interview President said he only sends Elder Goff the best, so I guess that was an awesome complement! That took most of the day. We went taught a lesson with the Taledos. I took charge of the lesson completely and lead the lesson. The toughest part is transitioning from topics and Inspired questions.
Friday: We had weekly planning and other meetings. Weekly planning we plan for investigators, lessons, baptisms, less actives and stuff like that. I then went on exchanges with Elder Williams he has been out for like 9 months he is from Florida and is a convert. His companion is also Elder Williams haha. He works hard and is a great missionary. Kindof quiet though. We had lunch and then hit the bikes. His area is a lot sketchier than ours and so it got freaky with some people yelling at us. Got a few doors slammed on us as well haha. We then taught a lesson with one of their investigators, taught about the restoration. Then after dinner we were biking and got caught in a dust storm. So we had to bike through that until we found refuge at a members home! If you suck to much of the dust in you can get a thing called Valley Fever. Apparently it is pretty bad and can be bad enough that it stays with you for the rest of your life. Yikes!
Saturday: we met up with Elder Goff and re-exchanged. Then Elder Goff and I went to got help some people move. It was us two a member and two other missionaries and then those missionaries called their entire district. When that district showed up they just stood and watched while we moved a person's house into a U-haul in like 115 degree heat. Elder Goff was furious that there whole district was there. went visited some more members. The Awutukee zone is one of the hardest places to find teaching opportunities and so we do a lot of working with less actives. The Elders quorum gave us a list of like 50 people so we try to visit them. Then at night we stopped by the Elders quorum swim party. I kindof wanted to be "pushed into the pool" becasue it was so hot haha. They had a hairy chest contest and the winner got shaved and won a prize. Looked like a lot of fun. President hartmen is one of my favorite members here so far. He is jsut so down to earth and works hard, and isn't afraid to share the hard times he and his wife had when they were inactive. Oh and yes he won the hariy chest contest haha
Love
Elder Hemsley #2
Hey Mum!
So for the last couple weeks I've been in search of the IT factor. The thing (or things) that really make missionaries effective, as opposed to the average. I see a few people who seem to have it figured out, but I get the sense that a lot of my District is kinda in the same place.
Anyways, this week was good, but compared to what it was going to be, it was a tad frustrating. The pinnacle of the week came with the Luau that happened
on Saturday. A lot of good things came with that, and a lot of stressers came with that as well :P I'll tell you more about it when I get to
Saturday in my rundown.
Okay so as for my week......
Monday was transfer day, so its always a little crazy. I drove Elder Lee down to the church building on the intersection of Yale and Monaco, and we waited there for a bit until Elder Boerstra came. Lots of cool people from past areas to talk to. It actually didn't take near as long as I thought it would to get everything squared away. So we were able to shop and email that day instead of having to push it off to
Tuesday. That whole day my stomach had been killing me. Made it kinda difficult to get stuff done.
Hung out at the church for a bit and then me and Elder Boerstra ate dinner at the Koger family's place. They're a semi active older couple who lived in one of the trailer parks that our area covers. They bought us Popeye's chicken haha. Fine by me. The majority of the dinner was spent talking with them about their kids. They expressed a lot of sorrow that they had no interest in God or the church. It tough to see stuff like that, but I think that we gave them some pretty good advice/spiritual nourishment. Nice family.
Then we visited the Pico family that evening. Pretty typical active family haha. Young kids running around screaming the whole time. There really does seem to be a bit of a disconnect between the member church and the missionary church. Sometimes its a tad difficult to overcome that boundary and actually get a lot of these members involved in the work. But they were a great family.
Went home early cause I didn't feel good still.
Tuesday we did some service in the morning at the crisis center, and then after lunch we had a lesson with Jeff Green. I went into that lesson with the mentality of dropping him, but there was a spirit about the lesson that prompted me not to. He just seemed to get it that time. Definitely a good lesson. The problem that I think he is having right now is that he is taking a ton of summer classes that take up all his time. But those will end eventually.
Then we visited Darwin and Carmen and taught them the first half of the commandments lesson. I get worried that the whole "investigator-missionary" relationship is just morphing into a friend-friend one. Not that thats bad, but its really easy just to chill with them haha. They're doing great though. They want to get baptized in this ward and now they're looking for a place to move into in the boundaries.
Ate dinner with the Richardson family, and then we tried a few people with no luck before correlation meeting.
Wednesday was kinda weird. We had our District meeting time switched to 1 so we tried to get stuff done in the morning, but not a ton of luck. I gave the training and I thought it went okay. The Zone Leaders really seemed to like the role play activity that I planned, which is good I guess haha. Then we had a lunch appointment with Brother Bright. He a really nice older dude that is returning to activity, and he loves to take the missionaries out to eat. . He's older, unmarried, probably pretty lonely. And his life seems pretty uneventful. He watches the news, checks the weather, goes out to eat, and talks to family. But he's super nice.
After some unsuccessful referral contacting, we went to dinner with the Leis family. To tell the truth I want super hungry since we had had such a late lunch, but I managed to get a few pieces of pizza down haha.
That evening we were able to contact a referral named David and give him and his family a copy of the Book of Mormon and the Bible. He accepted the invite to learn more so we're gonna go back over this week. Had an appointment with the Castillo family but they bailed again :P
Thursday morning we did a lot of contacting around the Montbello area (we call it Mont-ghetto haha), then we had lunch and DLC meeting afterwards. Went okay I guess. Meetings are starting to run together if you ask me. Then we went over to the Mata'ele's to practice the short little presentation that we were going to give at the Luau. It was weird but apparently I am the most comfortable with speaking in front of people out of all four of us. We had an appointment afterwards, but the guy had to go on an unexpected trip to utah. Afterwards we saw Darwin and Carmen again with Brother Hess. Taught them about the Law of Chastity, which is pretty big for them since they need to get married before they can get baptized. But they were super cool with it. They agreed to get married!! That was a big deal. They are probably going to use the Church to do it to! It'll be sweet.
Ate dinner with the Luna family, and then we went with Brother harrison to go visit some formers that we had set an appointment with, who bailed. So instead we visited a Ghanian family in the ward named the Appiahs. They have a lot of money problems so it was mostly Brother Harrison doing the talking. Then we went to our appointment with the Salazar's but they bailed too! Lots of cancellations this week. So we visited Joe Chavez. Rough guy, rough background. He has build up this impenetrable opinion of who he is and how he can't change, so its hard to invite him to come to church, so we invited him to let us come over and work in the yard with him. He liked that one.
Friday was pretty difficult. We had set up an appointment with the ZL's to go through our weekly planning with us and see if there isn't anything more that we can be doing, but at the end of the day, we still ended up doing the same things to plan, even with them around helping us. So it didn't produce that much of a difference if you ask me, but we got some good info from the sisters while we were there, so thats a plus. ZL's took us to dinner that night. We got sushi haha. Then we visited the Quintana family and answered some of their random deep doctrinal questions haha. I never thought that knowing why Noah cursed Canaan in Genesis chapter 9 would come in handy hahaha.
Satuday was taken up by the a huge leadership training meeting, and then by the Luau. The meeting was interesting. Not super informative. President Mendenhal is still getting the hang of things I think haha. The one thing that I did take away from it was that we were going to have to get express permission to attend baptisms that we might have in other wards. Apparently there have been some problems with missionaries just going to any baptism just to hang out.
Then the Luau was a phenomenon, thats for sure. We had to have it in the Church since it was raining, and over 500 people showed up. It was packed and kinda hectic at some points. The food line was ridiculous. We heard a few storeis of some people not having a very good experience, but the majority really enjoyed it. Lots of less actives and investigators were there. If you ask me it was too many people. But the show was great, and according to the Polynesians who saw, our Haka was the best one that they had ever seen a couple of Palayngi's (white boys) put on. I've got pics and a video that I'll send you when I find my connector cable for my camera. In the end it was a neat experience, even if it didn't exactly go off without a hitch.
Sunday was a pretty typical
Sunday until after church. We got a call during church that the Mortensen's kids needed another blessing of comfort. They were the ones who were in the fire about a month ago. So after dinner with the Alansos, and a quick stop-by lesson with the Lakes, we went back over to the hospital with a representative from the Peoria ward, Brother Anderson. We took him because the hospital was technically in another ward, and we though it might be good to involve them since they're closer and can help more. The kids were semi conscious, and they looked SOO much better. The skin grafts looked amazing. So we gave them a blessing. The main reason they needed it was cause their dad was out of town, and they were coming off of some pretty heavy painkillers, and that was causing them to go through withdrawal and have hallucinations. But I think it helped. They were appreciative.
Well that was my week. Lots of cancellations, but still a lot of good stuff.
Glad to hear from your letter that everything is going well at home and with real estate. It made me really reflect on how blessed we were :)
Love you guys
Elder Efan
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