Elder Hayden: Week 16

First week down as a trainer and he seems to love it!  They are just working up a storm and the Lord is blessing their area.  He told me in my personal email that he was looking at his pictures from the MTC and after about 15 minutes, he just missed his hair.  That made me smile.  I asked him if he found anyone to cut his hair and he said “No one cuts my hair like Julie (Spahr).  We love him, miss him but are oh, so proud of him. 

Elder May: Chapter 16

1) Although we were lost, through faith (and a GPS) God led us back home. 

2) I got lost driving home from Tampa.

As you all know, I have been assigned to be a trainer. Elder Gardner was assigned to be a zone leader in Tampa and he ditched me to do so. Not really though. Something that the twelve week (missionary training program) booklet tells us to do is to "train a missionary so that he would be able to train at the end of these twelve weeks." Elder Gardner did that. I am ready. 

My new trainee is Elder Sites. He is straight out of Woodstock, Illinois which is two hours away from Chicago in the northwest part, close to Wyoming. He is a fantastic missionary with a desire to serve and loving spirit. I made him promise me that no matter what happened, he wouldn't go home. 

I picked him up and we were taught by the Assistants to the President until around 2:30 and our area is probably an hour from Tampa. We got back in our area at nearly 4:30. That is my bad. I turned the wrong way down a road and thought it was correct so I just drove, thirty minutes, the wrong way. So another hour and a half later, (SO MANY MILES WASTED), we were back in the area and off to the work. 

That next hour we saw a miracle. His name is Frank. Our appointment fell through so we drove down the street to see where we could make a U-Turn, because missionaries don't do three point turns, and Frank was walking around out front of his house. We taught him about the restoration and set up to come by the next day. He told us right then he had already been baptized. We went by the next day and answered any questions he had which went from priesthood, to kingdoms of glory, to Joseph Smith, to the moon and back. But we got them all answered and he said he would be baptized. 

Elder Sites first investigator of his own is now a progressing investigator with a baptismal date. 

We have some amazing investigators right now and they are all excited to be baptized and we are super excited to help them to do so. Speaking of them,

We were blessed enough to finally have the standard of excellence for church attendance. Which means that we had six investigators of ours that are all progressing date sets coming to church. Eddie, Jada, Lori, Alecia, Mally Rose and Leaper. All six of them have dates set for these next three upcoming weeks and I am really excited for it. 

Under A Hornet's Nest

The first picture is the largest hornets nest we have found so far. I checked probably three times to make sure there was nothing in it before I stood underneath it. 

Elder Sites and Elder May

Second is a picture of Elder Sites and I that I took 11 seconds ago because I realized I didn't have one yet. He didn't know I was taking it. 

Sonic Squirrel

Third is a squirrel I fed at sonic. He was pretty cool. 

I love you all!

Love,

Elder Hayden