I have waited a whole
year for this letter… Elder Hayden is heading onto the down hill slop. One Mother’s Day call complete and one Christmas
call complete. We are almost over the
hump. I get asked a lot “Does it feel
fast to you?” The answer I give is always
no! J But the reality is that the days go slow but
the weeks really go by quickly. And
remembering back to Hunter’s mission, this part goes even faster. Love him, miss him but oh, so proud of him! Enjoy!!
Week 52:
1. OH
I LOVE THIS BOOK!
2. Thanks
Elders...My family has been pretty anti for most of their life.
3. Yeah
I've read to Alma 40 or so when I was reading it before.
4. Exchanges!!!
5. I found a baby blue jay!!
Happy year mark to me! This Thursday is my year mark and
that is super exciting! Even more importantly, it's my parent’s anniversary
today. Thirdly important is that it is the anniversary of when I gave my
farewell talk. This is a big week for all of us.
The first quote comes from a fantastic lady we are teaching,
Sylvia who is an awesome 49 year old woman with 32 grandchildren, who after
some patience and trial and error for finding out when she is home, we finally
have had a couple of appointments and she is reading the Book of Mormon now.
She read 1st Nephi 1-3 the first time we came by and we called her on Saturday
and she has it on her phone now and she is at chapter 9. She exclaimed to us
that she absolutely loves it. In her own words she said, "Oh I love this
book! It's beautiful! He had to chop his head off! How beautiful!" As a
piece of advice for anyone giving someone a book of Mormon have them download
it on their phones. We've been doing that recently and people are much more
open to that then a Book because they can carry it anywhere and adjust the font
size and stuff. Lastly for this quote, she pronounces Laman as
"Let-a-man." Every time. It's fantastic.
Next was a really cool, but interesting experience for Elder
Swapp and I. We were asked to give a blessing after zone conference this
Wednesday up north of our area. We waited for a bit but the lady, I'll call her
Nancy, eventually got to the assisted living facility and walked us to the
room. We were asked to give a blessing to a frail older woman who was about to
pass away. Before we started, Nancy said "don't use oil, just a blessing
and my uncle will stop you if you say anything he doesn't agree with." We
give the blessing and he doesn't stop us at all but afterwards Nancy tells us
that her whole family in that room was against the church and she had explained
to them we can give a blessing and after a little reluctance they agreed. It
was a good experience though.
Third is when we went to a new investigator family that we
moved in on my birthday. We talked with them for a good while to find out some
concerns and other things and he told us that he was just about to be baptized
and then a couple of things came up and he decided against it but he had read
more than half the Book of Mormon so we gave him and his wife another one, and
he also asked for all the pamphlets again so he could do some reading of those
so he can refresh his memory. They are making us dinner tonight.
Fourth, I got to go on exchange here in Clearwater with one
of my zone leaders Elder Stout who is a fantastic missionary. In the zone
picture I sent he is the one in the very top left. We went finding like crazy,
were setting appointments with former and just overall seeing absolute
miracles. One that we saw is that we went to subway to grab dinner and before
we left the car he grabbed two restoration pamphlets and we walked up to the
door and talked to a group of five guys just standing there and while he was
talking another group of four people walked up and said "Hi Sir." To
me and I asked if he knew who we were. He said "the Mormons right? I had
missionaries coming over. I love the Book of Mormon. I have had so many
blessing come since I started reading it but I left my old one in my dad's
house when I moved." So I got him a new one and his face when he saw it
was complete awe that he finally had a new Book of Mormon again. He was so
grateful and we got his address to the missionaries in his area. Such a
blessing. After subway, Elder Stout invited the people making the food to
church and gave one of them a pamphlet with the church address on it.
Lastly is a cool thing that I saw today and it is a blue
jay. I'll start taking pictures of all the birds Florida has. They are weird
but blue Jays look awesome.
Anyway that was a brief rundown of my week. I love you all
and appreciate the prayers. I definitely need them, as we all do.
I love you all! Take
care!
Love Elder May
