Elder Hayden May: Elder May

Many missionary moms and dads have a love/hate relationship with Mondays. We love Mondays because we hear from our missionaries, but we hate Mondays because after connecting, we lose the connection. Being able to connect and stay connected with Elder May is my work in progress but I was very grateful for this email and all the pictures (see below). He is getting better about taking pictures so that helps me stay connected. We are so excited to talk to him in 5 days. 5 hours and 35 minutes. We love him and miss him but oh, so proud of him! Enjoy!!

Chapter 54:

1) "Can you guys come back tomorrow evening too?"

2) “I drive a really nice car"

3) "I'm a missionary but I'm not here to do that right now."

4) Me and Elder Swapp decided to take pictures of all the wildlife here in Florida.

5) That moment when a lesson gets really heavy REALLY quickly.

6) Ochan's lesson.

We met with the Bayless Family on Monday and Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning we got a call from them saying that they don't want to meet until Jeremy has a lesson in which we have a member that has learned Hebrew or studied something that relates with what his hold ups are. Luckily, there is a member in the ward that studied the classical languages and read the Old Testament in Hebrew for his personal study. He also was a professor at BYU for many years. We had a long lesson with Jeremy and Brother Sherwood and hopefully it helped but I don't know yet.

Second is that we asked a sister to meet us at a lesson so that she can fellowship Kim. We get a call when we 2 minutes away from her where she says she wants to know exactly where to go because she doesn't want to be away from her car. I wouldn't want to either if I drove a 2017 Alfa Romeo. It's a nice car. Pretty funny though.

Third is when we got to go get some packages that were sent to a wrong address by mistake. We knocked on the door and it was really weird to not try and teach him. He had all the stuff that had been sent right by the door. It was an interesting situation but I'm glad it all got worked out. He had my year mark Box, laundry soap, pop tarts and because of that my mom was kind enough to send another box with those last two things. See picture.

Like the fourth quote says we started taking pictures. We so far have an ibis which is basically an ugly seagull, squirrel, a grasshopper, a crow and a cat.

Fifth is more of a shout out to missionaries in which they are teaching and out of nowhere the person you are teaching starts crying. With because they share something personal, feel the Spirit or any other reason. When it happens you basically don't know what to do, especially with the personal stuff because you can't counsel at all so you just sit there. It is intense but I just wanted to share that.

Lastly is a lesson we had with Ochan. We read more in the Book of Mormon. I love teaching him because he doesn't really understand English great so he doesn't know what I mean when I say "Elder Swapp can read a couple verses now" and he will just keep on reading. He read probably 35 of the 43 verses in Alma 32. Then we asked if he believed Joseph Smith restored the church and he said yes very quickly and then he felt the Spirit so strong because he knew he was telling the truth and it was true so he got a huge smile on his face. I love it so much!

I love you all so much! Thank you for your support and prayers

Love – Elder May