Week 8!

Hey friends and family!!

Wow, time is really flying by now! I'm almost through my first whole transfer out in the field, only about a week left! It's super crazy, I feel like I just showed up in North Dakota last week! I'm still doing super well, but it's getting kinda tough to distinguish this week from last week so I'm gonna do my best haha!

We've got some super awesome investigators that I'm probably not gonna have too much time to talk about, but I want to tell all of you about two in particular. The first one is named Talon. He's a Native who's been through some pretty tough stuff in his life, but he turned his whole life around a few weeks before Elder Johnson and Elder McDougal met him for the first time, so he was super ready to learn from the get-go! He's a super awesome guy and we were able to put him on date for baptism on May 5 this last week! He's still got a long way to go, but we're super excited for him. The second one is named Tristan SharpFish. You can probably tell from the last name that he's also Native haha. He's a 10-year old who was recently adopted by his uncle after his mom died. His uncle is a fairly recent convert but super strong in the church, and he knew that Tristan's mom wanted him to be baptized. So Tristan has been taking the missionary lessons as well and we're hoping to put him on date for May 5 as well and be able to have a double baptism that day! So that would be awesome, they're both great people.

I'm not really sure what else to talk about haha. Our area is super huge, like I've already talked about, so we're driving everywhere all the time, which is kinda fun haha. We mapped out a monthly schedule of where we're gonna be on each day of the month this last week, so that's been helping a lot with daily planning.

It's warming up here, which is great! I don't have to break out the hat and gloves almost ever anymore, pretty soon it's full-on gonna be spring and I'll even be able to lose the jacket! We're all super excited for that, winter in the Dakotas is the worst!!

Haha that's about it for this week! Love you all, thanks for all the thoughts and prayers!

Elder Hart

Weeks 6/7

Hey friends and family!!!

Wow, so it's been a while since I've had the chance to write one of these. Last week was a pretty crazy time the whole way through and me and my companions only had a little bit of time to email on Friday, so I figured it wouldn't be worth it to write two group emails in like three days. So now I've got two weeks to cover and less than fifteen minutes to do it, so I'll try to touch on as much stuff as I can!

So we had zone conference last Monday, which was kinda fun. It was up in Rapid City, South Dakota, which is about four hours away from Valentine, so we drove up Sunday night for interviews and then stayed with some other elders in the mission. One of the guys we stayed with was John Thompson, who went to Herriman High, so I got to talk with him for a while about high school and all the people that we knew, so that was pretty good. Zone conference was just like I remember it from Brazil... a really long class about how to be a missionary with a lunch break in the middle. But it was good haha, pretty much all of it was just one huge training for how to use smartphones because we're getting them pretty soon. We also got the chance to go over to Mt. Rushmore for a little while, which was a pretty cool thing to see.

After zone conference we headed up to Mynot, North Dakota, which is about eight hours from Rapid City, because one of my companions has go to some medical center up there every couple months to get an infusion for a stomach issue that he has. So that took two days and we ended up getting home pretty late Wednesday night after we stopped in Mission, South Dakota to visit some people.

On Saturday night we went up to Rosebud to participate in a little Saint Patrick's Day dinner that the district president and his wife throw for the scouts every year, so that was kinda fun. They were watching Coco, which definitely isn't an approved movie for us to watch haha, so we kinda just tried to ignore the fact that it was on while we were over there, and then we left to go teach a few lessons.

Other than that it's been a pretty normal couple weeks, which means really busy!! Our area is so huge haha, it's hard to make time for everything with all the traveling we have to do. But we're making it work and I'm still having an awesome time out here!

Love you all, have a great week!

Elder Hart 

This is me under some massive cow statue in North Dakota on the road trip we took, I think it's the biggest one in the world.  ha ha!

Week 5

Hey friends and family!

Wow, there's so much to talk about again and so little time! I'm so excited for when my mission gets smartphones so I'm not under so much pressure to finish emailing so quick. I'll do my best to get through everything though.

Our area is absolutely massive, it's by far the biggest one in the mission! The reason it's so big is because an older couple, the Bartholomews, had an emergency (he had a heart attack) a few months ago and had to go home really abruptly so that he could have surgery, and they emergency transferred my companions to their area at that point to cover for them. So that's where they've been for the past three-ish months, but now that the B's are back, they sent us down to Valentine, except they still want us to cover that same area plus this new one. So there's a little bit less pressure up in South Dakota where the B's are because they're able to take some of the work, but we still have to balance a ton of stuff and it's pretty nuts! But I also feel really well prepared considering the experiences I've had in the last couple years, and I think I'm doing my part to help my companions with everything.

As far as my companions go, me and Elder Johnson have become pretty good friends over the past couple weeks. We're pretty similar and I could see us being friends back home if we went to the same school. Elder McDougal is... he's really different. Elder Johnson has a lot of frustrations with him that I can tell he has a hard time keeping in, and sometimes he vents to me about him a little bit... they've been together for a long time and he's starting to have a really hard time with him. But Elder Johnson is a good missionary and he can deal with it, even though it's kinda tough sometimes.

We work mostly with less actives down here in Valentine. Most of our investigators are outside this city, mostly in South Dakota, so most of our time here is spent trying to reactivate recent converts who've kind of fallen away from the church. The tough part is, most of them don't realize they're inactive haha. When we come they just want to visit with us and tell us about their day and everything, which is great, but we have a hard time getting to the point where we're able to talk to them about the gospel, because as far as they know, they're just as active in the church as they need to be! But we have some awesome investigators. This one guy named Talon, who lives up in Mission, South Dakota, is a really solid investigator who already has a pretty strong testimony of the Book of Mormon. We're hoping to get him committed to a baptismal date tomorrow. It's harder for me to teach Natives than white people for sure, just because our cultures are so different, but most of them are really humble people, so it's not too hard to start to form a relationship with them.

I'm still learning a ton about the gospel and the Savior! It's an ongoing process for sure. There have definitely been a few hard times during this week, but I'm getting through them all. Two phrases keep echoing in my mind whenever things become really hard. The first is from the hymn 'We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet', when it says "We doubt not the Lord nor His goodness, we've proved Him in days that are past!" I've definitely felt the truth of that phrase in my own life. I've proved the Lord in days that are past. I know that I can get through whatever he asks me to do. The second phrase is the last part of 2 Nephi 4:19: "Nevertheless, I know in whom I have trusted." This mission is tough for sure. Even when it's good, it's not easy, but I know in whom I have trusted. I know that as long as I keep relying on God, everything will work out just fine.

Love you all, have a great week!

Elder Hart