Week 35

Hey everyone!

Wow, this has been an awesome week! Not really as far as doing the work goes; we've barely even been in our area at all because of transfers and mission conferences and all kinds of other crazy stuff, but it's been great!

Most of the first half of last week was spent just getting Elder Garner ready to leave and saying goodbye to everybody and stuff, and then we headed out to Bismarck Thursday morning. The plan was to just stay in Bismarck Thursday night because Gerard Sharpfish and his family were getting sealed Friday night, so me and Elder Schellenberg were planning on going on splits with the zone leaders. But President decided to have us head back to his place and help out with some stuff there and then go to the temple with the missionaries going home... so we definitely weren't complaining, I was super grateful to be able to attend the temple and spend some time with President Howell. And then we found out that Gerard wouldn't be getting endowed until 6 and the sealing wasn't until about 8, so we decided that we should just go to lunch with the Sharpfishes and head back to Williston from there. We let the Howells know and they were like 100% against that and told us that we needed to stay for the sealing. So we just ended up doing some work at the mission office on Friday and we got to go to the temple with them after all! That was seriously the best experience of my mission, I just love all the people down in Rosebud so much and it was awesome to be able to see them all again. Gerard and his family have come so far and it was honestly sort of a surreal thing to see them in the temple all dressed in white and everything. 

It's just been an all-around great week I guess! 

Hope everyone's doing well,

Elder Hart

Week 34

Hey everyone!

Wow sorry, I totally forgot to write a weekly until a couple minutes ago! We just got transfer news a couple days ago, Elder Garner's headed over to Wahpeton and I'm getting Elder Schellenberg, so I'm super excited. He's just coming up from my old area in Valentine, so I'm pumped to hear how everybody is doing down there. I guess they're also making me district leader so we'll see how that goes.

We've just been travelling a lot this week, we had to go to Minot on Saturday and we've had lots of out-of-town dinner appointments. We haven't been able to work with our investigators much which is kinda frustrating but hopefully we'll be able to see at least a couple of them this week. Elder Stacey, the area Seventy, talked to us about member missionary work in Minot, and that was really good.

I've been thinking a lot about my favorite hymn this week, I'll Go Where You Want Me to Go. I was pretty nervous about transfers before we found out what was happening, and I just kept on repeating a line from the third verse to myself: "So trusting my all to Thy tender care, and knowing Thou lovest me, I'll do thy will with a heart sincere, I'll be what You want me to be." That hymn has helped me get through a lot of hard times the past couple years, I think we often underestimate the power that the hymns can have in our lives! They can sometimes give us just the strength we need to get through certain trials.

Hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Hart

Week 33

Hey everyone!

Man, I really don't know what to say in these weekly emails! We're definitely really busy every week but it's just pretty much the same old stuff week after week after week and it wasn't even really that exciting the first time 😂 so if you don't feel like reading them anymore I totally won't even be offended. Plus I'll probably never find out in the first place so...

Anyway, we had zone conference this week, which I always really look forward to. At least some parts of it, I could probably do without a lot of the trainings from other missionaries, but Iove interviews with President Howell and the things that he talks to us about as a zone. He talked about using the Spirit in our finding efforts in deciding what to say and who to talk to. It was awesome, I still have a hard time opening my mouth and talking with everyone. It's probably the hardest part of the work for me but also one of the most important, so I keep trying to improve every day.

Hyrum's still planning on getting baptized this Saturday, so as long as he passes his interview, everything will be good to go!

We got the chance to watch the Face2Face with Elder Cook yesterday. Hopefully the rest of you got to see it to, and if not I'd really encourage you to watch it when you have the time! I love learning more about our Church's history. Even though there are a lot of unanswered questions and things that happened that may seem strange to us today, learning about our past always strengthens my testimony of Joseph Smith as a prophet and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as the only true and living church on the Earth today.

Hope everybody has a great week!

Elder Hart

1. Real oil rigs are way bigger but I'm not allowed to climb up those ones, so this works fine!

2. I just took a picture of this one because I'm concerned about that semi's hauling capacity... all I can do is hope and pray that that truck made it alright, it looked mighty heavy.

3/4. It's a BAT! But at least it came to the right church ;) If it comes back we'll try and see if it's interested.

5/11.  Helping out at GIFT meals

Week... uhm... 32? Yeah, probably 32

Hey everyone!

Sorry I didn't get an email out last week, we ended up being pretty busy and I totally forgot about it until Tuesday. So I don't remember what week it was last week but I'm pretty sure it would've been 31... I don't know, we'll find out after I send this 😊

Lots of service this week!! We finally finished knocking down all of Tim's weeds... pretty sure I talked about that earlier, but if not we were just cutting down weeds for this guy who lives on like 20 acres so that his property could meet city requirements. It took us three days over three weeks, but we got it done! We also went and helped out at a yard sale to raise money for charity on Saturday. That was a good time, they raised like $1500 in four or five hours. And then on Saturday night we went to the Methodist church in town and helped cook a bunch of food. I guess the church gives out free meals and does a little worship service every Saturday night, which is pretty cool. People from a lot of different denominations come and help and we were able to share the gospel with a bunch of volunteers while we were working.

Not much to report as far as the investigators we're working with; everybody's had super busy schedules and we haven't really had any teaching visits all. That's alright though, this next week should be a lot less busy.

I read 2 Nephi 4 this past week... that's probably like the greatest chapter in any book of scripture ever. Like MAN! Nephi had an awesome testimony! All the trials and experiences he went through only served to strengthen his faith in God, and the last ten to fifteen verses of 2 Nephi 4 are one of the best examples of a strong testimony in the scriptures. I'm still not even close to where Nephi was and I don't know if I'll ever get there, but I know that I'm gonna keep trying to be more like him every day. I'd invite everyone to take some time during the next week and read Nephi's testimony of our Heavenly Father, because I know it'll strengthen yours!

Hope everyone has a good week,

Elder Hart