Week 44

Wow, holiday weekends on a mission are super weird! I was pretty sure they'd just be normal since missionaries aren't super-allowed to celebrate holidays and our families are like, super far away, but it turns out they're actually way different! We weren't really allowed to go out and do missionary-type stuff on Thanksgiving except for hang out at members' houses, which seems totally weird but that's what President Howell said to do. So we went and played in the little Turkey Bowl the ward did Thursday morning, which was pretty fun. I've never been the biggest football fan of all time but I've always liked it, so it was fun to play for a couple hours.

We went to the Andelins' for Thanksgiving dinner, and man do those people go all out! The food was just pretty standard Thanksgiving-type stuff, but the apple pie Sister Andelin made was literally the best thing I've ever eaten in my entire life! After that Brother Andelin showed us all the sculptures he's made over the years, and that man is so amazing at what he does. He's super humble about it, but his wife and a couple other people told us later that he has sculptures in museums all around the world and he's earned the nickname 'modern-day Michelangelo'. I took a couple pictures of a few of the sculptures he showed us. He also gave us a copy of the book he wrote refuting the entire theory of evolution and took about an hour explaining how it was completely false, so that was fun 😂 He's super, super smart.

NJ and his dad finally came to church last Sunday! We were honestly pretty 50-50 on if they'd show up or not, so it was a big relief when they walked in the doors. So as of now, NJ's still on date for December 8th!

Oh and last thing, we popped a tire the day before Thanksgiving rolling into a parking lot, so now I'm sitting in a tire shop waiting for it to get replaced... which is definitely the best possible way a missionary could think of spending a P day 😊👍🏻

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!!

Elder Hart

1. Super awkward selfie angle and you can't really see the tree but I think my mom will get mad if I don't send any pictures with me actually on them 😉

2. Our cute little Christmas tree that Mom sent 😊

3. Joseph Smith's death mask that Brother Andelin recreated

4. George Washington mask

      

Week 43

Hey everyone!

Man, it's been a real long week! That's what happens when the work is moving slow I guess. It wasn't actually super slow this week but nobody showed up to church even though like ten people committed to coming, which just made everything kinda seem pointless. We know it wasn't, but it's hard sometimes when you don't see the fruits of your labors!

On the bright side, the Spooners are progressing really well (outside of the fact that they didn't show up to church this week 😊). NJ is on date for December 8th and he's almost definitely gonna meet it. His dad is working on becoming worthy to baptize him and his mom volunteered to say the closing prayer. She was tearing up at the end, it's been so amazing to see a family come back to the gospel and see the Spirit touching their lives again!

Jonathan kinda mais ou menos right now (that means so-so in Chinese). He wants to learn but he's having a hard time developing faith and acting on our invitations. If he doesn't start reading the Book of Mormon soon we may have to stop teaching him 😐

We also had zone conference this week, which was awesome! President always gives awesome trainings, I just love hearing from him. I still kinda feel like the ones from all the other missionaries are kinda unnecessary, but that's probably just my own attitude problem that I have to fix. We also had interviews. I love getting to talk to President one-on-one, I just really feel a connection with him that I was never quite able to feel with President Hess.

It has recently come to my attention that I've gained a ton of weight so far on my mission (and by recently I mean like three months ago). Like I've literally gained twenty pounds during the last year... which is definitely not good. So that's gonna have to be something that changes super soon.

Anyway, it's been an all-around great week!

Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!

Elder Hart

1. I still love dogs in case anyone forgot.

2. We helped Brother McMillan build this homemade hot tub a few weeks back (please don't even ask me to explain how) so this is the finished product
3. Hey look, it's Herbie!
4. GIFT Meals

Week 42

Hey everyone!

It's been a pretty good week! I can't decide if things are picking up or slowing down, but it seems like we're pretty busy so that's definitely a plus 😂 

The biggest news is that we finally got another person on date this week! The Spooners are a less active family that want to come back to church, and they have an unbaptized son named NJ. He really wants to get baptized and they think he's ready, so we had the first lesson yesterday and set his baptismal date for December 1st. His family also wants to get sealed in the temple so we're gonna try to get the ward involved and hopefully they'll start going to the temple prep class.

Other than that, we just knocked on a bunch of doors and tried to find new people to teach this week. We also did some more service at the Methodist church, I'll attach some pictures.

Wow, I just love the last words of prophets in the scriptures!! 2 Nephi 33 and Moroni 10, 2 Timothy 4, Revelations 22... when servants of the Lord know it's about time for them to depart from this world, they really start to focus down on what's important! There are so many incredibly powerful words in those chapters, I'd encourage everybody to search them and ponder the truths you find, knowing that those were the last words a prophet of God chose to say to you. I know that if we follow the teachings of the prophets we will be able to find greater happiness and fulfillment in our lives.

Have a great week everyone!

Elder Hart

p.s. It's getting super crazy cold up here!!

Week 41

Hey everyone!!

It's been an awesome week here in Williston! Me and Elder Schellenberg are training Elder Buhr, and it's been a blast so far! It's always good to have a little change to shake up the work a little bit. It's kind of weird to be in a trio again, it takes me back to the beginning of my mission a little bit, but this time I'm in the complete opposite position from last time. I'm the oldest missionary in the companionship instead of the youngest one, which is just really weird. I still feel pretty darn new, I can't really believe it's already been over 9 months!

I still can't believe how much the members care about missionaries here, we can't go a couple hours without someone trying to give us food or money or something like that 😂 the Lord blesses His missionaries for sure.

We've started meeting with a less active family in the ward this past week who have an unbaptized son. They think he's ready to start taking the lessons and they're also really wanting to come back to church, so we're super excited to help them! We're also teaching a guy named Jonathan who recently started dating a girl in our ward. He's really sincere about his desire to find the truth and he listens really intently to the message we have to share. He needs the gospel explained very simply, but he's definitely a soul who's been prepared to receive it. Things are definitely picking up, hopefully we'll have a couple more baptisms coming up soon!

I'd encourage everybody to read 2 Nephi 28 this week sometime for daily scripture study. It struck me pretty hard as I read its verses. It prophesies of the wickedness and false doctrines that will be preached in the last days, and I realized that I've heard almost every single one of the things Nephi warns us about preached to me by somebody on my mission. We need to be very careful and firm in our beliefs in these last days, for there are many who would seek to draw us away from them!

Have a great week everybody!

Elder Hart

1. Some little string cheese ghost things we helped the old folks' home decorate for Halloween

2. The Halloween dinner we are with the Rhineharts, they went pretty all-out!

3. The new companionship

4. An old car this dude was bragging to us about so we took pictures by it to make him feel good haha