Week 69

Hey guys!

What a crazy week it's been! Transfer calls came this week, and I was so stressed about it all week. There's so much that I want to do in Canyon Lake this transfer and I did NOT feel ready to leave, but I had a really bad feeling that I was going to get transferred. But calls came on Saturday night and it turns out both me and Elder Guzzle are staying here for another transfer! So I'm really relieved about that.

We found a super cool guy this week named Ryan. It was actually a really cool experience that I'll take a second to tell you guys about. I think I've mentioned before that we've been spending a lot of time finding this month without any real success. I've been studying Chapter 9 of Preach My Gospel almost every day for more ideas and praying for more faith in our finding activities, but nothing seemed like it was working. So I was getting pretty frustrated, but we still weren't giving up. Last Tuesday, we had about thirty minutes before a dinner appointment in our same apartment complex, so we didn't have time to go anywhere. We decided that we would use the time to call and text some former investigators in the area book, so we picked about five or six names and started going down the list. None of them answered or responded to our calls/texts except for one guy named Ryan. His drop reason was that he had at some point decided that the Church wasn't true and asked the missionaries to stop coming to his house. To be honest, he was the one I had the least faith in as far as picking him back up, but as soon as we texted him he asked us to give him a call. So we did, and he immediately started talking about how he couldn't believe that we had called him; he said he finally felt ready to start reading the Book of Mormon again, come to church, and get baptized! We met him the next day and read a few chapters in the Book of Mormon with him. He already has a testimony that the Church and Book of Mormon are true, and as soon as he's finished reading the Book of Mormon he wants to get baptized (and he's reading really fast). We have another meeting with him tomorrow, so we'll see how that goes, but I can't believe how strong of an answer God gave us to our prayers and efforts. I had really started to doubt that an answer to our prayers would come, but God never forgets His children and He really taught me that this week.

That's definitely the biggest thing that I have to talk about from this week. Yesterday we had to spend some time at the hospital with Hope and give her a blessing for an anxiety attack that was turning into seizures and stuff... so that was fun I guess. We also helped the youth in our ward out with a big park cleanup they were doing for youth conference. That actually made me miss being in young men's a lot, it was definitely a good time! But I'm sure YSA will be fun too when I get home so I'm not too worried about it haha.

That's about it for this week! Have a good week guys,

Elder Hart

I almost forgot pictures! So enjoy the dinosaur and the graffiti wall I guess 😊 the picture with the Popeye's can is just because it reminded me of when we used to watch that show at Gammy's house and I couldn't believe how gross spinach looked 😂

Week 68

Hey guys!

So I've been looking through my planner for like five minutes now to try to figure out how to start this letter, but nothing crazy has really come to me so I'm just kinda going for it. This has been a pretty hit-or-miss week; one day we'll be running around like crazy with way too much to do and not nearly enough time to do it, and then the next day we'll open up Area Book to start planning and be looking at a completely blank day. That's not necessarily a bad thing, because it leads to more time for finding, but the problem is that nothing has really come from our finding efforts this week! Our teaching pool has really diminished since last transfer and we've yet to really be able to rebuild it.

We did find one new guy to teach this week though. We met this dude named Jason at a mobile food dropoff for Feeding South Dakota last week -- that's this thing where we load up a bunch of food into a trailer at the food bank and then drive out to some location in Rapid City to hand it out. He told us that he'd met with missionaries before and that they used to play basketball with him all the time or something like that, but for some reason they just stopped coming to see him! So we set up a time to meet with him at McDonald's on Friday morning (don't ask me why, he just really wanted to do that for some reason 😂). We ended up talking a lot about the Plan of Salvation and the Book of Mormon, which he was really interested in! We also went and visited him at the sword store where he works at the mall -- and for anybody who doesn't know, I LOVE swords. I don't even know why, but I had a collection of like ten plastic swords for a long time as a little kid and it never really wore off! So it was super cool for me to look around his store and have him tell me about all the random swords in his store and where they came from and how they were made and all that stuff.

Oh also, it was my birthday on Friday!! Man, I can't believe I'm 20 years old! That sounds WAY older than 19 for some reason, and I don't feel that old at all! It was a pretty good day though. We went to McDonald's with Jason in the morning like I already talked about, and then we had another lesson with a guy named Ben right after that. We also went to Chili's for dinner, which is always super good! It was just a bunch of other missionary stuff other than that, but that's all you can expect from a birthday on a mission haha.

Well that's about it for this week! I hope you guys have a great week,

Elder Hart

1/2. Me and Elder Guzzle and the Rapid City elders at dinner on my birthday... our foreheads all look super good ;)

3. I don't know if the white handbook says anything about holding swords but this was super cool 😬😂

Week 67

Hey guys!

This has been another crazy/super boring week at the same time. Proselyting/teaching wise, next to nothing has been going on. We found a new older couple to teach, Lee and Darcy, but they're not super solid and have already rescheduled with us twice, so we'll see how that goes haha. Eddie is actually doing a lot better this week. I don't remember how much I've told you guys about that situation, but we were strongly considering dropping him for a little while because of a bunch of stuff that was going on. But this week, he came to church and told the whole elders quorum how excited he was to get baptized and how he's not going to let any of the hard stuff get in his way. He also serenaded all the women in the ward with Amazing Grace after church, so that was something haha. Hope is still doing really well; we taught her more about temples and family history this week, and she's so excited to start doing the work for her parents so she can do their baptisms when we're able to get her up to Bismarck! So things are going well, but they're just not as busy as they were a few weeks ago.

Non-workwise, (if that's even a word) however, we had a ton of stuff going on this week. President flew down to do interviews, and those are always a big ordeal. He schedules fifteen minutes per missionary, but he always goes way over, so our interviews got pushed back an hour and a half and that threw a big wrench in our plans for the day, but it always ends up working out fine. We also did exchanges with the bus elders. I went with Elder Ripley, which was super fun. He's a real funny kid, so I always like being around him. We've also been doing lots and lots of service, just like always.

Oh also the weather has been CRAZY this week! We've had everything from dumping snow to super thick fog to pouring rain to clear, sunny days. It's been nuts. I wish the weather would just pick what it wants to do, but I'm pretty sure someone up in heaven is just spinning a super big Wheel-of-Fortune-type thing and just throwing down whatever it lands on. But it's fine because it's supposed to be really sunny for the rest of the week, so I'm excited for that.

Have a great week guys!

Elder Hart

Week 66

Hey guys!

This week has been awesome, we've been really busy these past few days and a ton has happened!

So on Friday we had a mission conference with Brent H. Nielson, the executive director of the missionary department, so that was obviously pretty exciting. He taught us a lot about the importance of the Atonement and how we can better teach it simply to others, as well as how to find more people to teach through members and less actives. It was great to see some missionaries that I haven't seen in a long time. Two sets of them stayed with us for a couple days, including Elder Lamb, so that was a blast! It was so great to spend some time with him again, he'd only been gone a week but I already missed him so much!

Hope's baptism was also on Saturday, and wow! That was probably the highlight of my entire mission up to this point. It wasn't easy getting her here, but every step of the way was worth it. The day of her baptism was so stressful, there were so many things to get together and the Mt. Rushmore ward decided last minute to move their pinewood derby to our building and we had to work around that, which was great. There wasn't a jumpsuit big enough to fit her, so we had to call a member last minute to bring her a white blouse. The hot water also decided not to work, which meant that we had to boil a ton of water in the kitchen and dump it into the font to make sure it was warm enough, which was obviously awesome. And even then, the water was barely knee-deep, and Hope is a big lady with knee problems, so that was super stressful. I had to push her waaaay down to make sure she got all the way under, and she kinda slipped on the way up, but wow was it worth it! She came up out of the water crying and was telling everybody that she could hear angels singing! It was such a special experience that I'll treasure forever, and it probably wouldn't have been as special without all the hard things leading up to it.

It was a great week all in all! Talk to you guys next week.

Elder Hart