June 3, 2013 Maren

Hey Family!

I don't really know what to say or talk about in this letter. Its been a crazy and hard week. I don't know if missionaries are supposed to let their family know when they struggle but I don't want to paint a false image of missions for my brothers I just want to be honest. Missions are hard. And they just keep getting harder. 

Some excerpts from my presidents letter:

I have been struggling lately, feeling like everything is so overwhelming. It felts (and still sometimes feels) like every day we are being told to work on this thing, and then focus here, and then there, and then apply this principle better. I love everything that we learn but sometimes it feels like there is no way to possibly apply/live them all. I will admit that I got discouraged and overwhelmed.

After pondering all week on what I was feeling and how I needed to change so that I could move past this and focus on the work I finally received the answer, I needed to ask for a blessing, but more than that I felt like I needed a Fathers Blessing, and I felt that there was a very specific brother in our Branch that it was to come from. I don't know if we're supposed to ask for blessings from branch members but I followed the prompting. He is a brother in our ward that has come to call the three of us his "daughters." I have come to love his family so much.

I didn't tell him much of what was on my mind, just that I was overwhelmed. He put his hands on my head to give me a blessing of comfort, took a deep breath and really let the spirit take over. The things he addressed and blessed me with in that blessing are things I have scare let myself dwell on or admit to. I needed a Fathers blessing, I got one, not from him, but from my Father in Heaven. He spoke to me through that brother and I recieved the strength and peace that I needed to continue working hard.

Sorry, that was a very self centered few paragraphs. It was just such a testament to me that my Father is there and he cares, more than I can comprehend he cares. He knows how I feel and wants to help me, I just have to open the door and let him.

Yesterday we had our investigator Elizabeth come to church. This was a small miracle since we haven't seen or talked to her all week. We have reservations about continuing to teach her without her husband being a part of it (since we really don't want to tear the family apart and he's muslim) but she came to church all on her own ready to worship. We're still not entirely sure how to move forward with her but now we know that she is dedicated, I don't know if she can even feel it yet but I can see and feel a difference in her. 

Family, the blessing I got yesterday was a miracle to me. I was getting very very discouraged and even unsure about what I was doing here. It felt like we were in the middle of a big ocean trying to move in ANY direction but we just kept getting pushed back to the same place. The blessing I received addressed every concern that had been weighing heavily on my mind, even the ones I was trying SO hard to ignore. It was powerful. I am so grateful for the priesthood and the blessing it has been to me my entire life. Dad. Thank you so much for being a worthy priesthood holder. I know I asked you for blessings a lot but you never ever hesitated to place your hands on my head. Brothers, please value and respect the priesthood that you do and will hold.

Tania, I am so glad you loved New York. Long Island is the best huh? Isn't it amazing how the island is so beautiful in one way and yet the City is beautiful too just in a completely different way? I love both. Your "one night to yourself" sounds amazing! We are gonna have so much fun coming back to visit someday (or you can pick me up.) I have thought about living out here too... Still not quite sold (its expensive!) but its definitely a beautiful part of the world and they could use some strong saints.

Dad, I loved your thoughts on Power. I was studying that this morning in Preach My gospel. It talks about how the sons of mosiah "went forth with authority and power" to preach the gospel. I was also curious about what it meant by power. What you wrote is going to help me as I study that further so thanks.

I love you all so much. I am not very good at forgetting you yet cuz I miss you so much but I know stephanie is right and i need to give my whole heart and soul to this and just forget everything else. Its Hard! but I will keep trying.

I know that this church is true. I know that this is a great and marvelously important work. At the end of the day... its all that really matters. Its amazing how caught up in the world we can be and not even realize it. I think it takes something like a mission to really put things into perspective. I mean, maybe its just because its my 24/7 right now but man... NOTHING else really matters at all. Just family and the gospel, everything else is secondary. 

Love you!

-Sister Maren Hale.

June 3 2013 Jacob

Dear Family!!!!

 

Sorry about the later reply last week and MAREN!!!! I feel so terrible I am the worst brother ever for not mentioning happy birthday. I Had it on my internal to do list and totally spaced it..... grhhh.. Any ways this week has been pretty good. Not the best but good. The last three days my companion has been plagued with a migrane so its been a lot of time in the flat this week. But the good side of it is that I was able to clean out the area book this week!!!! When we got to the flat the area book was a mess. Just a complete jumble of record. Well I decided that i wanted to fix that and so I put the task on my self. It was long and arduous but I was finally able to make some sense of it. But it was so bad I just decided to make a new one and start from scratch, so i reached up to get a new one and BOOM! The area book I thought was empty was huge and heavy. I opened it up to find an entire area book of just Former Investigators...... So i had to resort everything and finally put it together and it shed some despressing light on the area. My area has been in opperation for years!! We have teaching records from 06 and my companion says that those should have been destroyed since we get rid of the older records. So it goes even farther back. We start looking and the area has just been knocked to death, the street that the bishop prayed for us to knock, was knocked about 6 months ago by the previous Elders. So we are not giving up, but its good to know what approaches we can do now. We NOW know not to knock but to try and street contact. Harder than knocking, but hey I need to learn.  Im not discouraged family, I just know now how to work! Work smart mom? Haha!

 

So this week you guys should have received an email from me with some attachments in it. That is the testimony and convertion story of one Jo Wakefield and her daughter Sabrina. The Mission mom/ daughter for the area. This testimony is amazing and I highly encourage the family to read it for FHE or something.

 

So this last few weeks has been ones of miricles. Well pertaining to one family. Do you guy remember that Mother and Daughter who appeard Golden but we could never teach or get a hold of again? Zoe and Judie? Well me and Elder Harrison have been trying different ideas to try and get in contact and one day we just felt like we should drop it for a while. Just leave them be. It was a weird thought but one that we both agreed on. Well that proved to be insperation because about a week to two weeks later we ran into them everywhere. Seriously everwhere. We ran into them during completely random moments where it was litteraly a 10 second window. But we ran into them over and over. Ok so maybe only about 2 tops. But we kept seeing them and talking to them and they started opening up again. Well last time I wrote you guys. I got done and went to find my companion and guess who we ran into again???? Zoe and Judie for the third time. And it was not just Zoe and Judie but their brother/son and his girlfriend and son. And we talked to them and we thought that they took a real shining to us again. They asked tons of questions and we basically taught the whole 4 of them the first part of the restoration. I told Aaron ( the Brother) How I miss yard work from back home and he said that he needed some done! He got our number and we are praying that they will call us to do service with them. It was just to awesome! Now this story is not finished because Zoe texted us the other day saying that her phone was working again. We texted her for a while, but when we mentioned teaching she stopped texting us. We can not give up on this family and we feel as if we NEED to teach them. Please put them in your prayers. Ask for obsticles to be taken out of their path so that they will want to be taught. Pray for their hearts to be softened ANYTHING!!!!!!!! We feel like this family is special. They could really build the kingdom of god. Pray that Aaron will call us to do the service.

 

This week has been a really cool study week. We have been doing everything we can to be able to find people to teach, but we just cant seem to find anyone. Well because of this I was a little depressed. I could not really see the work we were doing or see the fruit of our labors. This week though I decided that I want to read through PMG all the way through. I've never done that so I figured that i better. Well it turns out that, that was exactly what I needed. The end of the first chapter talks about the success of a missionary and how to judge whether you are a good one or not. The thing that I found most interesting, and that I found in all the scriptures that they gave for references, was the fact that the lord praised his servants for being missionarys first. He always did that. Good job Nephi for preaching! Way to go Alma for preaching the word! He blessed them highly for their work. The other think I realized while reading was the fact that Alma and Nephi (the third one) did not have much success at first. They were actually quite down trodden with the sins of the people and how even though they tried! No one seemed to listen. The next thing that I noticed was that god commended them on keeping the commandments. Now that made me think.... Who called Alma and Nephi to be missionarys. I couldnt remember a scripture where god asked them. So then it must have been one of their desires! Reading about how they kept the commandments and thinking that thought brought me to the conclusion that the more we keep the commandents, the more that we learn and understand the doctrine, the more that we want to share it. I mean it says it in preach my gospel that the more we understand the atonement the more we want to share with the world what we have. The more we LOVE the work. I decided right then and there, that if I want to be a better missionary, if i want to love the work, if i want to be able to fall asleep every night knowing that I did my best as a missionary. Then the first step is to completely understand the doctrine my self. But I also realized that the way that I can truly messure my success as a missionary is by how much i grow. I have no idea if i have already given this as a spiritual thought but if i have then maybe there is a reason.

 

I love ya guys. Im really sad that I wont be able to see our Uncle Jason and the family. I miss them so much and keep remembering Lagoon with them. Talk about a blast. I love you guys. Tell Kaylee that If I WOULD LIKE her boyfriend... then he can stay. ;) Haha im happy for her. She is awesome and one of my Heros. Im glad you guys get to spend more time with her and grandma. Well i think thats everything im going to write this week. But really quickly one more thing. Mom I cut my hair super short today. Its weird. Its a classic british hair cut that my companion wanted me to get. Its a number 5 short back and sides. Parted at the side. Look it up. Haha but i look weird.

 

Love ya guys!

 

Til Next Week - Elder Hale

May 29th, 2013 Jacob

Dear Family

 

Im sorry that my letter is coming late. We had a bank holiday on monday, so again all the libraries were closed, and we also had transfers so our P- day is on wednesday this week. Im still in weston-super-mare Luckily. I still have so much to learn from this area as well as my trainer. He litterally has taught me so much and made me realize so much as well. It is way to soon to be going somewhere else.

 

So this last week has been good. Im trying to think of anygood stories to share with you guys. This last week we had a dissapointment. We had an investigator who we finally invited and she accepted to come to a chapel tour. We were super stoked about this, because we have been trying to get her to come to church for ages and the chapel tour is usually a good first step to try and get someone there. Well she accepted and while my trainer was having his driving lesson we got a text from Jo, Her next door neighbor, that Donn ( our investigator) Was not feeling well and wont be able to come to the chapel tour. Bummer. We still have not been able to see her again. Its really kind of sad. But we press onward and we plan on moving forward. Last week I went on an exchange with someone from my MTC group. Ya i went to portishead and for 24 hours, me and this kid who are the same age, mission wise, had to lead an area. I did not realize how much self control that would take. But we went out and we did do a lot of stuff. Knocked more doors then I've knocked with my trainer and visited an old guy with a crazy mustache. Haha it just made me realize that in 6 weeks, I could be training...... I can train somebody!!!! That poor missionary would be scared for the rest of his life.... No not really but it is a super scary thought. Its making me study more and suck up everything I can from my trainer. Boys, I have not read preach my gospel all the way through and thats what I need most right now. All im studying is PMG and im realizing that if I study it, and truly try to apply what I read. Then not only can i teach my investigators better, but I'm also getting taught myself. That book is amazing. You can learn so much from it.

 

So this week we have visited a lot with the Jones family. The mom is crazy and has a glass eye and she loves popping it out to scare the missionaries.... I have not been targeted though for some reason. She also makes really good food and has been teaching me how to cook. Im thinking between her and my companion that I will be a pretty decent one after I leave Weston. Anyways, her husband in not a member and our main goal is to try and teach him. Hes getting use to the Idea of missionaries being around more and more and hes even starting to participate in family prayers with Louisa Jones and the kids. The best part about this family is the kids. They have two of them and they are both autistic. They also have IQs higher or equal to that of Albert Einstein. Louisa was telling us a story about how the youngest (Thayne) at five year old had thought up a way to end world hunger. It involves cross breading a cactus and corn. I wont go into more details but its so cool. She was also telling us a story how when Thayne was in the hospital, the missionaries came to give him a blessing. When they were blessing him they said that the lord had a great work for thayne to do among his children and that he would be able to get past all of his health problems. She said that it was a great comfort to know that he was going to get past the health problems but also she felt a huge pressure for now raising this child who she knew had a great work that he needed to do. Haha she said that she tried to get the missionarie to get more info about the work, but she said that the missionary could hardly remember what he said. Boys use your Preisthood. It has been divinly given to you and because you have it, you have the responsibilty to use it righteously.

 

I dont know what else to write to you guys. I have so much more I could share, but I feel impressed to share that one with you. Im doing well though and we just cleaned up the entire flat. OHHHH Dad!!! So my companion made a dish and decided it was horrible so he threw it down the sink. Well it included rice and rice gets bigger the more water you add. Well thats what happened. Our sink got clogged. But fear not because my father taught me well and I was able to take apart the sink down below, Rinse out the parts, and throw it back together. Haha we also had a power surge that flickerd the lights at a store we were at and flipped a breaker at out flat. I was able to find the fuse box and fix the problem. DAD thank you so much for teaching me how to do stuff like that!

 

This week we also made a bout a ton of Ice cream. Thats right... make. But it is the best ice cream i have ever tasted. We made it for a Recent convert who passed her one year mark and we threw her a kind of party. We were able to see a potentials kids there also and got super close where them. We played for so long and I've never been so tired. They really ran me ragged. But they love missionarys and we are hoping that through them, we will be able to see the parents more and get to teaching them. Pray!!!

 

Well I love you guys. I really miss you. I realized today though why missionarys letters sometimes get shorter and shorter. They dont like getting taken away from the work. I love you guys but like my sisters said. We have to forget our stuff at home and just give everything out here. Thats how important it is. Really quickly I want to share what I learned in preach my gospel today. It talked about baptism and confermation. But to my surprise they talked more about the confermation and the gift of the holy ghost over the baptism. I studied and realized that the Holy Ghost is awesome. He teaches, he comforts, he allows angels to talk through him, he converts, he tells us what god wants us to do, and so much more. We have the gift of the holy ghost. But we can loose his companionship if we dont keep the commandments. So keep gods commandments and keep the holy ghost. We need him. Theoretically, with the gift of the holy ghost, we can make every choice, a right one.

 

 

Love ya guys. Til next week

 

Elder Hale