LETTER # FOURTY SIX

OUR ZONE PICTURE June 14th 2014

This week was really good,difficult but good!

 

We had our first district meeting with the Zone, they all seem to be good hard working missionaries! We have 4 sisters too and they are all hilarious and hard workers! I am really excited to work with this crew :)

 

This weekend we had a leadership meeting with President and Sister Martins. We were talking about how the mission has been slowly declining and what we could do to help the missionaries continue strong doing what the Lord wants them too. We decided that we are losing faith in the Lord, and that we need to stop working by ourselves but with Him…this is His work so He knows what we must do!

This is so true though…many times we work, and plan thinking ,"Oh I know what we should do" and we forget to ask the Lord what He wants us to do with His sons and daughters. So it was a really great meeting where we learned that if we work with the Lord, His angels will help us and prepare the hearts of the people, and we will find the people who are ready to hear the gospel. We applied these things this week and I really saw the difference!

 

So this weekend was hard because we lost about three days of work with meetings and interviews, because the other elders are really far away from us and we live in a pretty big city so there is always traffic (Oh how I don't miss DC traffic haha). But the Lord really blessed us! At the end of the week we had a baptism of a young man that we have been preparing for a few weeks named Matheus! It was a great baptism, we did a zone baptism so we had about 5 people being baptized after stake conference and all the members were really excited about the progress we are making!

But the coolest thing that happened this week was that Louis, a recent convert, invited this little old lady in his neighborhood to go to church with him. She is about 4´2 and has no teeth, but when she was listening to the talks during stake conference she was crying a lot. And when she saw everyone being baptized she tugged my sleeve, and I slouched down to talk to her and she said "Brother…I want to be baptized, I feel something different here that I have never felt before… Can Louis baptize me?" I explained to her that there is a process for baptism and that it would take a few weeks to prepare, and she looked upset and said to me, "Brother if I don't get baptized today I won't come back!" haha So I felt bad denying her…so I called President and he said to me, "If she doesn't have any serious problems and if Bishop is okay with it, baptize her!" So we did a little interview with her, called bishop and he gave us the A-okay, but I had a feeling it would be better to wait until next week, so I talked to her and asked if it could be next week and she reluctantly agreed! haha Miracles happen! I was so stunned it came out of no where, and I felt bad not letting her be baptized then, but it will be better next week! 

After that we went to lunch at a members house, and when we entered the sister was like "all right elders, behave because you will be eating lunch with a 70"! I was like FREAK! haha But the lunch was really good and it was fun talking to the 70 a little bit to. Sadly, I didn't get to take a picture with him…but I will ask the member to send it to my email :)

So that was the highlight of the week for sure!

 

Sounds like all is going well in the States. It makes me happy when you are all happy :)

 

Crazy to think that another week has flown by…it is passing really quickly, sooner then you know it I will be back with you guys. I can't wait but the thought of leaving the mission makes me sad. I really love the mission :)

Love you all!
Elder Hatch