Hello Again

Alrighty, well, this week has been pretty awesome, as usual. I don't remember if I told you or not, but I spoke in church last week. I was asked to speak on how service and prayer helps us keep the commandments. It was interesting. I had about 15 minutes prepared, but when I got there, I was the only one on the stand. haha. But the other two speakers were just sitting with their 3 little kids on the front row. They both spoke and left me with about 3 minutes. haha. I got up, and gave a short, sweet message, and sat down. I felt like i could have done better, but afterwards, I had like 15 people tell me that my talk really touched them and I did a great job. Can't argue with that! Anyway, this las week hasn't been as busy as usual. For whatever reason, we just didn't teach very many lessons this week. It's pretty lame, but we are still working hard, and trying to find more people to teach.

Our investigator, Donna, who is getting baptized on June 13, is still doing really well. She finally made it to church this week after being sick, and she told me that she loved it and that she would definitely be back next week. It was pretty cool. She actually called me this morning to ask me about some stuff they talked about in sunday school, cause the lesson was on temples. she asked if her husband had to be a member in order for her to be sealed to him. I told her yes, and that we would teach her about the temple after she was baptized. So, hopefully, she will get her husband to sit in with us when we go over tomorrow.

We have also picked up a few new investigators. Two of them are people we met on the street on our way to other appointments, and one of them is a friend of one of our "eternigators" or, person who, in this case, has been an investigator since last august, and just won't make the commitment to get baptized. We are going to drop him soon, if he doesn't come to church this week. But his friend is really cool. He is interested in the Holy Ghost and accepted a copy of the Book of Mormon and said he would check it out. We are going to meet with him sometime this week. One of the other guys, we actually just talked to yesterday on our way to an appointment. He said that he found a Book of Mormon and started reading it, and said that he doesn't work so we could come over whenever we want. SWEET. He was a pretty cool guy, and as I was talking to him, I felt like he will be very promising.

And, we had Zone Conference with Elder Arnold from the 70 on Friday. It was so good. He basically told us that our mission has been flat as far as baptisms go, for 10 years, and that we need to change that. He taught us the method that Neil L Anderson taught him to extend a baptismal commitment on the first lesson, and it is so cool! It got me so fired up to go out and teach tons of people. He is a very cool man, and he definitely inspired me to change some of the things I am doing so I can become a better missionary. It was such a great conference.

Ok, time for the cool story of the week. This time, it is kind of sad, but it was an interesting experience. We have been meeting with this guy with like 6 names, but we just call him Sal. He was asked not to attend his church that he lives within the boundaries of, because he made the women feel uncomfortable. He got permission to come to our ward, so we have been teaching him, and we talked to the bishop about 3 weeks ago to see about baptising him. The bishop told us to wait, because apparently, Sal has a pretty long history with the church, and the bishop wanted to find out more before we did anything. Turns out, that yesterday at church, bishop told us that he was actually asked to not attend any church anywhere, because he actually had some restraining orders and a legal history with the church as well. So, we had to ask him to leave, and not come back. It was pretty akward, but we had Bro. Shumway, amember of the bishopric to help us. We can still teach him, but he is not allowed to come to church, or on to church grounds, at all. I don't know if he will still want us to teach him or not, but we'll see. It was quite the experience. I have felt that he was a little weird since we started teaching him, but now, I know he is a little weird. haha.

Congrats to Phil also! that is so cool that he won it. He definitely deserves it. And Grandma should stop thinking he's a dork. He's not. haha. That's a pretty awesome story. Speaking of golf, we get to go next week! hooray. I'm stoked.

Anyways, everyone else is done with their emails and are waiting for me to get done so I guess I'll go now. but before I do, I was wondering if I could get a copy of the ward list so I have people's addresses in case I want to write to people sometime. And also, Pres. Evans just approved us getting bikes too. My comp and I definetely want to get bikes. And, I think that is all for now. there's always something I forget to say in these emails, but whatever. Love you all!!! Have a great week!


Elder D. Hammer