Transfer Number 17

Transfers came in today and here's the news. I will be staying in good ole' Olivehurst for the remainder of my mission. Elder Dowling is being transferred to Auburn and I will be training a new Zone Leader, Elder Osborne. I have served around E. Osborne in the past and he's a pretty decent guy. I'm a little bummed to not have E. Dowling as my companion any more, but oh well, that's the way it is. We have a ton of stuff coming up in the next 6 weeks so we are going to be super busy. Hopefully E. Osborne can keep up because he's going to have to know the ropes for when he takes the area at the end of the transfer. He'll do fine, I am sure.

So, to answer your questions, Mom: As of right now, I haven't received your letter from this past week. The mail hasn't come yet today, so maybe it will be there when I go back to our house to check. I will be shipping my bike home now that I know I will be staying in this area and won't be using it. I don't think the mission helps with that, but I'll check. If they don't, I have no idea how much it is going to cost, but I'm guessing it's going to be pretty expensive. How much money to I have available in my account? (I see my emails frequently throughout the week, so you can reply when you get a chance)

I did get my shoulder looked at once recently, I think it might have been two weeks ago. They put me on some sort of pill that I have to take daily, (I'm not sure if it's an anti-inflammatory, a steroid, or what), and I have an MRI scheduled for tomorrow at 4:30. On Thursday, I will be meeting with Dr. Vogel who is an orthopedic specialist to review the x-ray that I had recently and the MRI that I will be having. Hopefully he'll be able to tell me what's wrong and I'll probably know what needs to be done to fix it. I'll let you know how all of that goes in my email next week.

Alright, now for the past week. We had a pretty good week actually. We met or exceeded all of the goals we set except for the number of new investigators we wanted to find. We have a few people that we are teaching right now, all of which I feel are so close to being ready for baptism. One of our investigators just hasn't quite caught on to everything yet, but she's coming along. Basically the rest of our teaching pool consists of people who could get baptized tomorrow except that they have legal issues to handle first. For some reason, throughout our zone, it seems like the majority of the investigators being taught by the missionaries are on probation. Church policy is that those on probation can't get baptized until they are off, or unless they come to church and are basically active in every way for a period of a few months, at which time they can petition the First Presidency for approval to be baptized. It's hard sometimes to work with that, especially if someone is really excited about getting baptized soon, but it's all about repentance. Restitution is required for true repentance, that includes making everything right with the government. We'll keep working with these people and provide support as they continue to progress.

We experienced a bit of a miracle the other day. We had just come back from grabbing some food for lunch to continue weekly planning at our church building. Before we went inside we wanted to check the institute building next door for some info we could give to our investigator, Lindsey. Well, we rarely park on that side of the church, and it didn't even cross our minds that the institute would be closed. So, as we were walking back to the church to go inside, a man pulled into the parking lot. He got out of his car and told us he was just there to smoke a cigarette. We started talking to him and found out that he's actually been wanting to learn more about God and church, but he just doesn't know where to start. He's been in and out of prison more times than he can count, and he's tired of it. He knows that his way of doing things is failing and he's ready to try something different. He said, "where do I start? Who do I talk to?" Well...he came to the right place! We of course offered him help and testified to him of how our message could help him and his family (his significant other was in the car attentively listening to everything we were saying). They both accepted to have the missionaries in there area come and teach them. He took a Book of Mormon and said he would start from the beginning. The fact that we were exactly where we needed to be just when he randomly decided to pull into a church parking lot to have a smoke break is testimony in itself that the Lord is leading this work. Hopefully he recognizes the Spirit enough to act on it and bring his life into harmony with the Gospel.

Well this email is pretty long already, so I'll wrap things up. I just remembered that like 3 or 4 weeks ago my flight itinerary came in the mail. I think you have probably already received a copy of it, but just in case, here are my flight plans. I'll be flying out of Sac at 6:20am and arriving in SLC at 9:04 on December 18th.

Okay, I hope everything is going well. I love you all! Be mighty!
love,
Elder Justin Hammer

PS: Devin, what did you think about meeting Elder Dowling's mom at your zone conference or whatever it was recently? Kinda crazy eh?