Happy New Year Again

Sorry for the same lame subject line, but whatever. This week was incredible. I have to say it's been one of the best of the 11 months I've been out (as of today, for anyone who cares. haha) It's only been a short time since we last emailed, but so much has happened that has been amazing. The biggest one I have for this week is definitely Aaron's baptism. We still had to teach him basically all of the commandments with 3 days left before his baptism, but we got it all done and he had his interview the day before his baptism. He passed with no concerns. We've only known him for about 3 weeks, but I've grown to be great friends with him and was so stoked for all of his great choices he was making. His baptism was on Saturday, which we were a bit worried about because even when they are on Sundays right after church, we never have more than 30 people attend. Well, we had a great turnout for this one. About 30 people, I'd say. It was great. I gave a talk on the Holy Ghost after a different Elder talked on baptism. The baptism itself went smoothly and it was so powerful to watch. After the service was over, I was talking to E. Dawe, who was the one who baptised him, and who I have decided is one of the coolest guys I've ever met, and he told me that when they were in the bathroom changing, Aaron looked at himself in the mirror and said "I'm a new man, Elder Dawe. I feel so clean and happy!" Wow! There were some concerns that he may be doing everything just for his girlfriend, who goes to the spanish ward, but I think that that experience cleared up any suspicions there might have been. His confirmation was great too. He's already made some friends with some of the guys in the ward, so we had a pretty big cercle of men helping out with that. It was cool. He was so happy with everything. I would be happy too if I was him. I can't think of a better New Year's Resolution than getting baptized ;) We figured there's a good chance that not only is he the newest member in our ward, but the first one of the new year in the world! Don't know if we could back that up, but it's a cool thought. It kinda threw me off that it was only the first day of the year too, cause it was 60 degrees on Jan. 1st. It felt SO good. We even got to take our suit coats off. haha. But today, it's back to being freezing, windy and wet. Haven't had any more snow, though.

Church was cool yesterday too. In addition to helping with Aaron's confirmation, I got to help pass the sacrament, which is something I realized I haven't done in a long time. It felt really great to be able to help out with that and I was so glad they asked me to. We also have 2 more Elders in our ward now. There are 6 Haitian Creole speaking Elders in the mission, but for some reason, we had 3 new ones come out this last week, so President opened a new area for them in our ward. That's pretty exciting, but that also means they will probably get more dinner invites than us. haha. I know I've said this before, but in our ward here, fast and testimony meetings can be somewhat special-er than other places. Yesterday was one of the more interesting ones I've seen. It was going really well, people were all bearing really great testimonies. Then Amgalan, from Mongolia (I think) got up and bore her testimony too. She told us that she had recently written a song that she proceeded to sing for us. It was in some other language, maybe Japanese, cause I think that's what she speaks, and it was about 5 minutes long. It was a nice song, but I don't think that Sacrament meeting was the place to share it. haha. It was funny.

Due to Aaron getting baptized, that brought us down to 0 investigators. I don't enjoy when that happens. But, I have developed a firm testimony that when we are down to none, Heavenly Father provides for us. We have about 20 potential investigators that we haven't been able to get back in contact with, so that's not helping very much either. We received a referral on our phone for a man named Sumanakitti. We assumed that it was misspelled or just a lame referral, cause we get lots of those, but when we called him, he wanted us to come over and seemed really interested. Over the phone, from his accent, we thought he might be Indian or Middle-Eastern, but when we got to his house lastnight, there were Buddhist flags all over the front of the house, and there was a sticky note on the door written in Thai. He came out to meet us and let us in. Turns out he's a Buddhist Monk! Apparently he has a friend who recently took him to the Washington DC temple and he loved it. We started talking to him, and it was a wonderful lesson. He was very receptive to what we were teaching, he had lots of questions, and the Spirit was strong. He has no Christian background, so we are starting from nothing, but that's a big plus in some cases. Coincidentally, the thing he was asking the most questions about was baptism. We talked a lot about it, and it is something he wants to do, he just has to think about when. He probably doesn't understand exactly what that would mean for him, but we have a return appointment with him tonight, and we are taking a member who served in Thailand and we are going to use Ammon and Aaron's examples in the Book of Mormon to teach him what he needs to do. I am so excited to start working with him. He is such a nice person, and is so open to our message. He is currently living in their mini place of worship, so there is a big, really beautiful Buddhist shrine in the front room. That was cool. He is only there until his Master comes back from Asia in February, which we are hoping will not be a problem. We'll see.

Oh I forgot to mention the party we went to on Saturday night. There is an inactive Cambodian lady who we visit regularly who invited us over for a New Year's/ Birthday party for her husband. We got there and it was a totally traditional Cambodian dinner! I was so excited cause I haven't done that ever, except when we learned about it in the MTC. We sat cross legged on the mat with all the food in the center, and it was my favorite Cambodian food too, so that was great. It's called yowhan, and it's made from this spicy sauce (I'm not sure exactly what's in it) and you put it in a wok and cook all the meat and veggies right in it and put it over noodles. I need to learn how to make it so I can cook it when I go home. It was so good. The meat was on the more interesting side- it's usually just beef, but we had beef, shrimp, crab, 2 kinds of squid, and tripe (cow stomach) It was so good though. I'm sure you'd all like it a lot ;) As much as I loved the chance to eat a traditional dinner, when I stood up, I couldn't feel my legs cause I'd been sitting crosslegged for so long. haha. I'm definitely not used to that.

I think that's about everything that I planned on letting you know about. It was such a great week. I love being a missionary so much. I am learning to recognize more the Hand of the Lord in my life every single day, and to listen to and follow the promptings of the Holy Ghost. I love it! I hope you all have a great week. Good luck going back to school! haha. Love you all!

Love,
Elder Hammer

P.S. Thanks to Shawn and Mindy for the package. And thanks in advance to everyone who's going to send me a package for my birthday (hint hint) haha. Love ya!