Ugh

So this week was pretty uneventful, which is never a good thing. Right after I sent my email home last week telling you about how we still had one investigator, we saw him here at the library and he dropped us. And since then, we haven't found anyone that is super promising. Cool, huh? So yeah, we have no investigators so with that said, we are doing finding and that's about it. We are trying to use different finding techniques such as formers, less actives, going through our 1400 member ward list, tracting, and street contacting. So far none of those have really yielded any fruits. We came to the conclusion that we don't have anyone right now because we are supposed to plan for a big activity that will attract lots of people that will be interested. We are having a movie night/bbq on August 6th for the singles ward we live in and we are making sure that the membvers know that they should invite their friends. So that should be pretty big. And we are also planning on having a big activity like that with the Lowell ward sometime in September. We watched the PMG DVDs on how to find through the members and we came up with this idea that we would hold a cultural night with a performance or something from each of the ethnicities in our ward. Don't have any specifics yet, but that's our idea. I'm hoping that we'll be able to find some new people through those activities. We are also preparing for the Water Festival which is coming up right quick. I'm so excited for that. It's gonna be sweet.

I guess I can share about one person we met this week. We were just walking around, I think it was on Tuesday, and there was this big yellow lab that started barking at us. As we were walking past the house with the dog, this cambodian lady came out so we started talking to her. We talked to her for about 20 minutes about her family, who we are, and how the gospel can bless her life. She started crying and told us that she is divorced and that she really wants to find happiness for her family, and she can see in us that we are happy. So we set up a return appointment and gave her a Book of Mormon and a copy of the Family proclamation. But again, she is another potential that didn't keep her return appointment so we are just trying to recontact her. That seems to happen way too often. And, in all honesty, that is about the coolest thing that happened this week. We've been trying to get the members in our ward excited about missionary work, but that's not really working right now either. We've shared the set a date challenge with about 6 families in our ward and all of them but 1 have forgotten about it. I follow up with them at church every week and they just say, "Oh yeah, thanks for reminding me, I must've forgotten about that. Follow up again next week." And that's about how it goes. It's really really really frustrating. I wish more people would just realize that it is their duty to share the gospel with their neighbors and actually do something about it. I like combining D&C 100: 4 and Alma 13:24 and then sharing the set a date challenge. I still haven't heard back from any of you about how that's going. I'll let you look up thos scriptures too. Cool beans.

So my subject line of "ugh" can be used for how the work is going right now, but I was intending it to be for the weather. It's been awful. We've been up in the 90's every day this week, and Thursday, and Friday were the worst days ever. haha. Thursday was 103, which isn't really that bad, but the humidity had to be close to 100. It was AWFUL. It was really like the worst weather ever. I hate the humidity. And Friday wasn't any better. It got up to 107 with high humidity too. It wasn't as humid as Thursday, but it was still terrible. We went to visit this one former investigator, and literally within the 10 seconds it took to walk from the car to the door, I was dripping sweat. haha. It was really bad. Luckily, today is down around 80, so that feels great.

Oh yeah, Happy Pioneer Day! I didn't realize how much I like pioneer day until I came out here and have heard nothing but how the members out here couldn't care less about it because they aren't in Utah. I really hate when people talk crap on Utah (unless it's the utes, of course). There are so many people that have told me that they don't want to live in Utah or go to BYU cause "there are too many Mormons". I don't really understand that. How are they going to feel when they get to the Celestial Kingdom? haha. But anyway, I'm glad I'm from Utah and I am proud to say it every time someone asks. Sorry for that little rant, but it really does bother me when people talk down on Utah for being better than everywhere else :)

Alrighty then I gotta get going so we can go play some sports. Cool beans. Have a good week. Love you all!!!

Love,
Elder Hammer

P.S. Thanks for the picture, Mason. I'm glad you are loving my gameboy. haha