My week of Thankfulness

PDAY HIKE

I am so grateful for my wonderful family and friends and so this week
for my email I would like to follow an inspired idea I saw my friend
Elder Vierkant do a few weeks ago and just write an email of
gratitude. I am grateful for my family and their much love and
support. Im grateful for the the great privilege and blessing I have
to serve The Lord and the wonderful children of our Heavenly Father
with his infinite love that He has for each of them.

I am grateful for the investigators that we have to teach and the
willingness of the members to come out with us. This week we had a lot
of help from members coming to visit investigators and just be their
friends and be there for them to help them. I am also grateful for the
many people that allow us to come over and share this great message of
the restoration and fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This week
it was heartwarming to receive a message from an investigator for
thanking her for what we had taught her. She was humbled and wanting
to repent after she realized that she hadn't always kept the
commandments earlier in her life. We shared Mosiah 26:29-30 focusing
on
"...if he confess his sins before thee and me, and repenteth in the
sincerity of his heart, him shall ye forgive, and I will forgive him
also. Yea, and as often as my people repent will I forgive them their
trespasses against me."
I am grateful for repentance. For the ability to be forgiven for our
errors in the life is such an amazing gift and as we testified of the
Saviors Atonement and the power of repentance to this investigator the
spirit testified to us and her that we can be forgiven and that the
Savior wants to forgive.

I am grateful for my companion and for the many things that he
teaches me every day. Elder Kemp and I are very different but it has
been a great learning experience to be with him for almost 4 months
now and be able to learn his strengths and how to use them in
missionary work.

I am grateful for my health and for the life that I have been given.
There are so many people that we teach that have poor health or have
problems with being happy with their lives or being positive and so
I'm very grateful for the growing up with the gospel in my life. I
have been so blessed in my life and taken most of it for granted.

I am most grateful for my Heavenly Father and for His great love for
us by sending His Son Jesus Christ to suffer the penalty for all of us
and gives us the strength to overcome our challenges and trials in
this life. I love you all and I am very grateful for YOU!

Love,
Elder Hyde

Elder Cardon is a very inspired man...

Sorry that I am writing two days late. Our Pday got changed because
we have Zone Conference with Elder Cardon from the first quorum of the
70 on Monday so our Pday is today. I will get more to that later but
it was an amazing conference.

Last Monday we were invited to family home evening and a newer family
in the ward had invited a part member family whom we have been trying
to contact for months. The family came and they shared a great lesson
about faith and we got to meet a great part member family. The next
day we had to go to the doctors with one of the elders in our district
who has been having back problems. Then we received a text from other
elders in the mission telling us that a less active member needed a
blessing in our ward. We went and found her and she called us Angels
sent from heaven and was amazed that we had come right when she was in
need of a blessing. Her husband isn't a member but after the blessing
he said the missionaries could come by to teach his whole family. She
is the only member so I'm excited for the sisters to go teach them. It
was a great experience to give a blessing to someone I had never met
before and just feel the spirit work through me. The whole day was
very guided by the spirit as we tried to put our training of relying
on the spirit into play. I can tell you that the Holy Ghost will guide
us if we listen. That night we were completely guided where to go and
found some great people. We were also guided to a part member family
we have been working with and just stopped to see how they were doing.
We just started testifying of the Savior and the wife opened up
telling us she had been reading about repentance in the Book of
Mormon. It led in perfectly to baptism and we invited her to be
baptized. She thought about it and then with a reassuring husband at
her side said she would. It was a great lesson and I'm really excited
for Maria Muñoz. In our past lessons we had focused on temples, and
families being sealed and so she said she really wants that. A
wonderful night of miracles.

The following day we had a meeting with all the district leaders in
the mission and we could tell right away that it was going to be a
different meeting than usual. Usually the assistants take half an hour
to go over some attributes of a good leader and then president has
twenty or so minutes to share some thoughts. This time the assistants
went through their part in less than ten minutes and left the rest to
President Taggart. He got up with tear filled eyes and talked about a
group of 5 missionaries that he had to send home that morning and how
much it broke his heart. He told us his tolerance level is at zero and
that we needed to let all missionaries know that if they leave mission
boundaries, they are on the next plane home. Also if anybody is
involved with secret groups on Facebook they will be sent home. Normally we
want to keep those things quiet but this time he told us to let people
know. It was a powerful meeting and the spirit was really strong. I
came out of that never wanting to ever even think about being
disobedient.

Our whole district has been pretty sick this past week. I think I am
the only one who didn't get sick. So almost everybody in the district
needed a blessing at different times this week and so it was a good
opportunity to serve. But we had a few more trips to the doctors and
so that wasn't too fun. We also were involved with about 6 hours of
service at a community center this week planning and decorating for a
big fundraiser event to help out the community. It was a lot of fun
and good to get out and do service. Soon we will have to be putting
service hours in as part of key indicators(numbers that we report each
week). As part of the "just-serve" project that will be starting in
the next few weeks.

We had some amazing experiences this week, including an early
thanksgiving feast, giving more blessings, teaching some amazing
people, and another great family home evening with the same part
member family and one of the bishopric members family. So I wish I had
more time but I probably can only talk about the Zone Conference to
finish off.

So to start we also had a meeting Sunday night with all recent
converts/less active members that could come and we had two families
that came. The Marin family and the De Leon family(the one who lost
their mom to cancer a few weeks ago). Elder Cardon had some recent
converts share their testimonies and then he gave an amazing discourse
of the restoration and how to know if what we share is true. The next
day we had a 6 hour zone conference generally based on recognizing the
spirit. He started by going over some amazing information about the
Abrahamic covenant and really just made the scriptures come alive. He
shared some amazing experiences of working with the twelve and first
presidency. His testimony is really powerful about their callings as
prophets, seers, and revelators. He meets with them and all of the
quorums of the seventies every Thursday in the Salt lake Temple to
discuss many wonderful and great things. They also have their own fast
and testimony meeting every first Thursday of the month in case some
of them don't have the chance to partake of the sacrament with so much
travel, which has to be so amazing. In one of the stories he shared,
an apostle was selecting where missionaries were supposed to be called
and one he just couldn't quite pinpoint where the missionary should
serve so he said he would come back to it and in the beginning of the
next application he just blurted out a mission and said that it was
for the previous missionary. Then he turned to Elder Cardon and said
"Sometimes it's as important to know when God isn't speaking as it is
to know when He is speaking." Wow. What a wonderful saying, especially
when recognizing the spirit. Then we went on with how the training has
been going and then he shared something else that I really liked. He
said "you are all here more for what you have felt than what you
know." And it's so true, we can have all the knowledge in the world
but if we haven't received a witness from the Holy Ghost then it means
nothing.

I have run out of time but I love you and know that The Lord loves
us, knows us, and will give us comfort, guidance, and confirmation of
the truth through His spirit.
Although I may be far away, I feel all your love every single day.

Love,
Elder Hyde

Transfers & Halloween

First of all I have to say thank you to my wonderful family who sent me an awesome Halloween package that made my day! So normally I wouldn't be able to get mail on a Friday but the other Elders that we drive around had a meeting at the office for their training follow-up and when I went in they had a package for me so I got it just in time. :D The plastic spiders have been great to put all over the apartment to scare Elder Kemp and it was just a very cleaver and fun box. Especially since we had to be in the apartment doing weekly planning that night. I'm still not sure what to do with the glow in the dark stuff but I'm sure I will find something for it.

Even though transfers weren't until today I will start with that. Elder Kemp and I will be together for at least another 6 weeks! I'm sure glad we get along really well and I love that man because we will be together for at least 20 weeks. Which is quite a long time to be with someone 24/7 but I'm really glad to be able to keep learning from him and be able to see him grow so much! With the district we only have one change. Hermana Jones is leaving to Costa Mesa, where I was born, and Hermana Russell is coming in. She was also in my district in Santa Ana 5, so it will be good to have her back.

This week we had some really great experiences and saw The Lord blessing us with many miracles. One of our investigators named Elsa called us this week saying that we couldn't come teach her at her house anymore, we think it's because of her husband, but that she wanted us to come to her daughters baptism in the YSA ward this Sunday! It was a really spirit filled baptism and we found out that a good chunk of her family are members and they talked to us a lot about how much they have been trying to share the gospel with the family and it's amazing to see the change in the whole family from doing so. Then we had a huge miracle, an amazing member family from our ward was at the building and as the baptism ended and it just so happens that they live right down the street from our investigator. Then they invited her over to be taught at their house and it was just great to see them connect so well.

Jildalgo is doing really well and went off on a 25 minute story in the middle of the lesson about how stressed he had been a few days earlier because he haddn't been able to get work for a few days and everything felt that it was coming down on him at once. Then he remembered to pray and he said it completely changed his day and then he got work for 3 days in a row, which hasn't happened in weeks! He was able to pay the rent and get food for his family and he just said it really strengthened his faith. He is doing great and reading and praying often. :) The only problem is that he got called into work Sunday morning and so he couldn't make it to church.

We are also getting ready for a member of the seventy to come next week which is really exciting. We are having the Zone Conference on the Holy Ghost and I'm excited to learn a lot from it. Plus we all get to write talks about how we have come to recognize the promptings of the Holy Ghost on the mission and then he will choose a few missionaries on the spot to share them. Which is great because I know that it's the Holy Ghost that guides us in The Lord's work and so as we can better recognize and follow His promptings we will become more effective missionaries overall. I think the biggest thing that I have come to find on the mission about the Holy Ghost is that He guides us way more than we think, and that He is always willing to help us if we are willing to listen. Keep the commandments, listen for promptings, act on every good feeling or impresson and our loving Heavenly Father will never let us down.

Love,

Elder Hyde