Wonderful Birthday Week!

Dear Family,
First of all I need to thank you all for the wonderful birthday
wishes and letters that I received. I truly do appreciate all the love
that I feel from all of you. Especially my wonderful family with so
many fun little pictures of them forming letters with their bodies, or
the wonderful memory that they have of the treats that I love. It was
a wonderful birthday, thank you all so much! :D With the surfboard
piñata that you sent we set it in a tree and just like kicking a field
goal we kicked a soccer ball at it. Oh course the elder from Peru was
able to kick it down and then I chucked it in the air and it smashed
open for everyone to get the candy. It was a lot of fun! I got sung
happy birthday many times that day and the Calderon family had us over
for a few minutes to eat s'mores with them. That night we didn't have
too many birthday miracles because we had to let some investigators go
that weren't progressing. But we did find a really cool guy named Jose
who loves missionaries, he is just a little too focused on aliens.
Haha
This week we had Zone conference and it was a very interesting one.
I really enjoyed it but you could tell it was president and sister
Taggert's first one. They talked to us a lot about gates and how we
shouldn't be satisfied to only have the investigators dressed in white
once but to help them go through all the necessary ordinances that we
need in this life. Then we had a training from the assistants,
including my former companion elder Arèvalo. It was also a great lunch
to be able to catch up with Elder Lindsay and my old district and see
how all of the investigators are doing in Santa Ana 5. Lourdes and her
husband are looking really solid to being baptized in the next couple
weeks.

We had some vey interesting lessons later in the week. One with a
recovering meth addict and it was sad to see how badly she has been
affected by drugs and alcohol in her life. It's going to be
challenging to help her comprehend everything that we teach. We also
were asked by the bishop to take over the teaching for one of the
sisters investigators. He has been taught everything but the bishop
doesn't feel he has shown enough fruit and so we have to be very
upfront with him and try to find where his desires are at. Really nice
guy but just can't see to take anything serious. But I think as we
show love for him and his desire to be baptized he can make the
necessary changes. The other sisters have had some problems with an
investigator and so every time from now on that he is taught we need
to be there for everyone's safety. A lot of interesting situations but
also a lot of progress with people this week so it has been worth it.

I got to interview this 14 year old kid Ignacio this week. His
whole family (of 6) was baptized in April but he didn't want to be
because he didn't have a testimony of the gospel. I really admire him
for now making the decision to find out if it was what he needed to
do. He is a really humble kid that really wanted to be baptized to
obey his Heavenly Father and all of his commandments. I absolutely
love being able to interview people for baptism and feel of the love
that these wonderful people have for the gospel. He was baptized
yesterday and President and sister Taggart came and even shared their
testimonies in Spanish. It was really awesome! Plus President Taggart
is way awesome and invited and challenged everyone there to learn
English and that it would be blessing to their family in the future
and give them more oportunies to provide better for their families.
People were really surprised but it was defiantly done with the spirit
and it was a neat experience.

As for our area we found a few new families that have some
potential and an older lady that lives with a recent convert that says
she has met with missionaries before and has never felt ready to be
baptized but she thinks she is now ready and so that was a big
blessing to find her. Again nobody came to church, but the sisters
investigator that was passed to us came to the baptism and had a good
experience there and even joined the ward choir this week and came to
the practice.

We also had exchanges with the zone leaders this week and it was a
really good experience to see a lot of good things that I do well and
even more things that I can improve on. :) Elder Harvey came to our
area and we had a lot of fun talking to a lot of people and helping
the sisters teach that investigator about repentance and what he can
do to overcome those feelings of guilt that he still has. He even
talked to the bishop on Sunday and seemed really happy with the whole
experience. I think he is truly changing. I am reminded of an inspired
part in a talk by President Thomas S. Monson. He shared

"Another principle of truth which will guide us in our
determination is that boys and men can change. I’m reminded of the
words of a prison warden who taught this fact. A critic who knew of
Warden Duffy’s efforts to rehabilitate men said, ‘Don’t you know that
leopards can’t change their spots?’ Warden Duffy responded, ‘You
should know I don’t work with leopards. I work with men, and men
change every day.’"

I add my testimony that men and women can change and I have seen it
time and time again on my mission. If our desires to serve God and
keep his commandments become great than our desires to do anything
else, then we can see the biggest changes. I love this gospel and the
opportunity it gives us to change and better ourselves daily. Because
of the atonement of Jesus Christ we can be forgive for anything and
leave it behind us. I love you all and hope you have a wonderful week!

Love,
Elder Hyde

Also if you would like to read that from President Monson it's called
"To the Rescue" and here is the link.
http://www.lds.org/general-conference/2001/04/to-the-rescue?lang=eng