Teaching Families :)

His spirit inspires mine each week but this one was a tear jerker for me! Prayer works! ~Cindee


Hi family!

I feel like I just email you so I'm not sure what to say.
Elder Gardner and I have been so blessed the past few weeks and we are
seeing so much progress with our investigators it makes me really
happy! Lorena has had a pretty tough week but her testimony of the
power of prayer grew a lot. One day she was just really down when we
went over because of some things that had happened that day. She
prayed earlier and said that helped her but by the end of the lesson
she told us about an unexplainable joy that had come over her. It made
me feel so great as the spirit was able to comfort her and give her
joy. Then another day she was excited to see us to tell her of a
miracle. Her husband lost his wallet and they hadn't been able to find
it for three days. She and her husband had been praying(he never
prays) so that they could find it. Then somebody knocked on their door
and returned it without wanting anything in return. They were so happy
that God had answered their prayer and the husband acknowledged that
it was an answer to his prayer. He even told us he was happy to see us
and joined us for the first few minutes of the lesson before he went
to work. He is changing so much! :)


The Contreras family that is living with a recent convert is doing
really good even though they have their doubts they are reading the
Book of Mormon. If they continue to do that and pray, all of their
doubts will go away. They are a great family and we really became a
lot closer to the dad Eduardo this week. He even wants to be baptized
and accepted a baptismal date for March 29th. He and his wife will
need to get married before then but I have faith that he can make it.
The other two families we are working with are the Perez family and
the Gonzalez family. They are the two families that both lost a
daughters in a car accident last October. They are progressing very
well! One family is on date for the 29th of March and the other knows
that we were sent from God to teach them His gospel. I can't even
express how happy these families make me. It is such a privilege to be
a missionary, I know that it not only is completely changing my life
but the lives of many others. I am but an instrument in the hands of
the Lord, but I know that each one of us can do much good! :)


I have an Esteban quote again for this week. Somehow we were
talking about cavemen and we asked Esteban if he knew what that was
and he told us "yeah, a caveman is like a bear but it's not a bear and
it comes out of a cave and eats meat." Haha I love that kid. Have a
wonderful week and always remember who you are and that I love you.
And even more importantly you have a Heavenly Father that loves you.
:D


-Elder Hyde
P.S. I won't be on Facebook for a few months. We are having a big
meeting tomorrow for new technology training. I'm excited!
P.P.S. I almost saw Elder Holland this week. He came to speak at a
Chapman University that is in my ward boundaries but the investigator
that was going to come with us cancelled last minute so we didn't go.
But a lot of the ward members went and they said it was great! :)

Week of Conferences!

Hey family! We had a lot going on this week and it went by really
fast. We had an amazing zone conference with President Taggart on
Wednesday. We mainly reviewed all of the training that we received in
the specialized leadership training with the brethren from Salt Lake.
It was really good and there is so much that I feel like we will be
using that training we received for the rest of the trainings this
year. I really love it! It really is helping us teach simply and to
their understanding.

This week I got to go on exchanges with a new elder in the
district, Elder Valenzuela. He is sooo awesome! He just came from
Guatemala three weeks ago and it was so much fun being with a native.
He has great english because his school growing up is a bilingual
school, but he hasn't had to speak it in much conversation so it's a
lot of fun to help him learn, but I learned way more Spanish than he
probably learned English. My Spanish has come a long way. But he is a
great missionary and had prepared a lot with his two older returned
missionary brothers and dad so he already knows a lot of great
teaching and finding techniques. Plus he is contagiously happy and so
it was a really fun exchange. We taught a part member family, found
some families, saw the spirit work on a guy during a door contact that
was really great, and just taught with Elder Valenzuela and his
"greeny fire" for missionary work.

I also met one of the happiest kids I have met in my life this
week. Two weeks ago we heard a mom and daughter arguing about cleaning
the back porch so we poked our heads over a fence and asked if we
could help. They declined but said if we came back the next week they
would find something for us to do and that they would be interested in
listening to our message. So we went back and the daughter and her
little brother Jaime were waiting for us to come. They had finished
their project already but the kids knew we were coming so they had a
bag of trash ready for us so that we could take it out. They were
awesome! The whole time Jaime just had the biggest smile and he had so
many questions. It just made me so happy teaching them and I can't
wait to teach their whole family this week.

On Saturday and Sunday we had stake conference and had the
privilege of one of the seventy named Elder Packer to speak to us. He
still has very good Spanish from serving a Spanish speaking mission.
We also had the temple president, our mission president, Elder
Acosta(the area 70 in our ward), and another leader that spoke. All,
except for Elder Acosta, being very white and it was very interested
to hear them all speak Spanish. They did great though! Also all of
their wives spoke and some of them had never said a word in Spanish
before. I really loved it! Hearing them was amazing and at one point
he had all of us missionaries stand up and made us a promise that came
completely from the spirit. Elder Packer is an amazing speaker and it
was powerful when he testified of how the Book of Mormon came from
their ancestors. A young couple about to get married also spoke, and a
recent convert in our ward that has a rock solid testimony. We also
hear from a loving bold stake president that really knows the people
in the stake. He is an inspired man. What a great week and weekend to
hear from such wonderful leaders and members from the stake. It really
strengthened my testimony to hear so much testimony being shared. I
think there were only about 4 scriptures shared in the 4 hours that we
attended, and that shows how much was pure testimony sharing. I almost
felt like it was a stake fast and testimony meeting.

In the spirit of sharing testimony I would like to share mine about
Jesus Christ. I know that He is our perfect example, He did everything
that our Father in Heaven asked of Him. I know that He suffered a
perfect Atonement so that we could not only return to live with Him
but that we could also receive strength and help throughout our
journey here on this earth. I know that He gives us the power to
change and become clean when we accept Him into our lives. He gives us
peace in a world of trouble and hope in even the hardest of times. He
will always lead you to where you need to go. I love you all, have a
blessed week.

Love,
Elder Hyde

Menudo....

I finally ate menudo! I have heard a lot about this dish but I have
never had the pleasure of eating it. Menudo is a wonderful soup with
cow stomach, intestines, and hoof. It was surprisingly tasty and my
favorite part was the intestine. The hoof just didn't please my throat
going down. Now I wouldn't eat menudo from just anybody but it was
made from our loving Ward mission leaders wife. (You met them on the
Skype call on Christmas) So I trusted it because she is a really good
cook.

Now to some missionary work. :) This week we had a surprise 2 hour
district leaders meeting and it went really well. We are having some
changes in the way we conduct our district meetings which I really
like. We come up everything we share every single week. They used to
sometimes give us outlines but those will stop. Which is really good,
it makes us rely on the spirit while we plan and conduct the meetings
in stead of following an outline.

I would like to close by sharing a personal insight from my study
this week. I was reading in Mosiah 26 and thought it was amazing what
alma did when he was confronted with a problem. He wasn't sure how to
deal with discipline in the church and went to king Mosiah for the
answer. In verse 13 it says "And now the spirit of Alma was again
troubled; and he went and inquired of the Lord what he should do
concerning this matter, for he feared that he should do wrong in the
sight of God." Alma was confronted with a problem so he went to the
Lord. He ended up receiving a huge answer from the Lord from verses
15-32 but before he received an answer he did something really
important in verse 14 it says that he "poured out his whole soul to
God" I know that that is a key to receiving personal revelation. If we
really want God to speak to us and help us we must pray pouring out
out whole souls to God. That has been a huge blessing on the mission.
The prayers when I have poured out my whole heart have been some of
the most spiritually uplifting experiences in the mission. I know that
God loves us and will answer our prayers. Maybe we won't be faced with
how to lead the church like alma was but we are faced with other
challenges like how to lead our families, or give guidance and correct
to our children, family and friends. We may even face trials that we
don't feel strong enough to bear. But I know that if can pour out our
whole souls unto God in prayer, service, and sharing the gospel we
will find the happiness and direction that we are searching for. You
are all loved and prayed for every day!

Love,
Elder Hyde

In case you want to read more :D
http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm/mosiah/26?lang=eng

Happy Groundhog Day!

Hola familia!

Well things are quite different from last week. Last week was transfers and Elder Gardner and I get another transfer together! :) I am really excited about that! Another area opened up in our Ward and so now we have a van and get to travel around us 6 elders everywhere. It takes a really long time to go anywhere and so I don't have much time today.

This week was a little difficult because we had to drop(stop visiting) a big chunk of our investigators. They just haven't been willing to act on the message and so they need some time. Because of that we had a lot of time to visit some of our other investigators and we had a some great lessons. One guy named Ricardo is really sincere. We brought this awesome newly returned missionary with us and we all were just so happy after the lesson I couldn't stop smiling the whole night. The gospel really makes me happy, and seeing others accept it makes me even more happy.

We are still serving at the soup kitchen and are getting to know the people now. The volunteers love us and the homeless people love to tell us stories and jokes and tell us all the "deep Mormon doctrine" they have heard before. It's a blast. Service can cure any sadness and really helps me feel the Saviors love. So go find someone to serve! :D

Love,

Elder Hyde

Mission Leadership Council with the Proselyting department

This wonderful week had some ups and downs but looking back on it I
sure did learn a lot. We had three family home evenings within the
past week and those have been some of the greatest blessing for some
of our investigators. I really love this Ward and their desire to
bring souls unto Christ. We also starting teaching a members
girlfriend named Kimberly this week and she is really interest in the
gospel. Plus her boyfriends mom is a ward missionary and so she has
already been reading from the Book of Mormon and has some general
knowledge about what we believe. I love teaching people that want to
learn and are willing to change. She doesn't have much of a religious
background and seems worried about all that she is going to change,
but after just a week and a half of knowing her she has changed so
much it's amazing. The spirit is really working inside of her.

So also this week we had the wonderful privilege of having some
guys from Salk Lake from the Proselyting department come and share
some insightful tips and insights on how we can improve. A while back
all of the missionaries in the mission took a basic missionary survey
about teaching, learning, and a lot of random things. They also went
out to teaching appointments and finding opportunities with selected
companionships. Then they compiled the results from the survey and
proselyting, prayed and studied about what they should share and came
with a mountain of information, spirit, and great ideas on how we can
improve. They were very straight forward on some things that we aren't
doing very good as a mission and then gave us great feed back and
ideas on how to improve it. I loved it so much. Their names were
brother Jackman and brother Donaldson and they are great men. Brother
Donaldson was a missionary president in the San Diego mission when
they filmed the well know missionary footage of "The District 2" and
wow he sure knows his scriptures.

It was really fun to hear all of his stories about the behind the
scenes action of what happened during the filming of it all and what
he learned from the whole experience. Oh by the way, the meting we had
was 7 hours long... With a really short lunch break because they were
running behind on everything they wanted to go over. Some of the most
important things he shared with us was that our investigators can't
access the power of the Atonement without us. We receive the power of
the Atonement through the covenants we make with the correct authority
of God. Like baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost, the sacrament,
priesthood ordinances and temple ordinances are how we can receive the
power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ in our lives. Without these
ordinances we can't unlock the power of the Atonement. It really
touched me with how important our work is as missionaries, we are
literally helping other access the power of the Atonement in their
lives. I can't think of a better thing we could be doing. The point of
the restoration was to bring the fullness of the gospel back to the
earth, we cannot receive the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ
without the Atonement, and it's through the ordinances we make that we
are about the unlock the power of His sacrifice for us.

There are many things he shared especially about how us, and all
missionaries share way too much information with our investigators. We
aren't there to teach them just information, we are there to help them
feel the spirit, and know why they need to be baptized. After baptism
and receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost they will be able to learn
the doctrine a lot easier. They shared a new way to teach using the
pamphlets by basically just using the pictures. You can teach a simple
restoration with a baptismal invite in about 6 minutes that will be
way more productive and engaging for the investigators than a long
restoration lesson where they are filled with information and are left
confused. We use the pattern of when the angel visited Nefi in chapter
11 of first Nefi. We ask them to look at the picture, ask them some
inspired questions and then teach and testify of simple and true
doctrine. I really love teaching that way from the pamphlets and we
have seen a lot of success from applying it. When we do it, they
understand restored authority, and the need to be baptized. We haven't
had a lesson with a pamphlet since without inviting the investigator
to be baptized and so far they have all said yes.

I love this work, I know that our Heavenly Father and His son Jesus
Christ live. They know us, and love us and They want us to be happy
through obedience to the gospel.

I would like to leave you will an amazing quote from Elder Scott
"Don’t yield to Satan’s lie that you don’t have time to study the
scriptures. Choose to take time to study them. Feasting on the word of
God each day is more important than sleep, school, work, television
shows, video games, or social media. You may need to reorganize your
priorities to provide time for the study of the word of God. If so, do
it!"

Make time to study the scriptures! I love you all! :)
Èlder Hyde

The last 3 days...

So I know I just wrote Friday so I will keep this short and sweet.
:) I would like to start with an experience that I had last week that
I forgot to share. We didn't know where to go so we prayed for
guidance. We saw a big complex and decided to knock it as we were
knocking in this big complex we came upon a family that looked really
tired and wore out. We share the He is the Gift video and by the end
the mom was crying and the 4 younger girls were filled with emotion.
We testified of Jesus Christ and asked them what how they felt. They
explained to us that they were going through a tough trial and didn't
know where to turn. They felt the peace and comfort as we shared the
video and our testimonies with them and they said we were an answer to
their prayers. We gave them our information and tried to help them out
as much as we could but they didn't tell us very much about what they
were going through. The next day we received a phone call and they
wanted us to come by again. They had been advised that they would have
to leave their apartment in 2 days and would be homeless. The husband
lost his job and they had nowhere to turn. We worked with ward leaders
and we were put I change of finding a place for them to live. We
worked with other ward members and their family to move their
furniture and find them a place to live and there were a plethora of
miracles that weekend as we helped them out. We found them a place in
my old area where Elder Kemp is and now they are teaching the family!
:) it was great to feel of the love and appreciation that they had and
for Heavenly Father sending us to them. Prayers answered.

We have been really busy these past few days setting new ward
mission plans, working a lot with members, and just loving the work. I
know that God is looking over us, He feels sorrow when we pass through
difficulties, and He also feels joy when we are happy. I love you
family!

Elder Hyde

Just Serve! Finding Families and the Holiest Place on Earth

Well today is Friday, not Monday but it has been a glorious day
because we got to go to the Newport Beach temple today. It really is
the holiest place on earth. Today I really strengthened my testimony
of personal revelation at the temple. It really is the house of The
Lord. President Taggart has asked us to take our new mission motto
(Covenant keepers bringing a souls to Christ) to the temple and help
us relate the covenants we make in the temple to missionary work. It
was a very insightful trip to the temple and I know that God will give
us personal revelation and guidance if we truly seek Him.

Yesterday Elder Lindsay, my old companion in Santa Ana 5, and I got
to go on exchanges and we had a good day up until 8 but didn't feel
like anything miraculous had happened. We really tried to focus in on
where Heavenly Father wanted us to go and a family came to mind that
we haven't been able to teach since I have come to the area. We found
them home and they expressed some amazing miracles that had been
happening in their family and how prepared they have been by our
Heavenly Father. The mom said her son in Mexico has now read the
entire Book of Mormon and invited her family to read it. Then the
daughter told us how her really good friend just got married in the
temple. Then they just started asking us questions about the
difference between the Book of Mormon and the Bible and who Mormon
was. Then they taught themselves as we read the introduction together
and it was a great lesson. I'm really excited to work more with them.

Another great success we has was trying to put more emphasis in
service. We went and picked up trash around a neighborhood and right
when I was lacking faith that nothing good was coming from it a guy
came up to us telling us he was less active. He asked for a copy of
the Book of Mormon, asked us where the church was, and asked us to
come by to teach his part member family. What a miracle! The other
good service opportunity came from the sisters in our district. They
found a soup kitchen in our area and we are now going to be going
Tuesday's and Thursday's for 3 hours each day. I am really excited to
have more service and the people at the soup kitchen are wonderful. It
makes me so happy to serve! :)

It was another crazy preparation day and so that's all the time I
have but I hope that all is well. I love this work and I know that
Jesus Christ is our Savior.

Love,
Elder Hyde