The Adventures of My Life

***Please reply to this to the new email address: michaelhardy@myldsmail.net I don’t have anyone’s email address because I can’t use my old email…So send mail here so I can add you to the address book!***

Well, well, well…hopefully this letter gets out this week. Last week, I had the whole letter written and sent it but the server went down and I lost it all. It was one great letter, basically I forgot everything from that letter so I’ll just start fresh.

Sick, Sick, Sick. This has been my week and the week of my roommates. Somehow, I managed to get the plague and pass it on to Elder Jenson and now my comp Elder Staheli. In last weeks letter, I told the story how I had got the cold and I had to give a talk in church..but I was getting over it…that was not the case. It all started Thursday (the 20th) with a horrible sore throat. It then escaladed to misery, especially Sunday and the worst was Tuesday. I slept a few extra hours. But I started feeling better after that, only coughting mildly at night. But then the 2nd round hit me (or maybe just another strain) yesterday during church and right now I am just exhausted. I’m weezing pretty bad and my nose is runny, my cough has gotten pretty bad. It’s definately not cool being sick but especially as a missionary as Julie would know, it really is a bother. We have people to teach, places to go but the body just can’t handle it. Elder Staheli seems to just have gotten it, so the next few days should be interesting. It is one of the worst colds I’ve gotten since I can remember. But were working on getting rid of it.

Not much exciting things have happened this week, the last week was pretty cool. Oh, we did have a Chili Cookoff at the church on Saturday. That was fun, one of our part member families was there. Anyways, that’s when I was actually feeling really good..as for right now…

Pray for me to get better.

Michael had a computer failure in North Carolina, so no post this week. Maybe Wilma swept away his email as it went flying by.

Greetings from the great state of North Carolina! How is everydoing this afternoon? Having fun enjoying your world ways? Well, this P-day has come at a good time, it was a tough week at times but I made it through. A couple days, almost all of our appoinments fell through and we didn’t have anyone to teach and we did a lot of tracking and didn’t find any success. You would be amazed to see how many hispanics are really here, especially recent. We were just teaching a guy the other day from Honduras who has been in the states for 6 months and we came back and there was another guy who listened to us who had only been here 6 days! I think we do deal with a lot of illegals, and it doesn’t make it better when 2 guys in suits come knocking at their door, I think they terrified of us! Especially when both of us are pretty big. Overall, it was a good week, but no investigators showed up to sacrament meeting again, which is a killer when you have them commit to come.

Yesterday, Elder Staheli hit another car when he was backing up. I was standing outside backing him out but at the last second I started walking to the door but he backed up a little more and hit the front of a car. Our car has a little tiny scratch, but the other guy has a dent in the front corner of the car. So, all we could do was leave a note and leave, although we should have reported it. Anyways, he called later yesterday night and came over this morning. The guy is from West Africa (Who was parked illegaly in the first place), but it is kinda turning into a mess now. Elder Staheli is bummed, I don’t know how much it’s going to cost to fix it. Anyways, so that has kind of put a damper on this morning.

Well, I keep trying to work hard on my spanish, although I do have my ups and downs. My confidence is always wavering, I can pretty much do a door approach by myself and understand the general idea of what they’re saying, but it’s rough sometimes. I get Spanish headaches. Last night, we had a fiesta at one of our recent converts house and the ward mission leader and his family was there. Oh, the food was so good, I wish we were fed more…usually about 1 or 2 week while the english missionaries get fed every day. But we had barbeque and homemade tortillas and the hottest salsa I have ever tasted. It made our ward-mission leader, who is from mexico, cry! It was awesome…I only had a little tiny bit, but that got me pretty good.

The work is going good, I’m glad to be a missionary and teach the word, even if is in broken Spanish. Thanks everyone for you letters and cards and things, I will try to reply to real mail with real mail and emails. Well, don’t really have much to say (I do, I just forgot it all) except my baseball team sucks because once I leave, they are on the verge of the world series! STUPID ASTROS!!

Con Amor,
Elder Michael Hardy

First off, start sending email at this new email address: michaelhardy@myldsmail.net

Well, I’ve almost been in Carolina for 2 weeks now…crazy how fast time flies! This last week, we had a little rain and it seems to be cooling off to the 60’s. I’ve heard it actually gets a little chilly here in the winters and we’ve already been assigned to wearing our suit coats full time unless it gets over 75. The one bad thing about being here are the mesquitos, I have tons of mesquito bites, some of the areas are like little swamps. I’m sure it’s a lot worse in the summer though.

This last week, we taught 20 lessons and worked really hard. The downer though was none of our investigators made it to church…that is probably one of the toughest things to see your investigators break their commitments. It is hard with the hispanics because they work every day of the week just to make a living, they really can’t afford to make a sacrfice like that. I just wish they would make a law that you couldn’t work on sunday, then we would be able to baptize millions. We have one investigator, a 16-year old who has a baptismal date, but she hardly isn’t reading and she has only been in church 1 time in the 2 months she’s been investigating. I don’t know if she really wants to get baptized or if she is just trying to be a nice to 2 college aged guys. It’s crazy, Hispanics are so nice, they’ll say yes to anything you say, but they really don’t mean it. It gets frustrating sometimes….

Well, yesterday I had my first real day of spanish church, I came home with a headache because I had never inhaled so much spanish in my life! They have a little branch of about 15 member families, so it’s not bad…they filled up the entire testimony meeting and they have dedicated teachers for all of the classes, so I won’t get the priviledge very often to teach a lesson with a 5 minute warning. I bet I’ll have to give a talk in the next few weeks..hehe, but I’ll be alright.

We had some crazy days this week, when all of our appointments fall through and it looks like it’s not going to be a productive day, then all of a sudden some opportunity comes up and it makes everything better. On Wednesday, we were on exchanges and both of our appointments AND our backup plan fell through and we didn’t have anything to do. But the exchange just mentioned he had hispanic neighbors who he and his wife have been trying to talk to, so we decided to go over there and we taught them the 1st lesson, it was pretty cool. Then the next day, it was raining pretty constant in the morning and we only talked to one dude the whole time we were tracking and then we went to another trailor park and no one was home except for kids. So, in that same trailor park, we went and visited a recent convert and a women and her daughter she had told us about before came walking up to the trailor and we got to teach them in her house! For anyone who hasn’t done missionary work, teaching investigators in a members house is like the best you get…like gold. Entonces, the Lord always provides work for us to do if we work hard, It’s amazing.

Well, I don’t know what else to write, so I’m going to end my message here: !Que tengan un buen dia!

Con Amor,
Elder Hardy

For those of you who want to write a letter, this is Michael’s snail mail address:

Elder Michael S. Hardy
North Carolina Raleigh Mission
6508 Falls of Neuse, Suite 100
Raleigh, North Carolina 27615-6845

I think you can reach him on email at michael@hardys.org. We will post a different email address if it becomes available.

Octubre 3, 2005
Volume #1, Issue #1

Well, Finally Here!

Got to Carolina last Monday and have been busy ever since. The weather
here is great..off course I haven’t seen the cold winters (around
40-50) and I haven’t seen the steaming hot summers (90-100 w/ lots of
humidity), but it’s perfect right now, around 70. I am serving in the
Cary 3rd branch, which is pretty close to Raleigh. My new comp. Elder
Staleh is from Sandy, UT and has been on a mission for about 10 months
now. The weird part is he actually went into the MTC a couple weeks
after I left! Anyways, I am doing fine and we are having lots of fun
and teaching lots. We also have 2 other missionaries, english speaking
in our apartment, so it makes it hard to speak the language…and man
it is hard understanding people, all I can do is smile and nod my head.
One of the other missionaries is leaving in 5 weeks, and he is
starting to get a little crazy..the other one is kind of wierd…but it
makes for some good entertainment.

Well, we had to get up super early last Monday (3:00 in the morning) so
we could make it to the airport. Somehow my carry-on had a pair of
scissors! So, they had to go through all of my stuff and come to find
out the scissors were in a outside pocket! The ride was cool, we had a
hour layover in Pheonix were I called the house and talked to mom. The
ride to NC was long, about 3 a and half hours, but when I finally saw
North Carolina and all of the trees and lakes, i fell in love. NC is
so beautiful, no wind, no snow, no Utah! Haha, I do kind of miss the
mountains..but that is all. All the people here are super friendly,
especially the Hispanics, they will do anything for you. We have
taught tons of lessons, the hispanics are very receptive to our
message, they will always lesson even if they don’t want to. The few
white people we have came across have always told us within the first
few seconds that they go to another church and aren’t interested. It’s
good to be a spanish speaking missionary!

Anyone see general conference? I really enjoyed Elder Nelson,
Uchtdorf, and Erying’s talks. I didn’t have to watch conference in
SPanish, thank goodness, but it was cool socializing with them. In
between the two sessions, they had a little lunch, supposidly they
always do things like that, they love to party and have fun! Lets
see..what else..I am enjoying the work so far..We haven’t knocked on
too many doors but that ones we have, we have had good success with
them. Elder Stalieh had a baptism a few weeks ago and we have a couple
investigators that are getting pretty close. The success for the
spanish side of the mission is skyrocketing..they’ve already tripled
the amount of baptisms from last year…amazing. Like 3 years ago,
they only had 4 spanish elders, now they have 36 with more coming!
It’s pretty awesome..Hispanos Rock! Well, I better get going
now…wish me luck!