The Adventures of My Life

Well, the 2nd week in Raleigh was good, topped off great with the baptism of the Umanzor family on Saturday!  Although, I wasn’t able to teach all of the lessons..in fact just got to teach a few, it was a great experience watching an entire family enter into the waters of baptism.  This is definately what the gospel of Jesus Christ is all about.  The Family..the most important social unit on this earth.  After seeing her son baptized, I could see that Morena Umanzor started to cry…the spirit was definately strong.  This being a missionary thing rocks!  But sometimes I look back, and see it flying by (today is my 9th months day…half of a sister mission!!), I feel like it’s going by too fast and there is nothing I can do to slow it down.  Other times, it feels like it will never need…just from a missionary perspective.

Well, I just walked into this last baptism, but I plan on finding a few families of my own here in Raleigh.  There are tons of things to do and lots of less-actives to visit.  This branch is growing like crazy, if we can get some of the less-actives to church, we will become a Ward!!  Imagine that…Elder Hardy being here when the first Spanish Ward in North Carolina is organized!!  It should be happening pretty soon, we have enough members to do it…just get the paperwork going and do it already!!  Good Times…well, Elder Monforte and I have been working hard, only problem is that we don’t have transportion and have to walk alot!  But that’s what I get for not having a bike…I wonder if things will change when the new president comes…but I’m fine with it.  Sweet thing about Raleigh is that we have dinner every night!  And they are goooood.   Like I’ve said in previous letters, hispanics know how to cook!

Our investigator pool is kind of thin right now, with La Familia Umanzor being baptized.  We have found a few good potential investigators though.  Last Friday, we tough a powerful lesson to a family.  She is from Peru and alot of her family is LDS and he is from Domincan Republic.  It was kind of funny, the first contact we made with her, I was only speaking English, cause she appeared to be american and was speaking good English back to me.  I told her we had missionaries who worked with the English people, but we were the spanish missionaries.  But…we found out they speak spanish!  So, hopefully we can help them to accept the gospel.  It’s hard sometimes, discerning people, or what language they speak…because you don’t want to look like a fool.  Because they are a lot different types of hispanics…darker, lighter…from tons of different countries.  One of the Elders also serving in the branch is from Argentina and he looks American.  So, a lot of times you just have to make an educated guess in what language to speak.

So, what’s going on in the outside world??  I have totally given up, time has passed by.  I know when I get home, it’s going to be a totally different world, I will have to catch up on a lot.  But right now, I’m just focusing on the gospel and developing relationships with the people here.  One thing I’ve learned on the mission is how to care about people.  Back home, of course, I cared about family and friends, but the people I didn’t know, I just kind of ignored.  And for that fact, it was hard for me to make lots of friends.  But I’ve learned out here how to go out of my comfort zone, and talk with everyone.  And I’ve really started to see that everyone really has good qualities.  It’s really been a blessing for me to find qualities I like in all people.

Well, general conference is coming up this next weekend.  I command everyone to watch all 4 sessions, because they are all very important.  We need to take advantage of the fact that we have a living prophet on the earth to guide us and reveal to us what we need to do to be happier and be more prepared.  I’ll be watching it and taking good notes…don’t know though if I should watch in Spanish or English…probably English.

Well
El Evangelio is Verdadero!
Elder Hardy

Well, my 6-month stay in Cary finally ended this last week and I begun a new 6-month chapter of my mission in…Raleigh, NC!!  This is the area that every spanish missionary wants to be in…the heart of the hispanic effort.  Cary is probably the 2nd best place.  So, I have been extremely blessed.  As you know, Cary is right next to Raleigh, and we actually covered alot of Raleigh (at least the south-western part of it).  And the area I am covering now is the eastern part of Raleigh, including Downtown Raleigh, which touches the border of my old area.  So, everything is about the same here, not too much different than Cary.  I don’t think I’ll ever be going anywhere remote, country-ish because of the fact I don’t ride a bike (President is very strict about having a limited number of miles).  We actually have 150 miles to work with in the month, which is basically nothing.  It’s frustrating, I wonder how the new mission president will do about it.  His name is President Wallace.  Don’t know hardly anything about him.  But in all modes, I’ll probably be in the triangle my whole mission or the majority of it…in Chapel Hill and Durham, probably my next two areas.

Well, Being in a new area, I also have a new companion of course.  And he is Elder Monforte from Mexico!  The thing about him is he only has 1 transfer left, so I get to be with him as he prepares to go home…what a great priviledge for me!  He’s a stud though, still working hard, still enduring until the end.  We actually have a baptism this next week of a family of 3…it’s pretty sweet.  There are a lot of things to do here in Raleigh.  The biggest challenge are retaining the members who are inactive.  There are tons of less-actives, because the people get baptized so fast and there is not enough support.  The members here have very little experience in the church, and for this reason, it is very unorganized.  The member list has tons of wrong numbers and addresses because there is no secretary who takes care of it.  It’s pretty bad, that’s the one big weakness of the branch I have seen so far.  If the majority of the less actives would come to church, this would be a ward by now.  I’ve already met alot of the members, they are sweet.  The branch president is from Argentina, he’s pretty cool.

Well…days seem like they are flying by right now…already have one week in Raleigh.  The weather has started to get cold again for some odd reason.  It was in the 80’s last week, but now it’s in the 50’s again…brrr.  I got a pretty bad sunburn last week playing tennis.  It was nice weather.  We also went to the RBC Center and the NC State Football center last monday, it was sweeet.  I got video of a Carolina Hurricanes hockey practice.  I wish we could have done that tour sooner.  I’m also looking forward to doing other things like that here in Raleigh.  There are a bunch of tourist sites that I would like to see during preparation day.  Also, we got to go to the Reorganized LDS Church.  I won’t say alot about that, just that fact it has absolutely nothing to do with our current TRUE church.

Well, sorry about the lack of letter
I’ll try to do better next week
Later, Elder Hardy

Well, this letter is going to be super short.  First thing, I recieved a call Saturday night, telling me I am going to be transferred.  So, tommorow I will find out where I am going.  Should be a big letter next with all the details.  Have spent almost 6 months in Cary, it’s time for a change.  It was hard saying good bye to all of the members though, they are awesome.  On another note, today we just took a tour of the RBC Center, it was sweeeet!!  That is the place where the Carolina Hurricanes (Hockey team) and NC State Basketball play.  I actually got some live footage of a segment from the Hockey practice…it was sweet.

But, I’ve got to leave y’all now, have a good week!!

Elder Hardy

Well, we just finishing moving all of the heavy furniture today.  Last week, I informed you all that we were *supposed* to move, but things didn’t work out.  They informed us on Thursday that the date was changed to today.  So, we promptly woke up at 6:30 as always and started moving, and with some help from some members, finished with all of the big things around 10 to 10:30.  I am so worn out right now from all of the stress mentally and physically.  And we still have alot of little things to move and have to clean the place up, it’s not going to be fun.  But, that’s what it is all about, it’s never fun to move, but it’s something that has to happen.  Our new apartment is in the same exact format as the last one, just is a whole lot cleaner.  But I was shocked that they approved it because from the back window, there is a full length view of the swimming pool.  It’s not bad right now, because no one is swimming, but when summer comes, the Elders in the apartment are going to be suffering big time.  It’s a good thing I’ll be leaving in 1 week.  If somehow I am not transferred, I will be shocked.  But it’s pretty much a lock right now.

Another bothering event this week was the car.  Last Friday, the CD player started acting up and wouldn’t accept a CD to be played.  It was making a sound and wouldn’t stop, even with the car turned off.  We didn’t quite know what to do, neither did our mission car coordinator a member we have that is a car expert.  Brother Sanders (car expert) told us it probably needed to be cleaned out (the CD player), so we were going to wait until today to buy the stuff to do that.  But yesterday we got into the car and the battery was dead.  Therefore, I made arragements for it to checked out..luckily, it was still under warranty so it doesn’t cost anything.  So right now, it’s at the Car dealership being looked at.  We will see what happens without a car…it’s been raining a little bit today and it’s still going to remain cold.  Finally going to get up to 70’s near the end of the week again.  The trees are already blooming here…it looks beautiful, especially the trees with flowers and different colors.  I also fear that my allergies will start to worsen as spring approaches.

Well, I recieved a couple comments that I don’t write about the investigators enough.  I will try better with that.  Just lately, we haven’t had hardly any progressing investigators or people at church.  Things are looking alot better though.  We finally were able to teach the family of Karen (our recent convert).  We had an appointment with Karen, but she wasn’t there.  Her brother answered, and we were just about to leave when your aunt invited us in.  We were able to have a good discussion with her aunt, and then later the entire family came and we watched “The Restoration”.  It was sweet.  Then the next day at church…guessed who showed up…Karen’s Aunt (Fanny) and her son!!  It was awesome.  I was sitting by them at sacrament meeting and she basically asked me how long it would take for her to get baptized.  I was surprised big time…they really enjoyed the church.  Too bad I won’t be here to see the baptism.  Also, I was pretty busy in Church.  We had to sing a song in our Sunday School, we had to give the lesson in Relief Society and I had to bear my testimony in sacrament meeting.  Then later, we didn’t eat until 7, I was so completely tired.  But it’s alright, I’m a missionary, I have renewed energy every day!

Things are going great still, as always missionary work is tough sometimes, but it’s also the greatest work in the world.  It is the single most important thing I can be doing with my life right now and I love it.  This is the work of God.  And I am so grateful to him for allowing me to be out here in the field once again, especially in this great land of North Carolina.  Study is great, Book of Mormon is the word of God for us and an evidence that Jose Smith es un profeta de Dios and that the Church of Jesus Christ has been restored to the Earth again.  I hope you all are still reading the Book of Mormon with prayer family and individually daily.  I know I was a slacker on that when I was back home (with family prayer)

Well, I hope there is nothing I missed out
Elder Hardy