The Adventures of My Life

Here is another update from Elder Hardy… Things are going well here in Wilson, although, I started sneezing alot yesterday and my throat started hurting last night, and right now, I pretty much feel  miserable with a cold.  I have been trying to counter it with all of the cold remedies that I have, but the cold appears to be winning…at least for this moment.  Let’s see…everything looks ready for the baptism for Michelle Mendez this next Sunday.  We just finished teaching her the lessons yesterday after church, and she is going to be having the baptismal interview on Wednesday.  Looking back, this is the quickest baptism I have had from the start of the lessons.  We started teaching her on Sept. 5th and she will be baptized on Oct. 1st in between the 2 sessions of General Conference.  So, that is about 3 and 1/2 weeks.  The previous record was 4 weeks with Karen in Cary.  But, in reality, I have had nothing to do with it…it’s just they were both ready and willing to keep commitments.  It’s pretty cool.  The baptism and temple day are definately the best part of being a missionary.  Although I have not seen anyone I baptized get sealed yet..I’m hoping Sandy and Santiago there in Cary are still working towards that.

Well, I feel a little..light headed right now…so I hope my e-mail doesn’t sound wierd, but I am enjoying the time with Elder Guerrero.  It definately is hard right now…it wasn’t meant to be easy.  But, we pass by the same people, it seems like every day.  There isn’t much change here.  I believe an apostole once said that Missionary work can sometimes seem like an endless routine, and that is true here in Wilson, but we have fun and we seem to achieve success.  This next week, transfers are coming, so I should find out if I am leaving Wilson or staying for another 7 weeks.  I think it’s a 50-50 right now, I really have no clue what is going to happen.  But, that’s all I can say for now.

Well, I don’t have much to say this week, other than I am really looking forward to General Conference.  I have heard that President Hinckley did not look very good at the Relief Society broadcast, so I was wondering how much time our beloved Prophet has left.  I am looking forward to hearing from him again and also the other apostoles…General Conference is like Christmas for us missionaries.  Those are the only real holidays..GC and Christmas.   Speaking of holidays, I can not believe Halloween is coming up soon and that in 2 days, I will have been in North Carolina for 1 year.  Crazy.  Last Halloween, I was super sick from a bad cold.  It seems I am always getting sick with the weather changes.  It’s starting to cool down a little bit, to the 70’s and it appears that the leaves are starting to fall off of the trees again…it’s already fall.

Anyways, hope everyone has a good week at school, work and play!!

Elder Hardy

The weather is cooling down and fall is fast approaching.  I am not looking forward to pulling all of my winter clothing out all again…my gloves, my hat, my trench coat.  I am actually thinking about buying a coat, the rain trench coat wasn’t that effective last winter (neither was it very “attractive” looking).  Everything is going alllllright here in Wilson.  A few sweet things happened this week, let me explain:

We taught Michelle the 2nd lesson (plan of salvation) and it went awesome.  I love visited that family, they rock and always feed us great-tasting food.  The one thing I have missed though are papusas from the El Salvadorenos.  Yeah, we have noone from our branch from there.  But the food is still good here, although we only 2-3 times a week with the members, if we are lucky.  Anyways, back to Michelle, we moved the baptismal date from the 30 of Sept. to the 1st of Oct, because Sunday would be a little more convinient.  We should be doing the baptismal between the morning and afternoon sessions of General Conference, so think of me during this time, knowing we are going to have a baptism!  It is way firm, she is ready to do this.  Also, I am looking forward to General Conference, I love it!  I wish I would have paid more attention when I was growing up and went to the Priesthood sessions.  I really missed out on so much.  Really, being out here on the mission has made me realize the importance of being active not only going to church every Sunday, but also going to the activities and all of the other stuff to help out even more.  When I was growing up, I chose to skip a lot of the youth activities, camp-outs, scouts and other things.  I am now regretting that as I know Dad told me I would.

I feel, while I have been out on the mission, that I have learned the importance of hard work and dedication to the church and the importance of obedience.  Although I have not been the best and I have lots of work to do, I have started to realize the importance of the church in my life and the impact it has had on me and the rest of the people.  Well, we also had the chance to go to Kinston to out Zone Conference and hear from Elder Douglas Callister, from the 2nd quorum of the 70.  It was something very special.  If any of you all have ever heard him, you would know he has very very powerful delivery skills.  It seems he puts his thoughts in perfect, beautiful phrases.  It was amazing.  He talked about some great things, how planning wasn’t just a mission thing, how it was to used throughout the rest of this life and the life to come.  Our greatest, most precious gift that Heavenly Father has given us is his time.  We should all use to wisely.  He talked to us about talents, how everyone has there one talents and they aren’t something just acquired him in this life, but we have been working on developing them since we begun in the pre-existence.  Also, he talked about the reality of pray and the importance of scripture study to help us develop the talent of spirituality, the most important talent that we can be blessed with.  That it was the same talent that Christ possesed while he was in his ministry.  It was a great, powerful spiritual experience, that helped me personaly to strive to improve and kept chugging along out here in North Carolina.

It seems like everyone I am going home with (like 17 of us) is getting truncky (I guess I would say I am included a little bit), just because of the fact they just reached their 15 month mark.  Technically, it is different for me, mine is the 27th.  But the day we hit the mark, Elder Blakely (one I live with, also going home with me) was on exchanges with Elder Davis (another one going home).  So all 4 of us in the apartment were going home together on the night of our month mark.  We all went out to celebrate at Cici’s Pizza.  But, everyone has went back to normal.  I am back to concentration mode.

Well, I hope everyone enjoys the upcoming week, I know there are some birthdays coming up and that everyone should be having lots of fun.

Love,
Elder Hardy

Well, it was a pretty interesting week.  Honestly, I don’t know where to start since last week’s e-mail was so short.  I don’t know if I ever mentioned that Hurricane Ernesto came through here.  There were lots of winds and lots and lots of rain.  It really didn’t destroy anything, but it was a cool experience.  Well, a lot happened this week.  Started out on Tuesday:

We had our ZDM/interviews with President Wallis.  That was really cool.  I helped out a little bit in ZDM and everyone loved it..but I can’t tell the story about it or it would ruin the surprise when I get home…hehe.  Anyways, the highlight of Tuesday was in the evening, we finally got to go see the Lopez Family and teach their daughter (Michelle) and her aunt (Guadalupe).  They just arrived from Mexico about a month and a half ago, have already gone to church a few times.  But, the problem was that we could never go up to visit them (they live a good 30 minutes away, about 25 miles through rural areas).  So, we finally arranged an exchange to take us up there.  And it was a sweet lesson.  All of the family (all members with strong testimonies) were all sitting in with Michelle and Guadalupe, backing up our lesson with their testimonies.  Like Elder Guerrero said, it was one of those lessons you only teach at the MTC.  Everything went perfect, we taught all the principles in about 45 minutes.  We did not extend the invitation to be baptized as we wanted to do it in the next visit.  But it was sweet.  Then on Saturday, we returned to teach them (due to some lucky circunstances).  We were planning on going but we couldn’t get a hold of our exchange (Bro. Garcia).  So, we went ahead and canceled the appointment at around 4 pm Saturday (the appointment was scheduled for 6:30).  We went out again to do some contacting at the mall and we returned at the house at around 5:30.  Brother Garcia called us a few minutes later and told us that he could still give us a ride up there…he was just returning from the temple in Apex.  So, we called Angel Lopez again and rescheduled the appoitment in the evening.  It was another sweet lesson, this time just with Michelle (who is 15 years old), we talked about the book of mormon mostly and then we extended the invitation to get baptized.  She hesitated for a few seconds (seemed like forever), with the whole family looking on, and then she yes.  It was sweet.  So, we set the date for the 30 of September, general conference weekend.  So, hopefully everything will go well and we can teach all of the lessons by then (it might be the last weekend in Wilson).

Well, on Wednesday (Sept. 6th, 2006, the date I turned 21 years old), we had tons of appoitments…knowing it was going to be my birthday, we had some good appointments with less-actives and also with a good investigator.  I was super physched, I ran hard in the morning exercise, had a great study, even finished the book of mormon in spanish again.  We were going to visit with a preacher from another church, Pastor Cacho at 11, then with Sister Berlanga at 2 and then with the Pennell Family at 4, and then in the evening, Brother Houston at 7 and Jorge Leon at 8.  Well, I called the first appt., Pastor Cacho and he told me he was in Raleigh and couldn’t talk with us…Cancelled appt. #1.  So, for the back-up plan, we went to the library to make a map with the directions to get to the church.  That didn’t work out so, we ended up going to lunch with Christina (a recent convert, who remembered it was my birthday).  That was awesome.  Afterwards we went to visit Sister Berlanga…she had a visitor and couldn’t talk with us…Cancelled appt. #2.  After than we did a few stop-bys with less-actives, no success, and then other stop-bys, no success, and then went to our appointment with the Pennell Family.  We were invited in the trailor by their daughter but she came and told us that the parents were sick in bed and also they had to work at night…Cancelled appt. #3.  Also, to add fuel to the fire, they live way out there in the country, so we wasted tons of miles to go see them.  Afterwards, we tracked a trailor park we saw on the way..no success.  So, we came home and ate a quick, small dinner (mostly the contents of the package I recieved from the family), and we headed off to go see Brother Houston.  He was not there…Cancelled appt. #4.  Then we went to go see Jorge Leon a little early, but he told us he was going to the store and he would be back shortly.  Then, when we returned he told us he had a drink before and didn’t feel like he should study under his condition.  Nevertheless, we still ended up teaching him a quick lesson about repentance.  So, we finally taught…but just but pity…Cancelled appt. #5.  Well, we decided to go to a mexican tienda to buy a piece of Tres Leches cake, because it was my cumpleanos.  But the first one we went to, they didn’t have any left!  Then, we went to another…they also didn’t have any!!  I couldn’t even get a piece of cake!  But, all was well, we bought a shake, so that kept me satisfied.  But all in all, it was a very entertaining day, I wasn’t down or anything, it was just another day of missionary work, but it was kind of funny how nothing worked out…hehe.

Well, yesterday, we gave talks in sacrament meeting.  That went pretty well, we only had 23 at church, kind of low for us.  Michelle came to church, but not Guadalupe.  Michelle is really cool, at first, she was very timid, but she is starting to open up to Guerrero and I.  I think that she thought it was weird that a tall american was speaking spanish to her (cause she just got here from Mexico), but seems like it’s all good now.  Wilson is going good, but I hope to be changing…I don’t know if I can keep up the work for another transfer here.

Thanks everyone for the cards and package from the family. Elder Hardy

Well, this will be a very short e-mail, cause there is only one computer free here at the school library, so I need to hurry a little.  Anyways, it was a good week, the new news is that I have recieved a new companion….someone I actually have been companions before…with Elder Guerrero from Ecuador, it was crazy, when I saw him come out of the car…I didn’t know what to think.  We are enjoying the time so far and also that we may have a baptism in the near future because a 15 year old non-member daughter recently moved from Mexico to be with her member (recent convert) mom.  The whole family are members and she is already reading the Boof of Mormon and we haven’t even taught her yet.  Well, everything is going alright..should be a good next week with my birthday and everything….21 years old!

Well, hope everyone has a good holiday…let’s see if I have more time to write if some people get off.

Elder Hardy.