This Week

Hola familia y amigos,

  This week was another Sunday of disappointments. We have this family who's progressing that promised to go to church and we passed by almost every day this week to be sure that everything went well and they were preparing for the Sabbath, but alas, they didn't fulfill their promise. The same things happened with other people that promised to go too. It's so tough to get people to come to church. But we just gotta keep trying.  

   We're halway through the month an I'm only in Omni. We'll see if I can get it finished before the end of the month. Maybe next P-day, I'll spend most the day reading.

   So one day this week, I was sitting at my desk, peacefully eating my breakfast when I felt something brush past my foot, had a brief panic attack, and saw something small and gray dart under the bed. I jump up on my chair and waited for it to crawl out to see what it was. It was a mouse. Or baby rat. I can't tell the difference. I tried to follow it to somehow capture it and get rid of it, but it scurried away too fast and then I lost it. Still don't know where it went and I'm nervous it's gonna come back. We cleaned our house really good again today and set some rat pellets and a piece of bread in one corner of the house in case another one comes. 

  Yesterday was stake conference and I loved the talks. It made me wonder how much time and thought each person put into preparing their talks and made me glad that they fulfilled their callings. This is a church of order. Imagine what it would be like if one of them just through their talk together, in the same way we sometimes do essays for school haha). I'm grateful for the hierarchy of leadership in the church.

  When we visited Luis and Mercedes this week, I started talking with Luis and he asked me to tell him the story of Joseph Smith so I told him the story of the First Vision and after he said, "No, tell me the story of Joseph Smith." So I said, "I just told you." And gave a brief resumen and he said, "No, but do you know the story of Joseph Smith" and said yes and asked what he thought it was. He proceeded to tell me that he was a drug addict and died in an accident and lead a pitiful life. Apparently, his pastor had shown him a book that talks about and critizes a bunch of different religions. Ah, it hurt me to hear him say such awful false things about a prophet of the Lord. I bore my testimony and told him he needs to pray and ask God. Anyway, we had another rough lessons with him trying to help him clear up his doubts about Joseph Smith and found out he had stopped reading the Book of Mormon, so we stopped talking about that doubt and focused on the Book of Mormon and explained that it is the evidence that this is the restored church of Jesus Christ and he finally commited to pray about the Book of Mormon. We'll see what happens with that family. We've lost almost all our possibilities for families to baptize this month and Luis and Mercedes are our last hope so we're doing everything posible to help them understand. I know without a doubt that Joseph Smith was a prophet because I know without a doubt that the Book of Mormon is the word of God. It's that simple. No drug addict could have possibly been the means of bringing to pass such a marvelous work and a wonder. If Luis would just start reading again, he would know that. 

  Transfers are this Saturday. Anything could happen. We losing like 34 missionaries and getting 28 new ones so they will be a lot of changes. 

  Sorry this was kind of a boring letter. Hopefully next week's will be better. Love you all and hope you are looking for missionary opportunities! 

Con amor, Hermana Hawkins