Letters 8/05/13 and 8/12/13

Dear Family, Well, being true to my character, I once again promise a short letter chalk full of nonsensical whims of my imagination. Just to let you know, I did start this letter Monday, but have been super busy and now it is our lunch hour on Thursday. I still haven't forgotten all of you, even though it may seem like it; Life is too often in the way of the important "things" This past week has been full of everything, moving, meetings, and mini-missionaries. We moved living quarters, which took a day longer than we anticipated. We expected to be all done on our P-Day (Monday of last week), but we didn't finish until Wednesday morning @ 1:30 AM. We had to finish early because we had a mini-missionary coming to our apartment at 8:00 AM, and we had NOTHING organized. Our missionary was amazing. He is a local priest from elsewhere in the stake who came out proslyting with us for 2 days. We were able to introduce him to the world of walking and talking to everyone. At first he was shy, but we witnessed a miracle in the watching of his confidence grow. We were sad to part ways. But Friday did come. On Friday we had the WVM 1st Mission Leader Council (MLC). For the first time I was able to see the other, more "realistic" side of President Taylor, and it was amazing. That sounded bad...let me put it this way. I think I realized for the first time how powerful of a leader President Taylor is. As he fills his role as a Mission President, it reminded me of the type of leader Christ was and is. Strong, confident and loving. Well, love you all! Lunch is over. Love, Elder Hamblin 8/12/13 Dear Family, I apologize now for the bad handwriting, we are currently driving up to Mt. St. Helens...yes it is in our Zone. We haven't been able to coordinate rides previously, and today only 4 of us are headed to this magnificent site. No one else wanted to head up with us, so we alone sit in a member's van. I have seen many magnificent places, but this one is looking to be one of the better ones. This experience has been here the whole summer, but we have never been here to experience it. It is a little bit like life. Anyway, Elder Ewell and I have been working hard to build up the area and help the members open up and share the gospel. We are seeing some of the fruits of our efforts, but for the most part we are seeing the seeds planted by some other disciple's labors. When we contact people, the first reaction comes from past experiences with members or missionaries, whether good or bad, we take what they already know to be true and try to add to it. Often times they try to reject what we say, but we can see the truth settle deep within them. One such experience pops into my mind from the week gone. When I was in Woodland we received a call from a member referring us to member in the Longview 3rd Ward (my current ward). we sent the referral off and went about our work. When I came to this area, the lady who was referred by the Woodland member was one of the few investigators we had; we have been meeting with her since. Little progress has been shown since we began meeting with her, which was a worry to both Elder Ewell and myself. as we sat pondering what to do, we scanned over her teaching record in our weekly planning session. A teaching record simply shows what we taught, how it was received and the commitments we have extended, plus the ones that they have kept. We have taught many of the principles and all of it was accepted very well, but the commitments were not being kept. As we poured over the record, nothing in particular stood out. Over and over again we questioned what we need to do to help her progress in the Gospel. We looked at the commitments, we have extended (a practice I personally need to improve on). A particular commitment rested firmly in our minds; "Introduce family and friends to the missionaries". We had talked with this lady about her husband, and she said that he was an Atheist. We decided to at least ask her if she thought it would be a good idea to introduce him to us. the next time we met with her after we decided to ask her, she came to us and told us that she wanted her husband to meet with us! What an answer to our prayers! When we met with him he said it was about time to meet with us and come to know God in his life. He had secretly began believing in God and wanted to know who he is. Never have we seen his wife so excited about the Gospel, it is a miracle to see what the Gospel does in our lives when we involve our families. The process is still slow, but they are both progressing very well. Love you all! Love, Elder Rex Hamblin