Email 3/31/14

Life is good here in the great PDX! I love it here! I thought it was
going to be a little harder focusing on a smaller area, but The Lord
has truly blessed us. We have been working with some pretty amazing
people as of late, and they all seem to be progressing very well.
Before this last week we were thinking about dropping many of them,
but they have all made significant progress and we are doing our best
to help them out anyway that we can.

We have been working with a part member family where the husband is
not yet a member. He has had many questions about the church and
religion in general. We have met with them a few times and each time
things seem to go from bad to worse. There was one week when we were
on exchanges and I had left the area. Elder Ehrenzeller and the
missionary he was with went to their house for the lesson. That whole
day Elder EZ had a headache, and at dinner our members had given him
some medicine for the headache. Well they turned out to be high doses
of sleeping pills and Elder EZ fell asleep! Poor guy, he always tried
so hard to present himself in a way that is acceptable! Anyway, this
family was beginning to wonder if we really knew what we're doing.
Yesterday was the husband's birthday and so Elder Aragon had suggested
that we "build him a cake or something." So we baked him a cake and
took it over to him. He was more than a little shocked when we showed
up to his door with cake and sang him Happy Birthday. His wife was not
home, but he let us in anyway. We started talking about the church and
what made it different from the other religions. Up to this point he
was not too interested about the church and really didn't care, so we
told him of the Book of Mormon and why it was so important. After some
time had passed he became faceted to every word that we were saying.
We invited him to pray and he turned us down. I told him that I would
pray simply first and he could just follow my pray. When I finished
praying he tried to skirt the situation and change the subject.
Finally he agreed to say the prayer. There is nothing more powerful
than hearing a child of our Heavenly Father pray for the first time.
The peace and comfort that filled my soul could only be a fraction of
what our Heavenly Father feels for us. Afterwards he didn't want us to
leave and followed us all the way put to our car. I love this place!

Sorry I haven't written in forever!! I am the worst missionary in the
world! I will try and do better! I love you all!! You are the best!

Elder Hamblin