Hello All!
I want to first thank
Bishop Denos, Brother Saxton, and Brother Carlsen for their excellent
service as my bishopric for the past 5 years. You've all had such a great
impact on my life.
It's been a busy, fun, and eventful week! Sadly,
though, I don't have as much time to write this as I'd like, since this
week is also going to be a busy, fun, and eventful week. On Wednesday,
Elder Alpentista and I will be going to the Cardston temple with one of
the departing missionaries here, Elder Engstrom, so we're taking off
some time from our emailing to make up for it. Sorry about that. :(
Part of the busyness of the week is that we got to go on exchanges
with a couple of our fantastic district leaders. On Tuesday, I went out
to Brooks with Elder Keck, a Spanish-speaking missionary, while Elder
Alpentista came here with his companion. Brooks is kind of like taking a
little chunk of east Calgary and throwing it out in the middle of the
prairie, so I definitely felt at home, even though I sat through a
lesson that I really couldn't understand. (I did get to bear my
testimony of the Book of Mormon in Spanish, though! It still felt about
the same.)
On Thursday night we drove up to Calgary for
a meeting we had there on Friday. It was a great experience seeing a
lot of my really good missionary friends and talking about how we can
improve our mission. We had a cool opportunity to talk with Brother
Hemmingway from the missionary department over FaceTime, as well, about
how we can use online proselyting more effectively; He gave me quite a
few ideas.
While we were in Calgary, I also learned
something I probably could have seen coming, but I didn't. I'm
apparently coming home a week earlier than I thought I was. I thought
that I would fly home on the 3rd of July, just in time for Independence
Day after celebrating my last Canada Day in the field, but I guess I'll
be coming on the 26th of June instead. We're getting a new mission
president this summer, so that's the primary reason for it; It will make
things easier on him, which is awesome! I'm still trying to reconcile
all of this for myself, though. Don't get me wrong, I'm incredibly
excited to see all of you, but I bet you can probably sympathize a
little with how I'm feeling.
This has actually given me a lot of
opportunity to ponder something I've already been thinking of a lot
lately: Enduring to the End. We all have to endure to the end of our
lives if we're going to achieve our divine potential, but we also need
to endure to the ends of the different phases of our lives if we're
going to learn and grow from them as much as our Heavenly Father wants
us to. We all have a lot of those phases, and this on for me has been
the most rewarding one so far by far. It will hard to see it end, but
I'm going to do my best to follow the commandments we're given in the
Book of Mormon: "And now, my beloved brethren, after ye have gotten into
this strait and narrow path, I would ask if all is done? Behold, I say
unto you, Nay; for ye have not come thus far save it were by the word of
Christ with unshaken faith in him, relying wholly upon the merits of
him who is mighty to save. Wherefore, ye must press forward with a
steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love
of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting
upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the
Father: Ye shall have eternal life." I hope we all choose to do that,
whatever we're doing! I know we can with the grace of our Savior.
I love you all so much! Have a fantastic week, and don't forget to return with honor.
Be good! Have fun!
Love,
Elder Hafen
No comments:
Post a Comment