Monday, March 9, 2015

Week 87 - Business As Usual

Hello All!
    Another transfer has passed us by, and the Medicine Hat zone has got some great new missionaries.  It's gonna be a great transfer, and I can't wait to see what the Lord has in store.  It's been a fun and busy week with missionaries leaving, missionaries coming, and everything else going on in our area.  Things are good.
    There have been some miracles and some disappointments as far as finding the people the Lord has prepared for us this week.  I'll let you know right off the bat that Michelle is no longer interested in meeting with us.  Our second lesson with her fell through, so we called to set up another one, and she let us know that she had a couple of churches she was looking into joining, and I guess we weren't on the list.  However, in testimony meeting yesterday, the non-member wife of a returning member got up to bear her testimony of prayer, and said something like "though I'm not a member...yet." I really admired her courage in getting up to say what she said, and we're working with the ward to see if she does have interest in meeting with us at the moment.  We will see!  There was also a young woman in the ward who apparently has a friend we gave a Book of Mormon to while tracting, and may be interested!
    Otherwise, we're working with some awesome less-actives right now.  One couple we've met with a couple of times, Jason and Brenda, seem to be especially enthusiastic about coming back to church.  They haven't made it yet, for a variety of reasons, but we're hopeful that will change soon.  We also started meeting with an older woman named Eva this week who was baptized several years ago by a senior couple, but stopped coming for health and other reasons.  Her home teacher invited her to meet with us a few weeks ago to take the lessons again, and she accepted!  So, we started to do that this week, and it was a really cool experience to see the Spirit influencing her.  It's been a great blessing to see the Lord soften hearts so that they can receive His Spirit.
    In our bible study class last week, we reviewed Acts 17 and a scripture I already knew stood out to me a little more.  In chapter 17, Paul is preaching to the Athenians about the nature of God, and teaches them this: "For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring." (v. 28)  Something else I've realized as a missionary is how important our immediate family relationships and experiences are, and that the family really is the best possibly place to learn things like love, communication, patience, forgiveness, fun, and lots of other great things too.  No matter what happens in our families, there's still love, and I wonder what would happen if we all realized more and more that each and every person on earth really is a son or daughter of God, and therefore, that we all are really brothers and sisters, one big family.  How would that change the way we treat each other?  How quick would we be to forgive?  How much heartache and hate and envy could be avoided?  I ask those questions because I'm not terribly good at seeing my brothers and sisters for who they truly are, but I hope to get a lot better at it, and I hope to make the people around me one big happy family.
    I hope you all have a fantastic week!  I'm so grateful for your love and emails.  It really means a lot to hear from you all.  Be good!  Have fun!

Love ya,
Elder Hafen

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