WEEK 93 & 94: April 12, 2021

 

These are Elder Hammond's neighbors who he gave Kendamas to

Wow!!  This was another great week IN Midland.  Sorry the email is so late!! (He sent it last Friday) We had a crazy busy week and I finally have a minute to write. We had been trying to get in contact with an investigator of ours for the entire time I've been here to no avail!  We tried calling, texting, Facebook, and even tried contacting home through members!  But what we ended up needing to do was just to wait. He called us this last week and said he'd noticed his life was better when he was meeting with the missionaries and going to church. And he said he would like to meet with us that week on Friday.  We had an awesome lesson about the power of prayer, and how helpful it is to build a personal relationship with God and Jesus Christ.  He liked the message a lot, and said he'd apply what we'd taught.  His name is Josh and he's super awesome.  I think he'll probably get baptized in a few weeks (hopefully before I leave Midland!).

We had the chance to do a ton more service this week.  I love doing service.  As I read through the gospels of the New Testament, I notice that during the ministry of Jesus Christ he tended to focus more on serving people, and teaching people through serving them. That's something I'm super glad I'm getting to see work out here in Midland.  Texas is straight on the "Bible belt" and many people have misconceptions or mixed ideas about the church and our beliefs.  It's awesome to put ourselves out there to serve, and help people understand that our church is very focused on kindness, and serving those around us (and we aren't a cult haha).

We had an awesome district council this week.  We talked about the reasons why we served a mission. We did an activity where we split a paper in three parts, and wrote down three things

-the reason we chose to serve a mission in the first place

-our current reason for being here

-What we need to do better to align ourselves with that purpose. 

I loved this.  It applies to a mission well, but I think it's more powerful when thinking about reasons we chose to be baptized, stay a member of the church, and what we can do to improve on a daily basis.

I've changed a ton over the past 22 months, and my goal is to keep changing small and simple things over the course of my life. 

Thanks for reading.

Love y'all

Elder Hammond

Wallaby at a museum?

Someone's birthday

All the elder's in his group got the J&J vaccine!