I want you to know how much I love my mission and my Savior Jesus Christ. We are all disciples of Him. I am so grateful and in debt to Him and my Father in Heaven for giving me this opportunity to serve them. I hope I can do a job well done. The people of Idaho are truly blessing my life. I am so honored to serve them. Every morning when I put on my name tag it take a whole new meaning especially since time is going soooo fast. There is nothing else I'd rather be doing at this point in my life. I am so grateful for the experiences I am able to have. The power of the the Priesthood, prayer, and the Atonement are real! I have come to know the truth’s of this Gospel. I thought I knew I knew what the Gospel was before I left but I feel that I have gained sooo much more knowledge. A mission is the best thing a young man can do. We are all missionaries. Share the Gospel with anyone and everyone. I know this Gospel is true and is our Savior’s Gospel. How awesome it is that we have a modern day prophet to lead and guide us in these days. (Amos 3:7) there will always be a prophet. I know it. As we come upon a new week I hope that we can all improve on the things we need to and come that much closer with the Savior and feel of His love for each of us. Remember you are never alone. (Footprints in the Sand) Onward and Upward. Always remember that YOU can have YOUR OWN Sacred Grove Experience. Never forget the love that Heavenly Father has for you.
My week went a little something like......
Tuesday (25th)-- Temple Tuesday! As you know the Boise Temple is getting ready to be dedicated and on Temple Tuesday to invite members, investigators to invite to the open house. We knock every door we come in contact with and 1) to share the Gospel and 2) to win the competition in our zone to see who is able to teach the most temple lessons. So we thought we'd get a little more clever and make our numbers impossible to compete with so we called two young men from two of the wards and had them come out with us! Smart huh? No rules say we can't haha :) I went with a kid named Stephen Hurd - he's 18 and preparing for his mission in about a year. I had him do a few doors to get him in the swing of missionary life - I made sure I knew the family of course. He did a good job. Last week we got 13 lessons. This week we got....25 and shooting for 35 next Tuesday. We kicked some tail! Had some really awesome lessons with families and most of them are doing really well about inviting there friends to the Temple and going to take them! Makes our job that much easier. The members here are good and missionary minded for the most part. That all our day consisted of is knocking lots of doors and sharing a message about the Temple and the success that can come out of it and the Spirit will do the rest. In the evening we went to the Hunter Ward Bishops house and asked if we could do anything for him, the ward and if he'd like us to visit anyone - he had a few people for us so we will be contacting those people this week. The Open House of the Boise Temple is going to be such a neat opportunity for the people to come and see. When the Twin Falls Temple had there open house they had over 800 referrals! If you think about it Twin is about 50,000 people {maybe} and Boise being about 250,000 people (ish) just think of what can happen! Success is going to come left and right! I'm pumped. We get to take our investigators to it so that will be even cooler! Hopefully this will be a "kick in the butt" our investigators need to get them into the Waters of Baptism. Praying for that.
Wednesday (26th)-- Today plans got changed this morning. Life as a missionary - always got to be ready for change! So I got up today and grabbed the phone then headed downstairs to eat and then headed up and got ready. When I got out of the shower there was missed call from Sister Phonasa - we are teaching her nonmember husband. I called her back seeing what she needed and she was wondering if we could come do some service for her (pull weeds) so i was like heck yeah we can do that! So after studies and lunch we headed over and as Elder Sondrup was pulling weeds I talked to her about what we can do to get her husband progressing and have him receive a testimony of our Saviors Gospel. She was a great help. We know he has felt the spirit a few lessons ago with him (back w/ Elder Bennett) he mentioned he has some reservations and wouldn't tell us what they were. I asked Sister Phonasa to find out what those reservations are and let us know so we can pray/fast about what we can to do for him. She was less-active for many year but this past year or so she got active and recently went to the temple. And now she is going to be a host at the Boise Temple Open House.
Once we finished pulling weeds there youngest son who is 3 (Braylen) is way into Super Hero's so I played Super Hero's with him for a little bit and he had a great time! He was spiderman and I was superman haha. Cute kid he's super funny! After service and super heros with Braylen we went home and showered and then HIT THE PAVEMENT to find some people to teach! No luck since everyone was just getting home from school but after dinner we'll get 'em! :) We went and taught an investigator about repentance, and baptism. After Kaleb's lesson I went and got a haircut and then went over to Bill Kirk's house he has recently became activated and his wife is not a member. We watched the Testaments with them. Jenna (wife) was sick so she didn't sit in but his son did. They both really enjoyed the movie and had never seen it before. The Spirit was there for sure! I know they felt it. Bill is a rockstar. Cameron his son is going to ask Jesus what is favorite Football team is. Hahaha! How that came about was Cameron asked if we will get to meet Jesus and Heavenly Father.
Thursday (27th)-- Got up and did the usual morning stuff. Had studies and lunch then headed to the church to do a missionary survey and track our progress and weekly plan. We do the Missionary Survey's only when an authority is coming to tour the mission. We are having an authority coming October 25th and 26th. Who you ask?? To that I would say Good Question. Haha I'm not sure yet. :) I'll let you know! After we did the Survey we did some weekly planning for the upcoming week and talked about the area and people we are working with and discussed how we can better help them. It was probably the longest weekly planning session we've had ever in this transfer haha it was a good one though. We are hoping for big things this week. When we finished with the planning stuff we rode our bikes down to the Maverick by our house and I got a F'real shake and jerky just like the good ole days of St. G. Then we got picked up for dinner and then headed to the Sundance Ward's Ward Mission Correlation. Had a good talk with them. We did that for the evening. We got a few referrals from them also.
Friday (28th)-- Had the weekly District Meeting and lunch. Today our training was on tracting. It was a good training and learned some helpful tips! We'll be tracting this upcoming week to put these tips to the test. For lunch the district went to Los Betos but I really don't like it and I think it tastes like garbage so Iwent across the parking lot and got some real Mexican Food I got Del Taco! Once we got back from Lunch we headed over to see the Chiropractor as we do most Friday's and he give us free adjustments. I have gotten really close with him over the past 2 months. I hope I serve in his area. We went to dinner and then had Hunter Ward Splits and Brother Pettersson came out with us and we went to Aaron and Angela Sandoval's. We talked and taught about the importance of church attendance and committed them to come to church. They were iffy about it so on the spot I said these exact words, "I want a commitment tonight before I leave and now would be great." They accepted right away. (See Sunday to see if the came through or not) The lesson went really well. There is a missionary farewell for one of the people in their ward boundaries that they know well so that is going to be a good reason for them to go.
Saturday (29th)-- Today we got up and did some service for Ella our elderly lady friend. We mowed and trimmed her lawn and got it looking nice then headed around our area to see what the yard sales had this week since last week I got a Titlists Golf Set for 3 bucks ha ha! We headed home and got cleaned up after the yard work and rode our bikes over to the church to do our weekly progress reports for each of the wards we cover. After that we found a young man to take us around to deliver them to the auxiliaries and then went to dinner and after dinner went and contacted the referrals we received this week and had some visits with them. Most of them were nice but not too interested. Said we're welcome to come over anytime but also let us know that they weren't interested in pursuing the missionary lessons. Those are the rejections I like haha nice rejections make it all better. On the way home tonight I had my first bike wipeout of the mission. I thought I'd try riding the curbs all the way home and I was doing good but on one of the curbs I lost my balance and down I went aka *kaboom* haha. I slid and rolled onto some grass. Luckily nothing got torn or ripped and the only thing I had was grass stains - a lot of them but nothing was damaged. :) That's all that matter right? ;) not going to lie it was super funny. It was dark so no one could see me so which made the situation better haha.
Sunday (30th)-- Today we spent our time at the Hunter Ward (9am) then Meridian 2nd (11am) and Sundance (1pm). The Homecoming was in the Hunter Ward for Austin Staley. He helped us out quite a bit. He'll be a stellar missionary. He's going to the West Indies Dutch Speaking! Made me reflect and look at how great Idaho and English speaking sounds. He did a great job speaking about he Atonement. Guess what?..... The Sandoval's were..... not at home! They came to church. :) Man it was the first time in over a year that we all finally got them to church and wait there's more! They stayed for the whole 3 hours! Members were so good to them too. They said they had a great time. It was so great to see them and keep their commitments. The ward members were like praising us. It was funny. I was like it's not us it was the Spirit working within them. We didn't do anything.
Had splits w/ the Meridian 2nd Ward and I took a priest out with me and we taught a lesson about the importance of building a foundation and why we need to. We taught a member family (Nawahini's) and talked to them about their investigator friend named AJ. We're meeting with him Tuesday @ 7pm. I taught him once about the Restoration w/ the Nawahini's. I'll probably send Elder Sondrup over to teach AJ this time since I went last time. I think I have enough faith in him ;) haha just kidding he'll do well. After we did that we all went to dinner (all = me, the Priest, and Elder Sondrup). After that Taylor Paskett (Priest kid) dropped us off and we got on our bikes and went over to say bye to Austin or Elder Staley I should say. They invited us in and we had some food with them like snack food. I was super full already and then to have that but I ate it anyway and I thought I was going to burst! We then said bye to Elder Austin Staley as he heads to the MTC. Then we went to see a potential investigator that Elder Bennett found while he was with his previous companion. His name is Paul. We knock and this guy answers so I ask if he was Paul he wasn't and then went and got him. So Paul come to the door and he is HUGE! Like Paul Bunyon and the Ox huge haha. He asked us a question of "Who was the first woman on the earth?" We responded "Eve" He was like "no!" I then said "What? Who was?" He said "I don't know I want to know because no one knows and there is different records of a woman before Eve." We told him we'd check into it and get back to him. So now this brings me to a question for you... "Who was the first lady?" Apparently it's not Eve haha.
Monday (1st)-- Another month down 14 down 10 to go! Where is the time going?! Today we played frisbee, then football, then lunch, then we went to a nearby church and played basketball. After basketball we headed to a place called JumpTime and some missionaries jumped on the tramps I opted not to it's $8 an hour to jump on a tramp - to me that's a waste. I've been before but it's not worth $8. The Elders that jumped had fun though so that's cool for them. Me and some others Elders just chilled for an hour on there soft couches and talked. After JumpTime we went home and showered up and then I called Mama and Papa Nawahini and asked them if we could come over and e-mail home and they said "you don't have to ask Elder Hardy just come" Haha they are so so so so AWESOME!!! I love them so much! They are going to feed us too. It's now 9 pm haha and i am wrapping my e-mail up and then going to go eat. Mama Nawahini just came in and AJ (investigator) just walked through the door and AJ was talking to Elder Soudrup and she came and asked me if only I would come tomorrow on splits to teach him. Haha so I was like sure I can do that. She said AJ feel more comfortable with me then my comp. I think it's awesome! Because at first it was just the Nawahini's now it's just them and me. Progression is being made! AJ is such a cool guy!! He's in the military and way down to earth.
I hope you enjoyed this e-mail
Have a great week! I love you and miss you tons!
-Elder T. Hardy
** 3 Nephi 5:13 **
