Monday, February 20, 2012

Stepping in His Footsteps

Parts from Jared's letter to me:

Hello!!! :)

So I think I'm pretty lucky when it comes to crashes and everything here. Two sets of sisters have gotten in marshutine crashes since I've been here. One was a head on and almost resulted in a roll-over but thankfully the spirit of the Lord resides with missionaries and everyone was fine in both situations. :p

...So out here I try to do 15 minutes of Book Mormon as well. I would do more but I only get an hour for personal study. Plus in the evenings I like reading the children's Book of Mormon in Armenian :p It's fun because I understand all the words :p Plus we also read about 15 minutes in the actual one during language study as a companionship. 

...So about Violet, she's kind of dropped us again. Not completely, but she doesn't want people coming to her house because she's ashamed of how small it is and we can't just come by ourselves because she's a woman. Soooo....merrrr....but we're still working with her and hopefully it will work out.

Anyways, don't let the clouds of life get you down :) Always remember to play in the puddles when it rains.

Letter to Dad:

Hello!

Thanks for the pictures by the way :) (Carl sent pictures of his time as a missionary in Denmark) It's proof that in fact, these stories actually did happen, and that my dad actually was that age once upon a time :p  Before long, you'll be watching Jeopardy at night and be in bed by 8:30 :) Jusssttt kidding :P

So I hope Maddie gets better :)
(Maddie has the cough/cold stuff going on) You know, I actually haven't gotten as sick out here as I thought I would. That being said, I did actually go to the hospital this week because I've been feeling fluid in my ears most mornings and it hasn't been to fun. I went though and they said they couldn't find anything wrong. So 20,000 dram later I add something else to the list of stuff that needs to be checked by American doctors :p

Thanks for your stories from your mission though. It's always a nice reminder to see that the number of baptisms don't mean anything, especially considering how great of a person you turned out to be.
I guess I wasn't frustrated that my potential baptism was taken away from me, I was frustrated that Yeran was taken from us. We really liked that kid and it was exciting to see how he accepted the gospel so well and how he saw the blessings starting to work in his life. It was also quite frustrating because our last few investigators have either moved to Russia, gotten offended by the 'male present' rule, ended up living in another area (about three or four so far. They live on the other half of Center), threaten to get our Visas taken away, etc. It just kind of brightens the week when you have work to do. But anyways, we're doing fine. We find ways to make the day worthwhile and fun. It just takes a little more work.

This week I met another man on the street who happened to be a taxi driver in LA. He knew Santa Monica and all the streets etc. So that was fun. And it always is a way to break the ice on the street. Literally.

Speaking of breaking the ice though. Things are kind of warming up here, and as we were walking to church we heard a loud crack and looked just in time to see about 100 pounds of snow and ice fall from a tall roof straight onto a brand new BMW :p I'm sure that will be a surprise when the owner finds out. I'm just glad we weren't underneath that.


So the church has been around for about 20 years or so here, but we still have to teach some pretty basic doctrines. For instance, in Gospel Principles, our teacher started talking about how Jesus' name isn't Jehovah (a common dispute in this country) and then we had to correct that. Then they said we were wrong and didn't know what we were talking about. Sighhhhhh.....So we had to pull out the scriptures and testify and quote modern day prophets before they stopped calling us liars. :p Fun Sunday.


It turns out that a lot of stuff from America reaches here. For example, someone asked me about Davis from BYU. I decided not to get into that subject. A lot of people on the street though have been saying "Hey isn't Obama that Mormon thing?" and we have to clarify that it's actually the candidate for president.


We actually had a fun experience this week walking along the side of a freeway because there was no other way to get to one of our investigator's houses. Crossing off-ramps and dodging speeding traffic was a great way to get the heart pumping. Along the side though was a massive amount of snow that only had one set of footprints in it, so we quite often got knee deep in snow. I thought to myself though "What kind of spiritual message can I pull from this?" and this is what came to mind. The whole time we were walking, we always tried stepping in the one set of footsteps because it meant we didn't get a ton of snow inside of our socks and it tended to be a lot easier to walk. Some other ways looked easier at times but it always ended up taking more energy and resulted in wet, frozen toes. I guess in comparison, there's one Man who took the pain of walking through all the snow in our lives, and all we have to do is follow in His footsteps. It's the easiest way and the most comfortable way and in the end will save us a lot of energy and grief. :)


Anyways, that was my week :)

Love you!

Elder Hammer

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