Letter #41

Well, we have been in the mission field long enough to have the program completely change!

We went to District meeting this week and they handed out a new schedule for the missionaries. They no longer have to follow the hour by hour guidelines that are in Preach My Gospel. They are responsible to prayfully decide when they study, plan, exercise, and give service. They have found that return missionaries struggle when they no longer have a set schedule during the day to accomplishment the things they need to. They now have the opportunity to decide how to manage their time and to depend on the Spirit in making these decisions. They still have to get up at 6:29 am and they still have to fit everything expected into their day. President Chesnut still gave them an outline of a few things he wanted them to plan for on certain days and times. The schedule change doesn’t really affect us, we already plan our days our way but it greatly affected the Just Serve times that we have already committed to. We were confused and frustrated but President Chesnut met with us Tuesday afternoon and clarified the program for us. I think we have it all figured out again. The north valley missionaries help every week at a Catholic church for 3 hours right at the time the President told them they should be doing weekly planning. He asked us to go check it out because the missionaries told him if the missionaries didn’t go help they wouldn’t be able to have that food pantry function. We went to help on Thursday and they are right, it is sponsored by the Catholic Church but runs on the backs of our missionaries. They come early and move all the food from the storehouse to another room, they clean and sort and set out all of the food and then they pass it out and help the elderly that come get the supplies to their car, then they put everything away. They work hard for three hours! There are 3 people from the Catholic Church in charge and 10 missionaries doing the work. They had an Elder say the opening prayer. We reported back to the President after going and working and talking with the missionaries that we thought they should continue with this service. We heard yesterday that he approved their schedule change. It will take a while for the missionaries to quit asking “when” they should be doing things. They also get a 30 minute lunch (used to be an hour) and they have to be out of their apartments by 10am and it’s suggested they take their lunches with them. They are finding out that missionaries that spend less time in their apartments are less stressed and depressed. I agree with that, the busier we are and the less time we spend in the apartment the better I feel about everything. It will be fun to be a part of this new program.

The rest of the week we spent as the designated driver. Our Elders went over a speed bump and tore their entire exhaust system off of their car. It is still in the shop. They needed a ride to everything for most of the week. It meant that we were able to go to more lessons and we went on splits with them. That was fun for us. We did start to feel like there were things we needed to get done though. Friday we spent the morning taking them to the Doctor. Elder Bell messed up his pinky finger a long time ago but finally had an appointment with the Doctor. They had put Elder Johnson (concussion) with him for the day. Elder Bell has his pinky in a device to stretch the tendon and will have physical therapy. Elder Johnson has been told to stay down and not do anything, even read. He is still struggling. We have decided that they need to get rid of “morning program”, that is where these two accidents occurred. We thought we might have to drive Elders around all weekend but they gave them a different car to use for a while. We had a beautiful weather day yesterday for knocking doors. We accomplished a lot. I guess Heavenly Father knew we were doing our best and needed a good day to work on our responsibilities. Today we came out of church to a blizzard so we are happy that it was good on Saturday. There is a weather pattern here. Snow, wind, rain, flood, repeat…..

The Sienna Vista ward had a missionary Sunday today. The Elders spoke and the Ward mission leader. They asked Elder Hardman to give his testimony. My kind of meeting! It was nice. I am impressed with the willingness of the members to be involved in missionary work. They feed the missionaries every night, they go on splits with them and they help with lessons. I know we can all do more but these members are very supportive. They haven’t figured out what we are doing here though. I had a member ask me today when we would be transferred. Oh well.

We hope you have a great week and drive carefully, be very careful going over speed bumps! The gospel’s true and we love you!

Love,
Elder and Sister Hardman