Letter #51

You probably all sustained it yesterday! Our Stake President, the one that asked for a Senior Couple to clean up the records so that they could “right size” the wards, was called as an Area 70 yesterday. We will be having an emergency Stake Conference next Sunday to sustain a new Stake President. President Johnson served as a Mission President in Brazil. I’m guessing that he will probably serve somewhere in Brazil, but I guess we will have to wait to find that out. We have certainly witnessed a lot of changes in this area since we have been here. The wards are still trying to figure out home teaching and now they will have a new Stake Presidency!

Conference was wonderful. We went to the church to attend the sessions. There was just a smattering of missionaries this time. They try to get an invitation to watch with investigators or less active members. Our YSA sisters had an investigator come to the church. I think we pay attention better sitting in the chapel but I was getting “ants in my pants” by the last session. The benches aren’t made for long sitting. It is a great time for spiritual renewal. I hope everyone decided to work on something that will improve their lives and draw them closer to the Savior. There were a lot of great suggestions!

We had a pretty open week last week and so we scheduled to go work at the Food Bank warehouse. We had never gone before. It is a long way out of town but we had a good time checking this out. We sorted food for 2 ½ hours. It was great. We have learned that they get a lot of snack items but they are generally “healthy” snacks. In other words, healthy snacks don’t sell well and end up at the Food Bank. At the end of our shift they told us that they had flowers and we were to take a box of them. Walmart periodically drops off flowers I guess and they can’t distribute them with the food so they give them away to workers. We wondered what we would do with 5 bouquets of flowers. We took three of them to the three sets of Sisters in our Zone. Oh my! If you want to make a Sister’s day, give them flowers. We take treats every week and something every transfer but this made them happier than anything else we have given them. We told them they were free but they were still so excited! It was totally worth going to work at the warehouse.

We are helping the Sienna Vista ward figure out their visiting teaching. We were given a list to compare to our records. It has let us know of the people we thought were moved out that have slipped through the cracks and are still showing up on the records, little by little. It is so much more pleasant to knock on doors in the good weather!

We are going to have two weeks of meal planning and preparation. It is always stressful to me to look ahead and wonder how we are going to do it all. It always works out but I’m feeling the stress right now. The missionaries start displaying that they are feeling the stress about the same time I do, but they are stressed about transfers!

Elder Benti gave a great training in District meeting last week. He told how David only needed one stone to kill Goliath but he picked up 5. He brought us each 5 stones and had done the Chinese characters for God, companion, love, scriptures and Holy Spirit. We painted our stones with the characters as he talked about how we each need to pick up our own stones, in faith. I always think that if I had taught as well as these young missionaries I probably wouldn’t have had any “naughty” kids in Sunday School. They are amazing teachers!

The gospel’s true and we love you!

Love,
Elder and Sister Hardman