Letter #24

The Mormon Curse:

Once upon a time Nevada was Utah. Territorial Governor Brigham Young presided over the Utah Territory which stretched across Utah through the Great Basin to Carson Valley.

More than 100 families settled in Franktown in the summer of 1856. They built homes and planted.  Elder Orson Hyde built a sawmill.

When President Young called the settlers home to Utah in 1858 they left behind properties that Washoe settlers “adopted” without compensating the Mormons.

In 1862, Orson Hyde wrote a letter “To the people of Carson and Washoe Valleys” demanding $20,000.00 in compensation for his sawmill.  Here is some of what he wrote:

“… and this demand of ours, remaining uncanceled, shall be to the people of Carson and Washoe Valleys as was the ark of God among the Philistines. You shall be visited of the Lord of Hosts with thunder and with earthquakes and with floods, with pestilence and with famine until your names are not known amongst men, for you have neglected the authority of God… and given yourselves up to serve the god of this world; to rioting in debauchery, in abominations, drunkenness and corruption.  You have chuckled and gloried in taking the property of the Mormons, and withholding from them the benefits thereof. “

In 1881 a flood rushed through Franktown. The newly built dam overflowed and more than $20,000.00 in property washed away with it. In 1983, a flood devastated much of Ophir, Franktown’s neighbor to the north.

The Curse has taken on legendary proportion, every time something happens people say that it’s Orson Hyde’s curse.

I heard about the curse and decided to look it up, sure enough Elder Hyde cursed this place. He was never paid for his property so I assume the curse is still in effect! So far we have only had one day of rain since we arrived 6 months ago but we have seen a lot of fires, I am hoping the curse holds off for the remainder of our time here.

In the meantime, we do what we do. We continue to try to find ways to support the ward members. We take an Elephant blanket thing to those with a new baby.  We took one to Cynthia this week. Hers continues to be a sad story. We have taken bread to several people this week.  Elder Hardman is getting to be good with his bread making skills. We went to a lesson with the Elders this week and I was accused (by Elder Hardman) of flirting with the 2 year old.  I didn’t have to flirt, he wanted to hold my hand and wanted me to hug and tickle him. He is an adorable little guy with a HUGE afro! He wants to be a distraction but he also wanted to snuggle up to me, I didn’t mind. I don’t know if we will get to go back but I will go prepared next time.  I made a Quiet Book at the Super Saturday that is Jesus pictures, I will take it next time.  We drove a man home from church today and dropped him off at his truck, the truck is his home. The truck doesn’t run and has flat tires, it is parked next to a city park. He is a nice man, we met him at the Super Saturday because the Bishop had asked him to help with the cleanup, as part of him receiving assistance. I guess what we are learning is that all of these people are just that, nice people. Their lives are a mess, but they are nice people.  We knocked a door this afternoon and ended up giving the woman a blessing.  She was so grateful to have us stop by because she is having a hard time. When Elder Hardman offered to give her a blessing of comfort, she cried. There are so many lonely and sad people.

I was sad and lonely on Saturday night when I realized I would be going to Women’s Conference alone.  It’s funny how homesick little things can make you.  I missed all of my girls!  Next week we will be sad when Elder Hardman has to go get ice cream by himself and we miss all of our boys! We love you all!

The moral of the story is, Don’t cheat an Apostle, and listen to Conference!

The Gospel’s true and we love you!

Love,

Elder and Sister Hardman

Letter #23

“The Standard of Truth has been erected; no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing; the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every cline, swept every country, and sounded in every ear, till the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done. “

Nothing can stop the work… except a little bee.

The week started out great. We had our first (and probably only) 100% day on Monday. We only had five names to knock but we found someone home at all five places! Four of the five actually live at the address too. None of the four want anything to do with Church but we at least know they live in the ward. We were feeling pretty good about things.

Tuesday we had a great zone training.  After our meetings we went to a Mobile Pantry site that has never been assigned before so we thought we’d better check it out. It is down the street from the Homeless Shelter area. We found out that it is only for seniors that live in this one complex and that they don’t need extra help from the missionaries. While we were talking to the Food Pantry coordinator I felt a sharp pain and looked down to see this nasty little bee stinging me. Why? I don’t know, I was minding my own business.  Well that was the beginning of a painful week.  My finger blew up and it made my hand swollen. I carried a frozen water bottle around for two days.  Sleeping at night was hard.  My finger is finally feeling better. Where I was stung is still red and swollen but the rest is feeling normal. A bee sting does slow the work. We still did the things we needed to but I know that bees are Satan’s tools!  Everyone needs to be more specific when praying for the missionaries. We pray for their protection but no one specifically mentions bees.  Bees are a real detriment to the work.

Thursday we did one of the Mobile Pantries that we volunteer for on our own. I had a baseball mitt-sized hand that day but they have us wear rubber gloves so I wore an x-large glove on one hand and a medium glove on the other.  We enjoy our time at the Pantry.

Saturday Elder Hardman and I spent with the Relief Society of two wards doing a Super Saturday.  They had to have a priesthood holder in the church during the three hours and Elder Hardman volunteered. I had signed up for a craft, just to rub shoulders with the sisters in the ward. I didn’t realize it meant that we would be there the whole time and do the cleanup.  We have spent a lot of time cleaning the Church!

We have heard several comments about the Sun Valley area. At the Super Saturday one man that works for FedEx said that the whole town is a Trailer Park. I know it doesn’t sound quite like some of the other trips we’ve taken but we decided to check out Sun Valley. They were right, the whole town is a Trailer Park.  We balanced the trip with driving to see a pretty area of Sparks.

This week we have started wondering what our purpose is now. When we had 500 names to go through we had a pretty good idea what we needed to do. We are looking for ways we can help build up the ward, fellowship those that come and are trying to find ways to reach out again to those that don’t come. The young missionaries receive so much training on their purpose.  Senior missionaries have to try and figure it out on their own. Anyone have any great ideas?  Elder Hardman broke down and made bread.  He says he doesn’t want to be known for making bread.  It turned out well.  

That sums up our week. We were so excited to hear that Garrett passed the Bar. We are proud of you! We also enjoyed watching their new puppy on Facetime. We have loved the pictures of the kids with Grandpa Hardman’s cows and seeing a picture of their Great Pumpkins! Grandpa has learned the trick to having the grandkids come visit, plant pumpkins!

One of the ladies we tutor told me that having a bee sting my hand would take care of my arthritis. I didn’t have arthritis but I choose to believe that there was a good reason I was stung.  We hope you have had a great week. Our thoughts and prayers are with you always.

The Gospel’s true and we love you!

Love,

Elder and Sister Hardman

Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…………………………!

Letter #22

This week I feel like is an update week.

Update #1: Sister Gali finished a successful mission and went home.  It took her two days to fly home but she knew the minute she arrived she would go to the ward party, celebrating her arrival home and rejoicing with her about her mission. Wouldn’t it be great if every missionary knew they would be welcomed home that way? Elder Hardman reminds me that we do that as a family for our returning missionaries. That is special but in Samoa everyone is family and they join to celebrate. We are so happy we had the chance to serve with Sister Gali.

Update #2: We saw wild horses! We kept hearing about the wild horses in Nevada but hadn’t seen them.  Lori saw them when she was here. I was starting to think it was like a snipe hunt. Everyone sees them but you. This week we saw them!  That was fun.

Update #3: We work with the Food Bank of Northern Nevada, coordinating the Mobile Harvest Pantry assignments and the missionaries.  We have met with the lady “in charge” several times (Angie). She is a cute woman who really appreciates the help from the missionaries. We were invited to go to the Food Bank Warehouse, have a tour and have dinner. We rode in a Chartered Bus from Sparks to the warehouse.  We toured their new facility, it is beautiful. The Chartered Bus company donated the bus and their services. (makes me like them) Famous Dave’s Barbeque provided the dinner. (please support Famous Dave’s) Walmart has their warehouse next door and is their biggest supplier for food. (Gotta love Walmart) Zulilly’s warehouse is down the street and they pay their employees to volunteer and work at the warehouse. (Yay for Zulilly!) There are many good people out there that do so much to feed those in need.  Our eyes have been opened by this involvement.  There is so much need.  Angie met us later and asked if we would be able to help in Fernley. They have a Catholic Church that is starting a Food Pantry. We have been wanting to find something for the missionaries in Fernley. The missionaries love to help with these. They are so cute to watch as they interact with the people.  On our own we pick two times a month to help at one of the Mobile Pantries.  We enjoy it too.

Update #4: It was transfer day again. We had a lot of incoming missionaries but because many left early to return to school, not many outgoing missionaries. It is getting harder to see them leave now though.  We are getting so attached to those we work with. It is hard to imagine them not being here at the next District meeting. We have two new missionaries in our zone this time. I remember feeling like they look. I want to hug them and tell them it will be okay but they are Elders (can’t hug ‘em) and it seems to be an unspoken secret about what the first 12 weeks feels like. Sister Beutler keeps putting on amazing meals and I keep thinking how disappointed they are going to be when she goes home!

Update #5: Our very pregnant lady had her baby. The baby was born on Sept. 8^th and she was at church today.  She did not look like someone who should be at church but she was there to see the Bishop and ask for assistance. Oh man, we struggle with this.  The needs are real but there are so many of them that can’t contribute and have so many needs. We brought our blind lady to church today. Her plumbing is backed up and she needs to have some major repairs to the sewer and she was asking us to talk to the Bishop.  I think the Bishop goes in his office after Sacrament meeting and hides. We feel like we need some training on Government assistance programs. There is so much we don’t know about and we don’t know how to help.

Update #6: When Elder Pearson came he told how on his mission to Finland they would talk about finding pineapples. Finding a pineapple growing in Finland would be rare indeed. Golden investigators are pineapples.  The mission is doing all sorts of pineapple activities.  The A.P.s did a game where they had some missionaries go out of the gym and then told 5 other missionaries that they were pineapples and would accept the gospel as soon as the missionary talked to them.  The missionaries came back in and had to talk to all of us, trying to find the pineapples. It was fun. (Sister Gali was a pineapple)  Pineapple pictures are posted in the mission office.  There are pineapple pictures in the missionaries’ apartments.  Thursday, Elder Hardman and I took a pineapple to all of the new companionships in our zone.  Ha ha! We thought perhaps that we had found a pineapple of our own.  We have upstairs neighbors that we have talked to a few times.  They are a cute couple and have been cautiously friendly. Yesterday we got out of the car as he was going upstairs.  He stopped and said, “I have a question for you”. He asked us when and where church was. He is a return missionary, he grew up in Elko. We gave him our “welcome to the ward” bag because it has the address of the church, the Bishop’s number, and the meeting times.  We don’t even have their names on the ward list.  Sadly, they didn’t come today. Maybe they aren’t quite ripe yet. We will keep checking on them.

The work continues….

At the tour for the Food Bank our tour guide said, “Nothing runs on empty”. She of course was making a point about physical hunger. That phrase has stuck with me all week. We can’t run on empty spiritually either. We also can’t expect someone else to fill our tank.  I remember when one of our children started driving they would go out and take whichever car had gas.  When they brought the car home, it would be empty. We had a little talk about this habit and were told, “but gas costs money”! Yep, filling the tank costs something, there has to be effort on our part to fill the tank and you might have to give up something to get where you want to go. Sometimes we let the tank get dangerously low, thinking we can make it to the next station in time. Nothing runs on empty. How much gas in your tank? We are reminded daily how blessed we are, our tanks are full. We are so grateful for our family and friends. We knew we were grateful before, we feel it even more now.

The Gospel’s true and we love you!

Love,

Elder and Sister Hardman

The pictures are of the hot air balloon race and wild horses

Letter #21

Peace. I bless you with peace. These are the words that were said in the baby blessing at church yesterday. It may sound like a strange thing to bless a new baby with but after our week it touched my heart to hear his words. A blessing of peace in today’s world is a wonderful blessing.

We were asked to go with the Elders to a downtown motel where they were bringing a Book of Mormon to a referral. We never know exactly what the circumstances are when we go with the Elders. I don’t know if they knew the circumstances, but the person requesting the Book of Mormon is a young, very pregnant woman with a 15 month old little girl. She and her husband moved into the motel two weeks ago and he took off, supposedly to work at Burning Man. She has been there alone and scared. She is a member but hasn’t attended since she was a teenager. I don’t know if she called because she was afraid and wanted someone in the church to come by or if she really wanted a Book of Mormon. We met with her over by the Riverwalk. She didn’t want us to come to the motel in case the number was bogus that she called. It was the first time she had ventured that far from the motel. She told us how she had a prostitute ask to use her phone and had seen drug deals going on in front of the motel. (lovely environment). Her little girl is darling. She was telling us about herself. She has gestational diabetes. The baby is due any day. She had called and they told her that she would need a car seat to bring the new baby home from the hospital. They will give her a new car seat but she had to bring a car to install it in. Let’s see, she can’t bring the baby home without a car seat and she can’t get a car seat because she doesn’t have a car. We told her we would come and get her to go get the car seat. This turned out to be quite an adventure! There is no parking in front of her motel so picture us trying to load a very pregnant woman, a stroller and a car seat with a 15 month old in downtown traffic, that was exciting. We took her to the hospital and the man installing the car seats was onery and cussed her out for the car seat she had the 15 month old in. It was unsafe. She was given two new, appropriate car seats. He was not happy about putting them in the Jeep. He kept telling us that our car wasn’t really made for two car seats and a passenger in the back. (we know) Finally we were done and ready to drop her off again but he had installed the car seats so tightly that we couldn’t get them out! We dropped she and the baby off, drove to a street with parking, undid the car seats, drove back and I carried the seats up to her room while Elder Hardman circled the block a few times. Her motel room was immaculate. (I don’t see that very often here) I was pretty bold about trying to see if she wanted out, her husband had lied to her about putting a deposit down on an apartment and she said he is always lying to her about some pretty big things, but no, she wants to stay with him. She cancelled her next appointment with the Elders, maybe she just needed help getting the car seats. When the father blessed his baby with peace I thought of this young girl. She is alone and afraid but she doesn’t know how to find peace, even when it shows up in a little Jeep.

We also received sad news last week that the lady we have helped so much, taking her to the store, the Pharmacy, the Doctors, died. We don’t know any of the details. Her health wasn’t good and she had been blacking out and falling a lot. The Elders had called her about an appointment and her sister answered and told them she was dead. We know she is in a much better place than her downtown motel. We know she was grateful to have been baptized. We did what we could to try to lift her burdens. I liked her and will miss her. We have looked for an obituary, there is no news about her. It’s so odd to think that she can be gone and really no one cares. She had never been back to church after her baptism so the ward doesn’t know her. The Sisters had asked us to help her and that is what we were doing. I wonder what will happen to her cat, he was her dear companion. I hope her sister finds him a good home. All of this is sad, but I have still felt at peace about her because I know she had a good heart and had a testimony of the hope and peace the gospel brings.

We also received news this morning that Sister Johnson, the mom of our membership clerk that has helped us so much, passed away. She was doing so well after she fell and broke her hip. She had even come to church last week. She was one of the strengths in this ward. She was so loving and accepting of us. We will miss her and the ward will definitely miss her. The contrast of her life and service to others and the feeling of peace in her passing are remarkably different from the other feelings we have had this week. A life well lived brings peace.

We did have fun this week too. We were able to give some training on the “Just Serve” program to the zone leaders at MLC on Friday. AND, we met Rulon’s family in Elko! We stayed in a hotel and the kids enjoyed swimming. We went to a park for them to play, we furnished them with some Nerf-type guns so they could shoot each other. We went to church and saw an Elder that was one of the cute Elders that helped us move in. We just found out that he is transferring back into our zone tomorrow. He introduced me to his companion like this, “Remember how I told you that Sister Hardman made us “Café Rio”? This is Sister Hardman!” It’s always about food! Asher bore his testimony in the meeting. He did such a good job! He has no fear. I hugged him a lot hoping that would rub off on me. We went for a Sunday hike. Don’t let Rulon pick the hike. It was beautiful but a tough hike! His children are amazing hikers. Next time I am taking the nature walk. We were introduced to “Killer Bunnies”. It is their new favorite game. We played but really didn’t know what we were doing. Sage told us that Paisley had won the game at the last family dinner but that she was clueless. We were clueless too. It was so great to spend time with them. The drive back to Reno today was a sad one.

I have had this hymn come to mind a lot this week.

“Sweet is the peace the gospel brings to seeking minds and true. With light refulgent on its wings, it clears the human view.”

“Its laws and precepts are divine and show a Father’s care. Transcendent love and mercy shine in each injunction there.”

I am so grateful for the peace the gospel brings. The Gospel’s true and we love you!

Love,
Elder and Sister Hardman

Letter #20

This was a fun week with our second zone conference. We were able to attend all of the training. On our first zone conference we were in charge of the lunch so we missed most of the training. It was fun to be a part of everything. We really enjoyed zone conference.

I have talked a lot about MoD’s so I thought it would be a good time to share why we enjoy receiving our nightly MoD’s. Our new sister missionary in the zone told how she was wondering what seeing “Miracles” even meant. It was talked about at the MTC and then when she arrived in Reno she really started to wonder if what everyone was talking about was really a miracle. She bore a sweet testimony of how she has come to realize what a miracle is and how missionaries recognize them. She said she now knows that they see miracles every day. I thought I would share a few MoD’s.

MoD! We got to be missionaries today and we get to do it again tomorrow!

MoD!! The atheist lady that we met a couple weeks ago called us today and asked us to come back!! Also Sisters Muhlestein and Monsivais saw a raccoon for the first time in their lives today!

MoD! We had 7 hours of church today!

MoD! The dad of a LA, part-member family sat in on the lesson and bore his testimony and it was awesome!

MoD! We biked today and didn’t die or get sunburns! Also we had 2 people let us into their houses while we were tracting!

MoD! We saw Elder Gamble at the temple with our investigator who is getting baptized next weekend!

MoD! We were able to help some young women come out of their shells with the shower dance and taught them about missionary work at Mutual.

MoD! We were able to find 3 solid potentials today!

MoD! We had a referral who we were trying to contact and they actually contacted us and set up an appointment with us!

MoD! We had a LA who went through the steps of repentance by visiting the Bishop and then stayed for all three hours of church!

MoD! We were able to receive a prompting to stop by this random lady and she said she had been having impressions that she needs to go back to church and recognized that we were another impression!

MoD! I got to finish out my mission for the Savior with the best missionaries in the best zone ever!

MoD! We had a lesson at the Institute and had planned for 2 male members to come with us. One member didn’t show up so we couldn’t go inside. But then! Another member of the ward just so happened to be walking by, playing some game on his phone. He was down to be present for the lesson. It was an awesome lesson!

MoD! We got to have yummy waffles and eggs for dinner!

MoD! The Elder that taught Sister Balbuena’s family before they were baptized visited our ward today and he got to hear her speak about her conversion story in Sacrament Meeting!! (Sister Balbuena is from the Philippines. She has been a member for 5 years)

MoD!! A former investigator talked to her granddaughter about how she hasn’t seen her sisters (us) in a long time and then we showed up a couple of hours later! God knows us!

We love reading these every night from the different companionships but the miracle we see every day are these Missionaries. Let me tell you about one of them. Sister Gali (pronounced Nali) is from Samoa. She joined the church three years ago and by her own admission, promptly went inactive. Her Uncle has sons that have served missions. Sister Gali is the youngest of five girls, so when her Uncle told her she needed to serve a mission she wasn’t even sure what he was talking about but knew that he was right. She was surprised to receive a call to America because she only knew three English words, “Hi”, “Bye” and “No”. She tells how she still only knew about that much when she left the MTC. The Chesnuts told us that she had come just before they came last year and the President leaving said, “Good luck with that one. She doesn’t know any English. It will be a miracle if she stays!” Well, she stayed. She tells how she couldn’t help with discussions and didn’t know what people were saying so she would randomly blurt out her testimony, whether it was appropriate or not. She giggles about that now. At the end of last year she found out that the uncle who was instrumental in getting her on a mission, died. Sister Gali was heart-broken but she stayed. In June (she can tell you the exact date) she found out that her father had died. She felt like she needed to go home. She asked if she could call her mom. Her mom asked her, “Do you love me?” “Do you want to be happy the rest of your life?”, “Then you need to stay on your mission”. Sister Gali stayed. We love Sister Gali. Elder Hardman lovingly calls her (not to her face) his pitbull. Sister Gali is only about 4’ 10” but she is solid. She is loved by everyone. She is a walking miracle and we are honored to serve with her. She will be going home this transfer. These missionaries are our miracles every day.

I hope you will think about and recognize the miracles you see every day. Our lives are so blessed.

We had a fun couple of days with Shalene and Garrett this week. We went to the car museum, walked on the Riverwalk and went to Virginia City. I still wanted to get in their car when they were leaving but not as badly as I wanted to when Lori came, so I guess I’m making progress!

We love our family. We appreciate all of your love and support. The Gospel’s true and we love you!

Love,
Elder and Sister Hardman

Sign on business door….
“We’re always here, unless we’re gone”

Letter #19

Elder Pearson presented this graph at MLC. A study was done of missionaries that showed that the effort/diligence of the missionary and the missionary’s attitude/attributes move them toward greater faith. There is a place for each missionary where their frontier of faith begins but before their personal frontier they face barriers that stop them from reaching their frontier of faith, breaking through and finding miracles. We wondered how the Leaders would present this in Zone meeting this week. This assignment was given to the STLs (Sister Training Leaders). They did an amazing job! They had everyone go outside where they had drawn the graph on the patio and they used the missionaries as participants on the graph. They put three missionaries inside the graph and then had a “Holy Ghost” and a “Satan” join them as they faced their barriers. Some of the barriers were, “Its hot outside”, “All of your appointments cancelled”, and “Your companion is upset about some news from home”. As the three missionaries faced their barriers our sweet Elder Galbreath (the missionary/gentleman from Georgia) told them calmly that “Frostys are only 99 cents at Wendy’s and they needed a little break.” “Everyone had cancelled on them anyway, they could go home and “chill” for a bit”, “In fact, today had been a bad day all together, if they went home, tomorrow would be better”. He was such a gentle Satan that it was hard to see any harm in what he suggested. Our poor Holy Ghost was having a terrible time sounding as reasonable as Elder Galbreath! It took our missionaries on the graph to voice out loud their own determination to get past the barrier and break through to the miracles to make it happen. It was a great way to present these ideas to the other missionaries. I was so impressed. I learned more from them than I did from the presentation at MLC. They went on to teach about the principle of alignment. All spiritual power is a function of alignment with our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. Being in alignment qualifies us to receive their power. Faith is a principle of power and alignment. I had been looking forward to seeing how they would “pass on” the training they received. It was the first time we had been invited to listen in at MLC. I don’t think we will ever get over being amazed with these young missionaries. As you watch them in the mission field you realize how under-utilized they are when they come home. They are so used to being in charge, to studying, to testifying but when they go home they “retire”. Elder Pearson told them in strong terms that there needs to be a generation of Leaders in the Church that would be ready to stand against the world before the Savior comes again. They need a “Vision of Who They Are”. I learned that Satan doesn’t need to be loud or unreasonable to lead you astray. Those gentle whisperings that turn me aside from the right are not the Holy Ghost. We have listened to many talks lately that repeat that we need to learn what the promptings of the Holy Ghost feel like to us, individually, so that we can recognize them and follow. It was a fun and powerful training.

We are at the end of our list. We have a few people that refuse to be found and we haven’t had success with any of our other tools either.  BUT, we are at the end of our list! It has taken 4 ½ months but we are at the end of the list! We receive about 10 names a week that are new move-ins that we will continue to visit and we still have some clean-up and re-visits to do but we are at the end of our list! Our new move-in list rarely is someone that has recently moved in. We found one lady that has probably lived in her house for 30 years but the Church somehow found a P.O. box address and we tracked her down on Facebook to Reno and followed up by finding her real address with U.S. Search. Our detective skills are amazing. : ) She was surprised when we showed up but was kind. We have moved out an average of 100 records a month. I guess the official number right now is 533. I want to make a list now of the nice and the naughty ones that are left and have a visit with Santa Claus before Christmas this year. There are definitely some of them that should get a lump of coal in their stockings. We heard at MLC that one Senior Missionary calculated that it takes 32 visits before people’s hearts are softened. I asked Elder Hardman if that included the countless times we knock on the door before we find them home. Only 31 visits/person left to go!

We went to visit a less active Sister that recently moved in. We had a nice visit and I told her I needed to go because I had a R.S. dinner to go to and would she like to come? She grabbed her purse and off we went. She talked with everyone and was fun to have along. She did tell me that if church were like R.S. activities she would always come. : )

So where are you on the graph? Are you stuck behind a barrier or pushing forward toward a miracle? If you are hearing a soft, Southern voice in your head telling you to give up or give in, DON’T LISTEN!

The Gospel’s true and we love you!
Love,
Elder and Sister Hardman

p.s. To let you know that Elder Galbreath really is an amazing missionary and not like Satan at all we have included a picture of something Elder Galbreath pointed out to us. This is at a downtown motel. It is our laugh for the week. In case you can’t tell, it is a filled-in swimming pool, now read the sign that is posted.

Letter #18

Whew! It was a busy week! We had some fun experiences this past week. I don’t know if it’s because school has started or what but we also felt like we had success in finding people home again.

Monday- It was a regular P-day except that Garrett talked me into bringing my sewing machine so that I could offer to fix things for the missionaries. He told me how much he would have appreciated that on his mission. I have hemmed pants for an Elder and this week was asked to fix two dresses for a Sister. Her Mom had sent her two new dresses that have hung in the closet because they are too long. Thank you Garrett for the idea. You were right, it is appreciated by the missionaries.

Tuesday- We signed up to help at the Mobile Pantry for the Veterans. This is held once a month and we helped once before but decided we would like to do some of these assignments ourselves. The missionaries hog the Mobile Pantry assignments for themselves and never invite us to help. We have picked a few in the mornings that we want to help with. The Veterans one is special to us. They are so grateful for the food they receive. We are meeting some wonderful people that help each week with the Pantries. One retired couple help twice a week, every week! They always tell us how much they love the young missionaries that come to help. We always want to say, “What are we? Chopped liver?” The young missionaries always make an impression. After the pantry we went to District meeting. It is always the highlight of the week! I think the missionaries saw us at the meeting and remembered that they could use us. We were asked by the Stead Sisters if we could drive them out to a person they were going to read the Book of Mormon with, way out in the country. (remember, their miles have been cut) This guy lives way out in the boonies and he was “out there” in more ways than one. He served in Viet Nam and is rather paranoid and maybe a little bit crazy. His house was a disaster area. We had to “find” a place to sit under piles of stuff. Reading with him was difficult because he easily gets distracted and wants to tell his own stories. He wears a gun on his hip and asked the Sister if she was scared then proceeded to tell us it was for the rattlesnakes on his property. : ) Oh, the life of a missionary! It’s never dull! We hurried home because we were feeding the Zone Leaders that night and the Sisters in our complex had also asked if they could come to dinner. Elder Hardman had to drive to pick up the Zone Leaders and had to drive them back. It all turned out nice though. We had a fun dinner and sharing, “Our favorite part of the Mission” stories. During the dinner our trio of Elders called to see if we could help with a lesson that night. We dropped off the Zone Leaders and went to a lesson. It was with the new convert that we help a lot. The lesson was about Temple Ordinances and we told her we would drive her by the Temple on Wednesday when we picked her up to go grocery shopping. Tuesday was a full day!

Wednesday- We took Leslie to see the Temple and to go grocery shopping. She was having a difficult day. Shopping took a long time. She also saw the Taco Bell and asked if we could stop and get her lunch there because there was something on T.V. that she wanted to try. After all of her errands we took her home and saw the Access (handicap) bus waiting for her to take her to a doctor’s appointment. She hadn’t planned her day well. The rest of our day was spent knocking doors. Little by little…… We also taught our ESL class in the evening.

Thursday- Temple Day! I hope I remember to be as excited to go to the Temple as these young missionaries are. It was extra fun for them because President and Sister Chesnut, and President Parry surprised them by being there with them. It was a beautiful cool morning. They love to have their pictures taken together. It was a fun morning. We then knocked doors until it was time to get ready to go to the Temple again! We had two Elders leaving to get home in time to start college. We were asked to accompany them for a session. We went to dinner at Sizzler’s with the Chesnuts and the Elders. It was fun to be with just two Elders going home. Usually it is a crowd of them departing and they sort of keep each other calm. These two were giddy with excitement. We had a nice Temple session and drop them off at the Mission home. We were the last session for the night so it was late. One Elder quickly told the other that they were breaking rules being out so late!

Friday- MLC. We went to help with lunch and were invited to stay and listen to the General Authorities that were coming to speak. Elder Pearson and Larkin from the Seventies spoke. It was very uplifting and also made us wonder what more we should be doing. This is missionary work, an up and down roller- coaster ride. They get everyone all pumped up and now it will be fun to see how the Zone Leaders pass their enthusiasm on at District Meeting. We left from MLC to teach our ESL students. See how well I’m doing with abbreviations now!

Saturday- We usually go to help clean the chapel but when we got there they were having a funeral and the chapel had already been cleaned. They don’t really use email or text in this ward to let you know things beforehand. I guess it gave us a jump on our day. We knocked a lot of doors and actually were able to finally close out several of the “hard to get” houses. We thought we would take a trip to Susanville in the afternoon. We learned several things on the ride to Susanville. 1. Doyle, California is over 40 miles away and we now feel really bad for those cows they drive from there to the rodeo. We will appreciate them more next year when they arrive from Doyle. 2. Susanville has two State Prisons and one Federal Prison close by. The Prisons employ the majority of the adults in Susanville. 3. There is a Susan River. 4. There is a random tree in the middle of nowhere that people have thrown shoes on. There is no sign to explain this behavior but the tree is full of shoes of every kind. 5. The shoe tree was the most exciting thing about the drive to Susanville.

Sunday- The day of rest, mostly because the ideas we had to visit people all fell through. Anyway, this was the first week we have had that I thought, “Wow, that went by fast!” It’s good to be busy.

The Gospel’s true and we love you!

Love,
Elder and Sister Hardman

Pictures:
Temple Day and the Shoe Tree