Hey,
Our area is super diverse I've come to realize. By Tuesday night we had taught people from Nepal, Cameroon, Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. We're staying on our toes and I love it. God is truly the author of diversity. One of our main goals out here in HBG is to start a Spanish group. There are so many Hispanics out here and no church in Spanish for them to go to. 😔 We had a meeting with the bishopric on Tuesday night and we're hoping to get things moving. Things are underway with the Stake President and area authority so I hope things go well. It would make me soooo happy to get a Spanish group/branch going out here!
We've been meeting with our upstairs neighbor from Nepal and he's so awesome. His name's Ujjwal and he loves Christianity. He comes from a Hindu background but loves what he calls the "LDS faith." He's such a humble man and asks us a ton of questions. We invited him to pray about the Book of Mormon on Monday and we stopped by on Wednesday to see how it was going. He just sat us down and said: "Brothers I got my answer, I need to follow you and I felt a lot of peace when I prayed. We invited him to be baptized and he said he will talk to his family and pray about it! It was so cool! We're excited to keep teaching him.
Denise and Denisha are the most solid recent converts ever. We had them teach us the restoration and they did really well! I was impressed with how much they knew and their testimonies. You can tell that the gospel has really changed their lives!
We had a good couple of lessons on Thursday with Bert and the Rodriguez family. They're both on different levels with the gospel but we're working with them! Bert has a long path ahead of him, but we're hoping to start meeting with his girlfriend soon to get things rolling. The Rodriguez are doing well, but the team up we brought basically hijacked our lesson and taught what he wanted... It was a little frustrating but I guess in the long run it was good for him to reunite with the family.
Friday was sweet. We met this guy named Maurice that the ward council wanted us to go see and he was awesome. He was from the Bahamas and had a lovely accent. Long live the Caribbean. He wants to start coming back to church and we're happy to help him. Later that night we met a younger fella named Mark. Super solid and sounds like he'll be reading the Book of Mormon! He lives with a part member family, so the odds are in our favor. We'll see what happens.
Saturday was weird. Pretty much everything we had set cancelled so we had to plan on the fly. We ended up having dinner with this guy named Richard who missionaries had taught 18 months ago. He loves the church and Mo Tab, but he's really involved with the Presbyterians. It was weird because he basically told us he'll join the church once his pastor retires. 👍🏽 It puts us in a hard place because he's not ready right not but someone will baptize him someday. This guy could talk though, I was amazed. He hardly ate anything because he could legit not stop talking. The PA ramble is real.
Sunday was somewhat disappointing if we're honest. All of our investigators bailed for church which left a sour taste in my mouth. On the bright side the second hour Spanish Sunday school class is the best. Brother Armas does a great job teaching and he's really passionate about whatever the topic is for the day. The man speaks super fast with a lot of slang so following along can be hard, but oh so worth it. We'll get a Spanish group started here eventually. 😏
Random Stuff
- Biking along the Susquehanna river is beautiful. 😍
- We lost Elder Gray for a minute biking... He missed a few lights and if I wouldn't have looked back we might have gone a long ways. Whoops.
- Elder Rich straight up smacked me in the face while we were at a doorstep. He killed a mosquito but I was super confused for a second.... Oh the joys.
Twas an interesting week. Lots of ups and downs but overall it was good! It's good to be in HBG and we have a lot of work to do! At church this week I was really touched by the sacrament prayer and the importance of always remembering Christ. We are promised great things if we can always remember Him and keep His commandments. I'm going to try a little harder this week to always remember Him and I hope you'll do the same. I know we'll be blessed as we do so!
Also I probably won't be writing next Monday because we're planning on going to the Philadelphia temple later in the week. It should be great. ☺️
Much Love,
Elder Halls
Picture: Susquehanna River
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