September 23, 2013

Dear Everyone who cares enough to read these things,

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM!!! YOU GUYS LOOK SO AWESOME AND YOUNG IN THAT PICTURE!! Also Elder Murphy and I have decided that he and Jordan are the same person. They both can make me laugh no matter what, and bug me by poking me and jabbing me.

Where do I begin? This week has been nuts. I am gonna try something crazy:

Monday: P-day. Also we went knocking in the evening and found an 18 year old freshman at Sherbrooke University whose Mom just died, does not have a father and is all alone. We talked about the gospel and how much hope and healing it brings. We are going to follow up with her and see if she read the chapter we gave her in the Book of Mormon.

Tuesday: Went on splits with Elder Ruby but we stayed in my area and I was the senior companion. We taught a good lesson to a less active woman named Lina Jetté. She has been coming back to church steadily since we started meeting with her about six weeks ago. 

Wednesday: We had a great afternoon of knocking and found several cool potentials. Then in the evening we had three lessons set up in two hours. We were all set to do a member split with the bishop and his first councilor, but the second later lesson got cancelled at the last second, so we did not get to bring out the bishop. We still had two very good lessons. I directed the second one with a woman named Carol. She knows the church is true but just would not give up smoking. We taught her how we follow commandments to show our love for God. At the end I committed her to live the Word of Wisdom and she accepted!! It was awesome.

Thursday: We had a Dinner appointment cancelled, and we taught an awesome lesson to Gabrielle. She wants to get baptized, but now wants to wait till her husband Jeremy (who is like 5 months older than me) to be back into the church enough to baptize her. I might have already mentioned that.

Friday: Weekly planning and passed by Chantal, our drug addict who we have had a hard time seeing. We realized an active member lived in her apartment building and so we brought him. She talked about how much she wants to quit drugs and smoking, committed to do it, committed us to find her a ride to church, and then committed herself to baptism. She is awesome. The next step is formulating a plan to help her quit.

Saturday: Finally set up a lesson with Adriana, our referral from Bro. Vasques. She is about Mom's age with three kids age 20 9 and 6. She was Catholic in Columbia, but wants to find a church that will better help her family. We can help with that. She is interested open, and eager to learn. Her ex-husband seems to pretty much still act as the father in the home despite the fact that he doesn't technically live there, but he doesn't want anything to do with the church (he is pretty atheist I think). It was awesome.

Sunday: The grand finale came yesterday. We had church, then a good lesson with Virginie right after church. She said she has been hearing some sort of voice in her head telling her to read the Book of Mormon, so she has been reading it. We met with Dennis and finally discerned what to do with him. We finally got him to tell us why he wanted to meet with us, and it was to better understand how awesome the Catholic Church is. We dropped him. It was a lesson truly guided by the spirit. Then right after that we had a lesson with a less active named Manon Maryn. She Only read one chapter in the Book of Mormon, but it was because she was blown away by 1 Nephi 1. She had studied the B.o.M many times as a member, but she was so excited about all the things she had never noticed before. She showed us several verses and how she had applied them to herself. We abandoned our lesson plan and talked about the Book of Mormon and the Spirit. She committed herself to read every day, and kept talking about not being certain yet if she will come all the way back to chuch. We have not mentioned coming back to Church once since we met her. It is amazing to watch the spirit work in her to re-kindle her testimony. After that we had a ward fireside on missionary work and President Patrick came and taught everyone how to make a family mission plan. Then he had them all think of people they could invite to do something, then he had them practice inviting them. After the fireside the ward council met with President Patrick and he basically told them how to do more finding, so that we could do more teaching. Best. Sunday. Of. My. Life! 

I love everyone and I hope you all have a great week. Less-active work IS missionary work. It is every bit as important as finding Investigators and baptizing them. 

Elder Hardy

woop forgot the pictures. One is of me eating Wendy's in Montreal (Zone Conference in August), and the other is of me eating my meal of Sausage and French Toast Crunch on the way to the fireside this Sunday. It was kind of wierd and not super delicious but we were out of food and we had to make do.