November 24, 2014

Warning, this letter is a TOTAL missionary letter.

Mom I think you are starting to absorb my sense of humour. That was hilarious (yes I think I'm hilarious). To assuage your concerns, we got about 3 inches of snow, and now it's like 10 degrees Celsius and raining so all the snow vanished pretty fast. A few days ago there was freezing rain and that was fun to drive in. No close calls yet though.

As for Christmas, not sure. My clothes should suffice until I get back at this point. pictures for sure, I love receiving pictures. I'm going to have a huge collection for my wife when she starts scrap booking (lol). Not really in need of anything else. Just love and maybe some cookies. Actually a cheap side bag would be nice. The backpack is really hard to get on and off while wearing a winter coat.

This week was a good week overall for us and for the district as a whole. We're doing a great job raising our vision, and each week has gotten better since we started. For us we are doing a good job managing to get lessons, especially with members, but our investigators are kind of weak. We're doing our best to bring the spirit, but a number of them just let us back because they like us or because we are really persistent. we're still trying to find the ones who are prepared.

Yesterday we were doing just that, passing by formers and parking a ways away so we could walk a bit and talk to people and knock. Our appointments had cancelled and we were on plan B. None of the formers were home, and no one we had talked to was interested. After one pass by we got back in the car and decided to find a gas-station so we could both use the restroom. I wandered around for a while, not sure why I didn't use the GPS. We got lost in the maze that is Saint-Francois and ended up on some random street We'd never been on before. We stopped to figure out where we were, and I got the distinct impression "I'm on this street for a reason." I knew there was somebody here, but not which house. I pulled the car up the street, staring at the houses. Suddenly I stopped and said to Elder S..: "We're going to knock this house." We got out and knocked on the door, and waited, and waited, and waited. Finally the window by the front door opened and a middle-aged woman poked here head out to see who it was. We contacted her and she was really cool. She gave us print-outs of her favourite picture of Christ and we gave here a Book of Mormon in exchange. She was thrilled to receive it (she was ready to buy it) and we left her with a card. We didn't push for a return appointment or anything. We then got back in the car. We both felt that we had finished what we needed to do in Saint-Francois and left to go eat dinner. It was really a testimony builder to me. Earlier, in my frustration at our lack of success, I had prayed silently and asked God to guide us to those who are ready. He answered that prayer. I'm going to do that again!

I love you all so much! Can't wait to see your faces on Christmas!

Love, Elder Hardy

p.s. forgot the cord today. Sorry no pictures :(

November 17, 2014

A good week, though not as good as Joliette's

The subject of the e-mail is a joke referencing how the whole district is geeking out right now because Joliette was blessed with 8 new investigators (that is over 8 times the mission average for one team in one week). We had a good week ourselves though.

President Patrick has begun a new idea in the mission called "raise your vision." The idea has been to raise our vision (of course) of what we can accomplish here in Quebec. President is just tired of (and I'm guilty of this) missionaries using Quebec as an excuse for stagnant numbers and low baptisms. He's pushing us to push ourselves. The way he wants to accomplish this is through a better use of goals. If we raise our vision of what we CAN achieve, we will set goals accordingly. Then we need to go out and work to achieve those goals. If we do so we WILL achieve what we audaciously dreamed to be possible in Quebec. I'm really excited about this idea. It is so clear to me and I can feel that this is the time to turn on the jets! We've spent the last year and a half re-centering our vision on why and how we do missionary work, now it's time to raise it. With permission, I've set district goals for the remainder of the transfer (they're quite audacious) and been focusing calls and trainings on working hard to achieve worthy goals. The result has been a genuine improvement in just one week, and the prospect of steady improvement as our vision keeps rising.

Also on Friday we invited G.. to be baptized. The effect was magical. He didn't say yes, he said I need to know first. Now he is actually investigating and not just having us over to chat. The lesson was really powerful. The spirit really has opened his heart and prepared him to really start on the path to conversion and eternal life.

I have a message for little Zach Hardy: I love Pokemon too!!!!! But not as much as I love you!!!!

The play looks like it went super well! Don't worry Paige, I'm certain you'll have plenty more moments to shine in the next few years at least.

Also I almost forgot: the stake is doing a one day "media split" on November 29th. We'll be bringing along different tech-savvy members with us all day and they will document our daily activities and posting them on Facebook and other social media. The idea is to flood the internet with posts relating to missionary life. You can follow this event by using the hash-tags #missionnairesmtl and #terrebonneelders (ask a young person what those are). You will see my beautiful face!

Also Christmas is coming! Brace yourselves! I am pumped to get to call you guys and see your faces!

Lots of Love!

Elder Hardy

The window this morning (dang, I look as tired as I feel):

Me and Elder Spencer in our car:

Me and a river still during splits with Elder Noel:

November 10, 2014

Paige is adorable

Wow those pictures of Paige are just adorable! I'm sure she did amazing!! Lizzie looks so cute too in her little wings.

Well Lizzie is my last hope to have another sensible musician in the family. Oh well, I tried (jokes). In reality my singing ability has greatly improved on my mission because it's the only instrument I really have out here. Maybe I'll go out for choir and band when I get back to BYU. Good thing that's a million years away...

Speaking of singing this weekend was Stake Conference and our ward did the music for the Saturday session. We did a super awesome, but way too hard for the choir in question, rendition of "Au Grande Prophete" (Praise to the Man). The tenors were great, but we were too loud because we were the only section that knew the part. The song ended on an F above middle C for the tenors so I decided to blow the top off of the Stake Center. Luckily I was the only one who could really hit the note, so it sounded good I think. 

To respond to your question about service, we are looking for community service opportunities, but mostly just keeping our eyes peeled for unplanned opportunities. A good example of how it works was last Wednesday we were doing pass-byes in the afternoon in Saint-Francois. This normally isn't a good use of time, but we felt that it was the right thing to do. No one was home at any pass-byes and no one on the street had been interested, then we pulled up on a certain street to pass-bye a former. The former had been dropped due to a complete lack of progression, and normally we wouldn't have passed by him without calling in his case, but for some reason we had gone to his street. We sat in the car for a bit without saying anything when we got to the street. After a few minutes Elder S asked why we were still sitting there. We had no idea. We got out of the car and saw a man raking his leaves who hadn't been there when we pulled up. We grabbed our bags and literally ran to ask if he needed help. He accepted and randomly had an extra rake. I grabbed the rake and started raking with him while Elder S started bagging the leaves. It took about 25 minutes to finish and the whole time we talked about his life, his family, his home in Haiti (all in French I'll have you know). At the end we asked if he'd be interested in hearing our message and he accepted gladly. We haven't managed to teach him quite yet, but soon my friends, soon. It was such a huge testimony to me of the power of service. I could have walked up to him and just contacted him and left. I would have fulfilled my purpose technically, but we're here to serve man (lol) and the spirit had led us to this man not to be like "Hey, Hey you! Join our church!"  He sent us literally in response to his prayers for help, and used our service to open his heart to learn about the restored gospel.

That was a long story. I can't help but tell it as excitingly as I can.

As for being in charge, it's going good. I'm trying to figure out how to be nice to the Sisters without being TOO nice and friendly like their last district leader. As for phone calls, they still make my stomach drop, but It has been a long time since that feeling stopped being enough of an obstacle to keep me from doing them. 

I know that the gospel we live is the true gospel of Jesus Christ. I know that he will come again to the earth, and the joy we will feel at his coming will surpass all the emotions we can experience in our mortal lives. I love you all so much! Never forget who we are. We are God's converted disciples. We are all he has with regards to ground troops. Its up to us to go get the dirty work done so the spirit can testify and convert.

Love!

Elder Hardy 

November 3, 2014

Time has wings. Good thing I have a 12 gauge.

Time goes so fast! Now even the weeks feel really short! I feel like I was just here writing to you this morning! Part of the acceleration problem is that we got a car and now we aren't ever trapped outside our area with nothing to do. We've really cranked up how hard we are working, and we're seeing the blessings. Me and Elder Spencer decided we were tired of just waiting passively and hoping we get lessons. This week we went out and looked for them. Then all our scheduled appointments fell through so the end result was still only a few lessons, but at least we tried! This week the new less-actives and investigators we picked up should combine with our normal crowd and then continue to augment! Things are getting a little more exciting here in Terrebonne!

District Leader is an interesting challenge. My mind has two levels of focus to maintain now: my area, and the district as a whole. I've been praying and have already felt the Lord strengthen me in this assignment. I can testify to the reality of revelation, because I've received it about where the district's focus should be. Also, so many phone calls!

Wow Mom that's sad to hear the response that came to the thought of even stepping foot in the chapel. Satan is powerful isn't he. He doesn't just create apathy towards the truth, he convinces people to fear it. Funny thing is if the roles were reversed they'd likely get all offended that you wouldn't go in to their chapel. Good thing that doesn't bother us because we understand that Christ's Atonement makes all fear illogical (except the fear of God of course).

I have such a testimony of the truthfulness of the restoration. You all know I spend a lot of time thinking, and every line of thought I start on the subject of religion leads back to the restoration being the only logical thing that God would do. I think that having the gift of the Holy Ghost counts as being biased towards the truth though. Logic aside though, even if some korihor-like philosophy professor was to come along and tear my reasoning to shreds (unlikely) he could never take from me the spiritual witnesses I have of the  truth. Christ lives, and he will come again. I know it. He is the Savior of my soul, and the redeemer of any who are humble enough to accept that he chose a 14-year-old boy to receive his truth and not them.

I love you all so much!

Elder Hardy

Me and Elder Spencer waiting for our ride to go do service    

Me and Elder Dawagne saying goodbye at transfers    

Elder Anderson and I on my first split as a district leader    

October 27, 2014

I'm in charge now!!!

If anything has come close to shaking my faith on my mission (a joke) it is the fact that the Lord would trust me with a district. Yet he did. With the departure of Elder Dawagne to be a zone leader in Quebec city the "matrix of leadership and lots of phone calls" fell to me. I feel like now I am finally ready to contribute to this mission in a leadership role. We'll see how it goes.

This week was slow. Lots of conflicts with the car kept us from doing as much as we wanted to. That guy that I knocked on his back door wasn't home when we came for the appointment even though I had called and confirmed the night before. Poor guy doesn't realize what he's running from.

Elder Spencer is getting lots of love from the ward due to his piano abilities (we've been using a recording in sacrament meeting), so we'll actually have a chance to visit some members this week (and get fed). It's hard to visit members because they all just claim to be too busy. Then when they do decide they have time they insist on it being a dinner and all want us on Wednesdays. I'm complaining a little but really the members are great here. They're really a no-complaining get-stuff-done kind of group. It will be fun when we really get them moving on missionary work.

In the mean time while the Ward-Mission-Machine warms up me and Elder Spencer have been praying and feel we need to incorporate more personal finding into our schedule in order to keep the work rolling. Plus a few new faces at church could really help get people excited.

This new plan is being aided by the fact that we'll be receiving our own car tomorrow. It's all thanks to Elder Castrejon (was our zone leader until this new transfer). He pulled in some favors and used some of his massive influence with the A.Ps (I think one was his MTC companion, or they just like him) to show the mission office how much we need one. Thank you former companion!

Anyway that's about all for this week. Most of our appointments fell through so we spent much of our time trying to figure out how to get more. Next week should be more exciting I hope. 

I love you all!

Elder Hardy

 

Me blowing leaves

Elder Dawagne making a simple selfie more interesting.    

Me and Elder Dawagne on our last split together:    

October 20, 2014

God is great, beer is bad, and people are crazy

Yea so there isn't really a story behind that subject, but I have been waiting for an opportunity to use that title. I decided today that I was just never going to have a week like that.

I'll start with responding to stuff: Wow lizzie has braces! She looks so grown up with those things! Why does she have to go and grow up while I'm gone? also that was like the first picture I've ever seen of the fire-pit. I was geeking out about that too. Oh wait I just remembered that we can go on to the churches "google earth" thingy and I totally saw a picture of the house while the pit was under construction. 

As far as life here in Terrebonne, things are great actually. This little Guatemalan guy named Is..., who works on a grass farm 6 months out of the year and spends the other 6 back home in Guatemala, does more missionary work than the three entire wards I've served in combined. And that's not knocking on the three wards. He has already asked us to come up to his place to teach the other south-American workers that he's been talking too. The guy doesn't even speak french or English! Luckily most of his friends do, so we are able to teach them. Most are only passingly interested, but one has turned into a real investigator. The man's faith is so incredible! It's unlike anything I've seen before. He honestly concerns himself with the salvation of every child of God he runs into. I hope one day hope to be like him. He is a one-man example of how "Hastening the Work" works. 

In other news we've had some decent success from calling old formers. That is our main source of new investigators right now as we start to get the ward up and running.

Elder S said something really special to me yesterday in companionship inventory. I may not have mentioned it before, but before my mission I was a coward. A bad one. I've had some serious spiritual experiences confirming it as one of my major weaknesses. Yesterday Elder S listed fearlessness as one of my good qualities. He cited an incident from that afternoon. We were passing by a less-active who we knew absolutely nothing about. His house was very out of the way and wasn't easy to find. It was shabby and I described it on first sight as a "man-cave." My intuition was right and it was messy and filled with beer bottles and definitely not the home of any women. We knocked on the front door and the dog started barking and we saw a guy moving around through the window but no one came. Elder S was ready to leave, but I was really irked that this man wouldn't answer his door. All we wanted was to help him! So instead I walked to the back door (with comp. in tow) and banged on that door. A large mid-twenties dude with a Mohawk answered the door. I calmly introduced us and chatted for a minute. He was going to leave soon, so we set an appointment for later this week to come back and visit him. Then we left.

Upon reflecting on this story I realized that I have changed. I've learned to face fear that I was not capable of overcoming before. The difference I think is the spirit. When I have the spirit, I am strong enough to do whatever he needs me to. I love my mission. I can't think of anything I needed more for my life than this. I'm so grateful to all who helped me get out here. 

The Atonement is real. I know it because it has healed me. My Savior has power to do all things, but all he wants is to see us happy. I know that as surely as I know anything else.

I love all of you!

Elder Hardy

October 13, 2014

egg on my face

Well I forgot to wish Mom and Lizzie happy Birthday despite secret reminders from Dad. At least the Atonement assures that Mom and Lizzie will be compensated in the world to come for all the pain and anguish my negligence caused them. I'm sorry guys. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me? Even though this is the seven times seventy first time? Happy birthday to you two, and also to Ronnie in case I forget.

This week was a big one personally, but a slow one for our area. We Didn't teach a lot of lessons or find a lot of potentials, but I feel like I've grown a lot. . I feel like my growth is accelerating.

I wasn't perfect this week, but I still feel I'm making progress. This feeling stems from what has happened to me this past weekend. At the wedding reception we briefly attended I was able to see a lot of members from the Dow's Lake ward. One of them, a recent convert of the Sisters, came and asked if we could take a walk around the building. We did so (don't worry Elder Spencer came along) and he confided a lot of his struggles to me. I had become one of the people he would confide in in Ottawa because I don't judge him or try to solve his problem right there for him. He talked about his struggles with the commandments and the destructive effect it has had on his testimony and his church attendance. His concerns weighed heavily on my soul. I couldn't stop thinking about him. All that night I couldn't sleep, so instead I prayed. When 6:30 came I was still praying. In the shower I prayed harder than I ever had before. I was asking the Lord to intervene on his behalf. I felt strongly that my sins were in the way of the Lord hearing my prayers. I made the decision there that I had been struggling to make for a very long time. I promised the Lord that I was done. I was willing, joyous even, to give up even my desire to sin if it would help my friend. I fasted Sunday along with some other missionaries that know him and it was a very spiritual fast for me. I've expended more spiritual energy over the last few days than I ever have before. I haven't seen the fruits of it for my friend, and I know I can't overrun his agency, but I've seen it's effect on me. Me and Elder S hit a rough patch as a companionship for a little bit, but were able to move past it. I was amazed at myself as I was able to let little digging comments directed at me slide without any return fire or even internal anger. Just a few weeks ago that sort of thing would have meant war to the knife. The Lord is strengthening me. I just feel so wonderful today. The difference in spirit is mind-blowing!

It's so cool to hear about Tanner's re-assignment. Elder S's family lives in the Fort Collins mission. Maybe he'll serve in his ward! 

I definitely don't recognize the dress Paige is wearing, but wow she looks so grown up. 

My birthday present to Ronnie can be found in the blue tubs containing my stuff in the basement. As long as he PROMISES to NEVER lose the boxes or installation codes or damage the CDs he can pull out, install, and play Age of Empires 3. I don't know if he even plays much video games anymore but it is the best I could muster as far as a gift.

I love you all so much! I can't wait for Christmas when I get to see your beautiful faces! Remember that faith is faith unless it is tested! Keep praying and keep searching for missionary opportunities and they will come. The Lord wants to give us these experiences. He just wants to be sure that we really want them.

Love: Elder Hardy the Elder (double pun/reference!!!)

p.s. Our ward mission plan has a goal of 102 baptisms by the end of 2015. I love our ward mission leader!