Week 29 Look for Missionary Opportunities

January 25, 2016 Dear family, Well another week has passed, and we are already half way through the transfer! Pretty crazy. It seems like no time at all has gone by but here we are. Cool stuff. We had a pretty good week this week. As for some questions you guys have, my comp is from Orem, Utah. He went to Timpanogos High School and played football there. He is the oldest of 3 kids and has lived in Orem his whole life. He just graduated this summer with me and has been out one less transfer than me, so since mid august. He is a really great guy and a hard worker. Also thanks mom and dad for the awesome food package. It was all there in good condition. Me and 3 other elders ate the ribs the night we got them, and they were soooooo good. Thanks a bunch. The cheesecake is amazing too along with all the other food. I am also enjoying the new Utah blanket and especially the Rubik's cube. It is actually slightly harder than the regular one so it was a new challenge. Fun stuff. As for the weather, it has been raining a ton. We get rain it seems like almost every night and often during the days. Unfortunately we wont be going to the temple this transfer. The mission dept. for the church is changing some things up so i don't know when we will go next. I am hoping to go to the Sacramento temple at some point though. Monday was a pretty insane day. We had P-day and lately, we have been having 2 dinners every Monday night, because there is a family in the ward that has us come over really late for dinner and a lesson, as the wife is investigating the church. So the background is its a man and his Vietnamese wife, and her sister all living together in one apartment. Anyways she is investigating the church,and her sister kind of is. Her sister sits in on the lessons and stuff. So we were eating this crazy Vietnamese food, like catfish, shrimp, and squid soup of some kind. Really weird stuff but it was good. So we are eating that, and in the middle of dinner, the table breaks and the soup spills all over mine and Elder Hardy's pants. It wasn't hot or anything but really messy and we smelled like fish the rest of the night. Not to mention that it broke some of their dishes and spilled soup everywhere. So that was fun. Also I cant give details but it sufficeth me to say that before, during and after dinner the couple told us some really crazy like confidential stuff that they are going through and dealing with right now and we ended up being at their house for a long time after dinner. So it was awkward before dinner, then we spilled the soup, and it became even more awkward. Then we were there helping them after all this for a long time after dinner too. It was a really crazy night. Super weird, one of the weirdest ones I have had on the mission so far. Tuesday we had district meeting which went fairly well. I hate having to teach district meeting but the Hermanas in my district were very nice afterwards and told me that they really enjoyed it. So that helped out a lot. The rest of that day I was on exchanges with my zone leader, Elder Warnick. He has previously served in my area that I am in right now, in fact he trained someone that came out with me in this area, but anyways he came up to Woodland with me and it was great because he knew some people to go see and he was really familiar with the area. We had dinner with a super cool family that night, the Stowells, then went on splits that night. We do splits 3 times a week in this ward. Its so much but its really cool to see the members of the ward getting so involved in the work. Wednesday we had a missionary broadcast from members of the 12 and the missionary dept. of the church, for every missionary in the whole world. It was really cool, there was great counsel given by Elder Oaks, Anderson, and other members of the 70 and general auxiliary leaders of the church. Cool stuff. Later that day we went and did service in Davis. We did "Graffiti Abatement" so basically we walk around Davis and look for graffiti to clean up. Its pretty fun, very chill service that still gets stuff done too. We ate dinner with this super cool family in the ward that showed us a bunch of their huge guns, and I mean HUGE. It was super cool. The dad isn't a member but is a hilarious guy. They have a daughter on a mission too so they appreciate missionaries and they were really good to us. We gave blessings to the mom and son after dinner and it was cool to see that things said in the blessing were really applicable to the situations. Like the mom had just gotten a new church calling and in the blessing was said something along the lines of being calm and knowing purpose in church callings or something. It was a neat experience. I have seen a lot lately the power of blessings and the amount of revelation that can be received while giving them. It was awesome.That night we went on splits again so that was fun. Thursday we had a lesson with our investigator that is super cool. He has a baptismal date for august that we hope that he will be able to make it to. We then did service at the food bank and while we were there we talked to these two guys about the church and word of wisdom and stuff. They were cool guys. Later that night, we went over and gave a blessing to a member that we hadn't met before. She and her husband were super nice and it was an awesome experience. That night we were going to go on splits but that cancelled so we brought our investigator to the church and played soccer with the Spanish branch and Elders for that ward. It was super fun. I am so tall, white, and not good at soccer haha. All the Hispanic people were super good. Friday we did our usual weekly planning. We had dinner then went off to see the family of the little girl that was just baptized. It was super fun. We had a lesson with them then had some fun with them after. It was awesome they are a super funny and nice family. Saturday we did a bunch of finding and also had a lesson with a recent convert in the ward who has had a really amazing life. She is super awesome and strong in the church. Later that night we saw our investigator and set a baptismal date with him for Feb 6th. So it is official and it is happening then. We are really excited about it. Sunday we had church as usual then went out to Knights Landing about 20 minutes away. Unfortunately nobody we wanted to see was there so it was just a waste of time and gas and miles. But later that day we saw a less active member that is the crazy cat lady. She has 10 as of right now and while we were there the animal shelter or something dropped off 3 of them that had just been neutered and they were all drunk from the procedure. They were tipping over sideways and stuff. Super funny to watch haha. We then had dinner with members and we were going to bring them to a lesson but it cancelled last minute, which was super disappointing. We had our usual Sunday night meeting that night and now we are here. Thanks so much everybody for all that you do! I appreciate all of your love and everything you all do for me and I hope that you guys are all involved in the missionary effort in your areas wherever you are. I would challenge you all to look for missionary opportunities and make sure that you are living the standards of the gospel because people watch and see the things that we all do. People know we are members and we need to represent Christ always. Love, Elder Hatch