The Gospel can change hearts

Hello everyone. Well one week down in December. It was a pretty good week, it was fairly normal one. We did have a few things that were out of the ordinary, we had a meeting with the President, Assistants and all the District Leaders in the Mission and then we also had the opportunity to watch the First Presidency Christmas Devotional. Other than that we had a District meeting and worked all week.

A missionary's tools

As with every meeting I have had with the President I learned a lot and felt the spirit very strongly. It was a great meeting. It also surprised me to see how many District Leaders there are that are new. There are about 20 or so District Leaders that are new from this transfer or the last. It´s great to know that even when we don´t know a ton, or if we don´t have a lot of experience we can still magnify our callings with the help of the Lord. It was also good to see people I don´t see very often at that meeting. I saw some Elders from my generation and also both of my old companions. Our district meeting was also pretty good, we practiced a lot how to contact with Él es la Dádiva [He is the Gift] and also how to teach with it. We have actually had some really good experiences with this initiative. We've had some really good contacts and received a couple referrals from it too. We hope to continue working with it and finding more people!

Around the neighborhood

So in terms of Investigators we don´t really have any that are progressing. As always we are having trouble getting people to attend church. We do have one nine year old girl that has been attending church but her mother doesn´t want her to be baptized. Its been a little rough to not see people progress, but we´ve been working with a lot of less actives. There is actually one less active named Roberto who has been coming to church and changing a lot. We worked with him a lot but he moved to the other side of the ward where the other Elders worked. He bore his testimony yesterday and it was really powerful. He recently retired from the Army and we´ve seen a great change in him. He told us that now he just has a desire to attend church and be with his family more. Its great and has been a testimony to me of how this gospel can work a great change in our hearts if we let it.

Service opportunities

I also had the opportunity to watch the Devotional last night (in English!) and it was awesome! My favorite talk was probably by either President Eyring or Elder Christoferson. They were all great though and I hope you all had a change to watch it, but if not its online!

Yup, pretty good week. I´m looking forward to this one too, to work more with Él es la Dádiva and we are also going to have a Zone Conference tomorow too. Pretty stoked. Anyways, everyone enjoy your week and if you haven´t seen it watch the video He is the Gift! (link)

Love you guys!

-Elder Hartvigsen