August 15, 2016
Hello!
Austin is a little cross
country boy now, so proud. His face looks the same but his body and his writing
skills have changed a lot during my time on my mission. Off to high school too!
I received a package from mom and dad with ties, candy and spices as well as a
package from grandma with popcorn and rice crispy treats. Everything was still
in good condition and tasty, the Heidelberg zone says thank you to Grandma for
the rice crispy treats, we shared :) Thank you so much for the packages and
love!
As far as the coming transfer, I am staying and Elder Clemente is
going up to Krefeld, a city near Düsseldorf. Elder Mejilla from Colombia will
be my new companion, he was just in Dortmund for 4 transfers and Heidelberg
will be his second area. I hear that he also spoke German before his mission,
studied here or something like that, so that will be helpful.
This week I learned a
lot about prayer. I studied Elder Bednar's talks: Ask
in Faith and Pray Always. Sometimes I feel like I write to you about the
importance of prayer and answered prayers every week, that really has been a
theme of my mission, God answering my prayers and feeling the need to pray more
or pray more sincerely. I realized why we haven't been finding new people to
teach in the past few weeks, it is because we have not been asking, speaking
for myself, I haven't at least as much as I usually do. So some main goals of
this week were to pray more and ask more that we will be led to people with a
desire to learn. After probably two weeks of not trading numbers with anyone an
Elder and I found 3 people on a split, I found one on the way back and during
the week Elder Clemente and I spoke with another 2 people who want to learn
more. That was nice. 3 appointments set up and some more numbers traded.
As much as Faith without
works is dead (James 2:17),
works without faith are men relying on the arm of flesh rather than trusting in
God (2 Nephi 4).
I realized that even though we have been putting in the same amount of work to
search for people, without the faithful prayers and petitions behind it are
works were also dead.
Praying always does
include often having a prayer in our hearts, in gratitude or in reaching out to
our Father in Heaven on a more regular basis. Living according to our prayers
is also part of it. Joyful repentance is an important part of praying always as
well. Constantly seeking to improve, not in a self defeating way, but in a
joyful, happily striving to grow sort of way. And filling our prayers with
gratitude.
Anyways, I could talk
for a long time about prayer and talking to God, it is wonderful. Overall it
was a solid week, love Elder Clemente and looking forward to working hard with
Elder Mejilla.
Love you!
Hayden
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