10/07/13

Dear Family,

I found my scripture marker pencil!  We went to our investigator Charmaine's home to teach her, and it was sitting out on her table.  Yay!  I was very happy to find it.  That week without it was pretty rough.  Studying just wasn't the same.  On the note of Charmaine, she is still on date for baptism on the 27th of this month.  She's incredibly prepared.  She came to church last week and on her way home, some farmer offered her free vegetables.  She took it as God saying "well done for going to church."  Usually people don't recognize blessings that well.  It's quite refreshing.  She's amazing.  I'm really hoping she continues to progress towards baptism.

This has been an odd week.  It started out really nice with putting another investigator named Johnny on date for the 27th, and then not much got accomplished.  We had moves on Wednesday, so I was just in the mission office all day for the trainer's meeting.  Thursday was a full day of work, but then Friday was weekly planning and a band performance, Saturday was Zone Meeting and General Conference, and Sunday was General Conference all day.  The band performance went really well.  It was a lot of fun to perform again.  It's been a while since our last performance.  We finally have a good group put together again, so we're going to be performing a lot more.  We showed up to the performance and not many people had come, so we went outside of the chapel, which is on a really busy road, and sang people inside.  It worked pretty well.  We got like 20 random people off the street to come in and listen.  I hope we were able to touch them with our music.

General Conference was super great.  I loved it.  It's too bad you guys missed Elder Holland's talk.  It was amazing.  It's something that I think has needed to be addressed for quite some time now, and he did it beautifully.  I was amazed at all of the personal experiences we got to hear about this conference.  Usually they tell stories about other people, but there were quite a few very personal experiences shared this time.  Lawrence came to conference, and he said that he felt like they were talking just to him.  It really built his faith.  We had a cool miracle with him this week.  Do you remember my old investigator Jean-Leon?  He's the one that I accidentally called Jean-Valjean and then had to drop a couple of months ago.  Anyway, I felt like I should go see him this last week.  I didn't really know why, but I just did it.  The lesson didn't really go all that great just because he is so set in his ways, but after the lesson he asked us if we know anyone in our church who could use a job in his business.  He runs this big charity called Cofipro which deals with African countries.  I asked him if he could use an accountant, and he said he actually really needs to hire an accountant.  He wants someone who is from Africa, believes in Christ, and has a degree in accounting.  Lawrence is all of those things.  He has a masters degree in accounting from Nigeria, but hasn't been able to find work with it here.  He told me to send Lawrence to him.  He's going in for an interview sometime this week.  Maybe the whole reason Jean-Leon came in contact with us was to help Lawrence 5 months later.  Sometimes things don't end up the way you originally hope they will, but God orchestrates our lives perfectly.  Things will always work out if we just trust in Him.

So, my new companion is called Elder Nolan.  He is amazing.  I love him so much.  He's a 20 year old missionary from Manchester.  He is incredibly mature, both mentally, and spiritually.  It's a very refreshing change.  He is so prepared to be a missionary.  I don't feel like I'm training at all.  His calling before his mission was the Young Men President.  He's just super solid.  We sat down for planning our first night and he said, "Elder Hein, I just want you to know that I am here to work.  I know some missionaries come out not really knowing what to expect or if they're really ready to put in the work it takes, but I'm just ready to go.  Let's get to work."  Wow!  He blew me away.  He's going to be such a great missionary.  It made me so happy.  Not only does he have a great work ethic, he knows his doctrine very well.  He's a great teacher, he doesn't have a problem talking to people on the street.  It's just great.  I have a feeling this is going to be a really great transfer.  My district is super solid.  We have two of the best sisters in the mission, Elder David and his new trainee Elder Mitchell are super great.  It's just going to be good.  I'm very excited.

Elder Hein with his new companion Elder Nolan (Manchester England)

I enjoyed the emails this week.  Great job Catherine!  Way to be the number one ranked girl in your league.  That's super awesome.  Keep it up.  You'll go far.  I can't wait to get home and watch you play.  So, I might have just forgotten, but I don't think I knew about Nathan going on a mission.  That's super awesome!  Where is he going?  Let me know how his farewell goes.  Give him my best regards.  And could you send me his email address so I can email him?

I hope you all have a great week!  I've attached a photo of me and my new companion with the other missionaries in the mirror.

Love, 

Elder Hein