September 2013
9/23/13
Dear Family,
It was nice to hear from you again this week. As always, I
especially enjoyed the pictures. Cadee is getting bigger and bigger every
week. She's still only 3 in my mind, so it's weird to see how old she's
getting. She's going to be a completely different person when I get home.
Hopefully she doesn't think of me as just Cameron's friend.
This week was a really good one. We had President Interviews,
so that's always fun. President Jordan is such a great man. The
spirit works through him like crazy. Even talking to him on the phone is
a spiritual experience. I hear he sends mail to parents. Is that
true? Have you guys received any mail from President Jordan?
The baptism on Sunday went
great. Lawrence was so happy. He got all emotional during the
opening song (I believe in Christ), and it was just a great experience.
The boiler decided to be weird though, so he had a cold baptism. I think
that's just the Lord's sense of humor. Me and Lawrence have that in
common about our baptisms. Cold water. After church he just kept
thanking me for everything. He really wants to keep his covenants.
My favorite thing he said after being baptized was "Now, I am a son
of God. I want others to be able to tell that I am different when they
see me." He really understands what he has done by being baptized.
The ward did a great job at making him feel welcome, too. Everyone
introduced themselves and welcomed him into the ward.
Elder Hein at Lawrence’s baptism
I have a couple of stories to
share this week. Probably like 2 months ago now I decided to knock on a
door in our neighbourhood at like 8:30 one night. Typically I would never
knock on someone's door that late. Knocking on someone's door at 8:30 is
like the equivalent of knocking on someone's door at 10:30 in Utah. Not
typically the best idea. But I did it anyway because I felt prompted to.
I met a really nice lady who was nervous for an operation the next day
and I offered her some words of comfort that really touched her and brought her
to tears. I believe I already told you that story. I've been trying
to get a hold of her ever since, but haven't really had any success until a
couple of weeks ago when I knocked on the door and met her husband. I set
up an appointment to come around and teach both of them about the Book of
Mormon. When we showed up to the appointment (last Wednesday) and the
husband's mother had just died a couple of days before, so they were a little
distressed and rescheduled for us to come back on the weekend. We went on
Friday and they were really busy, but we were able to give them a Book of
Mormon on the doorstep and reschedule for a less busy time. As we were
standing on the porch, their upstairs neighbour poked her head out the window
and said "hey, are you guys Mormons?" We told her we are, and
she said "I want to know more about your church. When can we
meet?" We set an appointment for this morning. We met her and
apparently I had sat next to her on a bus a couple of months ago and
immediately said hello and asked how she was doing. She was getting off
the bus soon, so I just invited her to come see our church sometime. She
said it had really touched her. She hates how secluded everyone is in
London and wishes everyone would be more pleasant to each other. She had
known some Mormons when she was living in the states, but never really got to
ask them much about what they believed, so when she saw me again on her porch
she seized the opportunity to find out more about what makes the Mormons so
nice and happy. We taught her the first discussion and we're seeing her
again on Wednesday. She committed to read the Book of Mormon, pray about
it, and come to church on Sunday. We are always told that if all you can
do is just smile at someone, or help them with their bags, that's enough to
plant a seed. Maybe they'll be curious and find out more later. I
now know that is true. All I did was say hi to a lady on a bus and say
some nice things to a lady who's door I randomly knocked on one night, and now
I have three great new investigators who really want to learn about the church.
Usually we don't get to harvest our own seeds, but I have been blessed to
be able to this last week. Never ignore a prompting. Sometimes I
feel so prompted to talk to someone on the street and when I do, they just
immediately shut me down and it's really easy to then ignore the next prompting
because you don't think anything will come of it anyway. Sometimes we
receive promptings to do something that we see no immediate result from, but
maybe it's just the Lord seeing if we will follow a prompting when it really
does matter.
On Saturday I took a man from
our ward named Kofi teaching with us. We knocked on the door of the lady
named Charmaine we had planned on teaching, but she wasn't home. I was
prompted to drop in on another lady who lives in the area who, coincidently, I
had also taught with Kofi. We knocked on the door and her son opened the door.
He got his mum from upstairs and she just sat on the stairs halfway down.
She said she was feeling really ill and didn't want to get too close to
us. Kofi asked her if she would like a blessing. He explained to
her that because we hold the priesthood, we can offer blessings of healing.
She accepted the invitation and we gave her a blessing. We left and
let her get some rest and went back to the original home we had planned on
visiting. Charmaine had returned home and we were able to teach her
probably the best Lesson 1 I have ever taught. Kofi is the perfect member
to take teaching. He says the most perfect things at the most perfect
times and is very familiar with the lessons so he doesn't get off track.
She really loved the things we shared with her, including the For the
Strength of Youth pamphlet we had left with her when we originally met her for
her 16 year old daughter. She accepted a baptismal date for the end of
next month, accepted to read the Book of Mormon and pray about it, and said she
would come to church on Sunday with her daughter. It was such a great
lesson. The next day, she wasn't able to get her daughter to come with
her to church because they were running a little late and she didn't want to be
the focus of attention as she walked in late. Charmaine came to the
baptism after church though and really enjoyed it. We are seeing her
again this week. After the baptism, we decided to drop in on the other
lady who lives near Charmaine and see if she was feeling any better. She
was feeling a ton better. She said she believes the blessing really
helped her. She woke up and thought to herself, "I should go to
church this week." She promised us that she would come to church
this next Sunday and we are teaching her again on Tuesday. If Kofi hadn't
been with us, I don't think I would have offered her a blessing. Because he
was, she had a special opportunity to show some faith and see a miracle because
of it.
I am completely convinced
that this is the Lord's work. I can not affect people the way I have seen
them affected by myself. It's the Lord that fills in the gap of what I am
capable of and what he needs done. The spirit is the best teacher.
Never ignore it. Never disregard it. You never know when a
prompting you receive will result in something, but you never will know unless
you follow it.
I'm all out of time, but I'll write you next week.
Next Monday I find out if I'm staying here in London North or moving
(which means I'll be emailing on Tuesday). I would really love to stay
here. I love this ward. I love the people I'm teaching. But
if the Lord needs me somewhere else, I'm sure I'll grow to love that area too.
I hope you all have a fantastic week.
Love,
Elder Hein
9/16/13
Dear Family,
This week was a pretty good week. We've been strongly
encouraged to put a lot higher emphasis on Member Present Lessons, so I tried
really hard to get members involved in our lessons. I've come to the
conclusion that it can either be the best thing in the world or the worst.
Some members just completely derail lessons. Others say the most
perfect things at the most perfect times. There doesn't seem to be much
of an in-between.
A couple of weeks ago I
stopped into a church that I pass by at least once a week on my way to see
Lawrence. It was really cool. I talked to the Vicar and he said
that "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" was written there a super long
time ago. I thought that was pretty cool. On the topic
of Christmas music, do you think you could send me a copy of that arrangement
of "Oh Holy Night" that I really like? The band is going to
start practicing Christmas music soon. Also, it's starting to get really
cold. I should have brought those two wool coats of mine. They
would be really nice to have. How expensive do you think it would be to
ship them here? If you vacuum packed them I wonder if you could fit them
into one of those flat rate boxes. If not, I'll just buy a new coat here.
Lawrence is being baptized
this week!! Yay! He's such a great man. He's asked me to do
the baptism. I'm very excited and honored. Next
week I'll have some pictures of us in white to send you. Baptisms in
England don't come very often, but I'm pretty sure we appreciate them more.
Elder Gregson's brother is serving in South America and he told him in an
email that his mission's monthly goal was 300 baptisms. Our yearly goal
is 400. Haha, it's crazy. If every companionship baptized twice a
year we would reach that goal.
Elder Hein with one of his investigators -
Lawrence
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I'm glad you guys straightened out Catherine and her
thinking that I had entered into an agreement regarding lesbians. The
vegan challenge has ended. I didn't win :( I got lazy. I
bought a bun at the grocery store that didn't have any ingredients listed and
the other Elders went to the store and asked the baker about the ingredients.
I didn't think they would go that far, but I guess I should have been a
bit more careful. It had a little bit of butter in it. It didn't
even taste good. I ate one bite and threw the rest away. It was a very
tragic loss. Elder David is sitting next to me in his new suit as I am
typing this.
To resolve mom's concerns, yes I really did lose my phone.
It fell out of my pocket. I didn't get robbed like Cameron.
Also, regarding mom's email, does the missionary bear still work, or have
you worn out the battery yet? I have a feeling it won't last my whole
mission. I wonder when I wrote that little note on those stickers.
It must have been fun to come across. Did you save it? I
wouldn't expect you to, but it's something I wouldn't be surprised if you did.
Last week was the vegan challenge, this week was the Scotch
Bonnet challenge. The Zone Leaders came over to our flat this morning and
we went out and bought some scotch bonnet peppers and a bunch of ice cream.
Those peppers are HOT! We almost died. If you want a little
glimpse of what the atonement was like, try one. It feels like your
insides our bleeding from every pour. The ice cream makes it feel a
little better, but not much. I have a video of it on my phone that I'll
either send home on a flash drive some day, or show you when I get home.
It was bad. I still feel pretty sick. I can only imagine what
round two is going to feel like when it comes out the other end.
Well, I'm all out of time. I hope you all have a
fantastic week! Don't do drugs. . . or the scotch bonnet challenge.
Much love,
Elder Hein
9/9/13
Dear Family,
This week was a pretty good week. It was set up to be
a really good week, but a few very unfortunate things happened. First, I
found out on Tuesday that we had two meetings at the mission office during the
week that I hadn't been told about before. I had to cancel a bunch of
appointments. It was really frustrating. And then on Friday I
somehow managed to lose my phone. I had no way to contact any of my
investigators or members or anything. We had to go to the church to make
any calls on Saturday and Sunday. Amazingly though, I have a brand new
phone today. It was supposed to be at least Wednesday before the new one
came in, but when I went to the office for band practice this morning it was
there! I have to re-enter all of the phone numbers and everything,
though. It's a long, boring process, but at least I can get a hold of my
investigators now! It was a long two days not being able to call or text
any of them.
Because I live in a flat with another set of missionaries,
some interesting things tend to happen. The most recent was our making a
bet to see who could go the longest being Vegan. The winner gets a new
suit. Missionaries do weird things for fun. How we've defined vegan
is that we can't eat any dairy, meet, eggs, or honey. Basically, if it is
obviously a product of an animal, you can't eat it. Wish me luck! I
might have a new suit in a couple of days or weeks, depending on how long
everyone else lasts.
Elder Gregson is doing well. Every time it's his turn
to talk I just have to pray my hardest that he doesn't say something I'm going
to need to clean up. One time, he brought up the topic of polygamy.
It was fun. Another time, when someone asked us what it is that
motivates a couple of young men to leave home for two years to serve a mission,
he said it's because "the girls in our church only marry guys who have
served a mission." AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!! I almost died.
I think he was trying to be funny, but it was not the right time. I
just chuckled nervously and said something like, "but that's not really
why we come. We come because . . . (something much better)."
Every day is an adventure with Elder Gregson. Sometimes he is very
competent. When it comes to things that don't involve other people, he is
great. But when people come into the picture, there's no knowing what's
going to happen. He keeps me on my toes.
Lawrence is doing great. He's been coming to church as
much as his other church will allow, and we're planning on a baptism on the
22nd. He's such an amazing man. He loves the Book of Mormon.
He told me that before I found him he had been severely depressed, but
through the things I've shared with him, he's found hope again. He never
wants us to leave him after lessons, because he feels happy around us. It's
amazing how much the gospel can change someone. His life has taken a 180'
turn since I first met him. He's always happy and completely confident
that as long as he keeps trying his hardest, the Lord will make up the rest.
Seeing the man that he has become by accepting the gospel into his life
has built my testimony more than I can describe. He knows that this
church is true. That's not something I taught him. That's something
that only the spirit can teach. I've just been lucky enough to be the instrument
that the spirit has been working through.
Dad asked about the picture of me and the lady in my ward holding
the hymn book. That's our ward chorister. She's so great. She
is the loopiest old woman I have ever met. She enjoys leading the music
in sacrament meeting more than anyone I have ever seen. Her catch phrase
is "We LOVE the Elders!" The first thing she tells you when you
meet her is the story of when the Elders knocked on her door 35 years ago.
They said, "this is the Book of Mormon, another testament of Jesus
Christ" and she said "another? Well, come on in!"
She's the best. If you guys come to pick me up, we'll have to go to
London North ward for sacrament meeting so you can meet her.
Elder Hein and the ward chorister
.jpg)
I loved the emails this week. Cadee always seems to be
very excited to run through the sprinklers in two years when I come home.
She mentions it every time. I'm very jealous of all the peaches
that were mentioned in your emails. I would really love a peach shake
right now. I'm glad Mom included Amy in the annual peach bottling.
It sounds like she's really become part of the family.
I hope you all have a fantastic week. I think Mormon
said it best in Moroni 8:3. I love you all!
Love,
Elder Hein
9/2/13
Dear Family,
Wow, it's already September! This whole mission thing
is going really fast. I feel like I should still have a trainer, but now
I'm the one training. It's really bizarre. Elder Gregson is doing
quite well. He has no problem speaking up, but sometimes some very
interesting things come out of his mouth. He described Godly Sorrow one
day as if it were to make you feel like killing yourself. He also likes
to throw the bit where God says that all of the churches are an abomination in
His sight into the first vision story. We're working on focusing on the
positive, and the reasons why our church is the true church rather than why all
of the others are wrong. It's an adventure, that's for sure.
Teaching someone how to do something that I've only been doing for a few
months myself is quite the task. I'm pretty sure I'm learning just as
much as he is, if not more.
We had a really great day on
Friday. We had an appointment scheduled for the morning, but as we walked
out the door, it cancelled. We stayed in and did our "weekly
planning" that we had scheduled for later in the day. After weekly
planning, we went out to do some street contacting before our next lesson, and
we ran into this nice lady named Natasha. She is 1 month pregnant, and
she says she really needs God in her life. Her boyfriend wanted her to
get an abortion, but she wouldn't do it so they split and now she's living with
her mother. We taught her about God being our Loving Heavenly Father, and
how prayer and reading the scriptures can strengthen her faith in Christ.
At the end of our little "step-in lesson" we asked her if we
could meet with her and her mum sometime. She said she didn't want to get
her mum involved in this yet, but she set up a time to meet with us this week
and then she pulled out her phone and gave us the names and phone numbers of 3
of her best friends that she wanted us to call and try to meet with as well.
We didn't even ask her for referrals, but we ended up with three, one of
whom is actually quite interested and we have scheduled to meet her tomorrow.
If our appointment that morning hadn't cancelled, we wouldn't have ran
into Natasha, and we wouldn't have met her friend either. I'm very
convinced that this is the Lord's work, and it will go as he wills it to as
long as we are receptive to and worthy of the promptings of the Holy Ghost.
It seemed at first like our day had gone wrong, but really it had just
rearranged a bit to fit what God wanted us to be doing. Later in the
evening we were supposed to go visit Angela and Joshua (the little boy I
baptised) for dinner. Because there has to be another adult male with us
when we visit any woman, we had a member coming with us. We were waiting
for him at a bus stop and he was about 5 minutes late, so I gave him a call.
He said he was running like 2 hours late and wouldn't be able to make it.
This put us in quite a predicament. Angela already had food ready
for us to come and eat, so we couldn't just cancel on her because of the rule.
It would have been incredibly rude to just bail on the appointment.
I frantically called everyone in the ward I could think of to come with
us, but nobody could come. We even started stopping nice looking men on
the street and asking if the would accompany us to a dinner appointment at a
friend's home. It was ridiculous. I had no idea what to do. I
called Elder Hutchins, and asked him if he had any suggestions, and the only
thing he could say was, "have you prayed?" Nope. We
hadn't prayed. We walked to a quite little alley and said a quick prayer
to be able to find a good solution to this problem without offending Angela and
without breaking any rules. When we finished praying, I just felt like we
needed to go knock on her door and explain our situation and then see if she
had any ideas. I knocked on the door and she came to the door, and told
us that she had invited a friend of hers over who happened to be in town and
would like us to teach him while we were there.
I have a testimony of God
helping us to do His work. If we are doing our very best, he will make up
the rest. I've seen it time and time again on my mission and I've only
been here for just under 4 months. I loved the story Mom shared about the
sister and the watermelon. Miracles can happen every day. We just
need the faith and the willingness to make them happen, and then be able to
recognize when they have.
Despite the lack of ability and experience that Elder
Gregson and I have, this week went very well. It's nice having a
companion who works hard again. I don't have to be continuously priming
his engine to get him to work, I don't have to make an effort to boost his
morale every 20 minutes, I just work hard, and he mirrors. It's great.
I've said it before, but I'll say it again. Skills can be taught; work
ethic and attitude, as far as I've observed, can't. They are choices that
everyone has to make for themselves.
I received the package from Grandpa today. I saw his name on
the label, and I immediately began wondering what kind of funny joke, or
ridiculous item was inside. I was not disappointed. Everyone in the
office got quite the kick out of it. President wanted to know how many
calories were in the whole thing, so I whipped out my calculator watch and
calculated it. 27,000 Calories! I think if I ate that whole thing,
even spread over a couple of weeks, I would get diabetes.
Haha, I think it's about to become the London North ward pot of Nutella.
Nobody will have to bring any refreshments to an activity for months!
On the subject of calories, I have lost so much weight! It's a
little bit scary. The blue suit I came out with is like bed sheets on me
now. The trousers barely stay up with a belt. That other grey suit
that I brought which was too tight on me even needs to be cinched up with a
belt now. Don't worry, I'm not loosing unhealthy amounts of weight, but
apparently I had quite a bit to lose. I might need to buy another suit
here soon. Suits are amazingly inexpensive here. I bought a suit a
couple of months ago for £30.00. I'm not sure what that translates to in
dollars, but it can't be very much. It's really nice and is holding up
really well so far. Shirts here are really inexpensive also. They
run about £10 for a really posh one. So far, my accent hasn't changed
much, but my vocabulary has quite a bit. I have to try to keep things
pretty American when I send emails.
Elder
Hein received 11 pounds of Nutella from Grandpa Pugh
.jpg)
Well, I think that's about all I have to email about this
week. I'll send some pictures with this email if I can get them to
attach. One of them is of me and Elder Gregson in our wedding uniforms,
one is of me and one of my favourite ward members here in London North, and the
other is of . . . well, I guess you'll just have to see. I hope you all
have a wonderful week! I always look forward to reading your emails and
hearing about good old Lindon, Utah. Love you!
Love,
Elder Hein
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