Week 21: Get Out Of Jail Free

Monday, February 24, 2025   10:09 pm

What's up, another week has passed. Now I am in Taylorsville. 

Had some exciting new transfers, and I've got some roommates! We now live with English elders. My companion, Elder Enciso as I believe I mentioned, is from Mexico. He speaks and understands a good bit of English, but I do end up having to translate once in a while. Anyways, the English elders share our exact area, except their's is a stake, and ours is half a ward. 🤷‍♂️ Guess that's Spanish Vs English side. 

The other half of our ward is covered by another companionship of elders. They are social media missionaries, so along with thw normal teaching and finding, they spend some time each day making posts and videos and sending referrals to other missionaries. Random interesting fact, all four of us in the Springhill ward were (my last comp)Elder Romero's companion at some point. 

My family will understand this, and I'm sorry to who doesn't, but I taught the other missionaries in my apartment how to play Scum, and they are hooked. 😈 (I win about 90% of the time)

The Springhill ward is much more missionary oriented than my last area. The second day we were here, the youth had an activity where they roleplayed giving their testimonies with us, then they visited inactive members.😳

We also had a good amount of new people and recent converts attending church that the members were excited to talk with. 

After church all the ward leaders got together with us to talk about how the ward could help us to find, teach, and baptize. During the classes, they passed around a sign-up sheet with times that people could come with us to lessons. This is the complete opposite of my last ward. 

We have two people on date for baptism! The first guy's sister and brother in law were just baptized the week before I arrived, so we are pretty sure about him. With the second guy, we are basically just hoping he will attend church this Sunday. We don't know a whole lot about him, but we're gonna work with him and help him get excited. 

So, it's been a pretty good first week! We are back to walking since I do not have my own bike. But, yknow, that's fine. Lots of apartments to knock, lots of gringo catholics to anger, this place is great! 

Bye! 

________________

Later that day....

Whoa, guys. Something super cool happened. This last, Sunday, or I guess yesterday, our mission president held a mission-wide 24 hour fast to be able to have a Miracle March, full of miracles. In addition, he wants us to strengthen our connection with the spirit and dedication to the Lord by fasting 40 days from anything that might distract from the Spirit, trying extra hard to purify ourselves, and tonight, on the first day, we've had a miracle. 

A member told us that he had someone we could visit named Danny, and that he would come with us to help teach. Referral from and lesson with member already sounds like a miracle if you ask me, but God wasn't done. 

We arrive, and Danny isn't there, but with him also live some friends. 3 other couples were there, and all 6 people were willing to hear our message, discuss with us, and also accept a baptismal date for the 9th of March! 

In addition, they also have a 6 year old girl who I was able to give a sticker to. 

Anyways, yeah! Super awesome night, super humble people, and they're all really funny and kind! 

Man, I love this job! I wanna be a missionary forever! 

I've got roommates

Finding with the English elders because we have no area book. #whitewash (We had not been given a map or records of our own area yet💀)

...?

Ward mission leader dinner (I swear, I was not photoshopped into this, haha.)

Our new currency by the end of the year (Some nice decor in our home.)

Les extraño

"Dinner's on us tonight, Elders."

(The $100 that some random Tongan members handed us before driving away)

Week 20: Though Your Transfer Be As Scarlet, It Shall Be White As Snow

Monday, February 17, 2025   3:29pm

Hi friends, it's transfer time again. 

I'm leaving Parkway! There is a touch of sorrow, but the ward is kind of falling apart. A lot of the families are moving out, and this week, the one family that helps the missionaries is leaving. 

That family though is awesome, I love them a lot. They call themselves my mom and dad. 🤷‍♂️ 

The Parkway ward, we found out, doesn't even have enough active members to be considered a ward. It could do them a lot of good to be combined with the other ward that meets at the same building, because they have a lot of active, friendly members that will help visitors feel more welcome. 

My new area is called Springhill. My new companion Elder Enciso is also just arriving to this area. That means we are Whitewashing. Yippee. Neither of us know any of the members or the people being taught, so we won't really know what we're doing the first week. 

Elder Enciso was trained by Elder Romero about a year ago, so he's like my brother or something. We still don't have a car...

This last week, we had a bunch more people who actually are able to progress. One guy should be baptized this Sunday, and agreed to work with us to keep the Word of Wisdom for health and for Jesus! 

A nonmember friend of one of the youth is trying to sign up for FSY and asked us if we could baptize him tomorrow! We, uh, couldn't, he has not been to church yet. And his parents might not want him to, but he's got the desire at least! 

Even though we weren't able to have any baptisms this transfer, it was a super fun, and Elder Romero was a great companion. Hopefully, Springhill has more members that want to be involved in the work. 

I love you guys, have a good week! Share the Gospel! 

Return of Elder Haupert

Cold? Maybe a little. 

Hello from the United Methodist Tongan Church! And Adiós! 

One last look...

I didn't know the English elders were handing out autographs!

Family Feud?!

Hermana Durango!!! 💕💕

La familia Durango, mi familia de Parkway! 💖

Les amo mucho ♥️ para siempre

 

Week 19: This Car's Engine has Two Elderpower

Monday, February 10, 2025   10:35pm

Hi

We've had quite an interesting week. A lot of people have asked for blessings of health recently, so we've done a lot of that. 

One member asked us for a favor. Of course we were gonna help, we love helping. She needed us to push her car that wouldn't start. She had her husband steer. He was pushing on the brake the whole time as an extra unforeseen challenge. That was fun, though. We got it going kinda fast, just my companion and I. 

We had some awesome opportunities to bring a youth finding with us! We visited a couple of his friends who seem interested, and some recent converts! It was pretty fun. 

We ended up having 8 recent converts at church which is the most in a long time! We didn't have any nonmembers, though. But that's okay, because an elderly member made my day when he walked into the church and I shook his freezing hand, he said in English and I quote, "They call me The Fridge!" 

I'm pretty glad God has given me an increased appetite lately, because we ate 4 times with members yesterday. 

We have one family in our ward that tells us it's the law to eat at their house after church, and they signed up to feed us yesterday, so they planned to feed us lunch and dinner. They gave us a chicken soup and fried steak with rice. After lunch, we left with their son to visit one of his friends and two families of recent converts. 

His friend's family was just leaving as we got there, so we were able to schedule to meet them next week. But the first recent converts we visited were home, and wanted us to eat. So they kept putting tacos on our plates until we told them to stop. 

The next recent convert we visited gave us Tongan(?) food. Not sure why they had Tongan food. But it was pretty tasty. At this point, all three of us were clearly full, but it was late, so we had to return to the members who signed up to feed us. There is no saying no to that sister. She gives you food anyways. 

We got there, and they were eating arroz con leche, just some dessert. But their son told the sister we were reaaally hungry so she gave us huge bowls of it. I consider it a miracle we survived. But surprisingly, I have felt fuller. 

Then we watched our friend get bashed by his wife(who's a member) and another sister. 🫤

I read a really cool talk this week that provoked some interesting thoughts. It was 

"But We Heeded Them Not" from April 2022 by Elder Bednar. 

He spoke of the iron rod, which represents the word of God, and related it to when John in the book of Revelation refers to Jesus as 'the word.' 

When we press forward holding fast to the iron rod or rather, the word of God, it is like we are holding onto our Savior. And to heed the words of the wicked, the ones pointing a finger of scorn, and neglect to study the scriptures is to set Him aside. He is the only way to eternal life and everlasting joy. How much does your Savior mean to you? How tightly will you hold onto Him that you may not stray far from Him? 

Waiting for our friend in his living room

Where 80% of the residents hate us!

Finding with our youth

I read the words, the words He prayed while bearing sorrow in Gethemane. I feel His love, the price He paid. How many drops of blood were spilled for me?

Okey, hasta la proxima! Nos vemos!...

…si yo vivo…

Consejo de Barrio, que divertido!

Getting ready to build the Tower of Babel

My shiny new turn signal

Los tacos😋😵

Week 18: Uh, No, I'm Not Your Worst Nightmare

Monday, February 3, 2025   10:05pm

Hey, happy February! As my companion says, "I have fear." He goes home in April, so if time continues to move this quickly, I understand what he means. I know President Nelson said the Lord is hastening His work, but that's not what I had in mind.

So, uh... we've got a knew president... I didn't think I'd talk about that as a missionary, but it has caused us some problems. Fewer and fewer people are opening their doors, because for some unimaginable reason, a gringo in a suit scares them. Especially when he's got a latino companion or 'interpreter.' 😔 

One of our friends actually... was sent back to his own country. We aren't sure what happened, I've heard that he asked to go home?? Yeah. Well, he was the only nonmember that was consistently attending church, even if he lived outside our area and was really hard to contact. That was unfortunate. 

So basically, everyone is a little paranoid right now, but hopefully it's the humbling that everyone needed. That's what I'm praying for. 

We did have 4 nonmembers at church this week, though, God knows what He's doing. One of them was primarily hard to contact because he's terrified of being deported, but when we were finally able talk to him, he was willing to come; after we assured him that it was safe. 

Had a cool expirience where my companion and I were both prompted to knock the door of a friend we hadn't been able to contact since she came to church in December. She answered the door! Woo hoo! We scheduled a lesson for the next day because it was late. 

We came by, and I was excited; things were going really well until she suddenly fell into a different dimension... So we started talking to her about her expirience at church two months ago, since we didn't get the chance before. She told us she felt weird at church, and she wouldn't be coming back. We were unable to change her mind, so we ended up inviting her to pray about it and left. 

I was, of course, discouraged, sad, and don't know why we felt prompted to knock her door. But I do know that God has a plan that's not meant to exclude anyone from returning to live in His presence. But God plays the long game, so whether it's soon, or perhaps years later, God will do everything He can to prepare her to receive the fullness of the Gospel. 

I wanna share a scripture about a topic that is very important to me: Alma 32:15 says,

"Yea, he that truly humbleth himself, and repenteth of his sins, and endureth to the end, the same shall be blessed—yea, much more blessed than they who are compelled to be humble because of their exceeding poverty."

(A lot of the people we meet are super prideful despite their exceeding poverty!)

 Our mission president's wife asked me a week or two ago what my favorite Christlike attribute was. If I had to choose a favorite, I think it would be humility. As I've worked harder become and to understand what it means to be truly humble, I've been able to see that pride is often hard to spot in one's self. But pride is stubborn, unyielding, unwilling to listen or to change, and is what often starts contention between friends. 

But Jesus Christ the greatest of all? He was meek, lowly, and humble. He did the will of the Father from the beginning. He is a resolver of conflict, truly the prince of peace. 

If we are to truly follow our Savior, we must root out our natural desires and tendencies and become as He is. I know that the Lord will help us to do this, and that if we sincerely desire to change, we will be filled with a love for others so deep we couldn't dream of being contentious. 

Love you guys bunches! 

In-N-Out with San Marcos bishop and Elders Thomas & Thomas

I had no idea our APs had a van

My sweet ride (but it has no shocks or pegs)

We just got a letter

I wonder who it's from

This expires after my mission calling💀

We accidently knocked an anti's door