Another legendary week down. Life as a missionary can't get much better. The trio has been a huge bonus. My air mattress is holding air, my clothes are resting gently in their vacuum bags on the floor because I don't have a closet, luckily we don't run out of hot water in the shower, sometimes I get to ride in the backseat and take nap, and we always have enough people to play card games at night. Not bad!
Lots of great things happened this week, lets highlight a few.
-We set a baptismal date with our old 86 year old friend Don Anderson. We're not sure yet how determined he is about this, but he's expressed its a desire he has! He's sweet and old and really old. He likes to tell the same stories over and over. Sometimes I wonder if he hears what I'm saying. We work with what we got :)
-This transfer President Loveland called two elders as "travelling teachers" to tour to mission and help train areas that are struggling and such. One of them is none other than my former companion Elder DeGooyer. The other is Elder Wilcox and he is so rad. Unfortunately, we know what we're doing in our area so they weren't scheduled to come on exchanges with us. But another one they had lined up fell through on Friday so they called us up and spent the day with us. #party. We got work done, Elder D had served in PG before so we went out and found some people he used to teach. All 5 of us went to dinner with some members who promised us they didn't mind feeding a small army. It was awesome. Found a lot of people to teach and opportunities to serve that day. Elder D took me to meet this super old less active guy who is a wizard at chess. I beat him. He seemed a little sad, and I began to regret not letting him win on his own turf the first time. Then we get home and Elder Fielding kindly informs me that this old gentleman is legally blind and is dying of cancer. Then I felt really bad. Hahaha. He just called me today though and wants a rematch. No mercy, even for blind dying old men. He's a sweet guy.
-Zone conference in Fayetteville last Tuesday. My last zone conference. :( It was great though, got to see a lot of people I love and will miss. Probably won't see them again before I hit the skies. Every departing missionary bares their final testimony at the conference. I spent my whole mission thinking about what I wanted to say when my time came. Then, I couldn't remember any of it so I let the spirit guide. I felt good about it. Sad to leave it for the final time. Then I announced that I would be signing and distributing ALL OF MY TIES in the gym. You should've seen those elders tear into my rack of 50+ ties like piranhas in a blood frenzy. I regret not filming that. I determined to only take 7 ties home with me. I don't need more haha. One of my last companions was a little salty when he saw the tie he had traded me in the pile though hahah. I tried to tell him it will better serve other missionaries. He wasn't convinced.
-What else? We had the weirdest meeting of my life with a guy named Brother King on Sunday. He's old, wears like four fat rings on his fingers and a corduroy coat. He's a ward missionary, and a little gung-ho about it. He said "I want 15 minutes with you guys after church." We sit down and rapid-fire talk about random missionary efforts. He turns to me and says "You first, you have 5 minutes. Go. We have no time." I said, "what would you like to discuss?" "Whatever you want." So I tell him what I've seen in the area and some ideas. I takes two minutes. This is literally being timed. He says "you have 3 more minutes. talk." Uuuuuhhhh so I ask him what he's seen in the missionary work his long years of being here. He launched into a rant about negligence of leaders, lazy members, poor hometeaching. Now its Elder Fielding's turn. He takes a couple minutes and then asks Brother King, "What can we do better this transfer than last?" Brother King points to me without looking at me. "Listen to him. This is his show. He's the guy. The Lord has revealed it to me this morning." .....Silence. He says "Do you feel it?" .....More silence... "Good, I can feel it. I want you to feel it." Elder Wright is nodding his head in a slow confused way now. My eyebrows are raised but he's still not looking at me. He says more about "urgency. we have no time. This is the Lord's time. The Lords expands our time. Do you feel that? We want the ward leaders to feel that. Call them at midnight, I don't care. Tell them Brother King said to call. They'll work or I'll kick their butts." Afterward I got in the car and had no words to describe what just happened hahaha.
I'm out of time. Love ya'll!
Elder Hakes
An ocean of lollipops at the Ozark Delight candy company. Owned by a ward member.
Last zone conference with my bois and the Lovelands!
Doin service work with the crew
We earned these shakes.
No comments:
Post a Comment