Happy Belated Easter!

(letter dated April 25, 2011)

Hello Family!!
It's good to hear that you all had a wonderful Easter.

Julia and Steve, your news about being member missionaries brings me so much Joy. I'm so proud of you guys for being awesome and trying to be examples to your neighbors. I hope after my mission I can continue doing missionary work.

So...

Unfortunately Hector did not get baptized this week. We went and visited him a few times, and he would never really say a specific day, just that there was something he needed to "fix". We went and watched part of the Joseph Smith movie with him, which he really liked. Elder High shared a scripture about not procrastinating your day of repentance, and we talked to Hector about how he was ready. We tried setting a baptismal goal with him, and we got some horrible news. He told us that he's hoping it can be before, but probably won't be until after his trip to Ecuador. We asked when that trip was going to be, and he said... December. I was like," Wo, Um..." haha or something like that. So we were a little discouraged for sure. He said he wanted to talk with the bishop. So yesterday right after sacrament meeting, he met with the Bishop, and when he came out, him and the bishop told us that he was going to be baptized next Sunday! What a relief! So yeah, that's pretty exciting for Hector. We actually went by earlier in the week to visit, and I asked him if he's received an answer about the church being true, and kinda gave me a response of, "What a dumb question, of course" so that's good news I guess too.

This week I also got to conduct my first companion exchange with Elder Hunt. Elder Hunt just got to the mission but isn't really a new missionary as he served for 2 months in Bolivia, but now he is here in New Jersey. I got a chance to show him some of the ropes of Union City. Unfortunately we didn't see too much that day that we were together, but I hope I was able to learn something from the exchange. He's a really good missionary though, and really taught me to better look on the positive side of things, and to not give up.

This week we went and saw our investigator Jennifer who has been to church a number of times and her husband (they aren't really married though) is a member. It was a super disorganized lesson as we talked about Adam and Eve with the original sin, a little from the Restoration, the purpose of this life, and the gospel of Jesus Christ. It all came back to having her just read in the Book of Mormon. Elder High made a little thing for her to sign, saying that she would read the introduction to the Book of Mormon before watching TV, and she signed it. We don't know how it went though because they didn't come to church. Sadly they are going to be moving in just a few weeks to Florida, but hopefully she can talk to missionaries once she gets there.

This week we worked with a few less actives as well. We were able to get one to Sacrament meeting who hadn't been in about a year, and the other one didn't make it to church, but both of them are going to come on team ups with us this week which should be pretty great.

We met these cool people this week named Irene and Cheryl, who were contacts from about a week ago. We went and taught them and they had been to the church and taken lessons before, but couldn't progress much further because of the Husband. He's Jewish I guess, but a Lutheran. We'll hope to start teaching him as well.

Christian and Trixi: We have still not had the chance to visit Christian and Trixi yet, as it seems that Christian is on a new work schedule and doesn't seem to be able to meet with us at the same times as before. Hopefully we can hold onto them though, because they are super awesome investigators.

Oh, one or two things, last night the mouse finally got trapped that was in our house, and I guess up in the west New York apartment, they had one trap catch 3 mice at the exact same time. Crazy right? My comp took a picture of it, it's pretty interesting and I'm not quite sure how it happened. Bad news is, is that we might have bed bugs in our house, but I guess that's just what happens here in the East.

This week we also had the great opportunity to have Zone conference. It was a lot about doing things by the Spirit. We were supposed to write a two minute talk on how our "20 minute lessons" have been going, and I actually got called on to give my talk which was pretty scary, but I think it went alright. At the end of zone conference we watched a talk by Elder Holland that he gave in the MTC. He was talking about how after Christ's death the apostles went back to fishing. We've heard it a lot here about dropping our nets while here on our missions. Dropping all the things that are holding us back from serving the Lord with our all. At times we may come home from our missions and begin to pick up those nets again, or become distracted from continuing to fulfill our call as missionaries. The Lord asks 3 times, Do you love me? If so, "Feed my Sheep." Do we love the Lord? Then we must feed his sheep and continue taking the gospel to all the world. The Lord commanded us to drop our nets. Not just for a time but forever. Just as He did the apostles. I know that missionary work continues after the mission, and that there is so much joy in sharing the gospel. I liked the talk a lot, and it really was a great Zone Conference.

That's about it though. It was a great week, and a great Easter. I know the Gospel is True! Thanks for all your support, and sure do love you. Can you believe I'm at 8 months today? Time flies I guess. I'm super excited in some ways to call in 2 weeks, but in other ways I think calling home is harder. So if we could try keeping the crying to a minimum, that would be awesome, and I'll try not to cry either.

Love You!
Love Elder Hicks!