Rebuilding

(Letter December 5, 2011)

It's so good to hear that all went well during birthday celebrations! I'm sorry I didn't wish you a happy birthday last week mom. so HAPPY BIRTHDAY.  Well as I've said before, with the two baptisms, we are struggling to build up our area here in Passaic. We are trying to find people prepared and ready to progress, but this week didn't have too much success with that. These weeks are going by faster than ever. The transfer ends in two weeks, and I feel like Elder Erikson just barely became my companion. I don't know if I'm staying or going, it's kind of a toss up. To be honest, it's been pretty discouraging seeing the area take a big downfall. I don't know what we need to do in order to get it going on the upward drift, but some drastic action needs to take place. We saw a little bit starting last Monday. We have been pretty busy checking out formers/less-actives and the such, and we came to the house of a former, and ended up teaching a guy named Edgar and his wife. They seemed pretty interested in coming to know about a living day prophet at the beginning of the lesson, but by the end things weren't going so great. We'll see if we can get another few lessons in with them before we drop them entirely.

  On Tuesday, zone meeting went extraordinarily well. It was spirit packed, and really inspired the zone. We reviewed the new zone goals, and set a zone baptismal goal of 6 in order to contribute to the missions goal of 400 baptisms for the year. Hopefully we can encourage and inspire the zone to do the best to reach that goal of baptism. We really need to increase our faith, hope, and our vision for what we can each accomplish in our individual areas. I had the opportunity to work with Elder Tilley on Tuesday during an exchange. It was good to talk to him a little bit about his district, and how they are doing. We did some good old street contacting and knocking, but nothing too amazing happened.

We were also able to find this dominican girl named Adibell while we were checking some formers. She seemed to have interest, and wanted to hear the word of God, but when we went back for our return appointment, the guy told us she wasn't there, nor does she live there (which we knew, but she acted like she would be visiting for awhile.) 

We had the opportunity to teach Guillermo about the priesthood this week, and both of them were confirmed yesterday. What made yesterday even more special, is that during fast and testimony meeting, Gerardo went up and bore his testimony to the whole congregation of the things he knew to be true, and how happy he was to have the Holy Ghost. Those are the moments that are priceless in the mission. Sylvia is still doing great. We taught her about the temple this week, and she was pretty excited to learn about it. She's going to be just fine. Jimena is doing pretty well. She said she did her reading, she prayed and repented, but didn't really feel much of a difference. She's so much more open with us now than she was the first time we saw her, but we are still having a hard time understanding why she's keeping commitments. If she doesn't feel anything, and doesn't have much desires to be baptized, why would she keep commitments? We are hoping her motives are in the right place, but tonight we are going to go teach her about real intent, and get her to pray to know if the Book of Mormon is true. We've made contact with Meri once again, talked about sabbath day, but was still a no show yesterday at church.

The highlight's of the week were definitely the confirmations and the testimony meeting. I would say one thing that gets hard for me as a missionary, is that I sometimes measure my self worth/effectiveness on the numbers we get. So after a really good week, I'm obviously happier and more positive, but after a rough week, it's just a little harder. But things should turn around this week, and we just need to have the faith to make miracles happen.

I really loved the Christmas Devotional by the first presidency last night. I liked Presidents Monson's talk, and the story he shared from the book "The Mansion." It was great to hear the Mormon Tabernacle Choir as well. I still haven't quite gotten into the Christmas spirit, maybe because there is no snow, and Holidays on the mission aren't much of a big deal, but Elder Erikson wants to go buy a Christmas tree today that we can put in our apartment. That should bring a little more of the Christmas spirit. Next week we have our Semi-annual temple trip which should be pretty great as well. It's been awhile since I last went. Thanks for all your support and love. I hope all is going well across the United States. 

Jesus Christ is our Savior! He is the way! May the true spirit of Christmas fill your lives each day! Love you all!

Love,

Elder Hicks