The Green(ie) Family Tree

(Letter March 12)

    

Sounds like it has been a pretty eventful week there in Utah. I'm so glad to hear that all went well with little Alexis. As the family tree begin to grow in Utah, the family tree begins to grow here in New Jersey. In missionary terms I will be having my first "son", o sea, I will be training this transfer! That's probably the biggest news of the week. 

The transfer came to a close and I received the call from Elder Andersen on Friday night that I would be training this coming transfer. The mission is finally receiving some more spanish reenforcements with 8 new spanish missionaries coming into the mission today. Another high note is that President Jeppson arrived back to New Jersey yesterday and will be able to bid farewell to all the missionaries headed home. It's pretty crazy, one of the missionaries heading home is Sister Word from my MTC district. Luckily us elders have 6 more months.

    

So it was a pretty eventful week here in New Jersey as well, and I'm super excited for the opportunity I'm going to have to train this transfer, and get to work with a new missionary. Believe it or not, this is the first time I will have had a companion younger than me in the mission. All the companions I've had in the past will go home before me (except for Elder Wootton who will go home at the same time). I will be staying in Hightstown as Elder Wootton leaves to a new area after being here for 4 transfers. I also received the call from the assistants last night that I was being released as a District Leader, which is a relief because being a trainer and a district leader at the same time would come to be pretty hectic. I still don't know exactly how the whole training thing will work, I guess I'll just have to pray a lot.

In other news this week...

 

Our investigator Rosa is doing pretty well. She still has the desires to continue learning, she read a little bit in the Book of Mormon, we just haven't been able to see her much because she's been busy doing stuff in New York (On the New York topic: Supposedly Fausta is going to the temple on April 19th instead of May 19th, so I guess I'll be headed to the temple in about a month.) Rosa is super awesome, but our worst fear was realized in that her "esposo" is still married to somebody else and the divorce process would be very difficult. So... it could take her quite sometime to get baptized... but...

 

The Lord blessed us with an awesome new investigator this week named Henry! Henry is a friend of Hermano Mejilla, a returning less-active, and Henry has come to church with him before, and they even came to President Harrison's (Branch President) birthday. We taught Henry and he was really open to everything we were saying. These are a few of my favorite lines from the lesson...

E. Hicks : " So Henry, what would it mean if Joseph Smith was a Prophet."

Henry: "Well it would mean that we don't worship him, but that he receives revelation from God."

 

E. Hicks: Baptismal Invite, and set with date (April 25th, It was the only date I could think of, little did I know that it doesn't fall on a Sunday, my bad)

Henry: "Yes, I'll be baptized on that date as long as I meet your qualifications"

 

E. Hicks: Henry, will you come to church with us tomorrow?

Henry: Of course, you know we actually had a meeting tomorrow, but we cancelled it. Work isn't the most important thing to us.

 

Henry: "You know, I've been looking for a church that is different for a long time, and I think that this might be it."

(Those are all rough translations of things that happened in the lesson)

 

Henry came to church yesterday and seemed to really enjoy it. I think he could be baptized very soon.

 

We also started teaching a man named Hermano Mejilla whose son just got home from a mission 8 months ago. We asked him why he was never baptized, and it sounded like the only reason is because he never has time to go to church. He does work for a Marriott hotel though, so maybe we could give Mr. Marriott a call and try to get him some Sundays off. It would be for a good cause. 

 

If you want a chuckler for the week, I guess I have a pretty good one that happened on Wednesday night. So we finished eating with the Calle Family and we were about to leave. The family lives in a basement and so the ceilings are pretty low. Well being the tall person I am, those basements weren't made for people like me. I was saying my farewells to the family, not knowing that there was a lightbulb right behind my head hanging from the ceiling. I made a move, and next thing I saw was a flash of light as I shattered their ignited lightbulb with my head. The glass fell all over me, and their was a pretty hot piece on my neck, but after shaking all the glass off, the family just stared at me not really knowing what just happened. It was a pretty embarrasing moment for sure... (Insert Haha here)

 

  The rest of the week was pretty busy. We had a trainers meeting on Saturday with the assitants and Elder Jensen, and tomorrow we have transfer conference and get to meet our new companions. So it should be another eventful week with a new companion, new responsibilities and all.

 

The Gospel is True! I love you all so much!