October 31, 2011

Family,
Hello to you all, it’s getting kinda cold now, i like it. Happy Halloween. We had a great week, good things are happening. We haven’t given anyone a date yet but we had some come to church and we are teaching a lot of people right now, we will see how committed they are, but we are excited. We are teaching one family, a single mother with 4 kids, and she is just a great lady. She is really struggling because she has to do everything by herself, it’s really sad to see, but single mothers are the norm around here. She really wants to get closer with her Savior and know the truth, but there is just a lot of stuff going on in her life right now, pray for her, her name is Cheryl. Her kids came to church on Sunday, and they loved it. We have been having lots of success working with Less-active members. We went to visit a member who had been offended a couple weeks ago and said that he wasn’t going to ever come to church again. We went with our Branch mission leader, when we first pulled up you could tell that the brother did not want to talk to us but our Branch mission leader is really awesome, good with people so he let us in. He was still upset throughout most of the lesson, but i think he felt our love and true concern for his welfare, and we did care about him that’s why we visited him we were worried about him. At the end of his visit and after another great visit he has decided that he will come back to church and that he needs to go talk with the Branch president. I thought about the timing and attitude of our visit. You see he had only stopped coming for 3 weeks, but i think that if we would have waited for months, which is usually what happens, then his bitterness would have grown until his heart would have been too hard to reach. His heart was still tender and he was still close enough to the spirit to allow it to work in him, with more time he would have gone farther and farther away from that true spirit. As i thought about that i decided that i will always strive to bring quickly back those who have fallen away, that they may know that we love them. In the parable of the Lost sheep I’m sure the Savior meant, that the Shepard would drop all and go find immediately. You cannot do missionary work without love, and when i think of love i think of whole hearted service, which i do not give, but i sure hope to learn how to. Everything is going good, I will most likely have a new companion next week this Wednesday is transfers so hopefully I’m still here. I love you all so much, every time I read a letter from family I just get this grin on my face and tell my companion "don’t you just love your family" thanks for all of your letters, and don’t ever apologize for not writing more, I am more than pleased with how much y'all write me, I need to apologize, i never write anyone. Y'all are the best!

Elder Hendrix