Choices determine destiny!

Family,
 Thanks for all of the updates on the baseball tournament. Mom i want to write to all of the cousins who are graduating ( Katie, Tyler and Jared) so could you get me their addresses please. I liked Darren's graduation pictures, except for the fact that i wasn't sure if the one picture was Usher or Justin Beiber, and i thought the other one may have been Calvin Klein or something, haha. Did Scott do those? Little Garrett is way cute, thanks for the pictures!! Its been a great week. We finished up our zone-conferences, we had 4 different ones, and this last one was definitely the best. That is a lot of work to put those things on and it sure takes more organization skills than i have. It was a great learning experience, and i learned a lot about who i am... because that is what Elder Fisher and I talked about. Its cool, when you really know who you are, outside influences don't affect you in any negative way. "If all the elements combine to hedge up thy way..." we know that we are a completely loved son of God. When we understand that the plan of salvation requires that we have trials, tests, failures and weaknesses we are built up by those tests, we overcome our weaknesses instead of them overcoming us and the tests causing us to fall. When we understand who we are, we will do the right things for the right reasons, because we love God. But how do we come to understand who we are? I probably don't understand how to answer this question completely, but I know that it does come as we experience the atonement, and as we live the Doctrine of Christ. When we truly feel the Love of God, we cant help but feel special, that we have a purpose on this earth.  Also we will never find out who we are until we lose ourselves in the service of God, when we serve our fellow men, "whosoever will save his life shall lose it, whosoever will lose his life for my sake, shall find it".  I really know that that is true doctrine, i have seen it on my mission over and over. When we forget ourselves and give our heart to Gods work, his children, then we gain confidence in who we are and what we should be doing with our time here on earth.
 I had an interesting experience this week, where i learned a great lesson about choices. President Monson has said "choices determine destiny". I was on an exchange in Eastpoint (where i served last summer) in Atlanta, it is mostly ghetto's. We went to a less-actives sisters home, we talked with her for about 15 min outside her house. She has 4 little kids and lives with a pretty low-life husband who doesn't work, so she has to work. They live in a very bad neighborhood, and she knows all of these things are true. She recognizes that she is living in sin and isn't at all happy and knows it's not a good environment for her kids. The really sad part is that.she grew up in the suburbs of LA, in a good home. She was well educated, her father works for NASA and she has 3 siblings. She has been a member her whole life, born under the covenant and knows a lot about the gospel, she was active all her growing up years. But now she is in a very bad situation and completely unhappy, treated like she is an object instead of a daughter of God, and her children are growing up in that environment as well. I thought about how she has come to where she is, from where she has come. I bet you the difference can be found in as little as 5-10 choices she made as a young teanager, maybe less. Those seemingly small choices have now lead to a course of events that have not only put her and her family in satan's territory, but have caused her to forget who she is and who her children are. She can recognize that she is unhappy but she doesn't know how to get out of her situation. It has been one of the saddest experiences of my mission, and some of the saddest words i have ever heard come out of the mouth of a child of God. "I know where im going when i die... to spirit prison...God knows my heart and knows that i'm a good person, i know i won't make it to the celestial kingdom, but maybe i can get the second one". We definately bore our testimonies that she was most definately as capable of recieving joy in this life and eternal life in the celestial kingdom as any person on earth, and tried to re-asure her of the hope of Jesus Christ, because she was so wrong. But I felt so inadequate to help her and that was hard. The good thing is that she still understands the differnce between how the gospel makes her feel, she is begining to recognize the need for her God in life and I believe she will find it in due time. She really was a great girl. But truly decisions can have far reaching effects, and its so hard to see as a teenager. This experience has instilled within me a strong desire to reach out the best i possibly can to all young kids in hopes of saving at least one, because that will be so worth it. They are the most vulnerable and the most important. I thank those great leaders that i had, like Brad Whitehead, who loved me even though i wasn't very loveable, his friendship always had an impact on me, and others as well. It is a bad world out there and satan is so real, and he just wants u to be miserable. But on a happy not the Gospel of Jesus Christ can overcome all things!! It is true, this church is sharing its fullness with power. We have missionaries all over the world changing lives. I love you all, keep being so awesome!

Elder Hendrix