July 4, 2011

FAMILY

  Well sounds like things are running good. Mom and Dad, thanks so much for pleasing the Lord in your parenting, and teaching me correct principles!  I am so glad you talked to Serina, she is so awesome, she calls me her White son, funniest lady I’ve ever met. You should call her and tell her to be baptized, I’m serious she knows it’s true she is just scared to make a commitment, i was very sad to leave them! Well i bet you all want to know where i am serving.... I’m serving with Elder Wunderli, he just came from being AP so i got to know him cuz they lived by us.  He is from Sandy, he Loves sports which means that there are two kids serving together that know way to much pointless random sports info, last night we talked for like 30 min about Mo Vauhgn, ya only Brad knows who I’m talking about, it can be distracting but he is so focused, even though this is his last transfer. Everything we do is toward the work, and how we can baptize, he is focused on baptism, he is definitely one of the best missionaries in our mission. Yesterday we were late for a huge black families family reunion (it was a real southern experience at the reunion/cookout), and we took a wrong turn somewhere but it lead us past a members home and as we drove by he saw a lady that he taught a year ago (he served here a year ago for six months so we just hit the ground running, it’s nice) and he just pulled over and we got out and went up to the front porch and the first question he asked was, "so Kelonda, when are you going to be baptized", she expressed some concerns but we talked with her and she is going to let us teach her and pray about baptism. He really understands our purpose, but he doesn’t do it in a overbearing, rude, way at all it’s just that he understands the importance of what our purpose as missionaries is, and he is ridiculously personable, I’m going to learn so much and we are going to baptize for sure this transfer.  It is so cool too because this area had really bad missionaries in it last transfer, so they haven’t been doing anything, and the Lord has prepared the area for this time, 4 of Wunderli's converts have told us that they want to start coming back to church, and we have 4 really really solid investigators.  We are in Atlanta, and we honestly live in the Ghetto, we were driving around the other day and i said "is this the ghetto part", he says "ya we live just right over there", haha, we cover a huge part of the city of Atlanta, its pretty much everything south and West of downtown and the downtown area.  But ya, this is a real different experience, but there is so much good work to be done, i have already learned so much about how to be an effective missionary, Wunderli is awesome!!  We have been so busy you wouldn’t even believe, we are going non-stop all of the time, i haven’t been to bed by 10:30 in like 5 days, we just have so much to do, that’s what happens when you whitewash in (two new missionaries move into an area).  I am so excited, i can’t even express it. Yesterday, (we cover two wards, a singles and family) we were in the singles ward and a member brought his friend to meet us after sacrament who is looking for some direction in life, and we are going to teach him on Wednesday.  Wow I’m excited and today for P-day we are getting together with our district and the Assistants to grill-out, and just relax and celebrate the 4th.  Yesterday a kid bore his testimony in church, he told a story of a 24 year old soldier who just got sent to Afghanistan, he had just been married recently.  But they were dropped into the mountains and got into a bad spot and 28 of 45 men were wounded or killed. He was on the radio calling in support and was mortally wounded, he died with a radio in his hand trying to get support for his troops. I was very touched and i am so happy, that there are people willing to give there all, that kid gave up everything to protect us and not even us, the entire world as an American Soldier.  "Home of the Free, because of the Brave", and "One nation, under God". I love you all, can’t wait to E-mail you next week, hopefully i don’t get shot. Love ya!!

Elder Hendrix

PS: Mom i love what you said about member missionary work, call up the local missionaries and invite them to teach you. 

June 27, 2011

Family,                                                                                                           

   Well this last week has been great, although the work has been tough. I guess we just kinda came to the realization that all of the people we are teaching are just not progressing, and so this next transfer is going to be a start-over type of a deal.  I’m not sure where I’ll be yet, here or elsewhere i just know that Elder Sly and I are not going to be together anymore.  I love Elder Sly, he is such a good kid, great missionary, great people person, really smart, good teacher, and a great attitude, he is really mature, I’m gonna miss him. This last transfer has probably been my funest transfer, too fun actually because we pretty much live with 6 missionaries, I’ve enjoyed it great memories but it’s hard to balance fun and focused.  Well i don’t have much to say, I’ll let you know what happened at transfers next Monday.  The Gospel is so true, Jesus Christ lives and he loves us infinitely and I am so grateful for that, and serving him truer and truer every day is the best way to live life abundantly (John 10:9)

Elder Hendrix

Julie,

  Thanks for the Chocolates, tell mom that that stuff melts in the mail in Georgia, and it makes me Chubby. How is your Book of Mormon reading going?  What do you Love the most about president Monson, Uchtdorf, and Eyring? I love you so so much, and you’re not Crazy.....Not you are!

Elder Hendrix

June 20, 2011

Family,                                                                                                            June 20, 2011

   I will be very short since i just e-mailed you.  Everything is good Saturday we had two awesome lessons with a single guy and a family, the people we are teaching and working with here are so awesome I’m really going to miss them if I get transferred and we are pretty much positive that one of us will get transferred. It’s funny because for my sake i don’t want to be transferred because we are working with such great people and there will be some baptisms next transfer, but  I also don’t want Elder Sly to be transferred because I want him to have great experiences too, so it’s a Lose, Lose, situation but also a Win, Win, so ya that makes no sense.  I wish i could tell you about all of the people we are teaching, but real quick I’ll tell you about one guy.  If you can remember a few weeks back the story I told about a belligerent guy, telling us that Satan ruled the earth, but then we testified to him of the power of God on earth and his whole countenance changed? Ya that guy we are teaching him now, we see him every day, he is an alcoholic but he really wants to change, he is reading the Book of Mormon and he completely understands it and praying every day, he promised us that he would come to the churches 12 step program with us (I’m excited to attend that with him) and he promised us that he would come to church, we are really excited about him and his change that he has already begun to make. I would ask for your prayers specifically for him, for him to be able to rid Satan from his life, his name is Jamie.  One other family that we are working with, that I’m sure will join the church, they already love it and all of the people that go there, they know lots of members. They are a African American family, the mom is so stinkin hilarious, she always makes fun of how white we are, we try to act black and be "coo", but it just makes us look stupider, we had a great lesson with them Sat., although they didn’t show for church :(.  Anyway, the Book of Mormon is awesome, y'all are awesome! The South sends its Love.

Elder Hendrix

PS: I didn’t get to go to the temple :(

Oh yeah, Dad happy father’s day, go do something fun you deserve it, thanks for your constant flow of letters i look forward to them every week. You’re the best Dad a guy could ask for! Happy Father’s day!

Your (best) Son,

Elder Hendrix 

June 17, 2011

The World’s Best Family,                                                                                          

    We have had a really exciting week. First i don’t know if i told you this last week but i could use a new camera, and maybe some pictures ya’ll have taken recently, like the pictures of dads elk and stuff i would love to see. 

   So we have pretty strict rules on when/how we can go to the temple, i won’t get into those, but we decided to go this week. Well pday is on Monday and the temple is not open on Monday, so the rule is that you have to change your pday to another day if you want to go to the temple, so we were going to go on Wed.  But Monday night we received word that there were some missionaries stranded at the airport in Atlanta from the MTC. They were headed to Argentina, so our mission took 10 of them and my companion and i got two of them to kind of train for two days until Thursday, Elder Hanson and Moore. It was so much fun, because we were able to get twice the work done in our area we taught 13 lessons in two days and got 4 new investigators which is pretty darn good. It was really cool because me and Elder Hanson taught one lady, it was the first lesson, Elder Hanson (for the first time in his mission) recited the First Vision and when he finished she started crying and said that it made her so happy and that she had been asking God to help her find a church, she accepted a baptismal date and we gave her a blessing to help her quit smoking, we will see her tomorrow.  Elder Hanson was pretty shocked, he asked me "does that happen a lot", i said that i had never seen that, and all i could think was "Joseph Smith really was a Prophet!"  So that was awesome, we really enjoyed having them, it was definitely a tender mercy of the Lord for me to kind of bring my mind back to what it was like to be green and the faith that new missionaries have, it’s sad but it kind of fades after a while. So that is why I didn’t e-mail you on Monday because today is my pday for this week so I’ll be e-mailing you again in like 2 days....maybe.  But also today we had the wonderful opportunity, Elder Walter F. Gonzales was in Atlanta on a layover so he told president to invite all the missionaries in that area, which we are not really in that area but we live next door to the Assistants so they were able to invite us. It was really great, there were probably 30 missionaries and he just talked and asked/answered questions for an hour and a half. I learned a lot and I hope that all the missionaries there did too.  Our mission is really struggling right now as far as numbers go, and i just feel for President Satterfield because he works so hard, and loves us so much but some missionaries just won’t change, they won’t become converted to the gospel, they won’t be obedient to the simple rules that are so easy to follow if you just make the decision. But things are on the up that is for sure, i have felt like the Lord has been pouring out his spirit upon us abundantly. The eyes of my understanding have been opened more lately and our numbers will grow, i really hope they do!

   The Book of Mormon is so awesome; I love the Story of Abinadi! I would give anything to be there at that time, I love how he is teaching so boldly, then he is interrupted, then he rebukes the heck out of them, says "it doesn’t matter if im dead later or alive, but i have been asked by God to deliver this message and i will, after that who cares I have done His will", then without even missing a beat picks up right where he was when he got interrupted.  What a great example of a missionary!  Also, in my opinion, there is no chapter I know of in all of scripture that paints a more realistic picture of who Jesus Christ was than Mosiah 14, I love that chapter so much! (its definitely the best Isaiah Chapter)

  Anyway i Love you all, the Gospel is true, God loves his children which we are and Jesus Is the Christ.

Julie,

  Hey there crazy kid just wanted to say that i love you.....a lot. Have super awesome time. Have dad take you out for ice cream, he probably would love that!  Love you

June 13, 2011

NO LETTER YET THIS WEEK :(

June 6, 2011

Family,                                                                                                           

   I need a new camera mine broke, if you have an old one laying around.  Mom thanks so much for you inspiring spiritual experiences, they are great.  This last week we had a lot of great experiences.  First last Sunday we went to visit a guy that we heard sold worms. He does, they are called Caltalva (ku-tah-va) worms, they come from the Caltalva tree, it was fun to see his operation he harvest quite a few he has about 500 Caltalva trees, the worms are really just like a caterpillar.  He was a good old guy, he said that he had been to SLC and seen the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. He and his wife were excited to talk to someone else who would be excited about a worm operation.  We also had the opportunity to go on a team-up (splits) with President Satterfield that was such a learning experience. He pretty much just taught our investigators for us, but i learned so much he teaches with so much power.  One lady we taught is not that sincere about joining our church but she loves us and is willing to listen (we get a lot of those), and usually they don’t really understand the importance of the restoration.  But we saw firsthand, through president Satterfield how to teach someone like that: if you teach clearly and make sure they understand, by asking questions, but teach with power by the spirit it causes them to see the importance and then feel the spirit which makes them ponder the message in their hearts, and they can only accept the message if they feel the spirit. It was a huge lesson and i feel like something that will change my missionary work greatly, i am so grateful for the opportunity. He is the best missionary out here.  One of our investigators that we taught with President Satterfield accepted a baptismal date for the 25 of this month!  He is 18 and such an awesome kid. We also have 3 families that are really solid; we are so blessed right now in this area.

    The Book of Mormon reading is soooooo awesome, it’s more awesome that Julie is crazy, wow a lot!!  The lesson i have been getting over and over is about agency.  We must "choose eternal life through the great mediator of all men, or choose captivity and death according to the captivity and power of the devil".  Agency is everywhere, the Lords hand is outstretched, his light is continually before us, he will lead is, he will hedge up the way of our enemies, he makes a way for our escape, he delivers us from death and hell, and calls us to come unto him. On the other hand Satan entices us, he lulls us, he pacifies us, he leads us.  We use our agency to, neither Satan nor God can take our agency, Satan isn’t allowed to and God cannot or he ceases to be God.  Agency allows us to grow, i love it.

   I love you all keep being awesome!!

Elder Hendrix

Julie,

  Hey bud, tell me how softball is going. Is it flooding in Idaho?  Do you ever help dad at work?

Sundays are busy days for me, but i love going to church, it feels good.  I am not a lady and never was!!! But i have to keep my hair short. It is so dang hot here, i sweat every time I go outside, Idaho is better than Georgia in the summer. Yes keep picking on Darren, don’t let him get another girlfriend ok, and pick on Brice all that you can even play tricks on him when he is not at home, he deserves it. I love you to death Julie, keep reading your scriptures. Bye

PS: Crazy!

June 1, 2011

Family,

   I don’t have a lot of time, so I’ll have to be short. But we are doing so well, we are going to baptize a family this transfer.....we don’t know who yet but we are seeing miracles often.  The Book of Mormon is so awesome.  There is so much good stuff in there.  I have never realized how much is in it about the gathering of Israel. There is a ton about the restoration. I was reading about the Resurrection in 2 Nephi 9, and so much stuck out to me about how important the resurrection is. Today i was reading about the Atonement in the same chapter, and also a lot about the judgment.  But what is really sticking out to me is how much doctrine is on each page, and i know that there is even more that i am not seeing.  Also the path that the Lord has set is strait and clear, we can all do what he asks, and because of this we will know whether or not we are guilty or not. The Lord loves us, so he is doing all he can to help us, but we must follow his way. And we find that way in the scriptures, and modern revelation. Well i have to go, sorry for not being long, i love you all so much and i am grateful for being a part of your family.