August 22, 2012

Family,                                                                                                           

  Sounds like everything is going well for you guys these days, that’s good to hear.  Everything here in the ATL is just fantastic, though the work did take a slight hit this week, we just couldn't get people to keep appointments. The family that we are teaching, that are set for baptism, moved and we are not sure where yet, but they are still in the area somewhere.  But are we discouraged?..... Naw, this is the Lords work, he's in charge.  Plus i have learned a lot this week; i have had the opportunity to receive much personal revelation. Isn’t revelation so cool, we can actually know exactly what we need to do in our lives to fulfill the will of God, and the steps are simple: Pray/ponder, Read the Scriptures and go to Church.  I love my companion, by the way, he is the best.  It’s kinda like serving with your dad, he’s just so darn wise.  Oh boy i haven’t told you what happened last Monday night.  Ok, so this kid we are teaching, he’s 18, he is so awesome. We have been teaching him for a while (i think i told you about him but I’m not sure).  He grew up in the Hood, literally within the Gangs. But somehow he just gets it, he knows that there is a better life for him outside of what he is surrounded by. Man i love him, and hope so much the best for him. It’s so sad to see, and we see it every day. People who are just stuck in a life that they don’t want to be in, but they don’t see that there is another way, it’s honestly not that they are not good people it’s just that they don’t know that there is another option. I have definitely gained a new perspective serving here.  It’s amazing to see the Lord working with him, he is going to be baptized next week, but anyway.    He is going to the YSA ward, and for FHE last Monday they went cliff jumping on the Chattahoochee River.  He has never done that before so we told him that he should try it, but most intercity black kids don’t swim very well. So he tried to swim across the river and  got scared that there were snakes and dead bodies in the river, and he started to drown. Someone pulled him out of the water, but he had taken in a lot of water, so they called an ambulance and gave him a blessing. He said that they told him that he died in the ambulance, but they revived him and he had to spend a few hours in the hospital. He is fine now, and crazy enough it actually strengthened his desire to change his life and get baptized. But that was scary. You really do come to Love those that you teach and serve.  Well there you go, those were some pretty random thoughts, The Lord loves us all so much, i am so thankful for the opportunity to serve a mission for the Lord in Georgia at this very time.  I have a lot of weaknesses but i can think of no better place than the Mission field to make my weaknesses become strengths.  Mom and Dad, thanks for being PERFECT parents! Thanks for Loving God! I love you all; i will send pictures....sorry I’m slow

August 15, 2011

Family,                                                                                                           

  Well we had a great week. I think I told yall about my new companion last week so i won’t go into that except that he is awesome. He is really wise, i think i told you that he turns 25 in September so he is really mature and just knows what he wants and how to get things done.  We had a really cool experience this last week, it was our first day together and we weren’t finding anyone at home and nothing was happening, Elder Landsaw suggested that we pray so we did. We ended the day with 5 people who set dates for baptism, and then all of them came to church on Sunday!! We were really excited. We had a great experience with one of our investigators, i won’t get into details... it would suffice to say that the Lord made possible something that to our investigator and US thought was impossible and he is set to be baptized next Monday! As missionaries, especially myself, we worry about all of the challenges that people face to progress towards baptism and there are tons, but the Lord is always preparing a way for those people who are the elect of God.  As we were sitting with this investigator and he was telling us how he overcame this challenge i felt so blessed to be an eye witness to the Lord working miracles in someone’s life.  My testimony this week was strengthen that this is truly the Lords work, We were taught by Elder Gay that the Lord is preparing people but we have to come unto him and find his way, to find the "Effectual Door" (D&C 112: 19) and then we will be able to bless the Lives of people like Ammon and his brothers. The Gospel is so dang true!! But even better than that, if you can believe that we had literally a once in a lifetime opportunity on Saturday. Elder M. Russell Ballard came to this area along with Elder Gay, who came a couple weeks back. I was able to sit through two meetings as we were taught by one of the 12 apostles of the Lord. (One quick funny story: I was heading to the bathroom before our first meeting and i was walking kind of fast around a corner and I ran into Elder Ballard head on....Kind of cool....but kinda embarrassing too) The First meeting was really small, 14 missionaries and President and Sister Satterfield and Elders Ballard and Gay.  WOW I literally sat 6 feet away from an apostle as he taught us for an hour, as I looked at his eyes and listened to his voice i could feel nothing but purity. Pure Love for us the missionaries, and the work of the Lord.  It was amazing to see how non-chalaunt (i don’t know how to spell that) he taught such amazing doctrine.  Something i will never forget is the person that i saw that day, i felt like he was completely a servant of the Lord!  Then we had a two hour meeting with All the Missionaries in our mission all of the Stake presidents, Bishops, and ward mission leaders from our mission and Elder Gay and Elder Ballard Pretty much told us, of the "Georgia Atlanta Council" That we are not doing as good as we should, they told us that there are 100,000 people in our mission area that are being prepared now. It has been cool to see that the work is really progressing in our mission in the last 2 months, and i got the feeling that it is starting now and will continue to explode. There have been prophecies about the church in the south growing to like a million members and it’s just cool to be able to be a part of that, I feel that it is definitely happening.  Well the Work is really really going well, thank you so much for your prayers last week, you have no idea how much they really did help me i have a strong testimony of the power of prayer, thanks for strengthening it! Love you All!

Elder Hendrix

August 8, 2011

Family,

    I haven’t finished the Book of Mormon yet, i have the last chapter to finish, i wanted to save it for last to read it all at once because it is so good. You are right mom; it is FULL, from its first chapters to the very last one. It’s cool because all of the stories teach powerful important lessons, but within the stories there is constant doctrine taught. It has been a huge blessing for me to read It this way, i feel like i want to read it like this every time. I am going to start studying it slowly, which i am really excited for because it teaches doctrine so deeply especially on the atonement.  It is a fact: if you read the Book of Mormon, your day will go better!  Our week was pretty good, we had a great showing at church, the lady from New York, that we have been trying to get to come to church, finally came, yea! And we think she really liked it, we will see her tomorrow.  The Lord is just blessing us so much, we have challenging opportunities with people but it’s such a pleasure to share the Gospel with people who are the "Elect of God", it is such a sweet experience to see them, see the way that the Lord is preparing for them.  Elder Wunderli goes home on Wednesday; it was such a great experience to serve with him. He taught me a lot about missionary work, leadership, myself and life, along with more insignificant sports trivia, and lack of sleep from staying up late talking about sports....I’m looking forward to getting more sleep next transfer. But he is awesome, most defiantly i made a great friend over the past 6 weeks.  I will not be getting transferred and I already know who my companion will be: Elder Landsaw he’s from Bountiful, he’s a really awesome kid, and most important he has beautiful hair.  He was an assistant with Wunderli while i was with Sly so I’ve got to know him pretty well already, we will get along really well. He is an older missionary too he is 24, he is the man.  I have been pretty lucky to get two dropping AP's two transfers in a row, it’s because God knows that i need the training. I have been struggling lately, sometimes in your mission you go through periods where you feel the spirit more than other times, or where you are not as effective, and it affects your attitude you start to get discouraged.   I have been feeling a little bit of all of those, which is silly because the Lord is blessing us so much.  I’m kind of a wimp.  Through it i have been able to realize (AGAIN) that i must rely on the Lord for strength and wisdom. Yesterday during the sacrament i was reading Ether 12:27, I love the Sacrament by the way,  and it helped me to realize that i cannot worry about the weaknesses that i have, the Lord is giving them to us so that we can become like him some day. If we realize our weaknesses then we become humble, and we cannot receive instruction from the Holy Ghost if we are not humble, and if we don’t receive instruction from the Holy Ghost then we cannot progress. But the Lord wants us to come unto him, so that he can show us our weakness. I love God; everything he does is for us, so that we can be happy. I hope that i can be better so that i will be able to help his children feel and know the Spirit. I love you all so much, You truly are the greatest family of all time!!!!!  

August 1, 2011

Family,                                                                                                                       

   Sounds like all is well! I Love you all so much. I’m going to keep this one really short.  We had a great day yesterday. 3 investigators came to church, so that was exciting. It is so important for investigators to come to church, as it is for us also.  The spirit is always there, how can they know about our church if they never come. Church is another opportunity to receive revelation, and probably the easiest because all you have to do is show up. Elder Wunderli and I had talked about this after last week and we decided that we were going to focus on receiving revelation ourselves so that those that we teach will do the same, and we did and it made our purpose more clear and we came to understand better what the Lord expects of us. All of us should view sacrament meeting as a way to receive revelation, when we do this we are better able to do what the Lord wants us to do. Sacrament is so personal, it’s one of my favorite times of my week (probably because I’m selfish) because it is the time that i can’t think about anyone else but me, and my relationship with God. Yesterday a guy in the bishopric explained that the sacrament is like pac-man, we eat up all of these little dots and as we eat them we become stronger and more able to destroy the little ghost that cross our path, it was kinda cool.  Well the Book of Mormon is awesome!!!!  It is truly for us right now, and we are promised that if we study it and follow its teachings we will receive eternal life.  There have been times that i have struggled on my mission, I’m either confused or down, but when i went to the Book of Mormon i just felt good, it’s great. It happens because it teaches us who we are, and God has made us a promise that if we study it then we will be happy.  I love you all so much, the work is going great! The ATL is the Best, i am so glad to be serving in the Georgia Atlanta Mission!

Elder Hendrix  

July 25, 2011

Family,                                                                                                         

   I’m definitely so jealous that i missed out on the family reunion!! I want one of those shirts, if you don’t have an extra I’ll take Scotts!  I got so much joy from looking at those pictures, fun times, I’m disappointed in Brad for getting the truck stuck. Wow sounds like a wonderful experience.  Well we had probably one of the best weeks of mine, or my companions mission (he’s been out two years now), it was just filled with so many awesome experiences.  Monday with Elder Gay, Tuesday  G (with the ladies from Brooklyn) Wednesday with the temple i already told you about.  There is another family that we are working with, that we have been teaching we are excited about that.  Then we met with G again, which was probably one of the coolest experiences of my mission. When we met up with her we went on a walk with her, she was really upset. She started to tell us this story about how she had walked around Atlanta all day (she lives in the down town area), looking for churches to ask if she could volunteer there. It is kind of a long story but because of the way she Looks (she has dreads and full sleeve tattoos, and dresses very casual) they wouldn’t even come outside to speak to her, she says that she was standing in front of a glass door crying right in front of these Christian people and they would help her, she was very upset and even a little angry with us. My companion said it best "she just witnessed firsthand the great apostasy".  We just listened to her for a long time, then finally she said "ok well what do you want to tell me" in an annoyed tone. Now we had prepared a really good lesson, with really good scriptures, but we simply told her that we just wanted to help her, and that it wasn’t about what we had to say but what she needed to hear. Everything from then on was completely directed by the spirit, we really just testified to her that she was lead to the Chruch by the Lord. (both E. Wunderli and I have agreed that we have not taught anyone who has been more prepared by the Lord than her) We taught her the importance of her reading the Book of Mormon, and gave her a Restoration pamphlet (its lesson one in a pamphlet), it was so sweet as she opened up that pamphlet and looked at the pictures and words with a priceless smile on her face, like she had found her most prized possession, the spirit was so strong! We invited her to church and she said she would be there, and that she wanted to know how to find peace more than anything, she said she would give everything.  Also on Saturday we met a lady who is Jewish, but doesn’t really believe it, or she is looking for the truth. She is married to a good man, and has 6 kids; she also said that she would come to church. Later that day an 18 year old kid stopped us and asked us if we would teach him, he lives in the ghetto and has really bad friends and smokes weed, but he has a desire to quit, he really does. He’s such a solid kid and we felt the spirit with him, and he too committed to come to church, wow what a blessed week.  That is how our week went, until Sunday. Remember when Elder Wood and I had such great weeks, only to be followed by extreme disappointment on Sunday. Yesterday was a rough day, we didn’t have one investigator come to church, we had 6 really solid commitments and nobody pulled through. I know that moping about it doesn’t do any good, but this one hurt....a lot, i don’t get it we did all that we could do the Lord had obviously prepared these people to receive the Gospel, it was very discouraging. I hope that they all come to church next week. And i have faith that they will progress, pretty over it now, just concerned and at a loss of explanation but it’s the Lords work, he is doing it not me, he knows what’s best. I love you all!

Elder Hendrix

July 20, 2011

Family,                                                                                                                      

   Well this week has been so great especially the Last two days, let me explain. So the reason I am E-mailing on Wed, not Monday is because on Monday we had a special meeting with Elder Gay of the Seventy (did he come to your stake conference?), so we switched our p-day and since my companion is going home in 21 days we went to the temple (like an hour ago, so I’m flying high).  On Monday we had a great meeting, Elder Gay is an extraordinary man! He taught about doing things the Lords way, not our way. To do this we must seek his Will through revelation, because he is preparing people everywhere, we just have to reach them in the way that the Lord is preparing them to.  I learned that the only way to be successful in any aspect (all aspects too), we have to find out how the Lord wants us to do it, and that applies to regular life too, as a parent as a student as someone serving in a church calling, the ways are different for everybody and its our blessing to be able to seek that through personal revelation. Receiving revelation helps us prepare for Exaltation. Great meeting! After the meeting my companion and I followed our plan (that we felt we had received only a couple days earlier by revelation), and we were able to find a mother and daughter to teach, that are very interested in the Gospel, then last night we used the same plan and we found another lady, her story is awesome.  Last night we knocked on a referrals' door that we had tried to see a few times before (last night we were definitely lead by the spirit to go there), well we finally got to meet her, she has full sleeve tattoos and dreads but she is very educated, so she took us out to dinner. We sat with her for two hours and she told us about her past. She was born in Brooklyn and after college she became a police officer for the NYPD, later she worked narcotics undercover and then became a detective for the NYPD, so she was very successful, and she thought she had everything: money, cars, friends, nice home ect. She got heavy in to drinking and partying and she says that she did a lot of bad stuff. Then she spoke about her Mom dying, and talked about coming to the realization that she lived an empty life, and was not happy and she felt completely alone. It brought me back to how i use to feel exactly! She cried as she told us that her mother was the only good she knew in the world, and that because of her righteous example she was lead back to a search for God.  It was just a reminder of how blessed i have been, that the Lord gave me my family that through their example i was inspired to find my faith which brought me back to the way of Peace, the only true way, Jesus Christ! She is so awesome, we are so excited to teach her and to see her progress in the Gospel!!  She is one of the coolest people i have ever met, she is extremely humble, and is so wise. She loves baseball [of course though she is a Yankee fan:( ] which is great for me and Elder Wunderli. That was just such a great experience!! Then today I was able to attend the Atlanta Temple, it is truly the House of God, the spirit that is there cannot be denied! I it is so peaceful and quiet, i loved it. I love you all.  The Book of Mormon is Great! Keep reading 

Elder Hendrix

July 11, 2011

Family,

   Well i Love you all and I’m still alive! :) (it’s really not that bad).  Well i just feel so blessed by the Lord for having such a great family and for being able to have the experience that i am having serving in Atlanta with Elder Wunderli.  Last week i forgot to mention that during our transfer meeting Sis Satterfield always speaks to us before we find out where we are going. And she shared the Letter that Mom wrote to her, about her and Julies' experience with the Book of Mormon, wow what a story it was definitely a tender mercies of the Lord to be able to hear that story it made me cry, I’m so grateful for such a good mother and little (crazy) sister, and entire family thanks for sharing that story, it was a blessing for me.  I too have fallen behind on my scripture reading, because we literally have had no time for it, and i have really noticed a difference in the spirit being with me, and it affects my teaching, my relationship with my companion, my mind in general, so moral of that story is that daily reading from the scriptures is essential to fulfill the covenant we made at baptism. I’m so glad that y'all are reading with us!!  Also serving in Atlanta is a huge blessing, we have so many people that are ready for the gospel, so many good people who are looking for a better life. We had dinner with an investigator and her 2 kids last night, she has come to church for 2 weeks in a row, and her countenance has clearly changed, she looks soooo happy, it’s so amazing and we haven’t even taught her a lesson, we are so excited for her!  This place is great, the city is so cool, there is so much culture, its definitely not the right kind of culture but its eye opening to experience it.  Also in our area we have lots of cool things to go see on P-day like Georgia tech campus, the CNN center, Coca-Cola headquarters, Martin Luther King museum, and cool places in the down town area. And being the huge sports fans my companion and I are, we have The Georgia Dome (Falcons), Philips Arena (Hawks), Turner Field (Braves), and Georgia Tech.  It’s just a really cool place to live, and the missionary work is exploding, so I feel very blessed!!  We get to meet some INTERESTING people too. One lady we met the other day told us that she has died 5 times, gone to hell 3 times and heaven 2 times. She raised Willie Nelson from the dead, and saw God and so much more odd stuff, but i actually learned a valuable lesson from her.  There is definitely a difference between the spirit that we felt while talking with her and the Spirit that we feel as we teach the true Gospel, many people are deceived by false spirits, in fact she told us that we were, but there was no good feeling from what she was telling us, and as she went on and on (she just blabbed at us for 30 min) her eyes got darker and even the tone of her voice changed and the way she spoke, you could just tell that she was influenced by the wrong type of spirit.  Do you guys want her hear something funny, there is an Elder in our Zone named Elder Horner form Heber City, and his family owns Horner’s Corner, and he is really good friends with the family that owns the One-stop. Small world! 

Mom i don’t have Serinas number with me but I’ll try to remember it and I’ll send some pictures. YOU’RE THE BEST FAMILY OF ALL TIME!!

Elder Hendrix