week 72

Tuesday

We made a fun little video for our zone Facebook page about the fifth commandment and it turned out great! I will see if I can attach it at the bottom. 

Wednesday

We had our district council! Its always great to see other fellow missionaries

Thursday

We did service again! We went to a big warehouse, but this one was owned by a Catholic Charity. I took a few pictures and it was such a surprised when we noticed that the majority of the hundreds of boxes on the pallets were from the latter day saint distribution center!

I'm going to skip to Saturday because it was the best day (and second to last day) of the transfer. First off it was amazing because during daily planning a text came through from our district leaders with a Zoom link. I couldn't believe my eyes as I read the description (translated to English) "Oruro Station Ward is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting. Topic: Baptism of Virginia Cámara Hora 9:00 am 21 nov. 2020. A person I taught in my last area was being baptized! Her story is amazing and we taught her with Zoom for months even though she lives in Bolivia. I remember the night I invited her to be baptized and she said yes, but didn't know how to get to church or who her local missionaries were, and since church attendence was paused at the time she was never able to find the church. We found the sister missionaries and told them about the situation and gave them the best description of where our friend Virginia lives. They said they would do their best to find her and it wasn't until last week that they did (I had no idea) and they did a baptismal interview and scheduled her baptism for today. I thought that after I had transfers I would never see her again. I had faith that she would eventually get baptized when the missionaries found her, however I wasn't expecting it so soon, and I was so honored to be invited from her to watch it live. It was an unforgettable experience watching a baptism happening so far away of someone who's heart I touched from so great a distance. I personally congratulated her afterwards and then had to get back to the work with my companions. 

Another very exciting thing that happened tonight was that the transfer board was posted! I was the first one to see it in our companionship and I couldn't have been happier with what happened. I will be staying here in Sudley E for Thanksgiving and Christmas and so will Elder Smith! We will be recieving Elder Logan (who is a reassigned missionary who served in Trinidad) who will be replacing Elder Hart. Then, as we were talking about Christmas our mission president called us and had news for Elder Logan: he will be going back to Trinidad on December 17th! I guess we will only be with him for three weeks or so. (I really hope I will be able to go back to Costa Rica too.) But speaking of Christmas, now that I know that I will be here for Christmas, all the decorations have gone up! (there's not that many but hey)

I am excited for Thanksgiving and am loving the challenge that President Nelson gave us to make our social medias into a personal grateful diary and thanks God through daily prayer. I am especially grateful for missionary work and the joy it brings us when we get to help people.

week 71

Hello everyone! This week was crazy here in D.C.! Even without the added hecticness of the elections, this week was very loaded with appointments with friends and members. We also got to do a service project on Friday that was very fun and kinda gross. We were moving and spreading compost around trees, and we got to drive a cool but slow rover thing to move around the buckets of compost. I did not get very many pictures this week, but I got one of us in front of the compost pile.

Also on Friday, we had another Book of Mormon Institute class which was amazing! The topic was on the "final outcome" and how we know it! We know that the end game is that Jesus wins. We read in Nephi's vision and how he saw his end game which was his entire posterity falling in apostasy and getting destroyed. We talked about how hard it must have been for him to the the "sad ending" but we read further and saw how Nephi rejoiced in the real ending with the restoration and eventually the second coming of Christ. It was a great reminder for me to always keep in mind that as long as we stay on Christ's side WE HAVE ALREADY WON! I hope that little message helps someone and have a great week!

Week 69 and Week 70

WEEK 69

Hello everyone! This week has been quite an eventful onefor my companions and I. First and most exciting is that Elder Smith finally got to got to the temple! They had to drive all the way to the Philadelphia one which is four hours away from the offices of the mission (which are an hour away from our house, so he was gone all Saturday.) When he came back he had so much energy and light in his face and it was amazing! 

The second most exciting thing was the new training we recieved that has to do with Facebook. We were encouraged to make accounts if we didn't have one and to use it as much as possible as a missionary tool. We should be friends with all the members in our wards and and use our profiles to share awesome content from our Zone Facebook pages with other members and people we are teaching. It is quite the change because beforehand in this mission, being on Facebook was almost seen as being disobedient, however pretty soon almost all our work will be through it. 

Another highlight this week was our district activity that we had today! We went to the Bull run national park and saw the Stonewall Jackson monument and lots of other historical things, however my favorite part was the socializing with other missionaries and taking pictures :). 

Finally our friends Damian and Karina answered us last night and we had an amazing lesson with them! Even though it went pretty long, they were very open and they loved meeting Elder Smith despite his newness to Spanish. They even offered to help him learn it (they speak English as well)

Uh oh, I gotta go! I will write a more thourogh email next week!

Elder Hilton

WEEK 70

Hello Hola Buenas tardes como están bendiciones mis queridos amigitos :)))

This week was crazy and went by pretty quickly but with the little time I have left to write this email, here's what happened:

Tuesday: 

We had to cancel our service because of the Zone Conference which was AWESOME! It was all about finding JOY in the work. 

Later that day we had interviews with President Duckworth and they were great. It is nice to sit down and just be completely honest with someone and get absolutely everything off your chest, especially knowing that how he resonds will be in a loving way. I let him know what he needed to, and he told me that both of my companions had expressed the same things to a lesser degree and then gave me special advice on how to better lead the companionship. Later that night we recieved an urgent referal from Roni Pimentel - a person that we have been sending scriptures to. He told us that his mother and brother had both passed away in the same week and that although he is fine now, his family in Guatemala is strugglling a lot and he wants our friends (aka other missionaries) to visit them to "comfort them with the word of God". Of course we agreed right away.

Wednesday: District Council! Our realplays went alright (albeit very long) and we got to take a hilarious picture of all of us out next to our 2020 Chevy Equinoxes in a row :) We also found the Elders serving in Guatemala and sent them all the info we knew about Roni's family. 

Today we had a lesson with someone who I found on Facebook and slowly became buddies with! The lesson turned out alright, and in the end it turned very political, but to be brief let's just say he has a lot of faith in Christ but not in this country.

Thursday: All I remember was that we carved our pumpkins that night! I made mine an Adidas symbol with the nike slogan :)

Well, I ran out of time again! Quickly some other highlights were going to church on Sunday (Karina went to church!!!!!) and bearing my testimony loud and clear for all to hear in Spanish! Also today I got an expensive haircut and the little Asian lady cutting my hair was hilarious. She kept saying in her barely understandable accent "You look moviestar!" But after it all my hair got CHOPPED and I am rocking a Q-tip head - I remember why I cut my own hair now - But the experience was definitley worth it :)

Have a great week everyone!

- Elder Hilton