March 9, 2015

Oh man,

This was a llllllllllooooooooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggggggg week. First off we didn´t end up having that baptism like we thought. Mara´s mom wants Mara to wait a little bit more so that she´s certain that this is something that she wants to do and not just something that we talked her into doing... THIS IS YOUR DAUGHTER´S SALVATION WOMAN! Oh well. We´re going to keep visiting and try focusing on teaching Mirta, Mara´s mom. So I mean if everything goes well then we´ll be able to baptize both of them but we´ll see. I don´t think that Mirta takes us seriously. So we´re going to take a responsible member with us and teach her seriously and see if it works. 

However even though the week was rough there´s some really good news! One of the families that we baptized in Villalba is going to get sealed this week! And President wants me to go! :) I´m very content and really excited to see them all in white in the temple! Agh!!!! What a blessing! That was one of my mission goals and I´m soo grateful that I was able to take part in their teaching and now sealing! So that´s going to be on Saturday and we´re going to the temple as a zone again on wednesday soooo. :) This week should be a LOT better.  And the weather´s gotten a lot better lately. I´m rocking my new short sleeve shirts today. :)

Elder Stevenson and I were talking about why this week was awful and why were having so much success before. We came to the conclusion that Heavenly Father was showing us how good we were doing and how much he was blessing us. Now the trial stage. To see if we´re going to work as hard as we did before now that we aren´t seeing as many blessings. We´re both really motivated and so we´ve been working really hard so that we come out of the mission different and better than how we came in. Not because we were bad kids before the mission, but because we could be sooo much better and the Lord wants us to be soooo much better. 

The Mission is the best thing that´s happened to me. My view on life and the eternity has changed entirely. Things that scared me now make sense and I can see my growth almost daily. I LOVE MY MISSION AND THE LORD. I´m super grateful for all of you fools back home and your example because it´s been a HUGE help to me in my mission. Sometimes when I want to be a loser I think about you guys and all of your success and I want that. 

Love you all and have a super good week back home! :)

Love,

Elder Hawks

P.s. This is for Grandma Katie now... :)

Grandma I´m super happy to see you smiling in all of the pictures I´ve seen of you lately! You´re such a good example to me and I´m very grateful for all of the love that you have for me and my family! You´re awesome and I hope that you have a wonderfull birthday! I love you soo very much and I want you to look at all of your grandchildren and look how good of a job you did with your kids so that your grandkids could turn out as well as they did... :) You´re absolutely amazing and I´m very grateful that you are MY grandma. 

Love,

Stephen