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Me and Mike were companions for the day.
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Another picture of me and Mike! |
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The best Zone in the World! |
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So we did a Mormon blitz! The entire zone of Reforma went to the stake center on Saturday and we went out with all of the youth to contact references and lend service! My companion and I had to do divisions because one companionship couldn't come so that is why he isn't in the pictures. I went on divisions with a former missionary named Mike. He looks like a gringo, but he isn't haha.
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What a great day! |
I can't even tell you how excited I am for Collin. I honestly thought he wouldnt ever do it. mMake sure to give him a HUGE hug for me! and tell him, "disfruta su misión. no gasta ninguno momento en la obra del Señor. te quiero mucho mi mejor amigo!"
That was my goodbye speech:)
As for your story, I find it truly inspiring. One thing I have started to notice is that the work of Lucifer has always played a key role in being evidence of the true church of God throughout the ages. Wherever there is good, there will always be bad. It is pretty awesome that light will always beat darkness. Wickedness never was happiness. There are so many examples of this! It is just cool to see a real life one though. It is interesting to see that on a minor scale with those who are preparing to get baptized but Lucifer will obviously work way harder for people like that with the temple work! I can't even tell you how I feel after reading that story. It makes me so happy to see how much the work of the Lord is continuing back home:) Thank you for your help and your example!!!
I love you so much!
Elder Hackleman
On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 8:12 AM, Amy wrote:
Dear Elder,
Friday night I started to get inundated with calls and text messages wondering if you were safe in Mexico with the impending Hurricane Patricia bearing down on the country. I posted a status update on Facebook letting everyone know you were on the other side of the country from the Hurricane and it's land fall destination was well above where you are located. Everyone was very thankful to know you were safe and sound. You never realize how many people worry about you. In fact, the majority of the people who liked my status update were not even members. People who are members have great faith that the missionaries will get an extra protection from natural disasters so we tend not to worry as much as the average citizen.
Having said all that, how are you? Did you get any remnants from the big storm?
Does Mexico have anything like our Thanksgiving?
Collin is having a farewell open house on Tuesday. His mom has called me a couple of times. Poor thing. She is so stressed and worried.
Were you able to get some arch supports? Are your feet still killing you?
Ok, so I have a story for you. Do you remember Carol? She is an older woman in our ward who lives across the hall from Dale. One day about two years ago, Dale bumped into her neighbor when they were both headed out the door for church. She started talking to her about the church and found out she was a member of our church but hadn't gone for 40 years or so. She was attending two other churches at the time. Dale invited her to come to the LDS church and she agreed but only to one hour because she didn't want to miss her other meetings. She did this for a while. She is a very social person and believes in God, but felt it didn't really matter what church you worship him in. Anyway, I met her at church and decided to go with the missionaries and see what we could do. When we went to her house she told us she had died a few years earlier. She suffered a severe stroke. She had a do not resuscitate so that should have been the end. For some reason, she came back to life, but was hanging on by a thread. The family was called in and told to say their goodbyes. Days went by and she was in a coma, but still clinging to life. Days turned into months and she still didn't die. The family was told she would die any day so they went ahead and sold her house and almost all of her belongings. But, she kept hanging on. The doctors then said, she would never walk, talk, or be active again. Well, jump forward a year and she made a miraculous recovery. Since her house was sold she still was rehabbing from the stroke they decided to put her in a retirement home. That is how she ended up across the hall from Dale.
Anyway, when we went over to her house, she told me the story, and then told me she felt like she was brought back to life for a purpose, but she just didn't know what that purpose was, so she was searching for it in all different churches. The spirit was very strong that day and I felt impressed to tell her that the purpose she was still alive was so she could get her temple work done. I remember at the time thinking that was a crazy thing to say, since she wasn't even active in our church. She agreed, that might be the case and said she wanted to go to the temple immediately.
As she started coming more regularly to church she started pressing the issue, she wanted to go to the temple. The bishop wisely told me to help her through this process, but counseled me to take it slow. She would not be allowed to go to the temple until she had taken the temple preparation class and had a testimony that this was the only true church on the earth. Little by little she started coming to more and more church and finally gave up her other faiths all-together. She went through the temple prep classes and eventually went through the temple for her own endowments during the spring. Now she just needed to get sealed to her husband who died in the 70's as well as her parents and a daughter who also died.
She worked diligently in the family history library getting all the work ready for the temple work. She set the date for October 25th to be sealed to her husband and family. Last Saturday I took another sister to the temple along with Grant to do the baptisms, confirmations and initiatories so everything would be ready for this Saturday. Carol has been pretty ill and so has Dale. Dale now has cancer and hasn't been able to get out very often. As soon as the work was done last Saturday, Tim and I went up into the temple office to get the temple cards so we could then do the endowments for all the names. As the temple office was processing the names, there was a problem. They were showing up as duplicated and the system would not allow them to make the correction. We had all the temple workers available in there trying to help us get the names in the system corrected. Finally, they told us to go ahead with the cards and they would keep working on it to resolve the issues.
Last Friday, Dale, Carol and I went to the temple to do endowments on the female sisters who would be sealed on Saturday and Brother Duran did the male names. Then Friday night as Tim and I were driving to the football game, our car died again.
Carol was going to be picking me up for the sealing on Saturday so I didn't worry to much about our car thinking I could just drive hers. Then Saturday morning arrived and ten minutes before she was going to pick me up, she called in a panic. She couldn't find her keys. Nathan had our other car at work and so I didn't have any way to pick her up since the van was in the shop. I felt impressed to call a member of the bishopric who was headed to the church to watch the primary kids practice for the program. He had gotten up and dressed in a white shirt and suit not knowing before hand why he would dress up so much on a Saturday. He was just passing Carol's when we called him. He immediately turned the other way and picked up Carol, Dale and then came and got me and we all went to the temple. When we arrived at the temple, Carol could not find her recommend. I finally found it for her in her purse, right where she had already looked a dozen times. The temple matron took Carol back to talk to her and verify all the names and stuff. I went to the locker room to get changed and felt impressed to grab her temple worksheet and head to the office. Not knowing why, I did as I was inspired to do and found out every record had been lost. Once again, the temple work was gone. The lady who had helped Carol in the family history library got up Saturday morning and felt impressed to go to the temple to witness Carol's sealing. When she was changing she had the same impression, to go to the office. Basically, to make a long story short, all the records were gone. The temple had to re-install everything on the spot. With the sister who was there to be a witness that it had all been done before, along with my sheet with all the names, dates etc. and the other temple workers who had helped me the week prior with all the glitches we were having, we were able to make it happen on the spot. The temple took the names immediately to the baptistery so the official records could be in the computer and we went immediately to the sealing. Basically the sealings happened before the records of all the other work were even in the temple system.
It was totally crazy. Satan did not want that work to go forward, but no unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing.
Yesterday I was talking to Bishop Decker about it all and he told me when he interviewed Carol for her live sealing endowment, he felt the presence of Carol's husband in the room and President Derrick called bishop Decker to tell him he felt the same way when he interviewed her.
It was one of the most spiritual experiences of my life.
After I got home from the temple, I found out the alternator that we had replaced on the car three weeks ago had a wire slip off. It took them 5 minutes to fix the problem and our car is fine now. I realized Satan was even working on our car to try and stop the work!
No can do!
Love,
Mom
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