May 24,2010

Dear Family,
This week was pretty crazy. I was in exchanges the whole week. That means that I was with other missionaries in their sectors on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. It was kind of tough. I wanted to go back to sleep in my own bed and to teach my investigators. I hope I hleped the missionaries I was with though. We worked really hard this week. We had more lessons this week than any other week that I´ve had on the mission. We helped a lot of people. This sonday the family of 8 that we found only one week ago went to church with us. They really enjoyed it. The only problem is that the Stake President was there and he did something that made them angry. Right after Sacrament meeting we were trying to help everyone get to their right classes and then we realized that the family Villamar (the family of 8) wasn´t there we went outside and they weren´t there and finally we saw them in one of the classrooms with the Stake President and the Bishop. We wondered why they were there but we kind of blew it off and we started the next class. About 10 minutes into the class the family Villamar showed up and the teacher taught about baptism. It was really good. They understood a lot and liked it. We thought everything had gone really well for them. After church when the family had gone home we were talking with the Bishop and he said that the Stake President had challenged them to be baptized. We thought well ok, that could be good. We were wrong. We showed up at the house of the family Villamar after church and they were a little bit angry. They said that all we wanted was to baptize them and that they were pressured and all that. It was tough to see that but we were able to tell them that we don´t want them to be baptized from today to tomorrow. We told them that they aren´t ready right now and that they still need to learn a lot more and that they need to receive an answer from God. By the end they had calmed down a lot and they are still going to listen to us. I want to strangle our Stake President. I know that he was just trying to help but he needs to stay with the members. The investigators aren´t under his stewardship. That´s our responsibility. I´ll probably talk to him about that.
I read a basic scripture and applied it in a funny way. In Alma 1:27 it talks about how they were dressed neat and comly. That means that we have to buy all of our clothes in Wal-Mart ha ha :) Well it was a crazy week and I loved it. I learned a lot. This weekend we have our Stake Conference. We´ll have an area 70, the temple president, and President Sloan there with us. I´m pretty excited for it. Well I love you all. Can´t wait to write you next week.



Love,
Élder Hakes