June 28, 2010

Dear Family,
This week was pretty weird. I can´t believe I´m 20 years old now. I will never be a teenager again :) I ate about 5 times on my birthday. It was pretty sweet. Right now we have a family of 4 that will be baptized this Saturday. They are such an amazing family. We found them in the streets about 3 weeks ago and they have just made a complete change in their lives. They were looking for the truth. They are feeling that the emptiness in their souls is being filled. It is so amazing. Last night the father told us that he wants to give a talk at his baptism. We were really taken aback and we said yes that´s fine. We´re not sure what he´s going to say but I guess we´ll find out. Today we went to the Basilica again, the big catholic church. It was pretty sweet. I realized that I´m the missionary with the most time in Zone Los Chillos. I´ve been here in this Stake for almost 6 months now. I´ll probably get changed in 3 weeks. Well I´m doing amazing family. I´m so grateful for all of the e-mails that you sent me this week. I can´t tell you all how much I love you!!!!!



Love,
Élder Hakes

June 21, 2010

Dear Family,

Thank you so much for all of the e-mails that you sent me. They make me feel like I´m at home....kind of :) This week was an amazing week for us. We were definitely led by the Spirit to some new families. We were able to find 30 new people just in this week. We were led by the Spirit to a 19 year old kid that 2 days after we met him he went to church and he´s reading the Book of Mormon. He wants to know more and he is very receptive. We also found a couple and their cousins that live in the same house that also said that they want to follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized. They said that they wanted to learn more first before they get baptized :) About 2 weeks ago, we finished teching a lesson and we were going to take a bus to go to a different place. When we were about to turn on a street to go to the bus stop I had a thought about a person that we were teaching that really wasn´t that intrested. I didn´t know why I thought that. I half-way wanted to just go down to the bus. I said no and we went to this not-so-intrested investigators house. When we got there this time she just told us to go away that she´s not interested (we were visiting her in her store). She was with a customer and the customer said hold on a sec. I want you to talk with me and my family. We were very surprised and we said ok. We went and got to know her husband and 2 children right then and there. This family has been prepared for a long time. They now have a baptisimal date for July 3 and they are changing a lot. They read from the Book of Mormon and from the new Gospel Principles manual that we received this year. I will be eternally grateful that I decided to follow a thought that I thought was a dumb thought becasue 4 of God´s children will be able to return to live with him again.

This week we went to the Equator again. We went to a different spot than last time. This is supposed to be the real Ecuator line. They had some really cool stuff. They had water fall in the North and in the South and on the Ecuator. It was way cool because it went opposite directions and on the Ecuator it went straight down. There´s also less resistance on the Ecuator. He had me put my hands out and he tried pulling my arms down. Away from the Ecuator he couldn´t do it but on the Ecuator he did it pretty easily. It was pretty crazy. We also balanced an egg on a nail. They also had some cool stuff from the Orient, the Amazon Jungle. It was way cool to learn about all this new stuff.

Well I just want to share my testimony with all of you I know that the church is true. The Gospel makes changes in the lives of the people here. I love being a missionary. I can´t believe that I´m going to turn 20 years old this week. Thank you so much for all that all of you have taught me in my life. I´m so grateful for each and every one of you.
I love you all so very much.
Love, Élder Hakes

June 14, 2010

Dear Family,
Wow! What a crazy week. Well as I wrote last week I´m with a new companion now. This week was pretty good. I feel like we could have done more and this week will be a wake up call to him. We had 2 baptisms last weekend. A couple got baptized. It was a really sweet experience. They changed so much just this week so they could be prepared for baptism. They will be an amazing eternal family when they go to the temple. They´re so excited to change their lives now. I love helping people to do that. I do have some bad news too. THis week we laost the family Villamar, the family of 8. Everything was going good and they were preparing for baptism. We had the interviews on thursday and it was a disaster. All of the kids younger than 18 said that they wanted to wait until they turned 18 so they could make a good decision. The oldest, 19 year old, was completly shut and prideful. She didn´t confess her sins. She said that she didn´t want to be baptized and a lot of other things. We talked to them afterwards and told them that they can´t reject the answer that they have received. THey know that the church is true and they are just rejectng it because of their pride. We read some scriptures about how if they have an answer and they reject it it will be bad with them in the last day, but they didn´t care at all. It was really sad to see them like that. They were progressing so well and I felt like everything was going so well. I guess it wasn´t there time. We´ll visit them like 1 or 2 more times to see if they´ll change, but if not we´re going to have to leave them for now.´
Today we went bowling and played pool again at the same place. I ate McDonalds and Taco Bell today. It was pretty amazing. Well I hope you all know that I love this work. I know that there are a lot of ups and downs and that this work is very difficult, but....I LOVE IT!!!!!! It´s so weird to think that I´m going to be 20 years old in a few weeks. It´s kind of funny, I think I´m starting to lose my vision a little bit. I told my companion that my eyes only have a 20 year gaurantee he he he :) :) Well I love you all so much. I´m really excited for our zone and our companionship. We´re going to have a lot of baptisms and that´s always good.



Love,
Élder Hakes

June 7, 2010

Dear Family,
Wow what a crazy week it has been. We changed apartments to a really nice apartment this week. We also had to clean the old house really really good. My camera got stolen today.

I have a new companion. His name is Elder Archundia and he´s from Mexico. I´m training him as a zone leader and we have a new zone. We have 5 new missionaries in the zone and they made the zones a lot smaller. There are now only 14 missionaries in our zone. We´ll be able to help each missionary better now.

We had a really amazing experience on Saturday. We were with the six kids in the family of 8, the family Villamar. We talked about how to receive an answer and the importance of being humble to be able to receive an answer from God. It was a really amazing lesson. To end the lesson I felt like we should ask, in the closing prayer, if the church is true. They did it and each and every one of them received their answer the spirit was so strong. It was amazing. They have the goal to be baptized this weekend but I believe it will be changed to the following weekend. I´m so excited for them. I haven´t prayed so much for one family in my entire life!!!!

I love being a missionary.

Well, I love you all so very much. Thank you for all that you do.
Love, Élder Hakes

May 31, 2010

Dear Family.
This week was an amazing week. We had stake conference and we had an area 70 with us at the conference. His name is Elder Cesar Dávila. During his stay he also wanted to visit. An investigator family. The stake president knew about our family of 8 so he came with us to visit them. It was amazing. We talked about the restoration and it changed the whole attitude of the family. They all have a lot more desires to learn and progress. When we were in the priesthood session of the conference he invited us up to share the experience that we had. It was pretty cool. President Sloan was in the conference to so he was very happy that we were able to have that experience with him. When the normal session of the conference ended we went up to Élder Dávila with the family of 8 and he gave them all hugs. He also gave me a really big hug and told me thank you for the experience that we gave him. He called my comanion and I his senior companions. It was pretty funny. We also put a baptism date eith the family of 8 for June 12th. They still need a lot of preparation but I believe that they´ll make it. I´m so excited for them!!!! I´ve been so lucky. This is the second time that I have taught with an area 70. It was really cool. My companion was really nervous but I wasn´t. I knew that I was teaching the family and not Élder Dávila. It was an amazing experience.
Next week is transfers. We were talking with President Sloan today and he´s probably going to split our zone into 2 smaller zones. He wants to have zone leaders in each stake so we can work better on the stake level. That means that it´s about 99% sure that we will have transfers this next week. I think that I will stay in the same sector and that my companion will leave. He´s got a lot of time here in our sector. Just about everyone in the zone will have transfers next week so next Monday will be very crazy trying to help everyone change and find their new companions.
Well I´m excited to see what happens in the next few weeks. You all might have heard about a volcano that exploded but nothing happened here in Quito. We didn´t receive any ash or anything. The explosion was really far away. I do have some cool pictures of the volcanoes that surround Quito though. There are 4 that I can see from my house on a clear day!! Well I love this work. I wish you all could have my addiction to the work. Remember to keep studying your scriptures and saying your prayers. I love you all so much!!!!


Love,
Élder Hakes

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

May 17, 2010

Dear family,
This week was pretty amazing. I´ll start off with our own companionship. This week was the first week where we actually had a lot of time in our own sector. We had a really amazing week with some amazing experiences. Yesterday we were walking in the street and we contacted 3 girls and they didn´t seem to interested but they told us where they lived. The address was very vague and se just started knocking on doors, hoping that we´d find their family. We went off to this little street so we could say a prayer and my companion started talking to this family, before we said the prayer. We found out that this was ther rest of the family that we were looking for. We told them that they had sent us down here and they let us right in to teach them. It was amazing when we walked in and it was a family of 8. I had never taught so many people at once. The spirit was so strong. I pulled the goofy gringo trick so the kids would want us to come back (the goofy gringo trick is when I just act a little weird for the kids so they want us to come back. I figure if the kids want us back the parents will too:) he he). It was amazing because they all want to go to church and read and everything. I can´t wait to go back there.
This week we had another baptism too!!! Rodrigo Morocho got baptized. It was really amazing because before the baptism he was pretty nervous and it didn´t seem like he had a strong testimony, but right after he got baptized he shared a powerful testimony that really brought the spirit. It was amazing. We completed that family when he got baptized. They can now all prepare to go to the temple to be sealed. We´re really excited for all of them. The fountain picture that I put in there is a fountain that they made and that they have in their front yard. I think it´s hilarious because I´ll probably never see a statue like that again.



This week the our district did pretty amazing too!!! We were having some problems with one companionship and we talked with them about it and this week they did so much better. THey finally started to work and to grow in faith. It´s an amazing process to watch. They´re doing as Alma taught in Alma 32:27-30. I´m so excited for them to keep doing that.
Well I love you family. You are all amazing. I love this work and I love being a called representative of Jesus Christ to declare repentance and baptism to this people here in Ecuador. I hope that all of you can be doing the same at home. We should talk with everyone about this gospel because we want every single one of God´s children to be with us when we arrive in the Celestial Kingdom. If we don´t talk and show them they may never make it. Well I love you all.



Love,
Élder Hakes