Easter!

Its Easter time!

Haha I hope everyone is as happy as I am this wonderful monday morning! For whatever reason I have been thinking alot about Easter this year. Its probably cuz im teaching people about what easter really is. But this past week I have just thought so much about easter and what a great time it is. Not only do we get to think about Christ and all he did for us, and that he was resurrected on the 3rd day and over came death, but we get to think about it in probably the most beautiful season! Spring time when it is sunny and bright outside, when you can hear the birds, feel the warmth of the sun,and see the plants and trees and the many different colors! And to know that all of this came because of our lovely Heavenly Father. I love celebrating Christ's resurrection during spring time. It makes me feel so happy! So I hope you all get a chance to read and remember what Christ went through the last week of his life! There are so many important events and lessons to learn from Christ that he teaches us:)

So here in the south its still pretty brown. There are these trees called dogwoods that are starting to blossom that are so pretty! They are white flower things kinda like apricot trees I guess. Haha but the weather down here is sunny and in the 50's and 60's one day then rainy and stormy and in the 20's and 30's another day. March through May is tornado season when tornadoes spike so we have gotten alot of warnings for them but I havent seen one yet!

But anyway just a few cool stories from this week I wanna share. The first one is about service. On friday we went over to a food pantry right by our apt thats called the AMEN Food Pantry. We helped put cans and food into bags and take them out to families that came. It was so fun to go and help out with that! Everyone we worked with was so nice! We are going to go back once a week and help out now:) O and once we were done the guy that owned the place told us to start grabbing stuff to take with us. We told him we were ok but he insisted. He said they just got in 7,000 lbs of food! And so we got some stuff then he kept handing us cans and boxes and so much food! It was such a blessing because me and my comp spent all our money already for the rest of the month. And no we didnt spend it on things we didnt need we kept buying things for investigators to help them out hah so the Lord truly blessed us:)

On Tuesday we visited with a less active. Then we decided to go tract. So off we drove. I was kinda just going by the spirit to know where to drive. So we drove down this same road for about 5 minutes. I saw road to the right and felt I should go down it, but being the imperfect human i am i ignored that feeling and kept driving. We drove for like 10 more minutes and decided just to turn around and drive back home. We were driving back and I saw the same turn off again but once more I ignored the feeling.... For about 5 more secs. When I was getting eaten up the the feeling of regret and disappointment. So I told my companion we had to turn around and go back to that road. We went back and started to tract the road. The first house was a little old lady who was outside weeding. She was nice, but didnt want our help. So we tracted the rest of the road and and nothing. Haha so we came back to our cars and decided to knock on one more house. Then that house slammed the door in our face. So we were walking back to our car and there was a van that stopped us. It was a man and he said to come back to the first house that we saw the old lady. He said that his daughter was mormon and she lived in st george. Long story short he had done all this family history work and had tons of records and stories of people from Utah! It was crazy! I couldnt believe it! We found out the next day that he is a less active, but we are going back to visit them and to read more and he said he wanted us to make copies to give to our ward to keep records of!:) So Cool!! And there were some names that were from american fork so i wondered if any of ya'll knew them. Ugh I acutally left my notebook at the apt so I will have to get back to ya on the names haha.

But one sad story of the week is that on thurday scott wrote us a note saying that he had gone back to his other church. He wanted to go back to living his life the way it was before we met. And he was gonna have a surgery the next day and we were going to give him a blessing. He said he didnt want that either. So that kinda got us down, but we had a feeling to go get him a get well card and just tell him we still wanted to be friends and to call us if he needed help. We left that with him. A couple days later he called back and said that he wanted us to come over agian. That he felt welcomed in his church but didnt feel the same spirit! haha we havent gotten to get back with him just yet but sometime this week we will see him! But that is an added testimony that our church is the only true church!!  A double story trailer! right next to our appt:) never seen on of those haha they are usually double wide!

One last miracle that happened. On friday when we were at the food pantry we got a call from bishop saying there was a less active that needed a blessing. So we went out there on the county roads and got to his trailer. We went inside and there was one member who was visiting from Alabama. The other 5 or 6 people there were not members. Isaac was the man we were giving the blessing to. He was laying in bed and was so out of it. He was as yellow as a banana! He was basically really close to death. So we explained to everyone about the blessing. We would put some oil on his head, which they all gave us confused, weird, your both crazy looks haha. But we have him a blessing then left. Later that night the lady member who was there called us back and said that he was sitting up watching tv. He was eating which he hadnt done for days. He was talking with everyone and doing great! Then she said will you come over and give him a back massage in that oil! Haha that was funny but what a great miracle! The priesthood power is real! It is Gods power on earth that can literally save you from death if that is Gods will!

Well hope ya'll have a great Easter week and weekend! I know that my Redeemer lives!! He not only suffered and died for us, (which other churches focus on) but he over came death! He is resurrected!! We can all live together forever after this life through him! I love that message that our church has to share with everybody! No other church can tell people that!

I love all of you!

Love Elder Hall

Happy St Patricks day!

Hey ya'll,

Happy St Patricks day! I hope everyone had a great green filled day:) I know I did! But this week has been really good!

We started out with a training meeting on tuesday. It was down in Birmingham and it was for all the new missionaries and their trainers! It was such a great meeting! President Holzapfel talked and man he is so amazing! He told us a few things. One is we need to do our best and leave the rest to the Lord. That is what the atonement is all about. He related this statement to missionary work but I wanted to relate it to all of you. If you do your best every day with everything that you do, and maybe you do make a mistake, then part of doing your best is repenting of that mistake and not thinking about it. Leave it up to the Lord to fix it and everything will turn out ok because the Lord never loses. You will always be on the winning team:) The next thing is that He takes you as you are, and asks you to become. Wow what a strong statement! The Lord love us all and he accepts us how we are. We are all different in our own special way and the Lord loves that. But he knows what we can become and asks us to work on that. Now that is a very big thing to handle, to become like the Lord wants you to become. But as we turn to him and get his help along the way he can help guide us down the right paths, shape us into better people, and eventually become as he is! And most important with that statement, DONT WORRY! The Lord has blessed us all, and when you worry you are letting satan win. So please dont do that:) But those are some of the things we learned:)

Now I want to talk a little about my area, which I dont know if I have told yall about it much but if I have im sorry for saying things twice haha but Corinth is the furthest area away from the mission. It is also the biggest area in our mission. You can literally drive an hour each direction and still be in our area haha but anyway the mission president before President Holzapfel would send missionaries he didnt like to Corinth to get rid of them. He did this for a long time and because of it this area became the worst area in the mission.

My president is trying to change that. Missionaries call would and still kind of call Corinth outer darkness. I dont know why the Lord trusted me to come to this area, but im glad I have had the opportunity to have Corinth to be my first area! I have learned so much from it and I know that we are changing the area. President had me and my companion stand up during the meeting and talk about our area and our baptism we just had. He then got a little emotional and with tears said, "Corinth isnt outer darkness!!!" That made me feel so special to know that he cares about each area. And so does the Lord! He cares about each and every one of us individually! Transfers are on Wednesday and Elder Galorath and I are staying in Corinth! I love it here! I love the people and I love being apart of changing an area around!

Now Its not because of me or my companion that things are changing in this area. It is the Lords work! It is him that is changing the area for us! He has truly blessed us! I have come to learn that missionary work is this. You work your butt off! You study harder then ever! You tract and serve and love the people with the greatest love you have! Then because of that work the Lord will bless you with a miracle of getting a new investigator. Getting to teach someone. Its not by our efforts that we change lives. Its through the work of the Lord because he is working harder than any of us! He works 24/7. Day and night! And I love him because of that!:) He has truly blessed me! 

But I want to mention some people real quick. Scott is doing great! We have gotten him to come and eat with us at a members house and we have taught him several times! We have had powerful lessons and he knows and wants to get baptized! We need to teach him a few more things but he will probably get baptized this week!:)

John is still great! We went and taught him about family indexing on friday. On sunday he had already done 84 names! He is doing great and we taught him about the priesthood so hopefully he can get it this week or the next!

We still teach alot of less active families and are trying to get them back into church which alot have started coming back!

Well I love you all! I love my mission! I love Corinth and the chance that I get to serve here! I know that Christ is working and preparing people for me to teach! I love him so much! I love this Gospel! It is true and it changes lives! I am witnessing it change scotts life right in front of me! I love the priesthood and it is a very real power that blesses lives!

Again I love ya'll!!:)

Love, 

Elder Hall

Baptism!!

Hey ya'll!

What a great week ive had:) And i wanna tell yall about 2 people that have made this week the best week of my mission so far!

The first is John. I told ya last week that we had miscommunication problems. Well we went over to his house this week and visited with him. We taught him everything he needed to know for his baptism and he wanted to do it on the 10th. We were so excited. When we got home that night and were talking about it I realized that it was day light savings Sunday morning. We kinda freaked out for a minute and thought wow could anything else make it any more difficult to get John baptized. But we made sure to call him and have him set everything and called his ride and we personally made sure everything was perfect for him! On saturday night my comp and I set all the clocks forward. Come to find out the next morning my comps alarm clock sets itself forward automatically. So we were up at 4 in the morning. But we went to the church, filled up the font again and John showed up which was great! We had the regular church service. Then after church and right before a pot luck that the members were putting on we did the baptism!

We had a couple people give talks, then it was my part of it where I got to baptize John. So we get in the font and John was spinning in circles trying to figure out where to stand, but I finally got him over by me. Then I was trying to get the hand placement right and I couldnt get it for the life of me. But after a minute or so I finally got it. It felt kinda weird but I kept going. I baptized him and we got out and he started getting undressed when the ward mission leader came back and said wait we have to do it again. I was kinda puzzled but he asked me, "Did you have your left hand to the square?" O MY GOSH! I coudnt believe it! I had done the whole thing backwards and had my left hand up. Thats why I couldnt get my hand placement right! So we got him back down in there and baptized him the other way:) With my right hand to the square this time! hahah I was laughing and couldnt believe i had done that:) So that was the embarrassing moment of the week but great because I got a baptism!!!!!!

So the other person I wanted to mention was our neighbor Scott. I dont know if I told you about him but I will tell ya again if I did. He is in his 50s and had a rough life growing up. Didnt really have a good family and his mom and grandma would beat him. He has been divorced a couple times and his kids dont talk to him. He got into a really bad car accident a while ago and was in the hospital for a while. they didnt think he would live and if he did he would be paralyzed for the rest of his life. But he lived and moves around totally fine! It was a miracle. But we met him at the library and he wanted help with computer stuff. He said he wanted to find good Christian friends after his accident. We were the first people he met with. We have known him for about 2 weeks. The first week we would go see him and show him how to use his laptop and windows 8. The start of this week we have been trying to help him get wifi at his house through at&t but we got to talking about the gospel with him. We wanted to know how our church got started and more about our church. We talked to him for a couple hours then asked if he wanted to come to church this sunday and come to the baptism and pot luck. He said yes so we went and gave him a tour of the church. When we showed him the baptismal font and talk about baptism he said that he felt like he had been saved when he was 14 but felt like he needed to get baptized again. We went over that night and taught him the first lesson, the restoration. You could feel the spirit so strong and he believed everything! We asked him to pray and as he did he broke down in tears! Saying he has been praying for this all his life and has been praying for people like us to come into his lives! He came to church and loved it! After the pot luck he said that this was one of the best days of his life! That every one was so kind to him and that he would be back next sunday! We went over sunday night to watch Joseph Smith the prophet of the restoration with him and he loved the movie. We talked to him about the BOM and he said that he wants to read it with us. We tried to set a baptismal date, and he said that he wants to get baptized but doesnt want to set a date just yet because of surgeries in the near future like in a couple of weeks.

But i know that God has prepared Scott for me! Im so grateful to be out here and to be blessing Scott and others lives! I know im truly bringing them closer to Christ and bringing them back to live together as an eternal family!! I love teaching! We have a few more investigators that we are working with that are moving slower but it is still amazing to see their lives change through the gospel! I have had 2 opportunities to teach a less active couple with Pres Holzapfel and his wife! They are truly amazing people and I love learning from him!! He is one of the World famous scholars for the bible and knows so much about the gospel!! I dont know if you heard or not but there are around 120ish new mission presidents going out in July. Our mission is one that is getting a new mission prez. His name is Richard D. Hanks. I cant wait to meet him as well!

But anyways I love this gospel! I know its true! I love you all and keep writing me I love letters and emails!! Thank you all for your prayers I really can see in my life that because of them miracles are happening!

Love,

Elder Hall

Hey Hey - Again

Hey Yall!

So This week has had its ups and downs just like every other week. But before I go into everything that happened I wanted to tell ya how the south is, how my companion is and things like that.

The great old south haha down here people are very poor. Mississippi is the poorest state in the U.S. I have come to realize how blessed we really are. Like Dad always tells us how much we are blessed but it is very very true! Even most of the members that have come here from Utah are still very poor. So I have come to love the people, even though the houses are horrible and smell and some people smell cuz they dont have water to bathe and other things. But the one thing that I cant understand is that even though everyone here is pretty poor, they all have dogs and cats everywhere! People down here love pets! Each home has like 6 dogs and 11 cats and you think im joking when I say that but its true! haha so I have come to love animals a little bit more haha and there hair getting all over me and everywhere! Me and my bike:) we have become good friends now haha.

Now a little about the food. We have gotten to eat at some southern restaurants, members houses, non members houses, and regular fast food hah. Some southern foods that yall might wanna try sometime are chocolate gravy and biscuits (ooo yummy i love them!), chocolate covered potatoe chips, and fried foods like steak, fried spicy chicken, they love sweet potatoes with pecans, they love pecans haha, they love ham and potatoes. Now some things that I have had some problems with... Fried okra isnt too bad but its not the best either, Chitlins. Stay away from chitlins haha. There is a member named Mary Rogers. She is kind of poor but has us over for dinner. She told us she would make us boiled chitlins. I knew from the missionaries that they were some part of a pig but didnt know what part. So i ate them to be nice. They tasted um ok, but they smelled horrible! Then after we had dinner they told me that chitlins are pig intestines! haha I knew it was going to be something gross so i wasnt to taken back. But I did find out the story behind them. So back in the civil war days all the whites would kill a pig then take the pork, bacon, and all the other good meat from it. Then they would throw everything else out for the slaves. Mainly the intestines. So the slaves learned how to cook them and it has been past on ever since through the blacks haha. When I told other missionaries that have been here for a year and a half they couldnt believe it! They hadnt even tried them. But anyway just a few foods that I wanted to tell ya about!

So now a little bit about my comp. He is from LA. He is a good trainer and loves to help and serve others. He is always asking if we can help in anyway. He always waves to others when we go anywhere which is good cuz thats what missionaries do! But he is not to athletic. He and 2 other missionaries, as well as a lot of others in the mission love to play a card game named magic. I thinks its pretty lame so i just watch them play it. But they buy cards all the time and play it alot too haha i think heavenly father is laughing his head off cuz he keeps sticking me with kids who arent into sports or anything that i like! But thats ok cuz we get along pretty well:)

Now onto my week! So my and Elder Stankey, the district leader, went out on a split and we decided to tract. So we biked around 5 or 6 miles over by the church and stopped in a neighborhood. We started off by saying a prayer which I had never done before, then we headed out. The very first door we knocked on was a German lady named Mckela, or however you spell that. So we went in and talked to her and she has a lot of questions about our church. The amazing thing that I figured out is that each question she would ask went perfectly along with the 1st lesson, the Restoration! It was so cool to see all the pieces fitting together! I now know that Preach My Gospel is truly an inspired book! There may have been some people who wrote it, but truly God told them what to write!

On saturday we went over to a town called Selmer to help the young mens president build a ramp for a non member out there. So we headed out. One thing that I thought was funny is that on friday and saturday it started to "snow". On friday there were microscopic snow flakes and everyone here was freaking out about how much snow there was haha. On saturday it was blowing bigger snowflakes but still nothing at all stuck to anything. So I thought that was funny. But we worked in the snow the whole time and I loved helping build the deck and ramp and I was impressed with alot of the handy man things I knew cuz of working with dad! My comp and a member Matt who is 21 and is gonna go on a mission soon, didnt even know how to screw things in and didnt know how to use a nail gun haha so i showed them and helped them but that was fun! We are going back to finish it because we ran out of wood but ill take pics of it and send them to ya! But we also got to talk with the husband and wife and left blessings with them!

Ok now the sad part of the week. So I told you about John getting baptized. We went over and taught him, interviewed him and he was so excited to get baptized on march 3. So we told him that Bro Hunting, the first councilor in the bishopric, would come get him. He usually gets picked up around 6:30 because Bro Hunting has meetings. Anyway so sunday comes around and we get to church early start filling up the font cuz it usually takes around 5 hours to fill and getting everything ready. Time is going by and its around 8 and neither of them are at church so we call bro hunting and ask him and he said that John wouldnt answer the door or his phone. We went strait up to Johns house and tried but got nothing. So we went to church. After church John called us and was so so mad that we didnt pick him up and he had to wait 2 hours til 8, then he just went back to sleep. Then he said he didnt want to do with anything of the church anymore and hung up! Well that was a lie because br Well I had all of yesterday and this morning to think about that until he called us a few minutes ago. I talked to him and told him we are sorry about the miscommunication, even though he lied to us and we know that bro hunting and us were there to pick him up. But anyway I did get him to allow us to come back and talk to him tomorrow so maybe we can get him back into things and he will wanna get baptized this sunday:)

Well I just want you all to know that I love this church! It is the only true church on the face of the earth. Yesterday in the CES fireside president Bednar said that it is better to not shrink then to survive. That is so key and important! It is so much better to stand tall and not shrink down to satans level. Never let him get you down! I have learned this principle so much on my mission. I have had 2 baptisms fall through, people slam doors in my face, lessons and appt fall through and much more. But Im not going to shrink. I need to keep my faith strong in Heavenly Father and he will help us be positive and get out of the trail! If we are on Heavenly Fathers side we will always win! He will never forsake us, and we know that satan will! I

love you all so much!

Love Elder Hall!