Spencer - Called to Serve: Week 42 - Wild Animals, PLD, Handing out CTR Rings

Things be great here on the islands!!

This past week has been great!! On Tuesday and Wednesday we had our PLD conference with President and the AP's. It was my first one in Surabaya and the spirit coming out of those meetings is always so strong getting us pumped up to go out and be better missionaries than before! One of the things that was totally awesome was that President, in my interview was reading from the 100th section of the Doctrine and Covenants and put my name in there and it was just a super powerful moment that I am called here, at this time, for some reason and that the Lord is pleased with what I already am doing. It was a comforting thing especially sometimes when you feel like you haven't done a whole lot in an area!

As maybe you have seen, last Monday we were able to go Taman Safari which is a wild animal park and that was really cool. That is why last week's email came super early and the awesome pictures will shortly follow! Some of the experiences were taking pictures with orangutans, white tigers, baby tigers, and a lion. I also was able to ride an elephant which was way cool!

We had 4 investigators make it to church yesterday which was a miracle!!! I have never had any investigator attend church and yesterday 4 of them came!! One of them P S, we met when we first moved to the area but only met him once before he fell off the face of the earth with his work. This past week we were able to meet with him again, give him a baptismal date and he came to church with his wife so we will be working closely with him to see this happen. The others we have only met once but they were interested with the message of the Restoration and came to church with the follow-up lesson this Tuesday! A very gracious miracle!

Also this week, we were teaching M who is from Japan but is living here in Indonesia and has lived in America before. He just became Christian from not having a religion and does not understand church because it is in Indonesian and could be in Javanese. We taught him the Restoration and why there are tons of churches and he was serious about learning and actually understanding. One of our hooks was that if he was able to come to church we would translate for him as we already do for other members. He was excited except his family got super mad that we came to their house and M has asked us not to come back. However, the seed has been planted. During the lesson one of our investigators that we haven't been able to meet with called and asked if we could meet at the church. After high-tailing it out of there to the church that investigator never showed up but was a small miracle that he called us to meet.

Just a funny story..... after teaching M, there was a bunch of kids crowding around and I yelled out, " Siapa suka cincin?" (Who likes rings?) They went NUTS and I was able to hand out a bunch of "Choose the Right" rings to the little kids who were very happy and smiling that they got a free gift from a bule!

Things are staying pretty hot here in Surabaya. The other day we were only out for a little bit in the sun but my arms were red but quickly went away overnight and just continue to get darker and darker.

To answer the question about what food we eat. We have been eating a lot of Carl's Jr. and McD's even though it is pretty expensive because for the last little bit our house has had some stomach problems and we are worried that it may be the unclean food or something so we do still eat quite a bit of these other places as well.

As far as goals go, we also do have a goal for 20 lessons a week. We try to visit members that live in our areas but in our area there are only 3 families that are active and 5 who are less active that we have tried to find but there addresses are like the only ones not there. If there house number is 23 there is 20,21,22,24,25...... or if it;s 5 there is 2,3,4,6,7,8..... It is really weird so we move on.

The pictures look great. Kiersten looks old. Kaitlyn looks good with her new glasses and Zach is a stud in this pictures. I do have to say that pitching picture shows that he has pretty decent looking form already!!!

Keep up all the great work and I love you!!

Elder Hayes