ﺍﻟﺴﻠﺎﻡ ﻋﻠﻴﻜﻢ ﻭﺭﺣﻤﺔ ﺍﻟﻠﻪ ﻭﺑﺮﻛﺎ ﺗﻪ

(assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh)

I figured that the Arabic greeting would be appropriate as today officially starts the first day of Ramadan! Food might be a little scarce for the next little while! :)

So many awesome and things happen in a week that it is hard to fit it all into words. A was confirmed a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints yesterday and received the gift of the Holy Ghost! He was stressing himself out because he ended up being a little late after waiting for the bus for around 45 minutes, but all went smoothly!

One of the spiritual miracles and highlights happened on Saturday night! Elder Tuttle and I have a strong desire to find a family so that is what we fasted for. In our prayer, we were very specific on what this family would be like. We prayed that there would be 4 members in the family, there would be a dad, a mom, a son, and a daughter. On Saturday we sent out to start finding them. We went to a place that is buzzing with families on Saturday night! We sat down and Elder Tuttle says, "That is them Elder." I was super confused. As we looked across the walk way path, there was an awesome family of 4 that was all matching. How did we know they were the right ones??? It was their shirts that gave it away. The shirts said, " Dad," "Mom," Son," and "Daughter." HAHA We stood up and went over and talked to them about families. They are Buddhist but were open to us coming to visit them and share more about our message! Just in case that doesn't work out, we will keep searching! This is the same spot where we found that awesome family from Canada about a month ago if you remember!

There were 10 baptisms across the mission this past weekend!! 3 of them were in the 3rd ward here in Jakarta which is the English branch! One of the guys baptized was from Africa and the other two were from the Middle East. The spirit was so strong and it was such a wonderful experience for all who attended and witnessed. There are a lot of refugees here in Indonesia and so many of them are willing to listen to the Gospel! We cannot baptize them however if they do not have a permanent residence. It was cool to see that ward grow a little more!! the church is growing little by little here in Indonesia!

Another thing that happened this past week was finding a less active in a very interesting way. We were walking into a busy mall and lots of people were sitting just outside as we passed a few men that were from England, one says, "How are you doing today, Elders?" We did not expect those words to come from his mouth as they were smoking a drinking. We stopped and spent some time there and got to know these guys. They are from Manchester here for work. One of them used to be an active member of the church. Since, he has gone off the right path. His friend had a lot of questions and he answered them all. We spent about 10 minutes there just sharing things that were coming to our heads. It was an interesting experience. How blessed we are to have the Gospel in our lives.

One of our investigators right now is Buddhist and has known about the church for 20 years! He invited us over and we entered a Yugoslavic styled apartment complex. He had lots of questions and we answered them and almost all of them were answered by the message of the restoration or in the Book of Mormon. He is really interested and is interested in coming to church. His name is Chao Ming (晁麋嗯, taken from google translate).

The rest of the week we were on splits in Bogor where we just worked and worked and worked to see miracles. We split with all 3 companionships that are there and had a blast!! Also, Bogor is such a beautiful city!

Lots of great things that have happened and many more bound to come. We will be holding the MLC meeting tomorrow so all the Zone leaders and 2 district leaders are flying in for that. Love you all and wish that best!

Elder Hayes