Spencer - Called to Serve: Week 55 - A Call to Repentance, End of Ramadan

What another wonderful week it has been!!! I'm going to start right away with a great experience I had last Monday! As you know, P-day is every Monday. Our district didn't have much planned so we went to various malls and treated ourselves with a Wendy's frosty. All day long I just had the slightest feeling that I needed to repent of a few things, I'm not sure why but it was nagging me. When it was time to start working, I said a quick prayer asking for forgiveness for certain things. We left the house and made our way to our appointment. On the way there we got a phone call from a member that actually lives in Jakarta but is visiting her family here in Manado. With a worried sounding voice explained the situation she was in and asked if the Elders could make their way to the hospital and give her son a blessing if test results came back where her son would have to go to the hospital. After our appointment she called again and said that her son would have to go to the hospital. We got to the hospital and I was asked to give the blessing! I gave the blessing and yesterday he came to church smiling, all healthy like nothing had happened! I know that those promptings were divine knowing that later that night I would be called upon to give a blessing!

This past week was the end of Ramadan. The holiday is called Idul Fitri. The Indonesian missionaries were given the opportunity to skype and call this day because they didn't when it was Mother's day in America! Basically, on the 17th there is huge parties in the streets with incredibly loud music and people just going crazy! It was pretty fun to watch. The next day consists of NOBODY ON THE STREETS AND NOWHERE OPEN TO EAT.....except McD's and KFC. Needless to say I was surprised and we ate McD's.

Another miracle happened at lunch this past week. We sat down and the guy sitting at the next table over asks if he could see the Book of Mormon. We gave a background of the Book and he had to leave and we ate. We got his contact information and will hopefully will be able to meet sometime soon.

My new companion is Elder S. If you remember from a long time ago, he was serving in Solo the time that I arrived to Solo. We currently are in a 3-some consisting of Elder S, Elder B (the missionary that I trained) and myself! 2 Indonesians and 1 Bule Elder. I will say that my language was good but in like a couple days has gotten to the point of native!! We are waiting for one of the new missionaries from America to arrive so hopefully they can get their visas soon!

This week has been a good one. We've been busy teaching spiritual filled lessons and helping others!!

Hope all is well!!

Elder Hayes

p.s. we spent all morning deep cleaning our house!! It is so beautiful!!