Spencer - Called to Serve: Week 82 - Zone Conferences (PLD), World Wide Missionary Broadcast, and Just Some Good Ol' Missionary Work!

Each week as I start a new email, I try to think of new and interesting ways to start it. This week will just start with a good ol' HOWDY FOLKS!

This past week has been a great one! We have traveling around with President ans Sister Donald visiting Jawa Tengah and Jawa Timur where we held our zone conferences. For the zone conference, we have been watching the worldwide missionary broadcast and boy is it a good one. Honestly, there is absolutely nothing new that I heard but when you hear it from an Apostle, there is just something different about it. It helped me realize exactly what I wasn't doing and what I should be doing better. One of the cool things that I really liked was said by Dallin H. Oaks. He said, "sometimes we forget that the church on the Earth was established and built on a Heavenly Law..... we are not just called to serve, but called to establish His church." I think that is so true! Some say they saw Max, I have not. The first time I watched, I was listening intensely so maybe I was taking notes when they showed him and the second one, I translated for the Indonesian missionaries so my head was wrapped around one language coming in, another language coming out. Tomorrow, I will watch it for the third time for the last zone conference and will look for him.

Sunday was a pretty good day as we had 3 investigators to church. 2 of them were here in Jakarta and 1 of them was our investigator in Bali. One of them has a baptismal date for the 14th of February and is looking pretty good and on track. The other 2 we are hoping will accept baptismal dates this upcoming week so we can see them enter the waters as well and join the church. We are working with a lot of other people, but it is like a hit or miss type of thing if we can meet with them!

We have been trying to visit a part member family for a couple of weeks now. We were finally able to get an appointment with them on Saturday. We went there, got a little lost of course because this city is so confusing. When we found them everything was great. Apparently, the husband of this member is already reading the Book of Mormon with the Sister and they are already at the end of Alma. That was awesome to hear. When he said they were at the end of Alma he turned to us and said, "Elder, it is just continuous war!" I laughed inside.

As for those missionaries that have their call. The office couple has already written their names on the board and their dates. Yes, it is true, those are the missionaries that will be replacing us. It is a scary thought to think about and I'm not sure I'm ready.....you know, I just got here.

Well, we do not have snow here, but we do have rain. It rains almost everyday at this point of the year so we are watching out for flooding and all that good stuff. Returning to Jakarta just reminded me of how frustrated I get in traffic and that good stuff.

Well, this week should be another good one. Hope you all have a good week.

Elder Hayes