Contacting

     Well, as a mission, and I am pretty sure it is world wide, but there is a new commandment, no more knocking doors. Doesn't matter if we have nothing else to do, there is no more door to door contacting! But we still have the goal to get 80 contacts every week, or more. So how do you do that? Talking to everyone you see on the street. and I mean everyone. So you understand a little my companion now has 20 months in his mission, he is leaving in April and he hates contacting, so what does that mean, more for me!! I love contacting people. It's not just fun to be able to talk to random people (there are some really interesting people put there), but there is something about being the first missionary to share the message of the restoration with someone that I love feeling. And I will have you all know that we not only completed our goal of 80 contacts this week, but we did 103 contacts! And boy did we see the blessings.

     This week we contacted into a lady, Isabel, who had met with missionaries many years ago, but never got baptized in the church. She said she would like it if we came by to talk to her and to her family. So we did just that! Sunday night we went over to their apartment building and hiked up to the fourth floor and it was amazing what happened. In short she had a lot of questions and we had all the answers, or at least the spirit had all the answers and mercifully gave them to us in the exact moment that they were needed. And so at the end the the first lesson three of the five have baptismal dates for the 22 of February, we still haven't met the son (who is 14) and the dad is a little reluctant to accept much at this point, but he said he is going to read the Book of Mormon, in other words it won't be too long until he is asking to be baptized to receive the promised blessings. 

      Also cool experience with the Riquelme family this week. Luis (the dad) told us that the first time my last companion and I came to their house (knocking doors) that his wife looked out and told him not to open the door, but Luis looked at us and a memory stirred within his mind. He said that as he looked at my companion and I, two new gringo missionaries, that we looked just like the missionaries who baptized him. And with that conclusion he simply could not, not let us in. And so he opened the door and his wife went running up the stairs to hide from us. But this just shows me and helps build my testimony that the Lord does work in mysterious ways. 

     My companion Elder Cardona is always complaining to everyone that he is fat, and it is really funny because he is always asking people how he can loose weight and things. And so this week some of the members were doing a fundraiser so that their daughters could go to EFY and they were selling doughnuts. My companion decided he wanted to 'serve them' and bought six homemade deep fried chocolate covered doughnuts and brought them home and ate them in about ten minutes....that is not how you loose weight aka think we're gunna need a new plan!

     But so you all know the work is moving forward here, the members are getting more involved and as we know missionary work is the lifeblood of a ward. If the ward is heavily involved in the missionary work then they are more likely to do everything else, and they will be more filled the spirit. Get involved help those missionaries out!! I love each of you SOOOOOOOOOO much!!

Les Quiero,

Elder Hutchins