Hello Family!!!
how are all of you? It sounds like the reunion was fun so thats awesome. It's soo good to hear from all of you. I'm glad Sister Cottrell got ahold of you. She is awesome and I love her to death. We have a bunch of great families here, but I feel like I can be my goofy self around her. She's hilarious, and she reminds me of our family. It has been a roller coaster week. Every day we have had great experiences. Sounds like you heard the one about the thugs, and that was awesome. I love talking to hard core people that think they're so tuff b/c you can bring their ego down and be tight w/ them. There is a few people like that around our apartments and we have a good relationship w/ them. They kind of have our backs. the funny thing is when your on the Lord's errand your not too scared around people like that b/c they know you are a man of God and they'll respect that. We've talked to a lot of people and its interesting how things sometimes fall in front of you to teach someone. Sometimes some of our appointments fall through and we meat someone else. I love talking to black people btw. They're awesome. There was also one door we knocked on where this older white guy came to the door asking if we were LDS. We were all excited and said ya! Then he started yelling at us and told us he had a restraining order against us. it was funny. Let me know how you can get a restraining order against a church.lol. Whats even funnier is his mail box was a large mouth bass. So thats what we call him now. Yesterday was a great day. The church is still true here in Aurora I found out.lol. It was sooo nice to go to church again. Before church though we went to Brother Hinckley's house for lunch. Yes he is related to the beloved Prophet. Anyway he's in his late 20's and a great guy. He fed us chocolate chip pancakes and you put peanut butter on them then syrup. its sooo good, you should try it. btw the members feed us here every night so its awesome. so bro. Hinckley asked me what i did before i came and what i was interested in as far as a career. I told him and he is a guy I need to stay in contact w/ b/c he has a lot of connections. he went on his mission to washington d.c. and he said many people worked for the gov. there who would carry guns in their scripture cases. Apparently when a teacher would call on that certain individual to read he would just have to pass even though he had a scripture case. Well his scripture case would have guns in it. Is that legit!! He said they knocked on a lot of high up people like Ambassadors from other countries who had unreal security around them. There was another story where he went to give a guys wife a blessing b/c this guy was going on a mission to another country and his wife had no idea where and when he'd be back. She jus knew it was extremely dangerous. I won't tell you the detail b/c then we might have FBI following us around like he did while he was on his mission. And this is no bull crap either. This is legitimately true. Bro. Hinckley for a long time had FBI check up on him b/c he knew stuff that he wasnt supposed to know. So long story short he said I should work for the state department or something cuz they do a lot of cool things. but that doesnt matter until im done serving the lord.
So you heard Ive been homesick and yes I have. Its only in the morning when I do companion study that I have time to think about it and I hate it with a passion b/c it distracts me. If I had my district w/ me it wouldn't be hard but Ill have to make due. I'm slowly getting better at pushing it aside so it will come. The thing is, if I am talking or teaching someone I'm focused on them,so I wish I was always doing that. I do enjoy personal study though. Im distracted during that. I started reading the book of mormon and in my notes i am trying to interpret each verse into English, if you know what I mean. I go to the footnotes for reference so its a long process, so hopefully by the end of my mission I will have gone through the B.O.M and Bible doing that. It will be hard though.Well I love my mission, and I love the people in it. I have stories to tell, but its hard to tell it all so I'll have to write another snail mail sometime to share some experience. Let me know if you have questions for me and let me know if I need to do anything for any of you. I am going to try and write grandma, momma day, clark, and lauria today so let those you can know that they'll have something comin. I love and miss all of you. My prayers are always with you. Love ya
elder Hatfield
