Just as its
turning winter there, it is turning here. We are kind of in the banana belt and
the storms seem wierdly go around us, but we got a tiny bit of snow and during
last night it probably dropped to the single digits. It was weird b/c half of
last week was in the 60's. It sounds like you have quite the work to do this
week as always. That will be fun to go to the Hutterite colonies. I'd like to
see their culture for fun.
I read a quote
by Elder Maxwell the other day that said that all the easy things that needed
to happen has happened. From now on its hard work and that we must always
follow the counsel of the prophets and apostles and we can be assured that
things will work out. I just finished the Book of Mormon for the second time in
my life, literally today, and it reminded me of the world today. It was when
the people stopped heeding to the prophets that they fell into apostasy and
were destroyed. We live in this promised land and there are righteous people
throughout it, including us, so the Lord will not allow us to go under in any
way. This is his promised land for the new Jerusalem. We're really going to
have to humble ourselves to follow that counsel exactly, and pray for the
leaders of our country ungrudgingly. Easier said than done, and I realize this
is coming from a missionary who isn't experiencing the effects of this like you
are.
Enough of that
stuff though. That is exciting that all those people are coming out on
missions. I actually thought about Calvin Marshal this morning and was
wondering how he was doing.
We had zone
conference this last week and there were some exciting numbers given to us.
Apparently we have about 58,000 missionaries, give or take, throughout the world.
The brethren expect it to raise to about 90,000 missionaries in the next couple
years and then settle down to about 70,000. That is crazy substantial. For our
mission that means we stay around 170 missionaries in our mission. By the end
of next year it will be up to 250. We have 22 sister missionaries right now and
it will raise up to about 70 by the end of next year. Every ward will have its
own set of missionaries if not two. It’s a special time we live in. Another
part of zone conference President Maynes trained on 'Who are we.' He gave us a
paper of all kinds of quotes that talk about our generations in these last
days. Quotes that you have heard before like the one by Elder Maxwell about how
even the saints that pulled the handcarts will praise us for the faith we had
in these last days. Yesterday at church I was talking to a wise old seminary
teacher after we just learned about sealings in Gospel Principles and he
referenced me to Jos. Smith history 1:39 where it says something like,
"the promise we made to the fathers." If you cross reference it w/
what it says in the bible it's a little different. He took that to mean that we
made a promise to our forefathers, ancestors, in the pre-earth life that we
would do the temple work for them. We all realized when we were coming down and
I'm sure they, knowing they wouldn't have or enjoy the fullness of the Gospel,
asked us to do there work for them to be sealed in this eternal family all the
way up until all of Gods children are sealed to him in an unbinding chain. It
was interesting.
Have a wonderful week. Thank you for all that you do. I love
you and God Speed
Elder Hatfield
