pictures from Brady

This is Brady and his companion, Elder Wilson, with his mission President from the Peoria, Illinois Mission, President and Sister Erickson. The mission was dissolved earlier this summer and Brady is now part of the DesMoines Iowa Mission. Brady seems to do an awful lot of hard manual labor for his service work. Here he is roofing and digging out a basement.

"I'm working on my watch tan."

"It looks like I'm digging like a girl in this picture."

August 30, 2010

Hey Mother,
Transfers will be on September 9th. We will receive a call Saturday night, September 4th, if one of us will be leaving or not. But you have to remember next week's p-day is on Wednesday, September 8th, so I won't be writing to you until then.
To answer your question, some of the pictures that I sent you are from Elder Wilson's camera, so they are not on my memory card. The pictures that I did print out I wanted to write some stuff on the back of them. So that's kinda the system I've got going on.
The last week has been awesome. Saturday Elder Wilson and I got to go to the through the Nauvoo Temple with Bro. and Sis. Tingley. Bro. Tingley wanted to go to the Temple with us before I leave and President let us go so it was awesome. Since I've been here I've been blessed to go through that Temple 3 times. Its GREAT, once with all my companions. Since Elder Wilson has never been to Nauvoo before, we went to a number of bookstores, old town Nauvoo, the Bakery and the Blacksmith shop (dad I got some pictures don't worry) and of course the fudge shop. It was a awesome spiritual feast which ended in a feast. On the way home Bro. Tingley called ahead for reservations at a restaurant. We didn't know they were going to feed us or anything. So we get to Davenport and we ate at Texas Roadhouse! It was so good. Fresh Iowa beef is superior to all other.
On the other hand the work is pressing on. We were able to meet twice with M, the lady I told you about last time. At the first appointment we were on splits and so it was me and Bro. Clarke. When we started she had addressed her concern about prophets. She thought that it was the most unheard of thing to have a man on this earth today receiving revelation for the world. So we started talking about how there has always been a prophet on the earth shown in the bible up to the time of Christ. Then the whole conversation was turned to prayer how she could find out for herself. She felt like her prayers were empty when she said them. So Bro. Clarke bore a solemn testimony for like 15 minutes about prayer. Then I committed her to say a kneeling prayer every day that week and also asked her to say a kneeling closing prayer. It was great she was so moved by what the spirit had told her. Elder Wilson and I went back on Sunday to teach her more about prophets and why we need them today. We found out that her neighbor (who is a Jehovah Witness) came by and anti-ed her about us. I was a little worried about it but when she continued on about what she thought, she feels like what we teach and what she felt is what she is looking for in her life. The spirit is definitely such a blessing to have right next to the Book of Mormon, it truly is the most powerful tool we have for conversion.
LB's baptism was supposed to be this Saturday the 4th, but we found out that he is on probation until December. And the rule is that we cannot baptize until his is off probation. So when we found out, it just crushed Elder Wilson and I, and we weren't sure how to approach him about it. But at our last lesson this week with him we told him that we will have to move the date until he is off probation. He was a little upset that he had to wait, but he then said that he will have more time to prepare and read the Book of Mormon, and for us to come by and teach him. He is so willing and ready to be baptized, but we have to wait. But his 12 year old daughter all of a sudden is interested in listening to the lessons and wants to come to church. So if we can get his daughter baptized we think that this will give him added desire to look forward to his baptism.
I LOVE YOU ALL -Elder Hale
p.s. I got the packages you sent me and a couple of letters, Thanks.

August 23, 2010

Hey Family,
We had a sweet week this week. We were blessed with a chance to do some service to a potential investigator. Her name is M, we were in her neighborhood the other day and thought we should stop by. We had set up a couple appointments to come and teach her, but they fell through. We stopped to see her, and she was in a panic. She has a low spot on the side of her home where rain water collects real bad so a while back she had some dirt delivered to level it all out. The men that were supposed to come by to level out this huge pile of dirt never showed up. She had just received a notice from the city that she had 5 days to move this "nuisance" (I think that's how you spell it) off her lawn or she was going to be fined. She has no money nor the ability to do it, and she was just in tears with the question what she was going to do. We said that we would come by in the morning and take care of it all. So we shoveled for a few of hours the next morning and got it all taken care of. She was just in shock that we would even consider helping her even though we barely knew her. She didn't even think that we were going to come back in the morning. She kept asking why, why we do this kind of thing for people, why we are on a mission, why we offer service and help people. We just simply told her that we loved her and help out anyone in need. She was pricked to the heart just receive this simple service. We were able to set up a teaching appointment after we were all done. Yesterday she called us before the appointment and told us to come over to dinner instead. So we did, and we got to meet her boyfriend and were able to get to know them more, as well answered all the questions she had about the church. We now are going to go back this week and teach her more. We have been so blessed with service to open the door to teaching some one else about Christ.
We had Stake conference in Davenport yesterday, we had 2 investigators there. LB is the man. He's one of our newest investigators. He was there and we were able to go to the recent convert-investigator class before the meeting. He liked stake conference. One of the reasons he went was to see Elder Wilson and I sing in the choir, so he gave us a hard time about that. We were over at his house on Saturday teaching him about the Plan of Salvation. He told us before we got started that he had read that morning in the Book of Mormon, so we asked him if he had any questions about it, and how he liked it. He stated, "I really like Nephi and the way he talks. It's easy to understand him." He then told us that as he was reading, something hit him. In his own words he said, "I had a revelation about Joseph Smith. It just all came together that he had to be a prophet. If he wasn't a prophet, the church would not be here today. It would have all fallen when he died." How incredible, here is a man that has been seeking, and praying about the truth. He had the spirit touch him, and he recognized it and now is coming closer to Jesus Christ. What a testimony builder this week to the words of Moroni in 10:3-5. I love being a Mormon, where else would you have something like this happen, what a blessing.
I LOVE YOU ALL -Elder Hale

Pictures from Brady

"Mo' BRADY'S . . . in Davenport"

"We were on the highway and I saw this air freshener in this guy's car so I had to get a picture."

"We found a sweeet jacket and hat at our service work at the Benevolent Society. He had to try them out."

"We got a white board at Home Depot for planning and it did not fit in the Toyota, so we threw it up top and hung onto it all the way home."

"It was raining bad after an appointment to an investigator gave us some hats to wear to keep our head dry. We just had to get some pictures."

"District Meeting in Clinton. Elder Wilson and I set up the table for our District Leader using Relief Society decorations."

"All those days with a pellet gun in the backyard paid off. A bat got in the Near's house and Sister Near gave me a pellet gun to take it down, I only needed one shot!"
"Companionship Unity (note the safety galsses)"

August 16, 2010

Hi Family,
We had some ups and downs this week. We have an investigator, L, that had committed to baptism a number of weeks ago that has not been coming to church, this last Sunday was a make it or break it to stay on track for baptism. We reminded her of her commitment the night before at her appointment, but she did not come to church. We were pretty bummed but on the other hand we had a different investigator, LB, show up to church. He came with his daughter, who is 11, and stayed the whole time. He and his daughter loved it. They are planning on coming to stake conference this Sunday so he can hear Elder Wilson and I sing in the choir. We also had a lesson with him Sunday afternoon and watched, Joseph Smith prophet of the restoration DVD, you know the new one that the church put out. He loved it and felt the spirit there in his home. We committed him to baptism on the 28th of this month, and he was excited about it. Its going to be great, in order to fully prepare him we'll be at his home twice a week teaching. We have only 2 weeks left but we felt we needed to commit him then. He truly is a humbled man who was prepared by the Lord. Our recent convert, D, is doing much better. We have met with him a couple of times and took him to 2 teaching appointments. Last week he wasn't feeling accepted at church any more so we have been visiting him often. We just found out that on September 22 we will be hearing from Elder W. Craig Zwick, of the Seventy. That's always sweeeet to hear from one of the brethren. Elder Wilson and I are pushing the work here very well together. We have our differences at times, but there must be opposition in all things or we wouldn't know how great we really have it.
I sent a package home this week, and I hope you got it. It had a ton of pictures for you mother and a couple of tapes too. And I also received a package from Grandma, she truly knows what missionaries need.
I LOVE YOU ALL -Elder Hale

August 9, 2010

Hey Family,
This week has been a little bit different. For 3 days, I was in Des Moines for a training meeting. It was all the Zone leaders, District leaders, trainers and of course the AP's. It was awesome, the church has changed some of the ways we learn out of PMG. Its called "Simplified curriculum" It is absolutely great. The way we use PMG has now been more concentrated in certain principles along with these PMG dvds, which are video clips of real life teaching situations. It was awesome how much more we can do to bring the spirit into our teaching. And I just love President Jergensen, he's like every body's grandpa. He's always giving hugs to everybody and just so lovable. I got a lot of things answered in training that I had questions about the past couple of weeks. You can't believe how much the PMG video clips really helped me and I can't wait to get those into district meeting and with training Elder Wilson.
We have a baptismal date with our most solid investigator, Lakina (I thought it was spelled Lakeena but I was wrong). She loves us so very much and we are teaching her 2-3 days a week. After this training meeting I committed her to read the Book of Mormon cover to cover and to my surprise she has been reading every day. The only thing is that we cannot get her to come to church. She commits Saturday night and we call her in the morning and even went over and knocked on her door, but she has not come yet. She has her agency, and I don't want to take that away, but it is so hard to see some one prolong their baptism just because they won't wake up in the morning. Our most recent convert, Donald is having some problems. We just found out yesterday that he doesn't feel accepted any more at church. This week we are going to change that, with a dinner appointment and also a branch party that is on Friday. It's just great to be a Mormon, there is always something to be doing.
I did not get the package sent, but TODAY I will send it off, I wasn't done getting it ready last week and I ran out of time to get over to the post office. AND Roxanne I wrote a letter to you last week but did not have time to sent it on Monday. You will be getting it this week to your new address. I LOVE YOU ALL and thank you mother for the package, I loved it. -Elder Hale

August 2, 2010

Hey Family,
How have you been for the last 4 days? Being here in Clinton is definitely awesome. Some of the other missionaries tell me that I need to leave this place, so I can see the mission and know what it's really like. But I know everyone in the branch and many, many people around town. We just got our hair cut right before writing this, and 2 people I knew walked in and we got talking and tried to set up an appointment with one of them, but got his number instead. It's weird, even on the river walk where we contact people I run into people that I know so much. The last week or so we have met people on the street and a few days later tracted into their home. Its getting smaller and smaller here every week. But staying here this long isn't an uncommon thing, for a greeny it is, but I have heard of an elder that stayed in an area for 13 months! It will be hard to leave the branch and the town though, I was thinking about it when we were waiting for transfer calls, I was worried I would have to leave, but luckily not for now. Things are progressing though, we taught Lakeena a lesson with President Nickles the other night. It was a learning opportunity for everyone. We were on the porch teaching and the guy next door started mowing his lawn while we were trying to read Enos 1:1-12 about prayer. President and I almost started laughing as we were yelling the story of Enos over a riding lawn mower. No worries, the spirit came back once he was done with his yard work. she is so close to baptism, Tuesday night we will commit her, keep her in your prayers. I LOVE YOU ALL -Elder Hale (I should send off a package today so keep an eye out for it)