March 21, 2011

Family,
Its finally spring. That winter was a tough one.
As of Sunday we have a progressing investigator. Its been almost five weeks since our teaching pool dropped us, but now were on the rebound. We are teaching a less-active/part member family. We have been trying to get a hold of this family for the last 4 months, but finally we caught them home. Missionaries are so persistent. We taught them yesterday after church with one of their home teachers. It went real well, she has a lot of questions which is nice. Her husband wants to be active and have her baptized, so he is excited. They also have a 9 year old that we are going to try to involve into the lessons to get him baptized as well. It was the first real lesson that Elder Perfili and I have taught together but I think that it went smooth. She said that she would be baptized if she found out our message was true. The only thing is, is that she doesn't believe in "religion". She believes in God and Jesus Christ, but to say that that there is one religion that is the "right one" is a foreign concept to her. So I think that I am going to use the game Break the Ice, or Jenga, to illustrate the church that Christ established and the apostasy that followed. It's going to take some time but I think that she will understand that Christ created one church upon the earth at the time of His earthly ministry.
This week has been a draining one. We had interviews on Wednesday so we had to go to Ames and them back to Ankeny to interview both districts, then we went on an exchange with Newton, Marshalltown, and Ames 1st ward. This week will be the first normal week of the transfer and it's week 4! But that's par for the course.
I haven't been sleeping well at night for the last 6 months and it is starting to catch up to me. I talked to President about it and we are going to try a few different things with missionary medical to get it straightened out. He mentioned releasing me, but we will see what happens.
You asked about how I found out about how the Brown family and the Bensons knew each other. We were over at the Brown's house and got talking about where they were originally from. Brother Brown said that he was from Corona, California. So I just asked if he knew the Benson family, and he said that Kevin Benson was his young men's advisor. Then I told him that he was my uncle, and we got talking about the family and what the Bensons are up to now and everything. By the way it was Shawn Brown who lives in my ward.
You had said that Grandpa was reading my letters and liked them and everything. Everyone also says that, that my letter are so great or something to that nature. I wanted to ask, Why do you find my letters so great? I think they are very basic, but I wanted to know what you thought.
Well I LOVE YOU ALL -Elder Hale

P.S. When ever you send your next package, no rush, could you throw some cassette tapes and stamps in there?