September 2, 2013

Mom and Dad,

Thanks a lot for your emails and especially the pictures of Stephen leaving for Spain.  I got his first email and am so happy that he´s doing well and that so far everything is going well with him!  I couldn´t be prouder of Jason for having ridden Lotoja again that´s honestly an amazing feat and it´s a goal that I have so when I get home we´ll have to get my riding butt back into shape ;)

I´m going to be short because we have a meeting with President today about changes and then a few appointments.  This week has been a good one and it´s been different but in a good way.  We haven´t had the car since Thursday because they´re in the process of fixing EVERYTHING (don´t worry mom I didn´t crash it´s damage from before) and as a result we´ve had the whole time to work in our area.  It´s a ton of fun working with Elder Laurino because we´re both to the point in our missions that we finally feel like we have a grip on how we want to work and especially how to help our investigators make and keep committments.  We worked hard these past few days and were able to have some decent success.  We had our investigator Amparo in church today the only bummer is that her fecha for baptism got moved back because she feels like she wants to learn more about the Book of Mormon.  My companion and I feel good about it because it means that she understands how important baptism is and she wants to be sure about the decision that she makes but also that she´s willing to do the work to know for herself.  It´s gratifying working with people like her because they listen and put attention to what you´re saying and truly seem to understand the importance of this Gospel.  

This coming week is going to be pretty busy because we´re getting ready for our transfers (18th) and this week we´re hosting a mission tour with Elder Ochoa from the area presidency.  He gets here on Tuesday and Wednesday we have a meeting with missionaries from 4 zones, on Thursday we´re flying out to David to meet with 3 zones out there and then on Friday we´ll be here in the city with the other 6 zones in the mission.  It´s going to be a lot of fun but obviously pretty heavy.  It´s ok though these are fun times when we have the chance to help out the missionaries.  I´m excited to learn new things and to take as much out of this experience as possible.  The longer I´m here in the mission the more I love it and understand how important it has been to me and how much it´s helped me become the person that God wants me to be.    I love you all and am thankful for all of the sacrifices that you´ve made in my behalf so that I can be here.  I promise that I´m doing everything to make the best out of my time here and help as many people as I possibly can!  I love you all and hope that you have a great week!  Until next Monday!

Elder Hawks (the one in Panama)