August!

Good morning everybody!
So things are going great over here. Lots of success and things happening. The Lord has blessed us beyond measure with the people we have been teaching and things that have been going on. The weather has been fairly great. Really humid and hot with almost no rain. I love the dry heat, not necessarily the humidity. Elder Holm has been in his element though and has been vastly enjoying the humidity saying that it is better for you skin. All I know is that I wasn't peeling until it started to get humid this week, and now I am peeling all over my arms and hands. I look kind of like a snake. Anyway, my birthday was great and I still can't believe I am 20 years old. It is kind of ridiculous. There were a lot of very nice people thought that took care of me - got several presents, a turtle sundae at A&W, and the day after got sung too and cupcakes with candles to blow out and homemade birthday cards from one of the girls that we are teaching. It was incredible. I loved it! The cupcakes were delicious and actually getting to blow out candles was a blast! I appreciate the box from home and from Aunt Tiff and Uncle Joe and their family. Had some of everything that I liked or needed at the time. Thanks for the shirts Grandma Hughes! I was needing some more because I have managed to almost ruin some of my other ones in doing service for others and now I have solid ones that should last a long time and look nice. I am amazed at how things keep moving along and how things can change in a manner of minutes because of people's experiences and what is happening in their lives. We were able to start teaching 2 new investigators last week. Both pretty much dropped right into our laps. None of the doors we knock on or people we talk to ever seem to be interested, but because we keep trying to work hard, Heavenly Father keeps having people call us wanting to be taught and baptized. It is incredible and something that I am so thankful for!

Noa Bowen turned 9 years old last week and we started to teach him. He has already read through the Book of Mormon Stories book twice and is now on his third go round. He loves going to church and loves to pray and loves to feel the Spirit. He has had the desire to be baptized for the past year but because of less active parents, it hasn't happened yet. He is now on date for August 14 and we are hoping and praying that everything will work out for that date. He is solid and is praying for his own baptism and has been waiting and waiting for this day. Heavenly Father truly answers the prayers of children according to their huge amounts of faith and miracles really do happen is what I have learned. We are excited to be working with him and towards helping him to reach his goal of baptism so that he can return to his Heavenly Father.

Olivia (don't know the last name) was at church a week ago and got the prompting to talk with the bishop and request to meet with the missionaries. She has attened seminary last year and has been attending church for quite the past while and believes all that she has been taught. She now is ready to move forward and meet with us and get her final questions answered in preparation for baptism. She feels very strongly that the church is true, but is looking forward to reading from the Book of Mormon like we challenged her to feel even more of that same spirit. She is on date for August 14 as well and is excited to be so. Sadly, she left out of town till next Sunday, so we can't teach her or answer any of her questions until that point. But she is confident that she will get back and be ready to move ahead with that Saturday and work towards baptism. Heavenly Father truly blessed us to be able to teach and work with her and so far it has been amazing! Her mom is extrememly less active and has been for years and because of past situations currently no longer has custody of her daughter. She lives with her aunt in Draper currently but has tons and tons of friends in the Riverton 1st ward and so has been actively attending there and is excited to be baptized there.

Prayers were answered again this week as we met with Steve Miler. Everyone has been telling us there supsicions of how he was a smoker or a drinker or whatever. He has a very rough image in that ward and not a lot of people look at him too kindly or hopefully. But we taught him about the Word of Wisdom and he doesn't partake of any of the substances that we are commanded not to. His only question was about if Mt. Dew was included, and so we are go to ahead with his baptism on this Saturday. He and his wife have been actively attending church since we met with them and are excited to move together as a family towards the temple. Both want the blessing of being reunited with their little baby girl who was stillborn and are praying that they can make it back to the Celestial kingdom to live with her and Heavenly Father again. Steve was truly prepared to receive the gospel this time around because of that experience and is looking forward toward it. It is amazing the different reactions to experineces that people have. Plenty of people would have gotten mad at God for taking away their child and everything and distances themselves from Him. Steve was humbled though and brought to a point where he was willing to listen and to change his life after meeting with over 8 or so sets of missionaries before. Heavenly Father does truly work in mysterious ways and will give everyone, every chance to come unto Him.

Lexi and her friends were the ones who made me cupcakes and the birthday cards and she is so excited to be baptized and everything. She is looking forward to the 14th as her day and everything that will happen on it. We only need to cover the commandments with her and set up a program and we can go ahead with it. She is excited for it and it has made the difference in her life. They are all now actively participating in the lessons and are looking forward to the times that we come over.

Deylon is doing great! He has been able to come to church once with his sister and enjoyed it a lot. He is looking forward to coming again next week and towards being baptized sometime after that. Another miracle happened in that Dad plans to come home sometime in the next month and so Deylon can move ahead and be baptized. His mother's main concern was about not baptizing Deylon while the dad was away and now that he is coming back, we can piece everything together so Deylon can be baptized. Deylon is excited for that and we have enjoyed doing a few service projects over there and working with the family on different things. Sister Falkner is warming more and more up to us each and every day and I think we will challenge her again soon to come to church with us and see what she says.

The Nay's had a bit of a setback this week with things popping up again from their past. Everytime people make the decisions to choose the right and to do their best, Satan makes the hardest temptations appear and makes them look so inviting. So I am not sure what is going to happen there anymore. The family still wants us to come over and keep teaching as much as we can and the things that are going on. They still want Kamomi to be baptized in the near future and for Sam to receive the Aaronic priesthood soon. We will see though what happens now that they have met with the bishop and straightened everything out. They have been receiving a lot of blessings lately though and have started to pay their tithing and fast offerings. Lots of debts they had have been erased and they have both been able to secure jobs to help them out and keep them progressing.

Rachael has gotten difficult to get ahold of, she has not been answering phone calls or calling us back at all. Neither has Jim. We are concerned about how they all are doing and are trying to get in recontact with them as soon as possible to keep working with them. As far as we know, Rachael still has strong desires to be baptized and would like to move forward. We just need to help her get out to church more and to meet with us a few more times to make it happen.

Joe Heath has been making some huge changes and been feeling some pretty big differences in his life. He is willing to accept everything that we have been teaching and working towards joining towards the church at some future date. He has been reading a little bit, the only thing he struggles to do is to pray. We are working with him on that one and he has agreed to be praying about the Book of Mormon before we meet again to see what happens. He was very excited to hear about how the Book of Mormon prophesies about the Revolutionary War and Colombus and things like that and he was excited to read about that part now as he continues his reading. We meet with him again tomorrow to see what happens and what we can do to help things work out.

Everyone else we teach is making strides and have many other miracles occurring as well. Things have been going good. I love you all and have kept praying for you guys and hope everything is going well!
Elder Hughes