A More Excellent Way

The Gospel is such a powerful tool. It truly can repair any problem in anyone's life. This week we saw a few different testaments of that.

Last transfer we started teaching two men named Americo and Lito, they came to us looking for help with their drinking and smoking problems. Americo lives alone and because of that beer was his best friend. He started drinking and smoking when he was 16, because it was the cool thing to do, and hasn't been able to stop since. Over the past two months we have been working hard with him and telling him just how important it is that he says his prayers and reads his scriptures daily. For the first little while he didn't really have the desire or will power. But we never let up and kept pushing it on him. Yesterday Elder Yeanoplos and I stopped by just to see how he was doing (we like to suprise him). I talked to a totally different Americo, he held his composure, didn't slure his speach at all, and we actually had a real conversation. He said that he has gone a solid week now without even having a desire to drink. I won't lie, we just about gave up on this guy, after a few months of no progress at all, but we kept pushing him and kept testifying of the power of the Gospel in our lives and he is now starting to see it. Lito is a very similar story. He is part of that huge family that we are teaching, and he is really the only one that has problems with the Word of Wisdom. It has been so cool to see how everyone has been supporting him. He has gone a little more than a week without smoking or drinking. And yesterday he came to the church for the first time! It has been so cool to see his relationship with his "wife" change over the past little while. They are now talking marriage and hopefully will be baptized in the coming months. The Gospel is incredible. It has been such an incredible opportunity to introduce these people to the restored truth, and see the blessings manifested as they obey what we teach. I hate alchool!!! It is such a powerful thing! It is so sad to see it completely destroy lives here, every morning we see guys out in the street completly drunk, literally fallen on their faces... Satan is hard at work.. But the good thing is that God is working even harder. 

We had a great week! Hopefully this one will be even better. I hope that you all have the best week of your lives! 

Love,

Elder Hyde

HAPPY B DAY SAMMY!

What A Week!

Wow. Onother great week in the books. Let me tell you about it.
We'll start with the highlight of the week. One of our long time
investigators named Eddy was baptized! It has been really cool to see
him go through the conversion process. He was introduced to the chuch
by his best friend Pedro who has been a member for about a year now.
Eddy is a really special kid, he's 17 years old and is probably one of
the humblest kids I've ever met. He lives in a small, energyless house
with 5 other brothers and sisters. He doesn't complain that all of his
friends have televisions and running water, he's just happy to have
the necessities of life. Saturday his best friend Pedro baptized him,
the look on his face was priceless as he left the water. I asked him
how he felt after the baptism and he gave the answer most people give.
Light. Eddy is going to be a huge example for his other family
members. We are hoping that here in a few weeks his mother will be
baptized, and the cool thing is that he will be able to baptize her.
The Gospel has really brought this kid out of his shell, I'm excited
to see his progress over the coming months and years!
This week we started teaching some really cool people. Last Sunday
night we got a call from a member in Luanda telling us that one of his
relatives here in Lubango was having a lot of problems and that she
really could use a visit from us.  Her name is Carla and we first sat
with her last Tuesday. Before we even sat down she was already crying
telling us what's going on in her life. Basically she is having some
problems with her husband because of some financial issues. We shared
a quick message with her and then marked for another time to go back
and meet with her and her husband. Last night we met with both of them
and it was incredible. We taught them the restoration and explained
how applying the principles of the restored Gospel in the home will
truly make everything better. The problems might not go away but they
won't have the same impact as before. Before we left they were already
talking and laughing together again. She said that it has been awhile
since they've done that.
We also started teaching new guy named Albindimas this week. It was
really cool how we met him. We were waiting outside of a new families
house that we are going to start teaching and he casually walked up to
us and started chatting. Then he was like, "Hey you can wait for him
in my house if you want..." We gladly accepted and taught him the
restoration on the spot. He expressed to us how he doesn't really have
direction in his life and that he doesn't really know Christ, but he
wants to. We were happy to offer our help. It funny how these people
open right up to the missionaries without any hesistation. We look
forward to helping him form a relationship with his Savior. I'll keep
you updated on him!
Life is good down here in Lubango! The work is going better than ever
and I am not complaining at all. Yesterday the chapel was full once
again. I got to talk once again, it was awesome! I was asked to speak
on spiritual gifts and how we all need to develope the ones we have
been blessed with. It went really well.
I hope all is well! I love you all so much and am so grateful for your
prayers! Keep on keepin' on!!!

Love,
Elder Hyde

Hey hey!

Keato hit his one year mark this week! 

Long time no talk! This last week was a little different with us having P-day on Wednesday, but it was still a good one!

Our area is doing really well lately, we have a lot of good, progressing investigators that should make their way to the water pretty soon. I think a few weeks ago I mentioned our investigator Julieta who lost her husband about 2 months ago. She has been doing so great lately, her whole demeaner has changed dramatically over the past month or so. The thing that she has treasured the most is prayer. When we taught her that prayed doesn't need to be decorated or memorized that it is just a conversation with God her mind was blown. She has expressed the many differences that she has seen and felt after learning about the Plan of Salvation, she has hope in her life now. We are so excited for! She should be getting baptized in the next few weeks. It is such an honor to be here to witness the Gospel change people's lives!

We had a really cool experience a few nights ago as we were heading to our last appointment. We finished up a lesson at about 7 o'clock and had to rush to the other side of our area for our last lesson.  Our are is huge so it's always fun rushing from appointment to appointment. We use taxis to get to appointments and usually they stop at around 6 o'clock. But we were pretty confident that we would get one. We got to the street where one of the routes passed by and all of these taxi drivers kept giving us the cold shoulder, for some reason they didn't want our money. We thought that was strange, but kept waiting. And then out of no where a little car taxi pulled up with out us even calling us over and let us in. Basically long story short. If we would have taken a normal taxi as planned we would have had to walk pretty far to our investigators house, because the taxi route doesnt' go all the way there, but this nice taxi man (probably the nicest I've ever met) for some reason wanted to take us right to the house. That has never happened before. Who knows if anything would have happened had we walked to our investigators house in the dark, but I am confiedent that the Lord sent that man to help us out. He was super cool, and we plan to start teaching him this week. I don't know if this story really makes sense... you had to be there... 

The mission is so full of tender mercies! I love it! I hope that you all have an awesome week! Thanks for the love and support!

Love,

Elder Hyde

Kiddies: Have a nice last week of school! You guys better party extra hard for me!

The Summit

It is absolutely insane to think that one year ago today I was getting set apart and that this journey was beginning. It's seems like it was just yesterday... I am so grateful for this past year that I have had, I have learned so much about myself and about my Savior. There is no doubt that this past year has been the hardest year of my life but I am so grateful for it. The Lord has taught me so much through my trials, I feel like a totally different person. I wish I could express through email all that I have learned and all that has happened but it truly isn't possible. I love my mission so much, and am so excited for this coming year that I have to give it all that I have!  

So this past weekend the four of us took a long bus ride up to Huambo for Zone Conference with President Kretly. It was quite the trip. The bus was exactly as you would picture it. Chickens on the floor. Angolans sitting in the isle. The emergency escape hatch missing from the cieling (that gave a nice breeze the whole ride). It was an experience. The trip in total to Huambo from Lubango was about 8 hours. It's really not that far away, but only half of the road on the way there is paved. BUMPY. When we finally got to Huambo it was nice to see the other Elders and catch up. There are also 4 elders in Huambo. The other reason we were there was to see Huambo become a branch, they have only been a group for the past year or so. It was so cool to see how happy the members were to see all of their hard work pay off. President Kretly made all of the callings and now they are ready to go! After church President pulled us all in to one of the classrooms and gave us a little pep talk and told us that the rest of the day we would be out contacting looking for the next branch president (an Elder was made branch president). So we all divided up and were on our way, I worked with an Elder named Elder Ferguson. It was a super good time. We found some super cool people. We knocked on this one families door and they insisted that we would come in and tell them a little about the message, so that we did! They loved it. It was fun to spend a whole day out contacting. Tiring, but fun. The next day we had our Zone Conference. President Kretly killed it! It was so motivating! He based it off of Elder Hollan'ds talk from conference. He is an incredible man and we are really going to miss him. It was sad to say goodbye to him and his wife. Tuesday morning we were already back on the bus on our way home. It took a little longer on the way back... 10 hours.. Woot! 

A few weeks ago I mentioned a family that we started teaching called Team Lito. It's a big family of cousins, uncles, and so on. Lito's the oldest so we gave him the honor. They are so cool! So far we have 4 of them committed to be baptized on the 22nd and the other we have them committed to get married so that they can too. They are all so willing and excited. I love teaching them cause I feel like a preacher with a big congregation. The last time we were there I think I counted 16 people. haha. So much fun!

Have a great week! The work goes on!

Love,

Elder Hyde

What A Week!

Another great week in the books! 

The highlight of the week was definitely the baptismal service on Saturday night. There is nothing better than seeing your investigators turn into members and the look on their face as they leave the water. Our investigator Alex was baptized, and it was probably one of the coolest baptisms I've witnessed yet. This whole week leading up to the batpism he was so excited and giddy. He caught malaria last week so he was worried that he wouldn't be able to be baptized, but he asked for a blessing and he was just fine. The faith of this man is incredible. This week he is going to South Africa on business and is so excited to go to the temple. Unfortunately he can't go in and do baptisms cause there won't be time for him to get the Aaronic Priesthood before he leaves, but regardless he is exstatic. 

The rest of our week was great and full of teaching, over the last transfer we have really refined our investigator pool and as for right now we have a pretty solid set investigators. Over this next month we should see a few more baptisms. 

The comp and I are doing really great together, the work is so much easier when you have synergy in the companionship. He is a really good guy and teaching me a lot. 

This weekend the four of us are going up to another Province called Huambo to meet with the other 4 missionaries up there because President Kretly is coming for the last time before we become our own mission. Huambo is also becoming a branch which is super cool! They've just been a group for a little over a year now. It should be a good time. 

I hope you all have a great week! Thank you for all of the prayers and support!

Love,

Elder Hyde

Have a good last few weeks of school kiddies!

Good Times!

I had another really great week! You guys are probably starting to think that I just say that every week no matter how the week was, but I'm serious! It was an awesome week!

We were able to make some real progress with a few of our investigators. My man Alex (Phillipino) is doing so incredibly well. I absolutely love when we go to his house because he expresses just how much the Gospel is changing his life. He is so excited to be able to get out and serve the Lord. He has girlfriend that lives in Saudi Arabia that introduced him to the church and they already planning their wedding in South Africa. He said they're probably going to wait until they can go to the temple though, which will be one year from Saturday. He is such a champ! He has been on his death bed twice and gives 100% of the credit to the Lord for saving his life. He said that they are going to work for another 5 years or so and then he wants to repay the lord by serving a mission. I am so excited for his baptism this Saturday!

Last night after getting off Skype with the family Elder Yeanoplos and I went and taught a new family that we metSaturday night at another investigators house. We got into their house and they told us to wait a minute because there were other people that wanted to come hear. By the time we started there were about 7 of them in the room. We taught them the Restoration and it looked like their minds were absolutely blown. haha. They were all so excited! It's always a good sign when they ask if you can come back tomorrow night. We invited them all to pray about what we taught and when they have an answer to be baptized, they all accepted. There is nothing more satisfying than seeing the look on people's faces when they learn the truth. I'll keep you updated on this family for sure.

Our area is doing great and we are being kept super busy! This next transfer is going to be a super good one, I'm sure of it. 

It was so good talking with you guys yesterday! You all look so good and happy! I am still so giddy! 

I hope that you all have an incredible week! Thanks for all of the prayers and support! 

Love,

Elder Hyde

Con: Have a good week bruh! Ride my bike hard

Sam: You looked so good yesterday swammers!

Syd: You too kiddo! Have a fun last month of Junior High!

Lukey: Thanks for flexing for me bro. You looked huge! Did you turn 9 or 16?

Conference Weekend

Conference Weekend!!! Only a month late... haha. We finally were able
to watch conference and it was so great. All of the talks were so
powerful and obviously inspired. I heard a lot of things that I really
needed to hear to help me be a better missionary. All of the talks on
marriage were great for a lot of our investigators. It was really cool
to see everyone realize just how big the church really is, it was the
first time seeing conference for probably about 70% of the people
there. It was so good for them to hear Elder Anderson's talk on
marriage. Especially the part about Mozambique. The quote he shared
was awesome. "We had to choose to follow the traditions of our fathers
or to follow Christ. We chose Christ." There are so many traditions
here that go against, or not in line with the Gospel. Hopefully we'll
see some changes in the hearts of some of our investigators over the
coming weeks. I can't wait to get the conference ensign in another few
months or so.

I am starting to realze the role of the Spirit a little bit more every
day. I have been trying really hard to "get out of the way" and let
the Spirit fulfill it's purpose. I have book by Elder Bednar and he
talks a lot about getting out of the way as we teach, be it as a
missionary or a sunday school teacher. At times as teachers we think
that we're the light, but really we're just the conduits and channels
of the light. It is so cool to see the Spirit work inside of an
investigator as they try to make big decisions like baptism. Example:
This week we were talking with one of our investigators named Jeff
about his baptism that should be in a few weeks, and we asked him what
he thaught of the date and he said he thinks he needs more time, that
it seems to soon. We just kinda brushed it off and finished teaching
the lesson. By the end we asked him again, and he said "how many weeks
are there?" We said three. And he replied "That's plenty of time!" We
just need to supply an atmosphere worthy of the Spirit and it'll do
the teaching.

The work is going great! I am so happy!

Thanks for all that you do! Have a great week! I love you all!

Love,

Elder Hyde


Con: Sick business idea bruh. Hit that up.
Syd: Props on the competition yo!
Sam: You looked gorgeous yet again at the dance!
Luke: Play hard for me brutha!!