WHERE ARE YOU?

This is an excerpt from The California Carlsbad Mission of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Newletter message from Elder JR Hyde's mission president , President Thomas.  It is fun to see what instruction he is receiving from his leaders.  

I am always intrigued by the account in Alma between Moroni and Zerahemnah. This is where Moroni’s army is battling Zerahemnah’s army and Moroni’s army has them encircled around and Moroni stops the shedding of blood. He then gives Zerahemnah a choice, “…I command you by all the desires which ye have for life, that ye deliver up your weapons of war unto us, … we will spare your lives, if ye will go away and come not again to war against us.” So, we see all Zerahemnah has to do to live is give up his weapons of war and commit to not come to battle again. Moroni is not going to put them in bondage, he will let them go. Zerahemnah’s response is interesting, “…he came forth and delivered up his sword…and said unto him…we will deliver them up but we will not suffer ourselves to take an oath unto you, which we know that we shall break.” Zerahemnah is saying, here are our weapons but we will not take the oath. I have often wondered why would a wicked man’s oath be worth dying for? Couldn’t he have just given up his weapons and “said” he wasn’t going to attack? His oath meant something to him, so much so that he would die rather than break his oath. I share that with you because I want to remind all of you of the invitation I gave you at Zone Conference. I asked for a commitment, even your oath, that you would commit to read the Book of Mormon every day for the rest of your lives. I expect your oath to be as strong as Zerahemnah’s. One that you will be so committed to that it is more important than your very life. I promise you it is worth it. You will have a fountain of peace, joy, and happiness that you never realized possible. Sister Thomas and I are making our oath with each of you that we will make the study of the Book of Mormon a daily event for the rest of our lives. You can test us by asking us where we are. But when you ask us, be prepared to tell us where you are as well, and to be able to say yes, I am studying every day. We love all of you so much. We love you so much that we invite you to make this commitment.

The REASON

Photo of SoCal Stormy Weather -- Not by JR

The weather here has been great. we get a couple of days of june gloom -- but it is ok cause days like today are wonderful. 

Having two wards is a different experience -- but is great -- we now have a car because the Vista 10th Ward area is huge -- and is spread out with winding roads and no side walks -- completely different than the Vista 5th. There are just so many things that make missionary work so great.  



We taught Jacob to yesterday after taking him to a baptism.  Man,  I love this kid.

On Mon, Jun 12, 2017 at 12:10 PM, Shealyn Hyde wrote:

Sounds like great times!! What did Jacob think of baptism?

When he prayed, he said, "Thank you for helping me know that this church is true." I am going to invite him again next lesson cause we are going to be at the Hervey's house and they are his good friends. He told us that he feels at this point in his life he need to find and act in a religion. He told me that I am one of his best friends for helping him find this truth 

He asked about the Doctrine & Convenants -- so, we explained it and then we showed him the WOW and we read it at the end of the lesson -- which he thought was amazing that the revelation was given before the world knew the problems. 

The Spirit helped us bear some great testimonies throughout the whole lesson.  We talked about the gift of the Holy Ghost and how it is different than just feeling the Holy Ghost.  And we talked about how we get it as a promise after we are baptized -- He loved that. We read a bit from the Articles of Faith and are giving him a copy of them this week.  He just makes my day whenever I see him! It is that light of Christ growing in him that re-emphasizes the reason I came out -- to help those that want the light.

1st TRANSFER CALL

So this week has been pretty cool. Elder Pond got his transfer call on the third and he is going to the Oceanside 3rd ward to be the new zone leader out there. Which was really weird cause he was supposed to train me for the first 12 weeks. 

Then I get my call, I get to stay in the Vista 5th ward and have to white wash the Vista 10th ward. So now Elder Cattage who is my new companion and I have to ward share which should be fun. 


Another thing that happened this past week has been that while we were walking this guy stopped us while he was pulling out of a gas station and asked if we were Mormons. We said,  "yes"  then he asked if he had to be Mormon to go to church with us. After we told him no anyone can go he asked if the building across the street was the building to go to and it was we told him the time and gave him our number cause he wanted to know if he could meet our bishop also. Then he drove away, we didn't think that we were going to hear or see him again. THEN, on Sunday,  while we were walking in to the chapel  -- Brother Jeppson came over and told us that this non-member was sitting on his row and his name was Maxwell. So we sat with him, answered questions and invited him to hear more about the church and he said he would.  

Also, this week we helped a family move her family out of their apartment because her 9 year old daughter has been stalked for the last six months and it has gotten worse each time they try to get the cops or the apt manager involved.  

I should have more pictures next week cause I am going mountain biking on Calavara today. It is a volcano in my area with a lot of mountain biking trails on it.
(This missionary mom -- isn't too happy about that idea.)

"Hi Elders" and HONKs

This week has been great.

We have done a lot of walking this week and will have to do it again next. 

It takes along time BUT I enjoy it -- because people are able to see us -- so we get a lot of "Hi Elders!" and honks. 

The other reason is that I can wave at oncoming cars. I tried for a little while to count the amount of cars but there are just to many. Along with that when we are walking I can relate to other people that are outside easier. The reason we walk so much now instead of bike is because Elder Pond's bike has no brakes and since California has a lot of hills. Riding front brakes only doesn't work to well. 

So I am doing well -- and am in good health. Do we have new missionaries in the ward? Tell them to keep at it and have fun. That is one of the things that has made this time fly by. I mean the end of the transfer is this weekend and it goes by real fast --  even when I am not having a good day -- waving at people while we are walking and then to see their smiles -- completely renews me  -- it is great. 

I took some picture but forgot the camera, so sorry. One of the funny things to see here is the protest on the street every Tuesday.

HEY it was fun to hear from you guys.  Could you pray for our two investigators Jacob and James?

If We Truly KNOW It

The weather here is great my tan lines are crazy defined now. It has been in the mid to low 80 this week and could get to the high 80 soon but that is fine I like the heat here. Riding my bike here is great cardio and a workout mostly because we take the routes with the biggest hills so we can ride down them after we make our visits. 

We picked up another investigator named James --  so now we have three. Two of them are friends from the youth in our ward, these kids are great. 

This whole week whenever we are walking through neighborhoods we get the classic -- " You know that there is no soliciting here, right?!?" All we do is be polite and say either yes ma'am or yes sir we are going to see (one of the members of our ward). Elder Pond and I have a lot of comebacks that we think of and want to use but we never do. 

I like to try different contacting techniques,  so this week I am using "Have you heard about family search.org" --  to get people to talk to us. So far it has worked, the first time I did it the guy stopped and prayed for us. It turned out that he is a preacher from Florida visiting his son -- so we got preached to again. 

One of the things that I read this week was in Mosiah 18: 4, 6 --  [(4) And it came to pass that as many as did believe him did go forth to a place which was called Mormon, having received its name from the king, being in the borders of the land having been infested, by times or at seasons, by wild beasts.  (6) And it came to pass that as many as believed him went thither to hear his words.] while reading at the end of verse 4 it talks about wild beasts and in Enos 1:3 (Behold, I went to hunt beasts in the forests; and the words which I had often heard my father speak concerning eternal life, and the joy of the saints, sunk deep into my heart.) --

I like to talk about him hunting beasts as more of the beast being something that troubles us like sin on a weakness that makes us uncomfortable or scared, then going back to Mosiah. I like asking the people I share this with "do we go to places that may make us uncomfortable to share the good word? Do we share the word with people that we may be scared will not like us any more because we shared something that we cherish to a friend? There is strength in being like Abinadi and being bold while taking cause if we can be bold then we truly know it and if we truly know it  -- we can say it.
Anyway --that was one of the things I thought of this week. which has gone by so fast.

All We Wanted Was A #

Nothing much happened this week to talk about other than it was great seeing my family AND we got a referral from Sister Andrews for Jeff who was in the hospital after stomach surgery.  After we gave him a blessing and talked for a while about why he fell away from the church we were walking out and it is crazy the amount of people that recognize us. Other than that it is crazy how fast missionary works goes when you follow the rules. How has every ones first couple of weeks been? 

OH.... I almost forgot -- So while we were biking on Sycamore, we found this wallet on the side of the road all thrown around so we picked it all up and looked around for some ID. In that process we found that this lady had all of her ID( drivers, social, ect.) in it along with her checks,debit and credit cards. We would have just given it to the closest store -- Star Bucks--  but since her social was in it we decided to just hand it over to the cops which took 20 mins, but we didn't have the vista sheriffs # so we walked into star bucks to ask for the #.  The first person we were about to ask got really mean after we asked for a favor.  He started talking loudly about how he didn't have time for us. So, I went over to the cashier and said loudly we found this wallet and we wanted to ask for the # of the police station to get a cop to come and get the wallet because her social security card was in her wallet. Then other people started to ask if they could help us get the #. At the end of the day we got a call from the lady which made the day worth it.

JR's district did a Mother's Day booth -- this is the video the DLs put together. Mother's Day Video