Hills

I've been transferred! My time with my wonderful companions Elder
T and Elder A has been untimely ripped and I'm out of my the
Texas San Antonio East Stake. I've been shipped off to a land of gated
communities. I am now covering the Evans Ranch and Indian Springs ward
in the Hill Country stake, and oh my goodness is it hilly. This is my
first area where I have to use a bike, and my hindquarters are
beginning to feel the agony of uneven ground. Luckily for my
companion, Elder N, and I, our two wards don't cover a whole lot
of area. But it does take us about an hour and a half to get to the
far part of our boundaries, and you can count on every single road
being uphill or downhill. It makes me wonder why all of the rich folk
decided to dwell here. The temple is also close by. It is about a mile
and a half from our apartment, and it is on top of a gigantic hill. We
can always see it coming back to the apartment after a long day's work
on the bike. It's a beautiful and comforting vision of why we do
missionary work which would feel much better if I wasn't drenched in
sweat, making my pants a fair two shades darker.

For my mother and father, the name N may sound familiar. That's
because Elder Nebeker comes from the small town of Wendell, Idaho. If
you looked on google maps, it's the town about 10 miles down the road
from my home town, Jerome Idaho. Yep. The world doesn't get much
smaller when you are a member of the church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-Day Saints. Believe it or not, we actually ran Cross Country
against each other back at home. And now here we are, in San Antonio
Texas, both of us drowning in humidity and giving others the gospel of
Jesus Christ. It is really fun. Elder N is very quiet, so his
training style involves a lot of me tripping over myself and finding
out what works best for me, while he gently corrects and uplifts after
I do it. I love this guy already.

I am living in an apartment with another set of missionaries who cover
the area right above us. Out of the four of us, I am the only one that
isn't Spanish called. In the apartment the three other missionaries
jibe and kibitz in Spanish, and I sit quietly at the table and read
the Book of Mormon in Spanish, trying to pick up something they're
saying. It also makes me lie down at night and think, "I should have
taken another year of Spanish in high school". Well, too late now
Elder Hall.

I'm struggling to find things to write about in this letter, because
there hasn't been too much that has happened. There's a lot of
potential in this area, but right now Elder N and I are laying
down the ground work for the work really begins to go forth. But
missionary work is just like any other work. You have to come up with
a plan before you can do anything. Both of these wards are fairly new,
and the ward boundaries changed less than a year ago, so we are trying
to get the members excited about strengthening the Kingdom of God
through missionary work. Missionary work is hard if there is only two
people who are trying to bring people into the church, but it gets
easier if the members become missionaries too. It's also a lot more
fun! So what Elder N and I are doing is trying to get our
investigators too be taught into the houses of members, and let them
know where the members are in the area. That way they can be assisted
in their spiritual conversion to the church of Jesus Christ by
socially converting to it along the way.

There is a Christian song called "The Body of Christ". It basically
talks about how beautiful it is. No, not the literal body of Christ,
but the church of Christ. Each Christian takes upon them the name of
Christ, and come together to worship in a body. Paul discusses how
each person who believes in God is essential to the group, one can't
do it without the other. If there is one thing that I could leave with
you this week, it is that Christianity is an organized religion, and
that Jesus Christ is the head of it. He has a church on this earth
that has proper authority from God, and that the holy spirit will
testify of it to you when you are ready. God needs every person on his
side, he is reaching out to all of us, his arms are always open to
those willing to come unto Him.

Keep it easy,

Elder Richard Hall