December 11, 2008

This is a Dominican sunrise, we run to this every morning, its pretty cool. This is Hermano Gomez, he is pretty much the coolest teacher ever! This is a picture of Dominican Republic security, its pretty much the best security system ever invented, broken bottles cemented to the top of a wall. And last, this is just what Elder Hardy does best, and that is climb coconut trees!

Hola! Que lo que! Todo bien aqui, yo estoy chillin. Haha, isnt that funny they use, "I am chillin" here too. I thought it was funny. That is so cool that nate and kindy had their baby!!! I bet they are stoked out of their minds, haha, yea i still use lingo like that, but only in emails to you. anyways that is so cool. I cant belive another red head! Well everthing has been pretty crazy around here, the latinos are so loud! They are really funny though. At first they would just laugh at our spanish, but now they are trying to help us, so all is well. Last week we taught julio about the Book of mormon, and about prayer. He was so interested, i just wish i knew more spanish to teach him better. Oh, and by the way, it is not splits, it is just me and my companion teaching him, and both of us have been in the MTC for a month and a half. But anyways, it went very well, we commited him to read a chapter in the book of mormon, and to pray to know if it was true. We also commited him to meet with the other missionaries, so that will be good, because i think they know a little more spanish than us. But it was really cool to see a person change. His semester is done at the university, so i will never see him again, sad. But he wrote down our names, so he will remember us. Today is going to be really cool, we get to go to the temple, except this week it is in spanish! So i am pretty excited! Hopefully i wont be too lost. Oh yea, i got your letters and everything, so dont worry about that, and i decided that you can just email me, i have worked out a system to pring them off before i email. And, i am running low on my snack supply, i can try to make it another two weeks, but maybe having a nice box of treats will be nice to ahve waiting for me in puerto rico. By the way, i talked to this elder the other day from puerto rico, and he showed me all of the good surfing spots on a map, so i got it all mapped out for when we go! I am SOOO excited to get out in the field!!! I cant wait to go teach people every day. I am not sick of the CCM or anything, i am just excited to go teach people. Well i better be going, thank you for all of your love and support. love elder hardy

The Santo Domingo Temple

Hey dad, you know how you used to complain about that tree we had with the big pods, well just be thankfull they arent this big. The second picture is of the temple. This is what we see every morning as we are running, and the sun is coming up. The third is just me doing what i do best, and that is being a safari man. The last is a picture of my companion, who is next to me, and our roomates. Our roomates arent in our district, but they are still cool guys, they jsut arent blessed with a cool district leader. The last is a picture of our distrist, we are on the walk way up to the temple, just being goofs like always. well hope you guys like the pictures, i will send an email later today.

The Dominican Republic

December 4, 2008

Hey! whats up gang? how is life? Mom, thank you so much for that package, i got it on tuesday. That caramel popcorn is SO GOOD! My district loves it! Well i hope you got my pictures, i sent them today by email. Anyways, alot of good ahs happened this last week. last saturday we went to the university, and went contacting/tracting again, and we had a great experience. When we first got there we got shot down by two groups of people, so we were feeling kinda bummed. We were walking through a park, and i said a little prayer in my heart, asking heavenly father to help me to know who to talk to. Right once i finished this, i see a man that we had talked to the previous week, and he was not interested in all, he did not even want to talk to use. So i see this man standing there, and i say, Lord are you sure? I did not want to get rejected again, but then i made eye contact with him, and i knew i had too. So we started walking up to him, and he was getting all sketchy. I could see he was thinking, "Not this americans again". So we started talking to him, and he was acting really hesitant, and he said he didnt want to hear our message, except he said it in english, so i said, oh, you speak english. And he said he is taking a class. So i said that is perfect we can practice our spanish with you and you can practice your spanish with us. So we talked for about 10 minutes with him, His english was horrible, so i told him just to speak spanish, we found out his name was julio. Finally he got comfotable, and asked us why we are here, and then he asked us if we would share a scripture from the book of mormon. I was just like, "We got him!" So we shared a scripture and asked him what he learned, and he just went off, speaking so fast, i could only understand a sentence here and there, but it was all good, he understood everything, and seemed pretty interested. He asked more questions, and we did the best to answer them, and then he asked if he could go to church. I was so excited! excpet the only problem was we didnt know where a church was, so we got his number, to have someone call him from the CCM. Then he asked if we would meet with him next saturday at the park to talk more. I was so happy, i have my first real investigator. Me and my companion have been stoked all week! I cant wait to go teach him, we are planning on teaching him the first lesson, so we will see how it goes. This whole time we have been here, it has only been us 22 americans who have come from provo, but today we got 32 latinos. it has been pretty crazy here. it is defintely not quiet anymore. But it should be pretty fun. Today instead of doing an endowment session, president asked my district to help a group with baptisms for the dead. It was so cool. I really liked doing the baptisms and confirmations in spanish. It was a really neat experience. The group that was there was all american, the men were apart of the first 10 missionaries in the DR 30 years ago. One of them is related to hawks, so that was kind of funny. I forgot their name, but just tell the hawks that they are from utah, and that he served his mission in the DR. Well i am running out of time, but i love you guys, keep the spirit with you, and keep the lord in your hearts always. Love elder hardy