Close to the coast

Dear family and friends,

My first week with Elder McMillan is in the books! We´re super excited to work together and to work with our zone; there are tons of humble, hard working missionaries and we feel like there´s so much we can accomplish in the next 6 weeks! Well, now 5 weeks.

It´s so hot here though.  90-95 degrees and we´re close to the coast so it´s humid too!  And of course there´s no air conditioning.  I sweat at night, take a cold shower in the morning, then start sweating again and it doesn´t stop! They say it´s going to get hotter in February, which would be...not good.  We have a nice little fan that works pretty well, and just open the windows whenever we´re at home to try to air it out.  But wow it´s warm!

We had Mission Leadership Council this Friday which always makes for a fun interruption in the week.  We traveled at 6:00 on Thursday night, were up in Trujillo by 9:00 and hung out with the office missionaries that night.  Then the next day from 8:00-5:30 was the meeting! It was the longest one anyone had been a part of for sure.  There was lots of focus on Chapter 8 of Preach My Gospel, which talks about using time wisely and goals and planning and stuff.  It´s been a big focus in the mission for like the past 4 or 5 months, and the goal right now is to have every missionary carry out "clear goals and careful planning." We have a zone training on Tuesday to transmit all that information to our zone, and they only give us 1.5-2 hours to do it! Haha we´ll see how that goes...

I´m loving being with Elder McMillan.  We´re speaking lots of English in the room, which feels kinda weird.  I get nervous I´m going to forget my Spanish!  Up until now we´re all good though, haha no signs of forgetfulness as of yet.  It has been fun to talk about stuff like Cafe Rio and Imagine Dragons though! First time on my mission that my companion knows what those things are!

I´ve been really striving and trying to receive revelation these past months on how to change and baptize more.  I know that changes need to be made but I don´t know where! As I was thinking about it, I remembered Moroni´s teaching that the Holy Ghost teaches truth only to those with a sincere heart and real intent.  If we search for revelation to meet personal goals or have personal recognition, the Lord won´t give it to us! Only when our hearts are sincere will his promptings come!  So that´s what I´m working on!

Love you all so much, have a great week!

Elder Hart