"Elephants are my reverse Kryptonite." - Elder Belnap

From December 29, 2015

Sometimes context helps understand an email title. Sometimes it

doesn't. This is one of the latter.

I hope you all had a wonderful Boxing Day. Oh yeah, and a good

Christmas. That too.

This week, we...

- Walk all over Santee

- Visit a less-active who kick-starts our caroling run for the night

- Do some more caroling!

- Do even more caroling!

- Celebrate Christmas by eating lots of baked goods, Skyping our

families, opening presents, and doing weekly planning

- Do some after-Christmas caroling that kind of falls flat

- Teach the stake president (and some other people)

- Walk all over Santee... AGAIN!

Brothers and sisters, friends, Romans, countrymen... Don't drive up to

Poway. If you're ever in Arabic North's area, just don't drive up

there. Because if you do that too frequently in an attempt to contact

referrals you'll find yourself low on miles for the month. Which isn't

necessarily a bad thing (you can contact a total of zero people

driving from appointment to appointment, whereas you can easily get

more than that by walking), but it is a mild inconvenience. Such is

the story of Arabic North at the moment. So on Wednesday we walked all

over Santee looking for people and contacting potentials. I know El

Cajon like the back of my hand for the most part, but Santee isn't El

Cajon. Admittedly we got lost while walking and wound up going back to

our apartment rather than going to the potentials on Carlton Oaks

Drive we wanted to go see. But it's okay because we got a lot of

walking in and on the way we talked with a lot of people!

On Wednesday evening we had plans to have dinner with a less-active

member, Bro. Dunlop, then go caroling as a district right afterward.

Bro. Dunlop was a little stressed out (he was going to have an open

house on Christmas Eve and thought he had an extra day that he didn't

to prepare) but the dinner was wonderful and the lesson was good. As

we were leaving he had his player piano play his favorite roll, "The

Barber of Seville", and then we met up with the rest of the

district... On his front porch. I joined the rest of the district in

caroling while Elder Belnap stood in the doorway with Bro. Dunlop and

got sung to. Bro. Dunlop was really happy that we stopped by. He's

really close to coming back to church and just needs a little push.

Thursday was spent caroling (President told us at the Christmas

devotional that Christmas Eve wasn't going to be very effective for

proselyting so we should go caroling), as was Friday evening.

Highlights of our caroling:

- I think caroling is a thing in Iraq. Most people were really

confused about what we were doing but appreciated that we were singing

about Jesus. Only one person cut us off and told us to leave because

he said he was sick.

- We went caroling and found a family for the Sisters to teach. We

were in a parking lot and he said as we were caroling to him, "Stop

for a second. I've got a family that would love this. Come carol to

them." We sang a few songs to his family and invited them to learn

more. They said "Come back after the holidays." Finding through

caroling is a thing, people!

- We knocked on the door of a member family's house and may have rung

the doorbell once or twice. A person opened the door and said, "Sorry,

we're Jewish. But the residents are over there," and pointed to the

garage. Turns out the members rent out their house every Christmas and

live in their (very spacious) garage for a little while. Elder Belnap

tried to salvage the situation by handing them some treats and going,

"Well sorry about that. Have some non-denominational cookies!"

- Silent Night and Far Far Away on Judea's Plains sound pretty good in

Arabic. We typed up a transliterated version of both for the Sisters

and Elder Campbell used it as well since he's still figuring out the

Arabic alphabet. When they start up an Arabic Mormon Choir, the six of

us are going to be right at the front every Christmas, I guarantee it.

On Friday we opened our presents we got from our families and ate lots

of baked goods. There was some miscommunication on timing for Skype

calls but I did get to talk to my family. Sorry everyone, but my

parents are the coolest people on the planet right now. So are my

sisters. And my brother and brother-in-law. I need not say any more.

Saturday we tried a bunch of potentials in the afternoon but nothing

worked out. We got together as a district to do one last round of

caroling to some people we needed to see but hadn't been able to. It

wasn't as impressive, to be honest. Caroling before Christmas is fun

and cool. Caroling after Christmas is really awkward and a little more

uncomfortable and just plain weird. So we called it a night and went

our separate ways. 2015 Caroling ended that night. It was fun while it

lasted.

On Sunday our Gospel Doctrine teacher was out of town so he gave us

the assignment of teaching his class. He told us, "It's on the

Resurrection." I figured "Oh, easy! It's in the Gospel Doctrine book

and I can talk about the Resurrection fairly easily."

First off, it isn't in the Gospel Doctrine book. So I had to come up

with something from scratch which went okay...

Until I ran out of material in about 10 minutes.

In front of the stake president, who was in the room.

Fortunately, the program talked about how we would be talking about

the Final Judgement and so I pulled a little from that and then got a

good discussion going about exaltation and what steps we need to take

in order to achieve it. The stake president's comments were insightful

as always and he really carried the lesson in my opinion. In essence:

Ordinances prepare us for exaltation. Exaltation is achievable if we

put forth the effort to follow the Gospel and let it change us. Christ

is the way for us to achieve exaltation; without His help, we can't

make it. We tried some potentials and investigators at the end of the

night, but no one was home.

Yesterday we walked all over Santee again and actually didn't get

lost! We left the apartment, bags in hand, and I said to myself, "I

won't need my umbrella today."

About 4:15 the clouds above us started to give us a drizzle. And that

drizzle turned into a downpour. And Elder Belnap and I were still

about 30 minutes away from our apartment. We got into the apartment,

soaked and tired, around 4:45, had some dinner, and went down to El

Cajon for the night. It rained on and off all night. We went to stop

by Morad's, but we felt we shouldn't visit him that night so we went

over to Mollison and did some finding over there. At the end of the

night, my feet were admittedly pretty sore from all the walking, but I

suppose that's a good thing because we didn't walk just to walk, we

walked to find people.

That's it for this week! Shoutout to my trainer, Mason Poffenbarger,

who got married last week in the Laie Hawaii temple. Congratulations!

Thank you all for your prayers and your fasts for the people here and

for my companion. Thank you also for your letters and emails. I hope

you all have a wonderful week!

One last thing before I close up...

When was the last time each of you read the Book of Mormon

cover-to-cover? Last week? Last month? Last year? I know I just

finished it up on Christmas Day and I'm going to be starting it back

up on January 1st. I challenge each and every single one of you to

read it cover-to-cover and to pray about it, whether it's for the

first time or the hundredth, beginning January 1st. I'd also love to

hear your thoughts and feelings as you do so, so email me and tell me

about your experience. I love you all!

-- Elder Hawkes

"Butter makes everything... buttery." - Elder Campbell

Elder Hawkes and Elder Belnap

Elder Campbell is one of the two new Arabic missionaries. He's minoring in Linguistics and he came in knowing no Arabic.

Also, my motivation is very much nonexistent right now, so this email won't be the same as other emails past or future. Pinky promise.

Welcome to my weekly email, wherein....
- Elder Hawkes gets a new companion!
- We get two investigators with a baptismal date!
- We drop a man who didn't fully realize what our message was about
until our second visit
- We have district meeting, and then Elder Hawkes does a baptismal interview
- We get some people to church
- Elder Hawkes realizes how much he needs to improve... well, pretty
much everything

Let me start off this email with a story.

Once upon a time Elder Hawkes didn't go by Elder Hawkes, he went by some sort of weird name that he doesn't use anymore. He also was a lot younger and inexperienced in Arabic. In an attempt to learn Arabic a little more, he went to Startalk Arabic 2010 and Startalk Arabic 2011. While there, he met a young man with the last name of Belnap. And he
and Belnap were roommates in 2010 and good friends and partners in 2011. We both kept in touch after the camp but never really interacted beyond that.

Flash forward to last Tuesday. Elder Hawkes, Elder Greer, and Elder Jensen receive a call saying that they're all training. And also would we mind hosting a new missionary for the night? He just got in and he needs a place to sleep, get him fed and show him the ropes, make sure he's at the Mormon Battalion at 8 A.M., etc. So we drive to the mission home and who does Elder Hawkes find but the now-Elder Belnap, the same one that had been his Startalk roommate!

At this point it is certain that Elder Belnap is the "Studied Arabic for five years" missionary that President told us about. The question remains, though, who will be training him? Elder Hawkes assumes that Elder Belnap will be with Elder Greer and Elder Jensen.

And then transfer meeting happens on Wednesday. I'll spare you the details of us getting lost on our way to the Mormon Battalion and all the other crazy things that happen that day. The moment of truth comes. "In El Cajon!" President announces from the pulpit. "In the Hillsdale Arabic Group. Elder Greer, please stand. Your new companion will be Elder Jensen, and together you will be training...

"Elder Campbell!"

And so that's the long way of saying that I'm training Elder Belnap in Arabic North. How many missionaries can say that they were roommates with their companion before the mission? I certainly can now!

To be honest, aside from transfers our week hasn't been that exciting. I've learned that I really need to work on planning, finding, and teaching. We had a training yesterday for all the missionaries who arrived from about May onward (which is actually over 50% of our mission) and since my trainee needed to be there, I had to be there. And I'm really glad I went because I know exactly how to improve my planning, finding, and teaching this week and in the coming weeks. I'm not going to get into specifics, but suffice it to say that I have been a very poor planner up until recently (read: yesterday).

Now, onto what happened this week! Again!

After getting transfers all situated (including getting lost trying to go to the grocery store and winding up having to shop right before we went home), we taught some people. As is prone to happen in missionary work. I think that this week I'll do a more person-by-person thing.

So first off, the two with a baptismal date. Their names are Nabil and Nazhat. We added them about two weeks ago (I think it was two weeks). We went back this week on Thursday and taught them the Restoration again to make sure they understood it. Elder Belnap invited them to be baptized and they accepted! We offered them a date for December 19th. At church on Sunday we taught them the Plan of Salvation and it was a really great lesson. They were asking questions about baptism that really showed their spiritual desire: "Can you get baptized when you're old?" "You can get baptized again?" It was an amazing lesson!

Morad: He's still doing okay. He's still struggling with the Word of Wisdom and won't make his current baptismal date. We taught him on Monday about the Holy Ghost and about church attendance, emphasizing that if he was baptized and received the Holy Ghost he would receive greater guidance in finding work, starting a family, etc. It was a really great lesson... and then he got sidetracked towards the end of the lesson. :( And we almost got him with a new baptismal date. We still feel like we need to keep him, so I'll let you know how it goes. He's going to get baptized before December, I know it!

Maryam and Frial: It hasn't quite clicked for them. We read the Book of Mormon with Maryam on Thursday (Frial wasn't there) and she didn't quite get it yet. We're going to be working with them this week to get them baptized before Christmas.

Amer: Got dropped. He essentially didn't know we wanted to teach him something new and reverted to his traditions. It would have been so easy to just bash with him, but it wouldn't have gotten anywhere. So we dropped him and we'll follow-up in about six months.

And with that my motivation is completely and totally gone. Thanks for reading this email everyone. I promise my motivation will be greater next week!

-- Elder Hawkes