Week 18 - Kind and Radiant

Hello Dearest Mother :)

So good news. I was able to baptize M! :) It was funny though because she left her baptism stuff at home so she went back to grab it. Satan decided to get one more punch in at that moment. M said she went back and her mom said, "Do you really want to be Mormon? There is no reason to do it!" Then M responded with, "No, mom. That’s why I’ve been going to church, meeting with the missionaries, reading the scriptures, all because I don’t want to be Mormon." Then she said her mom was speechless. Now she is the newest member of our church!!!

Elder Ballif, M and Elder Heimuli

Also another cool miracle this week! So T and her family have been getting pressure from the rest of their family. We answer all their questions but still her family is giving them a hard time especially her husband. However when we came over she said she has the support of her mother in law. I was surprised so I asked why and she told us a pretty cool story. She said, "When my mother in law was a young woman she was living alone in New Jersey with 2 kids. No one else was around to help her and no one cared. Then one day a pair of elders from the Mormon church came and helped her. She still remembers how kind and radiant they were. That’s why she totally supports me meeting with you guys."

At that moment, I felt God’s tender mercies, knowing that no matter what, our efforts to do good are never in vain. Giving service and just being a great person can affect families years down the road as we were able to witness with T.

Be good examples in everything you do. Speaking of good examples, I received another package from the Robinsons!!!! Oh I was so happy and I got to read even more testimonies and cool letters they sent me. I’m so grateful for them, so give them my love please!!

Letters in another package from the Robinsons!!

I had my interview with the mission president and he pretty much told me that I will be staying here to continue the work I’m doing, so that means I will spend 6 months of my mission here in my first area!! Crazy. But we will see what else will happen! What’s funny is that my area is almost the edge of our mission. So I’m stuck down here in the south and we have the smallest zone in our mission, but we also have the largest district! During District meeting I gave training on "how not to be depressed during your mission." I don’t know why…do I come off as a cheerful guy or something? The scripture or chapter I want to share is 2nd Nephi 4. I want you to read the whole chapter but verses 28-30 are the best ones.

28 Awake, my soul! No longer droop in sin. Rejoice, O my heart, and give place no more for the enemy of my soul.

29 Do not anger again because of mine enemies. Do not slacken my strength because of mine afflictions.

30 Rejoice, O my heart, and cry unto the Lord, and say: O Lord, I will praise thee forever; yea, my soul will rejoice in thee, my God, and the rock of my salvation.

To me it means there is no reason to be depressed! When we drop our heads and slack off in our duties it gives Satan room to work. But if we rejoice in Christ, and center our lives and our work on Him, the rock of of our salvation, we will be immovable.

I told M to read this chapter but I guess I accidentally said 1st Nephi and not 2nd Nephi so she was very confused! What kind of missionary…haha. We straightened that whole mess out though!

Anyways things are going well. It’s chilly here but I have some sweaters here so I’ll be good till probably December!! Oh, haha, I forgot to mention that Hendrix’s hair is hilarious!! Haha he should grow out his hair like that! 

Hendrix shares Bo's hair, just to try it out!

And I hope Helam is ready for Daddy time! He'll be great, just like Hema is. Tell Hevynn I miss her and I hope she feels better soon. And tell Harry good job on his talk. I taught him well. Haha.

Ofa Lahi Atu!
Elder Heimuli

From the Principal's Office

Received this surprise text and pic this morning -- a great break on a busy day. 

"This is David Clark, principal of CN High School. Elders Baliff and Heimuli gave the devotional to our football team this week. Thank you for allowing them to bless our lives!" 

Houston must have been in heaven to be with a football team again! #HesOnTheLordsTeamNow

Week 17 - Review the Covenants

Hi Mom!!!

Well you wanna know the best thing that happened this week huh? Well Elder Ballif and I are still working hard. This week we taught 45 lessons, have 4 people on date, and I've been working with 4 teenage non members who are super interested. So the work is picking up. However in order to stay on top of this work, WE have to work harder too!! Haha I've skipped lunch or dinner just so I can nap because I'm so exhausted. But I guess that's just how missionary work goes.

So this week we went on a campout!!! Haha yes I know I hated campouts in scouts but being able to do it again was nostalgic. The reason we went was because one of our investigators who was on date wanted to go but wouldn't go unless we went. So we asked president and he allowed
it. We were able to have some one on one time with him, and he started to read the Book of Mormon alot again. The camping trip was tons of fun!! But when Ballif and I got home we couldn't move. We were so tired and unfortunately didn't do much that day. So that's going to be our last camping trip.

THANK YOU for all of your prayers!!! M has found a job and is on track for baptism this week. She is excited and so are we :)

You have to be careful taking Harry to Frightmares because you're getting too old to do those things mom. It's good to hear Alyssa is doing well, I can't wait to see pics of that beautiful baby. I love seeing pics of Hendrix. That one of him eating baby Lakei's arm is hilarious. :) 

And on top of all that great stuff Weber beat North Dakota!!!! Whoohoo!! Weber better take a national championship. That means that 2 people in our family would have a ring haha! It's good to also hear Stanford is still doing good. Cool you got to meet Mason. He's a nice kid. I know I sound old when I say stuff like that. :) How's Mason doin? How are the Tate's? If you see them again please give them my love :)

Of course I'll send a video for Hevynn's wedding!! I'm so excited for them! I know things will get hectic but try to just enjoy it cuz it's all going to work out in the end. Just keep believing and having faith.

Elder Ballif is pretty cool. Of course it's weird adjusting to another companion after having Elder Freeman then Elder Briggs so he has some big shoes to fill. However like I said he doesn't lack in hard
work so we are always working and teaching.

Lua was baptized?! That's awesome!!!!! I'm happy for Beeba and her kids. You know baptism is the first gate to salvation. It's an important step in the right and ETERNAL direction. So I pray that they keep going to church and increase their knowledge about the Gospel because when we gain a better understanding of God's plan we appreciate baptism and ordinances so much more.

Here's a little scripture about baptism. Mosiah 18:10 Now I say unto you, if this be the desire of your hearts, what have you against being baptized in the name of the Lord, as a witness before him that ye have entered into a covenant with him, that ye will serve him and keep his commandments, that he may pour out his Spirit more abundantly upon you?

I love this question. Yeah, why shouldn't we want to be baptized? It's an If-Then statement. IF we keep His commandments and stay true to our covenants THEN He will pour out His blessings upon us. As a missionary I've realized most of my work is not actually about going around preaching and knocking doors. There are people who have been baptized but have forgotten that covenant. And when we forget to keep those covenants, God can't bless us. Too often here have I seen less active members who once had a testimony but now they have forgotten it and I think about how much better their lives could have been.

So as a challenge I want you guys to review the covenants you have made and see if you are following them. Are you keeping the sabbath day holy? Are you loving one another? Are you being honest with your fellow men? These are just a few of the commitments we promised to follow as followers of Christ. And if you are lacking in some areas, just pick 1 and work on it. If that's something like keeping the sabbath day holy then work on keeping it this week, and I promise you will see blessings.

Love you mom. I hope you are doing well!!

Ofa Lahi Atu
Elder Heimuli

Week 16 - Experiment

Hi Mom :)

Luckily our library is open on Columbus Day (maybe because our city is named after the guy. ;)) haha.... that was a lame joke...But aside from that, yes I did get the card (THANK YOU) and I've been exercising every morning (except sundays..Duh). It's been nice to finally get good workouts in. My day seems more relaxed and I feel more confident when I feel less fat. Haha. 

So I sent Hevynn a bday gift, it's not much, but I hope she enjoys it :)

I also hope that she had a fun birth-week (cuz we all know she drags it out for longer than just a birth-day). Full wedding mode!! Haha that's sooo crazy but sooo exciting. My sis is getting married. And someone's actually marrying Bo. I'm sad I'll be missing that but I am really pumped for them! They are a great couple and I love them. 

Seems like life is hectic and crazy, but that's not a bad thing. I've realized that our lives are hectic when we are accomplishing things! A nap is nice to have here and there but being busy is really a blessing from God. He's saying He trusts us enough to give us many responsibilities. So keep it up!

As for Leah, I'm sorry things didn't turn out as planned but we have to remember all of this is really not OUR plan. Just like you've said to me many times, we just have to keep working hard and having faith in God's plan. As long as our choices align as much as they can with God's will, I know Leah and the rest of us will be fine. She's still #1 in tennis to me!

No, I didn't get the football updates! I'm so pumped that Weber won:) Elder Hansen and I are always repping Weber State out here. However, I do have to say that I'm sad Utah and BYU won. Not very charitable, I know. :(  haha I know I shouldn't wish this but I hope they lose the rest of their games. And I hope Weber keeps winning theirs!! So there I probably just jinxed the wrong team.

So last week was crazy. Elder Briggs and I were teaching a Family that I found with a different Elder. We said a prayer and then we started walking to their house and we both thought jokingly, "Hey with all these people we can handout baptisms like Oprah does with random prizes. You get a free baptism, you get a free baptism, everyone gets free SALVATION!" Of course I'm kidding because feeling the spirit is as far from random as you can get. The spirit helped us teach a very solid lesson and invited T (Investigator) to baptism. She accepted. Then her sister in law K and little brother R were both listening in on the lesson and they said, "I want to be baptized too." I kind of stuttered because I was so surprised. I probably gave one of the most informal baptismal invites. I just opened my mouth and said, "So, you wanna be baptized too?" 
They accepted and those 3 are now on date for November 21st. They love it and are progressing well, however T and K also want to get their husbands to join. So could you pray for them too? I can really notice the difference when prayers are involved. 

During General Conference I'm not sure I told you but I had an impression to move another investigator's date up. I don't know why, I thought I was just being selfish in wanting her to move it up. But I asked her to pray and she said she had a feeling to move it up too. So now she will be baptized on Oct 24th! Then she was faced with some more family challenges, however, they are starting to be resolved thanks to the help of your prayers. So thank you and keep praying!

Sadly Briggs went home. His knee was really jacked up and it was getting very hard for him to walk, so the mission department thought he needed to get surgery. He was sad to leave, and I was pretty sad too because we became super close!!
However, he needs it to be pain-free and then he will be good. 

Now my new companion is Elder Ballif and he's pretty cool. He came out with me. He's from St George so I got another Utah companion!

Oh and I left my camera at a member's house for like this whole week so I didn't get the chance to take many pictures...Sorry!!

Here's a scripture I've been trying to "Ponderize" and it's a good one. Alma 32:26-27 ...

26 Now, as I said concerning faith—that it was not a perfect
knowledge—even so it is with my words. Ye cannot know of their surety at first, unto perfection, any more than faith is a perfect knowledge.

27 But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.

I love this scripture because it gives us hope that includes EVERYONE. If we just exercise a little faith, even just a little bit, it will eventually
become bigger. It will swell until our faith becomes so strong that we cannot contain it! However it takes action which is what this means when it says it takes experimenting. I've seen what happens when we experiment with faith and it's just amazing the miracles we witness because of it.

Exercise that faith, act on it, believe in it and we can never go wrong!!

Give my love to the fam!!

Ofa Lahi Atu,

Elder Heimuli

Week 15 - We Just Have to Ask Him

Good Morning :)

Hello again it’s your favorite son and missionary EVER!! 

My buddy Evan. He has great taste in clothes. And schools.

I’m doing great, just tired alot haha but Briggs is good! He works hard and I really enjoy companions who are willing to put in work. I guess it’s an old habit that started with dad teaching us to work hard like him, then I took that expectation to my teammates, and it’s not any different out here. The hard workers are the ones I like to hang with.

Me and Elder Briggs from Las Vegas. He's awesome.

I haven’t seen Uncle Tom since we were in the old house! Make sure to say hi to them for me and tell them I love them! Oh and if Aunty Ana has the time, please send me some lupulu haha jk jk.

Hendrix is finally going through that Heimuli Fat Stage huh? Haha join the club little guy. Jk, he's too cute to go through the same stage all us boys went through, and some are still going through, haha. Is Alyssa ready to pop soon? I’m so excited for them, my niece is going to be beautiful because of Alyssa's beauty and Helam's feminine features ;) lol

General Conference was awesome :) Why? Because now I actually stay up and watch all of it! But I admit I was missing Dad, Hema, and Helam because of our priesthood sessions we used to attend together and the food afterward! What made me the saddest though was knowing I wasted so much time by sleeping through all those conferences. So much revelation is taught by the prophet and apostles, every word that proceeds out of their mouths is doctrine and scripture. I regret not taking full advantage of that opportunity. Harrison, even though you’re only 10 I hope you listen to their words instead of just playing with pokemon cards and legos. Start now and build that faith in the Prophet’s and Apostles’ words. It will benefit you so so much.

Thanks for putting money in my account, dad! I’m so grateful, and I should be good for a while. There are thrift shops here so it’ll be cheaper to buy my winter stuff here than you having keep sending me packages.

Okay, I could finally read the chain letter sent by the fam so I’m going to guess who wrote which messages. 1st was Hema, and no I don’t have an Indianan GF. My face is like Woman repellent. The 2nd one is Dad I think? 3rd one is Harry. 4th one is Hevynn cause apparently she really misses me... NOT. The 5th one is Helam...I think...it’s really hard to tell. 6 is Norma cuz she’s always sweet :) Number 7 is Pua! Haha her comment about the trash cracked me up because I could see them all doing that lol! I can’t wait to see how big baby Lakei and my little Hendrix and my new niece are (in two years). Number 8 with the horrible handwriting is probably Bo, so I think that disqualifies him from being in our family. Number 9 is Sifa! He'll have to hook me up with that Stanford hat when it's done. And the last one is Faith and the portion of the Bolen family that I actually like (so that’s pretty much every Bolen, just not Bo). Tell them I miss them and that I love them so much! Write me next week and tell me how well I guessed. I’m pretty sure I got 100%. All missionaries have this level of confidence, they’re just not all 100% correct 100% of the time like me. Jk.

[Note from Mom: He scored 10%. 1st paragraph was random with everyone putting in a couple of words. 2 Harrison. 3 Hevynn. 4 Helam. 5 Alyssa. 6 Pua. 7 Bo. 8 Sifa. 9 Brock. 10 Faith.  At least, he got Faith right.]

Haha I also got a kick out of Harry's letter and your reply at the botttom. You are harsh, but maybe and hopefully he learned his lesson!

So this week was crazy. Tuesday we had to go to Carmel (65 miles away) for Briggs’ leg appointment because he has a busted knee. His appointment was at 330. We decided to leave at 1230 to have a good buffer in case of traffic. Well good thing we followed that prompting because lo and behold there was a traffic jam. A semi-truck overturned on 2 lanes so it was at a standstill. We were there for 2 hours. It was about 2:50 and we were still an hour away. We called the office and they said if we weren’t there by 330 the doctor was going to leave. So you know what we did? We prayed. It was miraculous because as soon as we said Amen the traffic started to move. However we still weren’t going to make it to the appointment on time if we moved at the same pace. We prayed again while driving (I didn’t close my eyes, so no worries) and all the sudden all the cars like turned off to a different exit. So we flew and made there in time!

Now since conference was Saturday and Sunday we knew we wouldn’t be able to do a lot of work. On top of that Briggs had to go to a baptism in a city far away and had to spend the night there. So I had an exchange with Elder Cocker (straight outta Tonga…Fresh Off the Boat, haha). So I had 2 days to achieve all the goals we set, and meet with tons of people. So again I prayed asking if I could somehow achieve all the goals I had set in these two days. Then I thought to myself, “Who’s going to open the door to 2 big Tongans with a Book of Mormon and pamphlets in their hands?”

Well let me answer that: 16 people did in one day. 8 of them wanted us to come back! Mom, I seriously saw miracles and witnessed the Lord’s hand in His work that day. Right now 2 of those 8 are considering baptism and hopefully they will accept our invitation. We achieved and even shot past the goals I set for us last week. God is always aware of us and wants to help us. We just have to ask Him.

Here's a scripture that popped into my head because of conference. Mosiah 3:19.

"For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father."

We must make a much better effort to keep the commandments and submit ourselves to God's will. When we ask or pray for direction or for revelation we must be willing to act upon the promptings we receive. If we don’t choose to follow promptings then it's all meaningless. We may not like the prompting we receive, but when we act upon it the Holy Ghost's power and presence will be magnified and we will happier and stronger.

Love you mom!

Ofa Lahi Atu,

Elder Heimuli