December 18, 2016

Hey Everyone,

It's been a while since I have written. I apologize. Things have been pretty busy. One thing to talk about for my update is an awesome girl.  WHOA! We have been teaching here for the past month and a half and she is SO awesome. She has seen how God works through constant efforts to follow Him. She has really seen that if we want to achieve anything in this life, it is through our own efforts. She has seen miracles. She is really humble and loves learning about God. She is 23 and is a referral from one of our members here. I just remember when we first met her, we got a bit more of the story. The member who we were meeting with talked to this girl at work. This member told her how happy she was about the changes she saw in her husband. Her husband, after meeting with the missionaries and being baptized and following the commandments, quit drinking, quit smoking, was happier, loved his wife more, and a whole lot more. This simple testimony from a friend, opened her heart to learn. Now, she has been trying to live the things which we have taught and she has seen so many miracles! She always says, "Tuhan sugguh hebat" which just means God is so awesome. It's true! She should be getting baptized here in the next few weeks!

I'm still with my companion and we are going at it herei. I think our biggest thing is trying to work more through the members we have. We really want to help the members understand more of their responsibilities as members of Christ's church. If Chirst's Church which is directly lead by Him is on the Earth, surely we want to be as involved as we can!

One of the biggest struggles here in this area is just how the adversary works. Wow. He sure works hard to hold back the work here. In almost all of our areas, the people have a broken view towards us because of what is said about us and spread around as rumors. We are known as "sesat" which can be taken as lost and many think that we are here to force religion on them and just burden their lives. Just a lot of misunderstanding. We are simply coming with recent news that God has yet again given us a prophet or His spokesperson on earth to lead us and help us find the right path. There are hundreds of paths and no way would God make hundreds of paths to confuse us. I love a quote by James E. Talmage. "He operates by law and not by arbitrariness and caprice." I always have to find a dictionary to try to understand James Talmage. This quote is powerful. It's true. God works in order. He has made one way. He has made a way to find this way. He wants to help us find the way to find the one way. as long as we humble ourselves and open our hearts, we will find the way. It's so much better. Anyway, I know what I teach about here is true. It is eternal truth that cannot be changed by the cunning of man. Man is absolutely nothing compared to God. 

Love,

Elder Hanks