Elder Jacob Hill: The Big One Hundo

Malo Soifua!!!

Today on the Elder Hill Show:

** This is my 100th email....crazy stuff

** Learned a lot about humility and miracles this week

** Church was absolutely nuts for us, but it all worked out swell 👌

** I gave two departing testimonies on Sunday, so that was.....fun (I attached a recording of one of 'em at the bottom)

Holy cow, where does the time go?? This is my 100th email as a missionary, and I only have one more to go. It's so crazy that my last full week as a missionary begins tomorrow. My brain is still in full denial of that reality, so we'll see how this goes haha.

Our week went pretty well. We were pretty behind on our finding goal by the time the weekend rolled around, so we set a daily finding goal on Friday of about 10. We had some reliable spots picked out and roughly 6 hours of finding time, so we weren't too concerned. Well as fate (God) would have it, finding went poorly for the first bit. The first area we picked had been good before at a similar time, but that day it was dead. We went to our backup area and there were lots of people, but no one wanted to come to church or talk with us.

By 4:30 or so, we'd only found 3. And by "we" I mean Elder Jensen found three. I was getting a little discouraged, but I decided to just start praying and asking for help. We're told to expect miracles, and I decided to give it a shot. I prayed that despite the grueling heat (Friday was a brutal day with the weather), people would want to talk to us. I made the resolve that I would not stop talking to people until one of three things happened: 1. I found one person, 2. Elder Jensen found 10 people, or 3. The clock hits 7:30 and we have to stop for a lesson at that time. Well as time passed my comp found two more, putting us at 5 total. By 5pm we regrouped and redoubled our efforts. My prayer changed to "Heavenly Father, I'm not having any success right now, but Elder Jensen is. Please help him find more people to teach."

By the time 6:30 rolled around, we were both incredibly tired. Elder Jensen walked over to me and told me that he'd found a total of ELEVEN people (including 7 in about 30 minutes). It was an a amazing miracle, and it taught me a lot about faith and humility. As soon as I let go and let God do His thing, everything fell into place.

In other news, Church was wild for us. We had a lot of people confirm that they were coming on Friday and Saturday. But as these things tend to go, most of them either didn't answer or cancelled on Sunday morning. A few said they would try, so we kept our hopes up, but we didn't see any of our friends show up. A couple times during the meeting, we got texts or calls from our friends regarding church, so we were in and out if the chapel sporadically, calling and texting and waiting to see if anyone else would come. After sacrament meeting ended, we discovered that not one but TWO of our friends had come in during the meeting and sat in the back! We talked with them and got them situated for the second hour.

During Sunday school we again kept checking our phone and texting with another friend who told us she was on her way (very late) but was currently lost. We ended up walking down the street two bus stops to get her and walking back to the church with her. She was able to sit in the back of the Spanish branch's sacrament service, so that worked out. My comp and I were very tired physically and mentally, but we hit our goal and had three friends come to church, so that was epic. Miracles indeed.

Also on Sunday I gave two departing testimonies. The first was in sacrament meeting. I was guessing I'd be asked to speak at some point anyway, so I jumped the gun and gave my departing testimony a week early haha.

Sunday night was our weekly zoom with the whole mission, and I was the first one picked to share my departing testimony with the whole mission. I had a lot of emotions going during both, and it was so surreal. I felt so much love for others (and from God to myself) and gratitude for all the amazing blessings I've been given. I won't say too much because I'm saving some of that for my homecoming on Aug 28th hehe (spoiler alert)

Mafaufauga faaleagaga: I'll just attach my departing testimony I gave to the mission at the end for y'all to listen to.

Alofa tele lava atu ia outou uma,

Elder Hill

Ata:

- A few pics from our trip to Manhattan last pday

- Cool flower wall thing in White Plains

- Sick matte black Maserati

- Elder Jensen personal studying 😂

- Elder Jensen with a spoon on his face

- Wore masks for the first time in a while and I absolutely hated it 😭😂

- Still frame of a funny video we made of me figuring out I'm going home

- Amazing hot dog restaurant called Dog Den with FANTASTIC hot dogs (and punny signs hehe)