2400 referrals

November 4, 2015

Hello family!

First of all, before I forget, changes are next week. I will be leaving the office. That means I won´t be writing next Wednesday. I won´t be writing until Monday, the 16 of the November. From then on I will be writing every Monday.

This Monday was a Salvadoreño holiday, day of the faithful dead or something like that. Everyone went to the Cemeteries. So that´s where we went too. We talked to everyone about family history, familysearch, temples, and eternal families. It was a lot of fun. We did that throughout the entire mission. As a mission was got more than 2400 referrals of people who wanted to learn more about that.

We also did a service project for a family moving in. They had their house remodeled so it was a mess. We helped clean it up.

I´m excited for my next area. I can hardly wait to see what my next adventure will be. Wherever I go, I know that it will be where the Lord needs me.

I thoroughly enjoyed being it the office. I know that it was where the Lord needed me. I was able to do a lot of good here.

I love you all! Thank you for everything!

Elder Hilton

I felt so much joy.

October 28, 2015

First of all, I am not longer sick. It passed by quickly.

Also, thank you all for the birthday wishes! And for the package.

Something really cool happened this week. The mission did a family history activity for the recent converts. There is a member here in San Salvador that has a call center. Because it has a ton of computers, he offered it to the church for a night so that all of the recent converts could get together and do family history. It was just for members, missionaries weren´t going to go, but I went with the assistants to help out because I know family history.

So the activity is starting, and we´re standing by the door listening to a small presentation, and in walks M, one of the people who got baptized when I was in Nueva Concepcion! Wow! I was so happy to see her. She hadn´t seen me yet so I tapped her shoulder. She instantly burst into tears when she saw me. She was so happy. Also from La Nueva was a man called J. he was one of my investigators and now he´s been baptized, along with his wife, R.

M told me that the branch is doing well. That L and N are still active. Along with I. And R. Although she did tell me that R´s health is deteriorating. She told me that they´ve set the goal to be sealed as a family. But they haven't gone to the temple yet, not even to do baptisms.

I was able to help M look for names. We found two, a male and a female. One for here and one for R. Now they´re going to go to the temple. And they want to go as soon as possible.

That night I felt a bit of how it must feel in the celestial kingdom. I was so happy. I felt so much joy. I felt so blessed. I can´t even adequately express it. "And if it so be that you should labor all your days in crying repentance unto this people, and bring, save it be one soul unto me, how great shall be your joy with him in the kingdom of my Father!" (D&C 18:15). I felt that joy. 

As a side note, last Sunday we visited a family in our ward that we didn´t know. There´s lot´s of families like that because we´re all new. It´s a very active family. They were so happy that we visited them. They said that the missionaries hadn´t visited them in years. They in turn gave us four things:

1. An opportunity to serve them (they need help moving or something next week). Yes!

2. Offered to help us with some visits on Wednesday. Yes!!

3. Commited to share the gospel with some friends they had in mind. Yes!!!

3. Said they´ll make us lazagna next Sunday for lunch. Yay!!!!

These are the kind of things that make us happy as missionaries.

I love you all!

Elder Hilton

Nothing serious, just food poisoning I believe.

October 21, 2015

Dear family,

Today´s letter will be a very short one. Mostly because I´m sick and sitting at a desk is a struggle. Nothing serious, just food poisoning I believe. I´ll be better really soon.

I love you all. Thank you for all you letters and prayers. Thanks for the birthday wishes. I love the mission. 

Elder Hilton

But now I'm so grateful just because we have water.

October 9, 2015

Dear family,

This was a good week. Granted, a busy one, but good. I loved general conference. We were even able to see a few of the sessions in English. That was great. Even though it's the same thing in Spanish, it's always so disappointing to hear their voices and then have it covered up by the translator.

Things have calmed down a little bit. We never did find a new house but we've moved in with the Elders in the ward that borders Los Alpes. Their house is right on the border of the two wards so it actually works out pretty nicely. I love the house. It's soo nice. San Marcos is a little bit cooler than my other areas. And the house is on the top of a hill, so there's always a really cool breeze. And the house is like half open air, so the breeze comes through the house and cools everything off. And the house is clean. And new. And we have a water tank, so we always have water. We only have water every now and then in the other house. I'm so grateful to always have running water. It's interesting how my expectations have changed. If I were to move into a house like this before the mission I would have complained about not having hot water. But now I'm so grateful just because we have water.

I have two companions: Elder N and Elder B. Elder B is the migration secretary. I've been with him almost all my time in the office. Elder N is a pretty quiet guy. But he's really smart. He's picking up everything really fast.

Next week we will write on Wednesday, not Friday. President has decided to give us a P-day. Monday was supposedly our P-day, but Monday is actually our bussiest day in the office, becuase that's the day all the day all the other missionary write, send in their key indicators, send in their baptism records, energy bills, water bills, etc. Lot's of work for us. That's why we used to write on Fridays to try to conteract that. But it didn't help that much. Last Monday we left the office at 7. But President wants us to rest every now and then so he's changed that.

Well, I love you all! Until next Wednesday!

Elder Hilton

Changes!

October 2, 2015

Well, we had changes this week. And a lot of things changed. Significant changes:

1. I'm training Elder N to be the next general secretary. Elder N and I went to the MTC together so we already know each other. He's a very natural secretary. I attached a picture of us.

2. They closed Los Lencas I (our area). The financial secretary and the records secretary are going to stay in the ward, but we are opening an area in a ward called Los Alpes (in San Marcos, El Salvador). And because they wanted it to be a surprise so they didn't tell us anything. We don't even have a house. We're still living in our house in Los Lencas. We have the car right now we just drive to our area and back every day. I'm not sure what we'll do when we don't have the though.

It feels weird to be in this area. We've had a lot to do in the office this week, so everyday since changes we've gotten to the area at like 7:30 at night. I still haven't seen our area in the day.So we get there, it already dark, we don't know how safe it is, and we don't know our way around. 

The day of changes we got to our area, parked the car in the church and met some of the members and the bishop. And we met our Amulek amongst the members. His name is J. He's a young return missionary. That first day he gave us a referral and set an appointment to go visit him with us. After meeting the members, we drove back to our area.

The day after changes (Thursday): We still had a lot to do in the office. We left the office around 6:30, dropped off the other companionship in Los Lencas, dropped off the assistants in their area, and then drove to our area. When got there, everything was pitch black. The city had lost power. We found the church (the only place we know how to find) and Jose was there waiting for us. We parked the car by the church, and then he took us to the referral he gave us. There is no way we could have found it on our own. We had never been there before, and there were no lights.

But he guided us. He took us to the Ar family: E, V, and L (father, mother, son, in that order). E is not a member but wants to be one. V and L are less active members but want to be active members. We're very grateful for J. There's no way we could have found them without him. 

Los Alpes looks like a really nice ward. I still really haven't seen the area during the day yet, but I think it's going to be good. We're really excited. It always is sad to leave an area behind though.

Well, I love you all!

Elder Hilton 

Hello family! Things are going well over here. I´m enjoying the mission. I feel like I´ve finally got the hang of balancing our time in the office and the area.  In my extra time in the office, I like to make graphs so that I still feel productive. In our mission we have 4 standards of excellence: Baptism dates, church attendance, progressing investigators, and new investigators. I wanted to see which of those key indicators affected baptism most. So I added up all the standards of excellence for 9 areas over the last year and a half. Then I compared that to the number of baptisms they had. Then I made a scatter plots, and took the lines of best fit. The more horizontal the line is, the more the key indicator affected the number of baptisms. If the line is vertical, it hardly affected it at all. So, I found out that the key indicator that most affected the baptisms was new investigators. Then came church attendance. Then progressing. Then baptism dates. I also looked at the history of my area. I have all the numbers back until the beginning of 2013. The standard of excellence for new investigators per week is 12. With the exception of one week, our area had never gotten that many. It´s not that our area´s a really hard area, but I think that past secretaries have that because we´re in the office it´s ok if our area doesn´t do as well. But that is not true. We´ve started working a lot harder in our area. A little while ago Elder Alonzo, an area seventy, visited us. One of the things that he taught was that if we work harder, we achieve more. He said that if we think we´re working harder, but we don´t achieve more, we´re not working harder. I have come to know that that is true. So, we´ve started to work harder, and we´ve achieved more. Two weeks ago we found 14 new investigators. Last week, even though it was changes week, we found 12. That was truly a challenge. Monday through Thursday we had barely spent any time in the area and had taught only one lesson. But we worked like crazy on the weekend and were still able to achieve it.  So statistics are somewhat limited, and numbers are just numbers. But they help up focus more and they do help motive us to work harder. I´m pretty much out of time so this might be it for today. Mom asked me to explain how we find people to teach, but I´ll explain that next week. Just remind me. I love you all! Elder Hilton

We are learning how to follow the spirit.

September 18, 2015

Dear family, 

This was a good week. We are learning how to follow the spirit. We´ve been trying really hard lately to listen to the spirit and to live in such a way that nothing impedes its presence. This week I´ve felt it more strongly than before in the mission. It´s a really big blessing: we know where to go, where not to go, what to say, what not to say, and we know right away if we´re doing something wrong. The spirit is so important. Without it, we cannot really be missionaries. We can do the things that missionaries do, but we can´t truly be missionaries.

I´ve realized that if I didn´t have the gift of the Holy Ghost, I would be a different person. For example, sometimes as missionaries we get really tired, and we just want to rest. But we can´t, because we have a work to do. If we give in to those desires and slack off when we should be working, the spirit leaves, right away. But the harder we work, the strong the spirit is. I personally prefer to have the spirit, so that´s why I work hard.

We´re struggling a little bit with our area. We are able to find new investigators, but whenever we come back for the second appointment, they always make excuses, like there´re busy or something, or we just never find them again. So that´s the current issue with our area, but we keep working hard, and we keep feeling the spirit. That´s what makes it all worth it.

M still says he wants to be baptized, but not until next year. And recently we haven´t been able to find M.

So last time I said I would tell you a bit about what I do as a secretary.

The general secretary is responsible for everything “general.” That is to say, everything that is not handled by the financial secretary, migration secretary, or the records secretary.

My duties as general secretary include but are not limited to:

·         Making Reports

·         Buying/distributing materials

·         Managing Referrals

·         Obtaining legal documents (birth certificates, marriage/divorce documents, etc.)

·         Sorting/distributing mail

·         Managing phone numbers, making the directories, etc.

Well, in short, that´s what I do.

Well, I love you all! Thanks for everything!

Elder Hilton