Week 81: Stegosaurus Soares

We had zone conference this week! I loved it! Elder Ulisses Soares from the Seventy came to the islands to have a meeting with our zone. He's the coolest guy! His native language is Portuguese, but man his English is almost perfect. We talked a lot about goal setting and how we can improve in order to reach the goals we set. We had a discussion about why goals are even important. A thought that I had was that goals help us recognize the progress and changes we are making. If we are constantly reflecting and seeing where we are with our goals, we will be able to recognize that we really are working. Sometimes it doesn't feel like we've come a long way, but when we look back at the things we have already done, we'll be able to see that we really are putting in effort. Elder Soares talked about how sometimes as missionaries we get down on ourselves and think we're not doing enough. But that's why goals are important! If we make reasonable goals that will help us stretch, and we constantly review our goals, then we will recognize our progress. And even if it's little progress, it's still progress! We just gotta keep on having faith that we can reach them! Elder Soares is awesome. The meeting was very personal. There were only about 30 of us missionaries and everyone was able to participate. I'm grateful for Elder Soares' instruction and counsel and I'm excited to apply it! I was asked to provide a musical number too which was cool. I sang Brillan Rayos de Clemencia. It went pretty well!

Anyway, as I mentioned last week, the whole zone conference thing was in Gran Canaria. So the whole zone had to travel over there. However, I had to travel 2 days before everyone because I have to do exchanges with the missionaries there once a transfer. So I got to spend a day with an old companion of mine, Elder Trassierra. It was really weird working with him again. We were companions in Galicia about a year ago. We didn't get along very well, but it seems that we have both changed quite a bit since then. During our exchange, we talked a lot and reflected on our companionship and the things we had learned from each other. We actually had a pretty fun day together! We taught several lessons and talked to a ton of people in the street. It was a good day!

Elder Hendrix attended Maria's concert.

The work is going very well here in Tenerife! We have several investigators that are doing great! One is Maria. I believe I've talked a little bit about her before. She's from Barcelona and we've been teaching her for about 6 months now. She's the nicest woman. We've had some awesome lessons with her. The only problem though is the principle of faith. She says she needs more information and needs to study more in order to know if this is what she needs. Its weird, because she has said she knows that everything is true. She believes the church has been restored, she believes that Jose Smith was a prophet, and she knows the book of Mormon is true. So in our last lesson, we asked her what is preventing her from being a member of the church. She said nothing! She said she knows it's true, but she keeps on having little doubts come up. We're working on helping her focus more on her faith rather than her doubts. She's so close! Adversary just works hard to knock her down. But I know she'll be baptized soon! She's the sweetest woman. She's part of a local choir here in Los Cristianos and had a concert on Saturday night, and she invited us, so we asked President if we could go and support her, and he said yes! So we went to see her, and we brought Mayalene and Miguel with us. Those two are doing great as well. They're continuing to read and pray together. We had a lesson with them this week and did a lot of follow up to see how they're doing with everything. We asked how they're feeling about baptism and if they've talked about it. They said themselves that they're so close! They want to do it. They feel good about it! They're going to pray together about setting a baptismal date. They just want to continue investigating and getting to know the church a little more. They're so prepared! They've been coming to church and ward activities and they've really been enjoying getting to know the members! We're doing a noche de hogar with the Villalobos this week and they asked us to bring Mayalene and Miguel, so we're really excited for that! Mayalene and Miguel always tell us how welcome they feel here and how much they love the support they receive. I love that couple! We're gonna go on some sick double dates when I come back to Tenerife down the road. 

Speaking of the Villalobos, Hermano Villalobos gave us a call the other day and asked us to come over and help him lift something heavy up to his piso which is on the third floor. So we gladly showed up and he was there waiting outside of a moving truck. He opened up the door and there was a piano inside. He said it was for his daughter. I asked him if it was her birthday or something, and his answer was "no, she's just a good daughter." Hermano Villalobos is awesome. Anyway, we had a fun time getting that thing up three flights of stairs... But hey we did it! So that was a fun little service we got to do. A member in the ward named Anna heard about it, so she came up to us at church last Sunday and said it was her turn. So we went to her home a few days ago and helped her clean her house. Service is fun! And it makes the members happy. And when members are happy, the missionaries are fed. When missionaries are fed, they work harder. What am I trying to say? If there was a Chikfila here on Tenerife, the missionaries would work extra hard and the members would be extra happy. 

The weather here continues to please me. The back door has been open for about 3 months now... And it will stay open. Because the ocean breeze is perfect. And the gospel is perfect. And teaching the gospel by the ocean is also perfect. And I live on an island. And that is perfect.

Well that's about all I got for this week! I thank you all for the love and support you give! Hope you all have an awesome week!

Elder Hendrix

Week 80: Blankets are Neat

Today has been super busy, so I'm on a time crunch!

So for the past month, our stake has been doing a blanket drive to send to Syria for those who need them. We collected blankets for like 4 weeks, and on Saturday we all traveled to La Laguna in the north to put them all in boxes and prepare them to be shipped off. It was a ton of fun! There were about 50 members from all of Tenerife that came to help. In total, the stake collected almost 3000 blankets. I loved serving that day! There was so much energy there and everyone was really excited to help these people in Syria!

The missionaries meet in La Laguna to pack boxes of
blankets to send to Syria.

This week has been weird. I had to fly to Gran Canaria again to do exchanges. So I've been here since Monday. And actually, we have mission tour tomorrow, so our whole zone traveled here today. We changed p day to today and played soccer all day! I'm pretty dead right now. But I'm so excited for mission tour tomorrow! Elder Ulisses Soares from the presidency of the 70 is coming to speak to our zone.  I'll have to report next Monday! 

Ugh so little time today. Hope you all have a great day! I promise my next email will be more detailed! Love you all!

Elder Hendrix

Elder Hendrix on an exchange with a previous
companion, Elder Trassierra.

Week 79: Thomas the Train (part 2)

Saturday night was really cool. Thomas baptized his son! Oscar turned 8 a few weeks ago, and wanted so badly to have his dad baptize him. As I shared with you a few weeks ago, Thomas is a train, and not even his disability can prevent him from fulfilling his sons' desires and showing him how much he loves him. Thomas came extra early so we could help him get changed to his baptismal clothes. We lifted him up into the font, and there was another member inside to help him baptize. Thomas was so grateful for the request of his son. He's such an inspiring man. He has so much love for the gospel and just wants to be happy and serve! The baptism went really well. Thomas did a great job. And as soon as Oscar was lifted out of the water, he had the biggest smile on his face! He gave his dad a big hug. Those two are incredible. They're amazing examples to me. I was talking to Thomas afterwards and asked him how he felt baptizing his son. He said he was never nervous about it. "I may not have legs, but I have a son. And I love him." I'm grateful for the faith of this man and the great desires he has. 

Speaking of faith, we had a great district meeting this week! We talked a lot about strengthening our faith to find new people to teach. When I was younger, my mom explained to me that exercising faith is like wrapping a present. I can go find a nice gift for someone and wrap it up and make it look super nice, but the action of faith would be giving it to someone. Relating that to missionary work, we have this fancy wrapped gift, or gospel message, and it needs to be given away. If we just carry it around without presenting it to others, it won't be accepted. The first person we offer it to might not accept, but that doesn't mean nobody will. It just means we've got to keep on presenting it to people until we find someone. And I know that those people are out there! We just have to have faith and take action and give away that gift that has been so neatly wrapped. We had a great discussion about this analogy in district meeting and we're excited to get to work this transfer and share the gift! 

I hope you all have an amazing week!

Elder Hendrix 

Thomas baptized his son in Tenerife.

Elder Hendrix enjoys frangollo, a dessert made
by his nonmember friend, Jose.

Week 78: Noah was right

I gotta start with Mayalene and Miguel. I love those two so much. They're the most incredible people ever! We had another great lesson with them this week. We talked about the sacrament and the atonement. We helped them understand what the sacrament is for and why it's so important. They're continuing to ask good questions. They're progressing really well! They really love the Book of Mormon. We asked them about their favorite parts so far, and Mayalene talked about Lehi's vision of the tree of life. She explained every little detail of the story. Teaching them is always such a cool experience. We've had some really spiritual lessons with them. 

They came to church yesterday too! Gospel principles class was pretty cool with them. When the teacher ended the class, Miguel said he felt very grateful for all that the members and missionaries have taught them. He said that he thought he came here from Cuba with Mayalene to look for better work, but it seems like he came for something more. They recognize the spirit every time they're in the church. They've explained to us how welcome they feel. It was hard for them to leave their country when they moved here a few months ago, but they've told us that developing relationships with the members here, as well as being introduced to the gospel, has been very comforting. Ah, I LOVE THAT COUPLE. We talked a little about about baptism when we taught the this week. They said they would like to do it, and feel very strongly that this is the right path for them, but they want to continue with the discussions for a little longer until they set a date. Which is totally normal. We don't want to rush them into it or make them feel pressured. Updates to come! They made us Cuban food this week. It was super good! And I think today we're going mini golfing with them. 

We've started playing futbol on Saturday mornings. We used to play every week, but we had to stop because a lot of people were busy during the holidays. But we're back at it again! We played this last Saturday and had several people come, including Mayalene and Miguel! The hermanas had a few investigators there too. Several less actives and members in the ward came, so we had some success with that! I'm excited to continue playing each week. I think we should have even more people there this weekend. I need to get into shape too! I was dying last week, and we only played for about an hour. 

So here's an interesting story! There was a baptism yesterday at the church. There's a woman in the ward whose record was lost or something, so she had to get rebaptized. They were planning on doing the ordinance right after church, so they started filling the font in the morning cause it takes several hours...or so they thought. During the last hour, the bishop was having an interview in his office, when he noticed some water coming in under the door. He went to open it, and the entire hallway was completely covered. He grabbed my companion and I out of priesthood so we could help clean it up quickly before church ended and people noticed, but it was too late. It was way more than just the hallway. It was the entire church basically. Everybody was upstairs cause that's where the classrooms are. But man, it was a disaster. Apparently the person filling the font forgot about it. There were probably 3 inches of water throughout the building. There was so much water. I kid you not, we used buckets to scoop water out of the building. It was that deep. It took over 3 hours to get all of the water out, and that was with about 10 people working. Actually, I lied. We didn't get it all out. But we tried. But man there's some serious water damage in there. We had to use all the dust pans to transfer the water into buckets and then to pour outside. It was such a mess. But hey,the baptism happened! I've never seen a baptismal service quite like that though. It was definitely interesting. Everyone blamed relief society for having such a spiritual lesson. It made everyone cry literal rivers.

Our ward mission leader, Arcely Camargo, is absolutely insane at ping pong. He's from Uruguay and is in his 60s, but man he is impossible to beat. Last week, I played him like 5 times, and my best score was 3-15. 

And that's about it for this week. Love you all!!

Elder Hendrix

Week 77: Where's the IHOP?

We had a fun ward activity this week! We had the idea of doing an American dinner thing, and the most American thing we could think of that can be found here was pancakes. So we made pancakes for the whole ward! We had tons of toppings and whipped cream and stuff. Everyone loved it! The bishopric wants us to do it every month now. It was easy and cheap and it was very successful! We didn't have as many members show up as we wanted, but we had several investigators there! They loved it! It was cool for them to be able to interact with members as well and get to know them. Before the food, we shared the message of the restoration. We began teaching and just took a few minutes to introduce the topic, and then we watched the 20 minute version of the Joseph Smith Restoration movie. It was really cool to share it with all of our friends we're teaching! 

So fun story. I went to Gran Canaria this week! I had to do an exchange over there. So I got to take a quick flight over there. It was weird being alone for the trip haha. But I was able to spend some time with the Zone Leaders, one of which being Elder Lords! He was in my district in the MTC and I hadn't talked to him forever, so that was cool to catch up with him. He's a great missionary. I was able to learn some great things from being with him for the day. I flew back here to Tenerife this weekend. The flight back was so cool. It was only 20 minutes long but man, the views were incredible. The air was really clear that day, and you could see all 7 of the Canary Islands. 

Today for P day, a member took us hiking! We saw some amazing scenery! We hiked up a huge mountain here in the southern part of Tenerife. Roundtrip we walked 9 miles. And there was nothing flat about that hike. It was brutal. I'm dead. But it was so worth it! I'll try to send pics...

Anyway, I'm doing good here in the greatest island in the world. I love Tenerife so much!

Until next week!

Elder Hendrix

Week 76: Thomas the Train

We have some of the most inspiring people in our ward. There's a man named Thomas who's from Ghana. He has lived here in Tenerife for several years. He's one of the most humble men I know. About 6 months ago, he got in a bad accident at work, which destroyed several nerves in his legs. He was originally told that he would never be able to use his legs again. He had completely lost feeling in them. He was in a wheelchair unable to do hardly anything on his own for several months. But after a few operations, he was back up on his legs and using a walker. He was making an amazing recovery. And now, half a year after the accident, he's on crutches. He always walks on his own without help. It can take him 3-4 minutes to walk 20 feet, but he does it. His progress has been incredible. 

The inspiring part of this story however, is the fact that Thomas hasn't missed a single Sunday in church since the accident. He wakes up very early each week to dress himself, which is already difficult enough I can imagine, and makes his way down a flight of stairs where a member of the ward is always waiting for him in a car. Getting ready in the morning and then going down stairs is a fight in itself for this man, but his faith in the blessings of keeping the sabbath day holy is amazing. Thomas has 2 young kids who he absolutely cherishes. They're always right there with him cheering him on when he goes down the stairs to the car each Sunday. This man's desires have been a testimony builder to me. It makes me think about those days when I was younger and I was too lazy to wake up early for seminary or mission prep. If this man, who doesn't even have working legs, can go to church every Sunday, then so can I. But I can testify that going to church really is a blessing. God has blessed us with the physical ability to go, so be grateful for it and go! The opportunity we have to participate in the sacrament is beautiful. It's something that our Heavenly Father has given us because He loves us. 

Another inspiration in the ward is Paul. He's a young man who, like Thomas, doesn't have functioning legs. He has been in a wheelchair his entire life because of a defect he was born with. Each Sunday, he passes the sacrament. I love watching him roll up to the sacrament table after the priests bless the bread. He happily takes the tray and proceeds to pass it through each row in the congregation. Paul always has a smile on his face. These two men, Paul and Thomas, are a great reminder to me that everybody has the potential to experience the blessings of this gospel. It doesn't matter how big our challenges are. The blessings of coming to church and living the gospel outweigh any trial or pain we may be experiencing.

Anyway, this week was pretty great! We had zone conference with president. We talked a lot about repentance and how we, as missionaries, can better teach our investigators about the importance of repenting. We often teach investigators that repenting means to leave the sin completely, which is obviously an essential part of the repentance process. But a good point he brought up was that we should teach these people that we need to replace the sin with something new and better at the same time. We often hear repentance defined as "change." But I feel like if we define it with the word "replacement", it has a newer and more profound meaning. So let's take the sins we've committed and replace them with something better! Let's take coffee and replace it with hot chocolate. Let's take pornography and replace it with Disney movies. Let's take bad language and replace it with bad lip reading quotes. Repentance is very uplifting and results in a much happier lifestyle. So don't be afraid to repent! God wants us to be happy! And repentance is the happiest thing ever! :) I loved the zone conference. I was able to do a musical number as well! I did a piano solo of Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. It went really well! The conference overall was very motivating and encouraging. I'm grateful for all that I learned and I'm excited to apply it in the work!

And that's about it for this week. I'm so grateful to be a missionary! My testimony has grown this week, as well as my stomach. Seriously. There's a Peruvian member family here that fed us like a 342 course meal yesterday and I'm still recovering. 

Have a great week! 

Elder Hendrix

Elder Hendrix feeding a lemur at Monkey Park.

A lemur gets a snack from Elder Hendrix.

Week 75: Serving in English

I LOVE teaching English class. We teach on Tuesdays and Fridays. We have a lot of people that come regularly and they all love it! The hermanas teach the beginner class with a bunch of little kids, and we teach the advanced class. We usually have anywhere from 5 to 15 people come. And we have a lot of fun! We usually a basic grammar principle and then play a game to practice. I've been here in Los Cristianos for about 2 months, and I've already seen a lot of progress in these people. It's pretty amazing. They all come so excited to learn something and practice speaking. English class has been one of our most successful finding strategies too. 

We have several investigators that were found because they started coming to English class. Carolina started coming to class a few months ago. Just recently, she said she wanted to hear about our church. She explained that we're just different and seem really happy, and she wants to know why. So we told her we would be more than willing to teach her! We met with her this week and taught her about the restoration of gospel. She said she really loved the lesson. We invited her to follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized, and she accepted! So as of right now, she seems to be on track to be baptized next month. So that was a really cool experience! 

We've had several cool teaching opportunities through English class. It's such a great finding technique. And it's especially successful here in Tenerife because having a basic knowledge of English is required for pretty much every job because of all the tourism. Most of the work here is in restaurants or hotels. 

I talked a little about Mayalene and Miguel last week. They're a couple we met through English class as well. We were able to teach them again this week and it went really well! They said they discussed their baptism, and they have decided that they want to do it! They've talked and prayed about it and they feel like it's what they need to do. Man this couple is perfect. They're amazing! We're going to wait on setting a baptismal date though. They said they would like to learn a little more beforehand. Which is totally fine! We don't want to pressure them into it. They've made several friends in the ward already and they really love them! There's one family in particular, the Villalobos, who have been a huge help. They really want the investigators to feel welcome. This week, we had a lesson with Mayalene and Miguel, and Mayalene expressed how grateful she was for Hermana Villalobos. She introduced herself to the couple at church last Sunday, and they both felt very welcomed and touched. 

I know that members can make a huge impact on the investigators! It's easier to recognize the spirit when you're in a comfortable environment surrounded by good friendly influences. And so I invite each of you to remember this! If you see that the missionaries have brought a friend to church, fellowship them! That's missionary work! Participating in missionary work doesn't strictly mean tracting. It means service. It's means being charitable. Anyone can be a missionary. And those who are served (in this case, Mayalene and Miguel) feel loved! 

The work is going well, the weather is amazing, and I couldn't be happier. I love being a missionary!  Have a great week!

Elder Hendrix