Music is Powerful.

Monday, December 23^rd, 2013.

What´s Crackalackin ya´ll?!

Well pretty crazy that I will be talking to you all in just 2 days!
Can you believe that?! I am really so excited. Haha sorry I'm slightly
distracted right now, there is this little Arabic boy trying to play
with me right now here in the locutorio. Anyways, I am so excited to
see you all and talk with you! I think we will be doing it in a
members home, so all will work great! They are from Columbia, and he
speaks a bit of English and Japanese too!

Fun to hear about all of the happenings this week. Grandma´s funeral
sounded beautiful, and that many great things were said about her. I
am sad I haven't seen her for a long time, but grateful for the
memories I do have of visiting her together as a family. I hope that
Grandpa is doing okay without her for a slight moment.

Mom also thank you for your spiritual thoughts! I always print off all
of your emails to read later, and I appreciate the time you put into
writing uplifting messages for me! I love them and they really do
strengthen me.

Aubrey's Christmas concert must have been fun, I bet she was the cutest
out of the whole bunch! They do the same thing here I believe, a small
concierto de la navidad before the Christmas break! I wish I was there
to see it Aubrey!

Oh man before I forget. I GOT YOUR AMAZING PACKAGE! With the Christmas
tree with all of my favorite ornaments, how genius are you all?! That
seriously made me so happy, literally nothing made me happier than
seeing that. Thank you also for those letters in it, I am excited to
read them on Christmas day! Love you all!

Well I have my list here of things I want to tell you all!

Last preparation day, guess what happened?!  THE UNDERCOVER POLICE
KNOCKED ON OUR DOOR AT NIGHT. They were looking for Elder _, the
Elder that was in _ at the time. Poor guy, he had to fly back to
the island to get questioned by the police. I believe all is fine
there, just a lame attempt by Satan I think.

This week we had amazing intercambios, or exchanges. I went to Inca
with Elder Soumarrett from Chile, and we had a great time! They
basically don't have anyone to teach, so we ended up contacting almost
the whole time! We taught 4 lessons in one night, all to random people
on the street. It was a huge miracle that we had that many people
listen to us long enough to teach them a lesson, and really helped me
build my skills as a missionary. Elder Soumarrett is an incredible
missionary, and he gave me some great compliments. He was impressed by
my humility, and I loved hearing that from him.

Our English class is thriving! We have tons of people who come. Lots
of them are young kids from Morocco, which can be a little tough, but
we are seeing so much success from people coming. I build some great
relationships there, and really am able to have fun and express
myself. I love teaching, that's for sure! There is one man who comes,
from Columbia, who is actually a brain surgeon. I told him I wanted to
be a doctor, and all of a sudden he was offering me all of these
things. I had to tell him quickly that I couldn't focus on a career
while on the mission ahaha.

M, the 17 year old girl, is doing great! We have had some powerful
experiences with her, and have built a wonderful friendship also, with
her and the family. We have talked about her baby, and she is excited
for it! She asked us a question the other day about babies who die
early, and what happens to them! I believe we referred to D and C 137
or something, and taught her that they would be saved, that really
they were already prepared enough spirits to simply come to earth to
recieve their bodies. She loved that. Then another day as a nice
surprise, we sat beside her accidentally on a train. The lord puts
people in our path. Fact.

One thing that I discovered this week that I LOVE is the churches
addiction recovery program. We don't have one here, but we have
listened to it online at lds.org. It is incredible and inspiring! It
really gives hope to people with any type of addictions, and I really
challenge you all to listen to some of it!  Especially if any of you
have a personal addiction, I recommend it.

So in this Christmas season we are getting so blessed. I am receiving
letters from lots of friends and family, and its just the best. I have
all of the gifts put under my wonderful Christmas tree! The piñero
family surprised us this week with a GIANT gift, a huge box of food
and goodies for each of us. It is insane. I wont have to shop for two
weeks. They are so good, the most incredible family ever. They do so
much for this branch, and as the President, he shows a great example
of service.

Hey mom, the members LOVE your caramels. I have shared some of them with
every member family that we go to, and they just DIE. Hahaha I have
had people ask for the recipe, so if you feel like spending more time
on the computer (sorry), I'm sure the members in Manacor would love you
for it. Just know that your cooking is well appreciated over here.

Yesterday we had some incredible experiences. First in church, one of
the speakers said something that I loved and really made me ponder. He
was talking about the birth of Christ, and all the events that went
along with it. One thing that he talked about, was the angels who were
singing. He mentioned that he likes to imagine that those concourses
of angels could have been those spirits in heaven, rejoicing the birth
of the Savior...they could have been us! We could have been there,
singing joys that night! We don't remember it now, but just something
fun to think about.

Also, last night we had an incredible experience. We were walking back
from an appointment with an old man named Miguel, and we were walking
through this great big plaza with lots of people! There were 5 teens
sitting on this bench that began to say, "mira, testigos", which means,
"look, Jehovah's Witnesses".  This happens TONS here....and my way to
react is to walk up to them and say "no we aren't JW´s, we are from the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints". So we did that, and got talking.

This group was a little rougher around the edges, all smoking and swearing, and they
also were having obvious same-sex relations with each other, but we
kept on talking with them. They eventually asked us if we sang, and we
said yes. We then sang for them in the middle of this plaza "silent
night". The whole plaza just got silent as we started singing. We sang
the last verse in English, and as we finished and looked up, we
realized everyone was watching and listening. It was incredible. Music
is powerful, and I'm grateful for the fact that I was brave enough to
sing that in public like we did.

Well I will talk to you all soon, so I don't want to tell any more
details! I love you all so much, and I hope you can enjoy this
Christmas season. I love you so much, and will SEE you soon!

Love, Elder Hardy