This is Hunter's letter to his Dad.
This week has been full of doing the obedience walk. It's really depressing. So many people here have even harder hearts than Laman and Lemuel. A lot of people think it's easier to serve in the U.S. Or in California. Or just easier to serve in populated areas. I'd much rather serve in some backcountry place of a foreign country where it took time to get places and where people would 'have time' to listen. I'd much rather not have members feed us and have everyone ten miles apart than what I'm stuck with right now. Almost all of our investigators, potentials, and less actives say, "just come by and see if we're here!", when we try to set up a return appointment .  I just want to yell at them sometimes. Tracting has been dubbed a 'waste of the church's time and resources.' Most of our appointments always fall through, and no one is ever home. It makes it soooooooo hard to be actively doing something. Which is one of the good things about riding bikes around, but our area is only about 3 square miles, so........basically it gets to the point of there just being....nothing to do! It's great....

   It's awesome that you were able to hang with a seventy that's friends with president Riggs! I actually just met someone who's family is really good friends with his family! It's too bad that mom couldn't eat anything, but hey, when you have new running shoes everything else is inconsequential! I'm glad you were able to talk to Katherine! She is really excited about going back to Japan.

    The Scott sterling video was going on at a members house or just some person's house sometime. So many people here have their tv's on all the time. If you walk through some neighborhoods you can hear the sound of tv's because there are so many on. The Super Bowl was even worse than what it's regularly like, if you can imagine that. My pink running shorts aren't completely pink. They just have a strip of pink on the side and I just call the, my pink running shorts in order to differentiate them. And they're not racing shorts. Racing shorts and running shorts are different, and that difference is about 6-8 inches. But I do think just pink running shorts would be amazing! Or yellow or green. But they would have to be a bright green.

      We are starting to work more with a couple less active/part member families. Excited to see where that goes! I like that TIP thing. The problem here is that people do not recognize the significance of things, recognize promises, or even recognize the spirit. We're trying though! Thanks for your testimony. I appreciate and treasure it, and would like to also leave you  (and the fam) with a thought. Something I've come to realize and need more is member missionary work. Our area is barely hanging on to life. It is virtually impossible to find new people to teach by finding ourselves. Members are so important. What I really want is members that will say to their friends, 'we're having some missionaries over! Come and listen to them! They can answer all your questions!' And when they say yes, give us a call and say hey, we're having some friends over at this time to listen to you guys! So invite people over to hear the missionaries! If you tell the missionaries a day in advance they will be soooooo prepared. As long as they have nothing scheduled. It will develop your trust for them, and their trust for you. Trust goes both ways on a mission. Not just members trusting missionaries. I don't trust most of my ward here (even though they are awesome) to have anyone for us to teach. I wish so much more that I'd done that before my mission. Just sharing talking about modesty or the word of wisdom with someone isn't enough.  Follow up everything like that with an invitation to come and listen to the missionaries, and make it so they can't say no. If they can't do a day or week, just say, well, we are available this day, and keep on doing that until you finally have a day set! So that's my rant. I love you all!

Elder Hunter

(P.S. If you want to see an example of what I'm doing to proselyte on Facebook, search for the fox 13 news thing on the excommunication of John Dehlin.)