This has been an awesome week! We were able to find a whole bunch of people who are super open and interested in what we have to share, so we are really excited about that! The lord has definitely been blessing us with people to find. One of the cool stories was we were talking to a lady named Linda and we taught her pretty much all of the restoration while we were outside with her. As we were walking away her neighbor, who had been listening the whole time, waved us over and said he had some questions as well. He was really sincere and when we told him about the Book of Mormon he was excited to read it! Maybe we will just keep working our way down that street haha! Memorial Day was today and it was awesome! I had so much fun with the ward. We had some great food and then we played soccer and softball. Our investigator Marlon came and he just fits right in with the ward.
Everything is going great! I just love this area more and more. Have a good week everyone!

Well this was an exciting week! We started off by not knowing whether or not I was going to be in a trio for the rest of this week, or if my new companion was going to be able to be healthy enough to leave the MTC and arrive in Tuesday when he was originally scheduled. Well I went to the meeting where all of the new trainers and trainees are and my new companion was there! He got approved to leave the day after everyone else from his group had left so he flew on the red eye flight to Pittsburgh and made it right on time, with no sleep either haha. His name is Elder Halsey and he is awesome. He chipped and sprained his ankle in the MTC so he has a boot on but he will be wearing a brace it looks like now. After the meeting I was saying goodbye to some missionaries and one of the Elders who I was in a trio with, came up to me and said that during the meeting they went to see some people and had popped our tire... But he did wish us luck with the whole thing! So we had to replace a flat tire our first day together so it was pretty exciting. This week has been great finding new people to teach. Elder Halsey is really in tune with the spirit. We have had a lot of people who have said that they would love to meet with us. We were walking down the street one day and I told Elder Halsey to pick a door he was feeling prompted to knock on. He walked right up to a door and knocked on it. We met the most awesome lady ever named Carolyn, or Mama C. That is what we call her haha. We talked to her about the Book of Mormon and as we were testifying of it she said she was getting goose bumps all over. I was showing her one of my favorite scriptures and after I finished, she took the Book of Mormon back and said, "Hey give my book back!" It was pretty funny and now we will be going to see her this week. Sunday was great! Our investigator Marlon came to church and had a great experience. We were super busy the rest of the day. We met with a LA lady named Stephanie as our last appointment for the night. She is going through a lot and is really determined to put Christ first in her life again. As we shared scriptures and bore our testimonies of Christ's love she started crying. She is so awesome and her goal is to make it to the temple before too long. I love being a part of this work! It is such a blessing to be able to have this time where we have opportunity to forget about ourselves and serve others, and that is one of the greatest feelings there is. Thank you everyone and have a great week!

An abandoned house in Pittsburgh with a tree growing out of it

Elder Hasley and Elder May

Well this has been a pretty crazy week! My companion, Elder Slade, had some bad kidney stones so he had to go home. We dropped him off at the airport now I am in a trio with Elder Wood and Posada. They are awesome and we have been having a good time serving with each other! We are covering Both of our areas at the same time so that has been a little bit tricky, but we are making it work. I also got a call from President Johnson saying that I will be training. I am so happy about that! By the time I am through training here, I will have been in this area for 13 and a half months. President Johnson said that I broke the record for being in an area since he has been mission president. I am so happy to be in this area though, I love it with all of my heart!

This week we were able to see so many great things happen. The best part of the week was being able to talk to my family. They are the best and I am truly grateful for them. We were able to get a new investigator this week named Mike. At the beginning of the lesson he told us about how he didn't feel good about religion because it confused him. We taught the plan of salvation and by the end, he was talking about the peace he was feeling. It was awesome to see he spirit soften his heart.

We were also able to have a family home evening with Sister Etzi and her boyfriend Bill. When the missionaries first started seeing him, he didn't know about how he felt about us. But now it is like we are best friends. We usually play a little game and then share a spiritual message with them. Sister Etzi said she wanted to read about the first vision this time. As we read Bill was really interested. Sister Etzi bore her testimony and Bill said he wanted to know for himself as well! That was amazing, we will see what continues to happen with him.

We also got the feeling we needed to go knock on the door of a man named Don. He is the neighbor of some members and a really nice guy. When we knocked on the door he saw us and said he knew why we were there and everything. We just asked if we could do any service for him. He said he could really use some help with his lawn. His health has been really bad and he could not do it on his own. He kept saying how the timing of this was perfect! We have gotten a great relationship now. It was definitely the spirit that led us to him.

Well I just want everyone to know how much I love being a missionary. For the good times and the hard times. That is what sculpts us into what we are! Thank you for all of the support!

Elder May

District picture with Pres, Johnson

District pancake making in the mission home

This has been a great week! We were able to help another couple in a pretty sticky situation move out of there home this week! They were really grateful because they had to be out by the end of the month. But I definitely learned the importance of having love in a home. We were able to see a lot of great things happen with the less active members we have been teaching. There are a few who have been coming to church and are working on going to the temple! So great things are happening there. We also have seen so many great things happen as we have been spending a lot of our time finding investigators. We have been led by the spirit to many different people who are prepared. One young man named Damon is one of them. We met him last week and gave him a Book of Mormon and invited him to read it. When we went to go see him this week he said that he had been reading the Book of Mormon for an hour every night and that he had been loving it!! He said he loved what it taught and that he wanted to learn more. As we were preparing to have like the best lesson ever with him, his mom started yelling to him from the inside of the house. She chewed him out pretty bad and them came outside and yelled at us as well... So we weren't able to teach him but we will keep trying. Oh yeah miracle of the week! I couldn't find my magnet name tag anywhere and I thought it would show up eventually. Well I was on exchanges this week and apparently a less active lady came up to Elder Slade while they were in Mckees rocks and told them she had seen my name tag in a mud puddle on the side of the road. So we looked over there a couple of days later and we found it stuck right in the mud on the side of the road! But hey I found it! I lost this same name tag for all of last winter in a church parking lot and some members found it when all the snow melted. So I am still being blessed on finding my things haha. Well thank you for all the support and have a great week!

What an awesome week! First of all the weather was amazing all week long. There were three of four days right in a row that had clear skies with 70 degree weather! It was amazing to see everyone come out of hibernation for the winter, people actually do live in Pittsburgh haha. Last week I told you about Andre who we met as he was trying to pack everything up to move. Well this week we were able to take some time to help him and his family move and to get rid of everything they needed to so they could make the deadline they needed to be out by. It was cool to see how grateful they were. They repeated over and over again how we were an answer to his prayers. That is one of the greatest feelings I have been able to experience, when you listen to a prompting from the spirit and then realize that your listening and acting was an answer to someone's prayers. This week we have been able to spend a lot of time finding new investigators! I love seeing the hand of the Lord in everyday life. As a missionary if you will just go out and work, he will always provide. I have seen that time and time again. We were able to find some people who are really excited to meet with us this upcoming week. I am excited to see what other miracles will happen. We also were able to meet with Julia. She is doing great! We were talking about the temples and her working towards going there and she said that she wanted to go as soon as she can! She plans on meeting with Bishop in the next couple of weeks for her recommend. Yesterday we were on a team up with Brother Muñoz. Him and his wife just moved into the ward and they are awesome. During our lesson with Sister Jackson he asked her if we could sing some hymns with her and her family. She was like, "Man I don't sing!" Haha but we convinced her. After a couple of verses of the spirit of God, she was pumped about how good we sounded. Her 6 year old daughter, Precious, came in and we sang I am a child of God with her. It was really fun and it also brought a great spirit. As we were leaving precious ran out to us and yelled, "Thank you for teaching me how to sing!!" It was an awesome day. Thanks for all of the emails and support! The mission is going great and flying by way too fast. I love Pennsylvania with all of my heart, it is truly the promised land. Have a great week!

This was an awesome week!! We have really been praying and working with Julia and this week she was able to be baptized! It has been awesome teaching her and seeing all of the miracles that have happened and then being able to see her be baptized. I haven't met someone as prepared as she is. The baptism went great as well. She was able to sing "I heard him come" with her dad and it was really good. Her whole family was able to come even her grandpa and aunt from Utah, along with a lot of her friends from School so it turned out really great. She is excited to go to the temple so hopefully she can get there before too long!

After the Baptism Elder Slade and I were walking around visiting people and Elder Slade said, "I feel like we need to be an answer to someone's prayers tonight." I kind of brushed it off and didn't really pay attention to it. But that night we felt strongly that we needed to visit certain people but none of them were home. As we were walking up the street we saw some people outside so we went up to talk with them. Turns out they have a couple of days to move everything out of the house they are in. They had no way to move it all out by themselves and were praying to receive some help. They told us how much of a blessing we were to them. So we will be going back to help them this week. I was really humbled afterwards thinking about how in tune Elder Slade was with the Spirit. I just brushed it off but he was listening and we were able to be that answer to their prayers. It was such a great week, and we were able to see God's hand in so many different ways! Thank you for all of the support!

Elder May 

Julia's baptism (My arm is on the glass behind her, not around her!!)

Well it looks as though winter has struck Pittsburgh again! We got a couple inches of snow the other day... It was kind of sad looking at all of the blossoming trees with all this snow on them... But hey eventually it has to stay warm right? This week I was able to work hard with my new companion Elder Slade! He is awesome and he has a great desire to serve. It has been great going out and working hard every day! We had a zone training this week on finding new investigators and one thing we really emphasized is the effort of talking with everyone. We were out trying to get in contact with a couple of people and there was someone walking on the other side of the street with those big old headphones on jamming out. Well we decided we would just go for it and see if we could talk to him and he was actually interested and willing to talk to us. We taught him about the Book of Mormon and we even got a time to go back and teach him! So that was a really cool experience. Sunday we had another great lesson with Julia! She is so excited and after our lesson the member we had come with us said, "I have never met someone so prepared for the gospel before." And that is so true. We had a lesson on temples and doing family history work. President Hoggard who was with us has one of the most powerful testimonies of the temple. He lost his wife about 10 years ago to cancer. So when he bore his testimony of the temple the spirit just filled the room. Julia is excited to start working towards it! After Brother Olson, her dad bore an amazing testimony to Julia of this church and of Thomas S Monson. It was a rare experience. We are so excited for her baptism and to see her able to enter into those covenants. I am just so blessed that Heavenly Father allowed me to be a part of this experience.
I am loving Pennsylvania so much. After being here for 19 months it is a home to me. I love the green, the humidity, the cold, the crazy roads that have no rhyme or reason, everything! I truly know that we get sent to where we are supposed to serve. If I was asked if I could go back and have my mission anywhere in the world, I would choose right where I am at. I am grateful for the people out here. They have truly changed who I am. The Gospel is true and I am grateful for the happiness it brings to me! Thanks for all of the support! Have a great week!