Solothurn - Week 12

Hey Friends and Fam, 

It's been yet another great week out in the beautiful, rolling hills here in Switzerland. This week is transfer calls again, and we know that according to Swiss law, I have to leave the country, because I've been here 90 days on my American tourist visa. So next week, I'll let you all know where I'm ending my mission. Isn't that an odd thought?! It's been 2 years since I received my call, and more than 20 months in the field.

So, it was a good week. We found a new family through dooring who are open to the gospel. I was able to go on exchange in a struggling area and we found 5 new people together. We have people progressing toward their goal of baptism. The sun has decided to start shining more. I'm doing one of the most important works one could do in this world. Life is great I would say. 

As many of you know, the Baseball State Tournament is this week in Utah. I heard this week that the guys won their first 2 games, and will be playing in the Quarterfinals tomorrow. S/O to my boys for the hard work. As I was thinking about this, Wednesday this week will be the 4 year anniversary of the time that we played in the State Championship and lost in 10 innings, and a couple days ago was the 2 year mark of my last game. So naturally, as it always is, my mind was drawn this week to the greatest game in the world. I had the privilege of playing baseball for 4 years under the greatest high school coach in the state, and learning life lessons from a game I loved.

As I took time to think about it this week, I realized that a lot of those lessons have shaped my mission, and will continue to shape my life. I'd like to share 10 with you, that I believe if a boy can learn playing baseball, will shape him into a man as he progresses in life. 

1. It's not the Will to Win that matters, rather the Will to Prepare to Win  

* If someone wants to be good at anything, they have to practice at it. The same stood for baseball. We would practice as a team everyday after school, until the evening, then there were those of us who would stay after practice to work on becoming better personally, then those same few would be at the gym that night looking to get bigger, faster, and stronger. All of that was in preparation to win.

 * The same stands for missionary work. I remember stepping into my first couple days in the mission field, and feeling completely inadequate and unprepared. Anyone would feel that way. Watching and observing different missionaries, I've learned that sure, we all want a baptism, we all want to be successful, but those who fail to prepare to be successful, will always fail.

 2. Trust Your Teammates  

* Throughout my years of baseball, it was very important for me to learn to trust that everyone would do their job correctly and precisely. To be honest, there's a few kids I played ball with that I didn't really like off the field, but when it came down to it, I would have done anything for anyone of those guys on the field. The trust was developed by the realization that we were working towards the same goal, to win a championship.  

* The same goes in missionary work. You put 75,000 young men and women out on the same field from 75,000 different backgrounds, and you're going to find guys you don't like, respect, or even connect with. But the fact of the matter is that each one of the 75,000 is (hopefully) working towards the same goal. When you're able to put past you the fact that you don't get along off the field, and you can put your game face on and be ready to die for him on the field, that's when you see success. 

3. Measure a Man by the Size of His Heart  

* On the baseball field, if you put the strongest, biggest, fastest guy out there and pit him against the kid who's got nothing but pure heart and a push to win, the kid with the biggest heart will always win. In baseball, you could hardly ever measure an opposing player by their size off the bat. You could measure it by looking into their eyes, and seeing how bad they wanted the thing they were working for.  

* In missionary work, I could put the most talented young man out there. One who has been out for 2 years, and stick him with a rookie who wants nothing but to succeed. The greenie, with the influence of the Spirit will win and be more successful every single time. 

4. Get Over Not Being Perfect, and Move Forward  

* I often made the mistake of criticizing myself too much as seeing how well everyone else was doing. It's important sometimes to step back and accentuate your strengths as well. If all you ever see is the things that you struggle with, then your attitude will always be negative.  

* In missionary work, if I spent the entire time gawking over missionaries who were better at something than I was, I would dig myself a hole that would be hard to get out of. I need to focus on my own progress and recognize my strengths in the process. 

5. Never Be Afraid of Failure  

* I remember pitching in my first varsity game. I was so nervous, and my heart was pounding, and there was more people watching than there ever had been before. I came in, gave up a few runs, but still got my job done, and then the game finished. I had some time to think about it and then the next day, I got asked to pitch again, against the same team, in the same tournament. Knowing how it had felt the first time, I promised myself that I would block out the fear, and give the best I had to give. I came in with the bases loaded, no outs, in a tied game in extra innings, and blocked out the people, the voices, the heart pumping in my chest, and struck out the next 3 batters to end the inning and keep us in the game.  

* If I spend my entire time throughout the day worried about what people are going to think of me, or if I'm going to fail talking to this person, I'm going to be an extremely crappy missionary. If I can get over the fear, I can make miracles happen in the lives of people who are searching. 

6. Your Attitude Can Determine the Overall Success of the Team  

* I remember as well playing on teams where if you struck out and chose to come back to the dugout and have yourself a pity party by throwing your helmet and bat on the ground, you would then be riding the bench. I remember the feeling of one coming back to the dugout, throwing his things around, and it affecting the whole attitude and thus success of the entire team.  

* So a part of it is dealing with disappointment. Maybe I strike out instead of getting a hit and driving in a run. Maybe the investigator dropped us instead of getting baptized. But how I choose to react to that can affect my companion, my district, the members, which overall affects the success of the mission as a whole. How one learns to overcome disappointment will determine how successful one is in life. 

7. Don't Back Down From a Challenge  

* Another good way to say it I suppose is never give up. In my sophomore year, our team had a less than average season and we ended up in a play-in game against another average team to see who got into the state tournament. We beat them 7-6 or something like that. The tournament was double elimination, and we lost our first game and it looked bleak. Many would have thrown in the towel or stopped working hard. But we won our next 10 games or so to make it into the state championship. What an incredible experience.  

* Today, I've been blessed by this lesson as I come and go into new areas with new companions. I know that no matter what the situation is, I can make something great out of it, but only if I don't back down from it. 

8. Leave the Past in The Past  

* This is one I'm still learning and perfecting. This is the baseball experience from 4 years ago where we were one strike away from winning the state championship. All I ever wanted in my baseball career was to win a state championship. I remember the feeling of watching that pitch, being ready to jump up and run onto the pitcher’s mound in a huge dogpile, hold the trophy, put a nice ring on my finger, and celebrate for a long time. But as fate would have it, things turned out differently, and we lost the game. 4 years later, I still struggle with the memory of losing what I really wanted. But if I dwell only on that memory, it will always prevent my success. Leave the Past in the Past, because you can change history TODAY with one swing of a bat.  

* If I spent all my time as a missionary dwelling on the bad experiences, or the stories of what missionaries have done in my area in the past, I would be less than what I need to be, and always hindered by the knowledge that I can't change the past. I would rather focus on changing the past with one swing or one 85 mph fastball. 

9. Play Everyday Like it's your Last  

* Nobody really knows exactly when they'll play their last game of baseball. They may have a good guess, but that guess may be marred by injury or something else. For me, it was in my senior year that I happened to have stress fractures in my back from too much repetitive pitching, and had a shoulder problem, which seemed to get worse throughout the season and still bugs me now. I'm really thankful that I could finish the season, but it just goes to show, you never know.  

* I've seen a couple of missionaries come to the end of their missions early. Completely unexpectedly, one needs surgery, or one is diagnosed with a disease, or a tragedy in the family happens. It's no secret. Life isn't fair. So we should treat everyday like we don't know what's going to come tomorrow because we simply don't know. 

10. Never, Ever, Ever Quit  

* I remember an experience when I was about 10, where I got called on to pitch in a city league game, and I did horrible. I walked a bunch of kids, and lost us the game eventually. I came home that night with the determination that I would never play baseball again because I was so bad at it, and I couldn't pitch. Sitting there wallowing in my sorrow, I remember my dad coming into my room and reminding me that 'Hadfield's aren't quitters', and that I could do anything I stuck my mind to and one bad game didn't determine my destiny. If I had chosen to quit, I would never have lived the amazing baseball experiences I had, and never learned the lessons I did.  

* How grateful I am that one bad choice or chapter doesn't determine my destiny. One bad day as a missionary never determines my complete success or failure. I know as well that I will never, ever, ever quit in the work of God. What a priceless lesson.  All in all, I'm so grateful for the lessons I learned playing the greatest game there is to play. In a game of inches, I learned how to gain those inches, which will help me to gain inches in life. I envy my former teammates who get to play on one of the greatest stages of high school baseball this week, but I know I'm doing an even greater work on an even better stage. What an opportunity to learn about life! I LOVE BASEBALL.

Enjoy your week,

Elder Hadfield

Bern Zone Conference

Solothurn - Week 11

Hey everybody! This week has been pretty long. Some crazy stuff going on this week and lots of fallen out appointments again. That's always a thing though.

I had a really good Austausch in Zollikofen with Elder La Plant after we had interviews with President. My interview with President was really good. It was nice, it's been about 2 and a half months since I've seen him. He's really struggling figuring out what to do with our area. He wants to close us Elders because there's 13 elders in the mission going home, and almost none coming in. He has to close all areas with 4 missionaries in them. So either us or the sisters are getting closed, he just needs to figure out what to do. It would be difficult for the sisters to take over the work we have going here, and they don't have much going on to be brutally honest. So we will see what he does. Who knows?

Another cool thing, to figure out more with the situation, President came to our sacrament meeting yesterday and gave a talk. It was great to have him there. I'd never had President in one of our sacrament meetings before. He gave a talk about hearing different voices. This is kind of where my thought comes from for today.

We all live in a world surrounded by voices. As I think about my home life, I would wake up, pray, and hope to hear the Spirit throughout the day. Then I would go upstairs, hear the voices of my Mom and Dad, of siblings, then of friends at school, of different teachers and professors throughout the day, from a boss or work colleagues, of coaches and teammates, then again of mom and dad before I jump into bed at night again. Not even mentioned in that is my own voice. My own thoughts throughout the day. There's hardly a point where we aren't hearing a voice. So when do we hear the voice of the Spirit? There's points where other people get so tired of hearing the judging, accusing, annoying, or condoning voices of others, that they refuse to continue living the way they are. The voice of the Spirit is never judging, accusing, or condoning, rather loving, understanding, and guiding. When one doesn't take the time to plan a time into their day to listen to the Spirit, life becomes twice as difficult.

As yesterday was May 15, I thought on the restoration of the Priesthood which occurred 187 years ago. If Joseph had never chosen to take time to listen to the voice of the Spirit, we would have no truth on earth today. Miracles happen when we take the time to listen. That's my testimony!

Have a good week, I appreciate your prayers!

Elder Hadfield

Solothurn - Week 10

Hey everybody, 

Just a short email this week because I already Skyped home and had all that fun and jazz. This week, a lot of appointments fell out and it was actually quite a frustrating week. Very draining. It seems to be that we always have one really good week then one bad week on top of it. I don't get why. Hard to explain I suppose. That made for some good solid time on the streets. It's been a while since I've had that.

On Tuesday, we found 7 potentials on a Tausch with Elder Mateer, and on Wednesday 3 more. Since then, no more. There's just some missionaries who find different things more productive than others. I'm of the solid opinion that my time is best spent on the streets seeing the people, and talking to everyone I can talk to. That's the only way this whole experience works.

So there has been a couple points in the past couple weeks where I've been really frustrated, just because there's often a lot to do, and we can fill our time with good activities, or we can fill them with better and best activities that give us the chance to see more people, talk to more of them, teach more of them, and baptize them when it comes down to it. That's a common frustration I have with some missionaries. It's an improvement I keep trying to make as well, as I wasn't always the one to want to go do the best activities, I was just satisfied with the good ones. That's a big lesson I've learned on the mission. So yeah, one of those weeks I suppose. Lots to learn from. 

Shoutout to my mom. I love her with all my heart and she's my number one fan and my hero. Happy Mother’s Day to her and all moms everywhere. 

Thanks for your emails and support. I love you all!

-Elder Hadfield

Solothurn - Week 9

Hey everybody,

Yet another eventful week. Can you all believe we are onto May already?? my goodness, time is just flying. Anywho, this week was awesome like I said. I can honestly say that I feel such a deep love for the people we are teaching and for this area and for the members. It's not quite a Munich love, but it's similar. Anyway, onto some of the highlights from the week.

On Tuesday, Elder Killpack and I had an Austausch. I had him here in Solothurn and it was great to be with him one last time before he goes home. He and I have a pretty good bond. We taught A first, and had a pretty solid lesson about the Restoration with her. The Spirit was pretty thick and we could all feel it. We committed her again to pray and ask if it's the time for her to be baptized. We are working on taking super solid Joint Teaches with us to teach. Good lesson. Right after that, we went to F and had our first lesson with him there. He accepted the Book of Mormon really well, was excited to read, he already prays like we do, and he committed to come to church next week. All a good deal and a good Austausch. 

On Thursday, we were with the Z family for lunch and had a hilarious time. She is really funny and loves missionary work. They're an awesome family. After that, we hit the streets out in Solothurn. We had talked to people for about 3 hours, and then we saw this guy handing out free bibles. We knew the sisters needed one for an investigator they had. We walked up to him and tried to take one. He wouldn't let us have one because 'we don't believe in the bible'. So you can imagine this conversation led straight to a bash. I destroyed the guy after asking why it is that millions of people can understand one book so differently and expanding on that. He quoted a scripture to us, which I opened up and read the context of and was extremely odd. He was silent after that, but still refused to give us a free bible. Jerk. That night, we were at A again with our good friend G.

Friday was epic. We had an appointment with the M family. We got there, and the daughter answered and said her parents weren't quite home yet but that we could come around into the backyard. The son and his friends were playing soccer, and invited us to play. The parents got home and we were playing soccer with their kids and the neighborhood kids. So dad came to play too and it was tons of fun. We played for an hour or so, ate with them, then went over the first lesson and the Restoration. Throughout our discussion, there was a type of Spirit there that is just tangible. It's those moments where you can just feel your heart swell with happiness and the wish that these people will be touched by the Spirit. We asked if they thought that in theory Joseph Smith's story could have happened. They all answered yes. Then we asked if the believed it did happen. It was really quiet, then the 15 year old daughter said yes. I'm pretty sure it shocked her parents to hear that. We asked them if they would be willing to be baptized on the 18th of June. The mom was a little bit freaked out, but again the daughter said yes. After talking about it, they decided not to commit directly to a date. But mom was at church yesterday, which is for the first time ever, and it was really a huge step of progress. 

Saturday, we had a lesson with a new convert who struggles to come to church because of his work. We thought we were teaching the word of wisdom, but we showed up and we weren't teaching the word of wisdom and it was really obvious. One of those were you look at each other and say, 'No, we need to do something else.' After the opening prayer, we still didn't know what we were going to do, and we just decided to start sharing testimonies in a circle about the Atonement. It was so powerful yet again. I got to share 2 experiences from my mission where I have really felt the power of the Atonement very strongly. It turned into a great lesson. 

Yesterday, we were at church. It was a great fast and testimony meeting. At night, we were at M and his family's house. They insisted that they feed us their Ethiopian food they had made. When Elder Harradine was out of the room, M told me what the food was. It would have been nicer to not know actually. We had Lamb Stomach, Chicken Innards, and Boiled eggs, with pancake like tortillas, and the spiciest African sauce you can imagine. You just tore a piece of tortilla, grabbed with the other hand as much as you could hold, and threw them both down. Elder Harradine was struggling his way through the meal really badly. I actually didn't mind it that much. They were very impressed that I finished and had seconds. I'll send pictures. 

Way fun week, with some pretty powerful experiences. I've enjoyed it a lot. I'm down to just 4 weeks in Solothurn, so the work goes forward, and we will see what happens. 

Just a quick thought. This weekend will be 2 years since I received my mission call, and on pondering that, I thought a lot about my youth and experiences with YM leaders and campouts ⛺️with the bros. This quote from a President Monson talk came to mind. 

"The paintings of Norman Rockwell on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post magazine or in Boy’s Life always brought tender feelings to me. Of the two paintings I most admire, one is of a Scoutmaster sitting by the dying embers of the bonfire and observing his boys--fast asleep in their small tents. The sky is filled with stars, the tousled heads of the boys illumined by the fire’s glow. The Scoutmaster’s countenance reflects his love, his faith, his devotion. The scene recalls the thought, “The greatest gift a man can give a boy is his willingness to share a part of his life with him.”"

You can all ponder that on your own. It's meant a lot to me to have leaders who were always willing to share parts of their lives with me. I look up to those guys a lot.

Alright my friends, that's all for this week. I love you all, enjoy the spring weather! ☀️

Elder Hadfield

'A religion that does not demand the sacrifice of all things does not have the power to lead men to salvation.' -Joseph Smith

With G to visit A

Ethiopian Food

Solothurn - Week 8

WHY I STAY

Hey guys! This week has been a great one. We had some extremely cool experiences and got back on track after a rough week last week. Here's some of the highlights.

On Wednesday, the Assistants called and asked if they could come work with us the following day on their way through to Bern to exchange with the Zone Leaders there. I know both of them pretty well. Elder Hunt was my Zone Leader a while ago, and the Assistant when I was a Zone Leader, and Elder Jakobi and I got to know each other well at MLC's when we were Zone Leaders together. We aren't exactly sure why they wanted to come work with us, but it was way fun. I worked with Elder Jakobi together, (he's from East Germany), and I had a blast. He's hilarious. We all went finding for about 2 hours, and had numerous great conversations, and found 9 new people that day who said yes to giving their number out. Elder Jakobi and I played really well off of each other and had a great time. I was disappointed when we had to stop.

After that we went to the temple together. Another great experience there, I'll send pictures.

We had a lesson with A, I think I told you about her last week. The lady who has evil spirits. She's Italian, so we had an Italian member make her some cornbread, then we took it by with him. Turns out THEY'RE RELATED. Whattttttt?! We had such a good lesson with her and it was just another super tender mercy.

We got a referral this week for F from Columbia! It's that good South American blood. He's so prepared and really interested. We will hopefully have him in white soon.

We set a baptism date with M family this week. Wife and 3 kids. June 25. We are on fire lately!

So what I really wanted to talk about, and will make this email probably super long, is our Zone Training on Tuesday. At the end of it all, we were asked to prepare a short bit on why we stay on our missions. Pretty easy right?

I had mine prepared, and was pretty sure I had THE correct answer. The ZL's started off sharing, and then I shared. Then a bunch of other people shared and I realized there is about a million great answers to the question. As I thought about it more, I realized that there's a lot of reasons I stay on my mission and I feel like I should share some of them with you. So why do I stay on my mission? Why do you stay on yours?

Most of us come on missions and realize it isn't exactly what we expected. We aren't baptizing millions (especially here), there are disobedient and tough companions, the rules aren't always easy, the daily schedule takes quite the toll on one after a while, and we realize that missionaries, the people we grew up worshipping, don't have any type of magic and are still just normal people ordained to a calling. Being 20 months in, I can look back and tell you a lot of the reasons that I stay. 

1. I stay because I see myself fulfilling my purpose     - I don't mean the 'Inviting others to come to Christ'. That purpose is a means to an end of me accomplishing my own purpose. To return to my Father in Heaven. I've learned that the only way to do that is to change. I've changed a lot here in the past 20 months. Change is the central purpose and blessing of life. To become more like our Savior and adapt His qualities into our lives, until we stand face to face with God and know Him as well as He knows us.

 2. I stay for those who can't serve     - I have quite a few friends back home who I know weren't able to serve missions, or who came home early. One rings especially in memory, who wanted to serve so badly but was told it was not a good idea by doctors. A couple of my best friends, and one in particular, fought for their lives for a year to even get on a mission. I spent the first year of my mission often thinking of them, hoping they would get on missions, and they made it. The push that gave me was always a reason to stay and work harder.

3. I stay because as I develop godly love for people, I recognize how much God loves me     - This one is pretty simple. It's quite the feeling to start understanding how God feels about you. I have been able to teach people, pray my heart out for their success, watch them stumble and get back up again, have my heart break when they choose not to listen, and have my joy completely full as they enter the waters of baptism to enter a covenant. It's just a small portion of God's love, but it helps me to picture how much God loves me.

4. I stay because of the success of the people I've learned to love - Alma 26:35-37

"Now have we not reason to rejoice? Yea, I say unto you, there never were men that had so great reason to rejoice as we, since the world began; yea, and my joy is carried away, even unto boasting in my God; for he has all power, all wisdom, and all understanding... [He] is mindful of every people, whatsoever land they may be in; yea, he numbereth his people, and his bowels of mercy are over all the earth. Now this is my joy, and my great thanksgiving; yea, and I will give thanks unto my God forever."     - I've seen people's lives changed as they recognize the meaning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and I know God loves them, numbers them, and is mindful of them

5. I stay because I have a vision of the work I'm doing and its meaning  - JSH 1:25

 "I was led to say in my heart: Why persecute me for telling the truth? I have actually seen a vision; and who am I that I can withstand God, or why does the world think to make me deny what I have actually seen? For I had seen a vision; I knew it, and I knew that God knew it, and I could not deny it."

I have seen the vision that the Gospel of Jesus Christ can implant in one's life. I've seen examples of the truth of it over and over in my life. Coming here, hundreds of people just want to prove me wrong, and prove Joseph Smith wrong, by personally attacking me. It's not easy to deal with and I seem to always be raised with questions that I can't fully answer over and over again. But as I search the scriptures I find answers, and always come back to this verse here and know that I've seen the vision, and I can't deny it.

6. I stay because I see God's promises to me being fulfilled - D&C 84:88

 "I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up."

This being the beginning of those promises, I have felt His presence every single day about me. On the hard days, where I'm so frustrated with myself and with other people, or so tired that I can't take it any more, I feel a special strength that takes the place of those feelings. To be able to bring those angels to somebody else, and especially to BE that angel for someone, is the greatest gift I have to offer; to help another person see God fulfill His promises to them. 

These are just a few of the reasons as I've been brainstorming throughout the week and that I felt inspired to write down. I'd consider to all you who are missionaries to ask yourselves, why do you stay? Write down the thoughts that come to mind and remind yourself of them in the hard times. Staying will always beat quitting. That's lifted my spirits this week.

 Love you all, enjoy your week. 

Elder Hadfield

Solothurn - Week 7

Hey everybody! What a week. This week was definitely one of those grinding weeks where you push harder and harder and less and less happens. Last week and now this week are the school vacation in Switzerland, a missionary's nightmare. As soon as school gets out here, everyone packs up their bags, and goes out of country. Of course, they don't bother telling us beforehand. So, we spend the whole week trying to confirm appointments that we had already set up and then naturally having them fall out. We had 9 of them this week. Crazy. You have to ask yourself if people really are just that ignorant, or if they actually just have no respect for your time and your job. Questions left to be answered.

So, a cool experience from the week! We had a really cool experience last Monday. When we were out for PDay, we had a member of another ward call us and ask if we could come with her that night to her friend's place. She lived right next to us. This friend was baptized a member of the church as a teenager, but left 4 or 5 months later because of the pressure of her family to disown her. Long story short, her mom took her to a soothsayer, and the soothsayer told her not to marry the guy she wanted to marry, but she did anyways, and it ended in messy divorce. She took all the blame for it, and beat herself up so bad for it. Since then, she's been haunted by evil spirits, who tell her she's worth nothing and shouldn't continue living. It's been 15 years or so. She told us she was able to deal with it pretty well for a long time, but that lately, she had been really struggling with it. So we were with this member and her husband at this ladies house and from the second you walked in, you could just feel the darkest power of the adversary in the apartment. I've only felt that feeling one other time on my mission. So, everyone was asking questions to try and figure out the whole situation. I didn't have as many questions, but after a while, I just felt like I should pop out a Book of Mormon, and I threw it open and landed in 2 Nephi 2. A familiar scripture, 'There must be opposition in all things,' ran over my eyes, and I read it to her and talked about it. Many people would just say that she's crazy, and that its all in her head. But if there's one thing I've learned, it's that there is a God, which means there simply has to be a Satan, and his evil spirits. It's a real thing and pretty intense. I think that helped her a little bit to realize maybe she's not totally insane. So it came time to give her a blessing, and she asked me to give her the blessing. During the blessing I felt prompted to tell her about a million times that she was a daughter of God and that she could only be bothered by these spirits if she allowed it. Afterward, the dark feeling was gone, and she felt better. We got a return appointment to come back and teach her the gospel this week. It was just another great chance to exercise the priesthood. I think I learn twice as much as the person I bless when I exercise the priesthood. It's fantastic every time.

2nd cool thing: I got to talk to Elder Carr on the phone for about an hour last Monday in the evening and it just felt great. I love that kid, and Munich sounds like it's doing pretty good.  Another pretty cool thing that's happened this week to follow up last week's email. I mentioned last week the prompting that I had to write more things down, and this week, I've spent all my spare time after planning at night writing down memories and feelings I've had, thoughts about lessons I've learned from my companions, and from other missionaries. It's been a really cool experience to take a week and look back on my mission and to see how far I've come. I've said it before, but I never pictured myself in this stage of my mission. I always imagined staying a little young missionary who just spoke the language as best as he could and relied on his trainer for everything. But those days ended really fast at the beginning before they threw me out on my own with a new missionary and said essentially, 'Go for it!' Now as a more seasoned and refined missionary and moreover person, it's easy to miss the lessons I learned and the person I've become if I don't take time to look back and write things down. That's blessed me a lot this week.  Well, I'd love to hear how you're all doing. I hear my BoSox are looking at a good year! We can only hope. 

I love you all, and hope you're doing well. 

Make good choices and have a fantastic week.  Elder Hadfield

Solothurn - Week 6

Subject Line: Emergency Room Excitement!

Hey Everybody!

Who's ready to freak my mom out?! Hahaha from the subject line, I guess I better just get down to business, and tell my story.

So, for a couple days this week, I had been feeling pretty sick. On Thursday, I woke up with a sore throat, and with a fever. I didn't think much of it, and it went away after the early morning. On Friday, it got worse, and I had a stomach ache, but again, it went away after lunch. It was pretty obvious to me that I just hadn't been sleeping very well.

Friday Night, we had a really good eating appointment and turned a new family into investigators. We are WAY excited about that. It was really fun. The mom is from Brazil, the dad is Swiss, and the kids are great as well. It was a really powerful appointment. Anyway, we got home that night, and we had both eaten so much, that we were just at the point of laying on the bed ready to die if the other one of us mentioned food. I slept  pretty well that night, but then came Saturday morning.

On Saturday Morning, I woke up feeling just fine. We had transfer calls (we are staying together by the way), and then we launched into studies. After comp study, we were typing out our progress record to send to the ward council. I was laying down on the couch typing everything out, while Elder Harradine read me phone numbers and addresses. All of a sudden laying there, I got this unbelievably sharp pain in my left shoulder. Which isn't too uncommon, because I used to have shoulder problems. It went away, but about a minute later, it came back really hard and was closer to my heart. It went away again, and came back a third time right next to my sternum. To describe the pain, it felt like someone was just twisting a knife into my heart. I thought I should just get up and walk around, walk it off kind of thing. So I got up and walked into the other room. I was feeling okay, but all of a sudden the pain came back worse than before.

A bunch of things happened instantly, and I felt my heart slow wayyyy down, the blood flow cut off to my brain, my vision blacked out, I went dizzy, and I couldn't breathe. Being in that state threw my body into shock, and I passed out. On my way down, I hit the wall pretty hard, as well as the floor. Elder Harradine describes it as hearing a loud crash, looking over, and seeing my feet just violently shaking on the floor. He woke me up from everything after about 20 seconds. Waking up was awful. The pain in my chest was so sharp, that I was convinced I was having a heart attack. I still couldn't breathe very well either. He ran to call the mission nurse, and I laid on the floor, and the first thought was that my mission was over, and I was going to have to come home. That's the first time on my mission I've ever had that thought. It's not a fun thought. The mission nurse wanted to talk to me, and she asked me what day it was, and to be honest, I didn't really know. She asked me to take my pulse, and I did. I was at about 30 beats per minute.

She told us to call a member to take me to the hospital right away. I laid there, and Elder Harradine found a member to pick us up, and they drove us to the hospital. We flew into the ER, and they put me on an IV, an EKG, and something else. They drew blood and then left me kind of laying there. I was still in pain, and laying alone in the hospital room, I had a lot of time to think about my mission. The question came into mind, 'If you had to go home now, would you regret anything?' As I pondered that, the nurses wanted to take me in for X-Rays and an MRI. So we did that, and then I laid in the room some more. By that point, the pain had gone way down, and I was pretty sure I was going to be okay and not die. When I came to that point, I had a blast of the Spirit hit me. The thought was that I need to treat time more as a gift rather than an entitlement. The other was that I need to write more specific experiences down to remember my mission by. If I had come home on Saturday, I wouldn't have enough written down to please myself. That was a good impression that I'll need to act on. So after about 4 hours of laying in the hospital room, the doctors came in and gave me their analysis. They said my blood tests were the healthiest they had ever seen, and that they had no idea what was wrong, but that they were pretty sure it was just a muscle spasm around my heart. They wanted to talk to the hospital administrator for a quick second opinion, and that quick second opinion cost us another hour and a half. After that time they came in again. The diagnosis? Pericarditis. The swelling of the sack protecting the heart. The cause? Not enough sleep, too much work.

Did you all catch that? They said my heart's too big from loving so many people at the same time. Hahaha. So my heart was swollen enough that it hit a muscle, cramped the muscle, and caused it to spasm. They gave me pills to take for 2 weeks to take the swelling down, and said that after that, I should be totally fine. Thank heavens, I wasn't ready to die young.

Saturday was a day of lessons learned. Heavenly Father has such a funny way of thinking up brilliant ways to teach someone a lesson or two, and He got me good. It was definitely a day I won't forget for the rest of my life. So today, exactly 19 months into my mission, I'm extremely grateful to have the privilege of being a missionary. Maybe it's something I was taking for granted before. I love being here, love the people I'm serving with, and love the people I'm serving. It has already blessed my life immensely, and will assuredly continue to do so in these last 5 closing months. I know that there is a God, that He lives, and loves us. Very simple, but powerful. I know we go through certain times in our lives to learn lessons, and that's what He did to me this weekend. If you're going through a time like that, slow down, and think about what God is trying to tell you. It will bless your life, I promise.

Well, here are pictures of the whole ordeal, and I'll hear from you all next week!

Nice Dress, son!

Elder Hadfield