Family!

   I love you all. :) I hope you're having a wonderful week. It was a great week here in sunny California. (And I mean sunny, because it was in the 90s and 100s all week here in Moorpark! I'm surviving...enjoying the great farmers tan that's coming.) I loved hearing from you all this week. Thank you so much for all of your support. It makes me smile so big. :) So you're going to Disneyland this week? Awesome! I'll think about you all week. You will be so close! It blows my mind sometimes when we're at dinner with a member family and they talk about how they went to Disneyland that day. Weird. I'm in my own little world up here in my mission, but I'm so close to other things I'm familiar with. And Bonnie, it's so fun for me to think of how close you are. Anyway, enjoy my 2nd home. I hope you have an amazing time and really enjoy it. Please shout, "We love Melanie!" On the top of Splash Mountain. :) And eat a strawberry ice cream in a sprinkled waffle cone. Send me lots of pictures! And I'm way excited for the letters this week, thanks for telling me Momma. I thought of you all on Saturday with the Baptism and on Sunday with the Blessing and Party. There was a baby blessing in our ward too... I imagined I was with you all. This children coming into the world are such special spirits. I can't wait to meet Henry. How is the sod looking? Dad you gave the Baptism talk? Tonight we're teaching Charlotte about Baptism and Confirmation. I'm excited. I love her.

   So.....MOTHER'S DAY!!!!!!! I am SO excited! I love you all so much and hearing your voices is going to be amazing! We are allowed only 40 minutes, and if it's alright, I will be calling you at 5:30 my time (6:30 your time) on Sunday night. I will call Dad's cell phone like we did for Christmas. I hope that's all alright. I am so excited and so happy that so many of you will be there! You will all make me cry. :) Love you! Happy Mother's Day Mommy! Enjoy the wonderful feast! I can't wait to talk to you then!

   Guess what was fun yesterday. We had a lesson with a woman who has been trying to learn the guitar. She was having a really hard time tuning it. I was able to tune the guitar for her, and it made me feel so good. I can't even play the guitar, but I was still able to help her out. It was fun to hold an instrument again and play a scale or two to help tune it right. I think she was really grateful. (Dad, when I get home can you teach me how to play the guitar?) Speaking of grateful, I read President Uchtdorf's talk on Gratitude this morning. I loved that talk so much. I'm striving to have a spirit of gratitude in every circumstance. It really is the cure. It can lift us so much. He said that Gratitude is the catalyst for all of the other Christlike attributes. As I've mentioned in the past, I love studying the Christlike attributes from Preach My Gospel and working to develop them. They really help in every single circumstance and situation that comes up in life. We should all have a spirit of gratitude no matter what our situation may be at times. Thank you so much for the conference book! I love it so much, I study from it every day, and I've been using it for dinner messages and in lessons with others or talks in District Meetings. Thank you for the CD you sent me for Easter Mom. That is my favorite thing to listen to on Sundays and when I'm trying to calm down or relax in the evenings or at lunch time.

   So concerning the work, things are going really well. We had some amazing lessons this week. What made it amazing you might ask? Well, being able to see when the Spirit directs the lesson and helps you to know exactly what to say is amazing. Our lesson with C. on Thursday was so cool. I don't even know what happened at first, but I just started feeling all the right questions to ask and stories to share and we watched her change and open up a lot more. I know it wasn't me. I am so grateful for the direction of the Spirit and for the Lord's hand in all of His work. It feels so good to be an instrument in His hands. I want to strive to be more receptive to that guidance and those feelings. We also had great lessons with L. and M., I., and a few others this week. Our District Meeting this week was powerful. Elder Fagan and Elder Spencer gave the EDPEP and it was about using our personal experiences and testimony more in inviting others to make commitments and helping them to understand why those commitments are such a blessing. When they demonstrated Elder Fagan shared a very powerful and personal story about why he knows it's so important to pay tithing. Then when we all broke out into practicing, I was with Elder Fagan. He pretended to be one of our investigators and I was teaching. It was a cool experience as we got going into the EDPEP. I realized that when I focus on my personal testimony and experience with commitments, I'm a more powerful and confident teacher. It wasn't scary at all as I shared a personal experience from earlier in my life of how important it is to me to read the Book of Mormon every day. The practice felt really good and I felt like a powerful confident teacher. I know all of these things are true already. I love my testimony, I don't need to be afraid. I really appreciated the EDPEP this week that taught me that. That night I used that key in telling my personal testimony and experience in our lesson with Charlotte. It helped so much. I'm so grateful for how I'm learning and growing on my mission.

   Well...my time is about up, but I am SO excited to talk to you all on Sunday. Thanks for being such an amazing, wonderful, supportive, loving, encouraging, family. I love being a member of this family. :) Have an amazing week!

Love,

   Melanie (Sister Hardman)

P.S.- Bethany, I thought of you yesterday..."May the Fourth Be With You." Remember our buns? You're great!

This is me less than 30 minutes ago…just so you know that I’m still alive. ;)

A woman gave us a bunch of lo-quats? I think that’s what they were. J (And yeah, I had just had some red candy.