Hola Familia,
Hows everything back home, hopefully great. So this week was pretty great! First off we baptized Yonny on Saturday! It was way cool and his sister who's not a member came! Also I got to get in the water and baptize him! Everyone was laughing because it was very clearly my first time baptizing anyone and Yonny also tried to go under face first so I had to muscle him down the other way. But it was great and when we got in the bathroom to change he jumped because he was so excited. He also made it to church on time for his confirmation and a guy in the ward that came to Yonny´s baptism did the confirmation then gave a sweet talk in church that I think helped Yonny. I took a picture of Yonny with my plaque and I´m going to print it off and give it to him to remind him of his goal.
So this week I think I got roped into the illegal animal trafficking business. Last P-day an Elder from my district called us and was like hey I bought a monkey but it can´t stay here for the night, can you guys keep it for the night and tomorrow I´m going to give it to a member family. My companion was all for it so that night they brought it over but it wasn´t a monkey. My companion started laughing because it turns out the thing is actually some type of Mongoose! My companion was totally down to keep it for the night, but the first elder didn´t want to give it to the members anymore because it wasn´t actually a monkey and it would´ve eaten all of their chickens. So Elder Morinigo volunteered to send it to his family (without telling them by the way that he´s sending them a mongoose!). So the next morning we brought it over to this family that always carries packages to Elder Morinigo´s family for him and they brought it over there! Could you imagine if a mongoose just showed up at our house! Haha you´ve gotta love Paraguay and the Paraguayan way of life.
So as far as your questions mom, transfers are every 6 weeks, interviews with President are every 3 months. We will have transfers in 3 weeks but a lot of times they do special transfers and shuffle people around, and those would be occurring today. We have district meeting weekly, but the first week of the month we do zone training which is where the 2 districts in my zone have a meeting (without President). We have a huge zone conference with like 3 zones combined every other transfer and these usually take place in Asunción. This is where President and his wife and the assistants speak (and last time we even had a member of the 70 speak).
So that´s pretty crazy that Spencer is working on his mission papers! I realized this week how much progress I´ve made in my life since the beginning of my mission. It´s crazy because you do a lot of growing really fast and it´s hard, but then you come out of a hard time and you are so much happier and so much better. These past couple of months have been pretty hard but the most rewarding months of my life. It´s kinda weird because you´re thrown out here and you quickly learn that you have to depend on the Lord for everything, but it´s so cool when you consciously give up your will for His. A lot of things that I thought would be hard aren´t. Like I thought it would be hard to deal with people that don´t like Americans, but it´s actually kinda fun. Like just yesterday I got on the colectivo and this guy looked and me and said Get Out Yankee! I smiled and ignored him but he was pretty persistent, so I looked at him and asked him his name then asked him if he believes in Jesus Christ. I told him that I´m here in his country because I have an important message from Jesus Christ for him. He told me that Paraguay doesn´t need our dumb American message and I told him it´s for all of the world. He didn´t really have anything else to say after that. I tried inviting him to church but he quit listening to me. Haha those kinds of people make me laugh, but it´s really not hard. You can combat anything when you´re a missionary by simply bearing your testimony. I´m sure it works for people that aren´t missionaries too. The things that have been hard are having to humble myself and having to always think of your companion. I feel really bad for my companion because I´ve recently realized how prideful I am, but after some hard humbling experiences I´m so much happier and I feel so much better. It´s weird how easy it is to become prideful about things, even when your whole purpose is preaching the gospel. Pride sneaks in everywhere, but you can always pray for sincere help and it´s always worth the hard humbling process. As far as companions go it´s actually been pretty cool being able to see how everything I say and do has an effect on someone else and ultimately on our success. I´m sure my future wife will thank my companions because they have had to exercise a lot of patience as I try and figure out how to think of others before myself and working as a companionship. But it´s been great and Elder Morinigo has been super patient with me.
Well I love you guys a lot and I hope you're still doing all you can to live the way Heavenly Father wants you to. We´ve got great investigators and life is excelente here in Paraguay! I´m loving the people, the culture, the language, everything! Keep me in your prayers and my cousins on their missions too, and tell them I say hi.
Con Amor,
Elder Hulsey
