Email received January 4, 2013
Mbatecovio,
That´s Guarani for you. It's a way to greet men (I believe groups of people as well). This week was pretty great, I received so many blessings and a lot of help from the Lord. So last Monday after I sent home an email, I got to go to this way cool Soccer Museum. It´s got the South American Cup and it´s very nice, it´s also where they organize the South American Soccer League. I took a picture in front of a huge soccer ball with a tiny little movie theatre in that shows this little 15 minute movie about the history of soccer. We went with a ton of Latins and they were going crazy! It was so weird being in a movie theatre type setting again! It´s okay though because we were with the zone leaders. I´m also going to try and send home some pictures of part of my area, compare it to the snow and you´ll see that where I am is quite different than Utah. It was so hot on Saturday that I was just sweating buckets and everyone that we went and visited felt so bad for me. It was funny and I actually don´t mind sweating because when I´m sweaty it feels super nice if a car drives by or there´s a nice breeze that blows all of the sudden.
So as I told you at Christmas, one of the hardest things for me to do is contacts. Our weekly goal as a mission is 75 contacts but personally the most I had ever done in one week was 30 (and most other weeks were embarrassingly low). But this week everything changed. I noticed a little while ago that I don´t struggle with the language really at all anymore. I understand almost everything. There are a words that people will say that I´m not familiar with but I can almost always figure out their meaning from the context. So I realized that I don´t have anymore excuses and it´s time to get these contacts. My companion isn´t a real advocate for contacts because he feels like people just do them for the numbers, but President came to our district meeting and asked us to please do more contacts. He also told us that doing contacts is not the most effective way of spreading the Gospel, but that as we do our part we are showing our faith in the Lord and He will bless us. I decided that I don´t care if I´m doing contacts for numbers or not, but that I was going to do them. I prayed so much during the week that I would be able to get these contacts. I was always thinking about them (so much so that I actually had a dream about contacting people). Then on Wednesday night it seemed impossible to get 75 contacts, but that night I was praying super fervently that a miracle would happen and that I could get my contacts. I had an idea to ask my companion if we could do a division with a couple of priests in the ward that had asked us about doing a division on Sunday. Elder Morinigo was totally down and I suggested that I go to a village that we have hardly explored and that he go where our investigators are. It was such a success! I got 21 solid contacts that day alone! Then after that I would just pray that the Lord would put people in my path, and when I saw them I wasn´t nervous to talk with them anymore because I knew they were people that the Lord wanted me to talk to right at that very moment. I ended up getting 77 Contacts last week! It was great and now I´ve got so much confidence and I feel so much better after doing what President Madariaga asked. However I´m not going to lie, I don´t know how many of the people that I contacted are going to go anywhere right now in the Gospel, but I figure I´m planting seeds if nothing else. Yesterday I felt the Spirit super strong tell me to go talk to this one family that was sitting outside of their house. I went for it and they were very not interested. They started asking me things like what were the Savior's last words in the Book of John, and why we don´t believe that the Virgin Mary is our mother if she´s the mother of Christ and if Christ is our older brother. It didn´t matter how much we tried explaining things to them. But then I said a prayer in my head and the Lord put it in my head what to say to get out of the situation. It´s funny how the Lord works sometimes, but it increased my faith talking with them so it´s all good.
Well I love you guys and I hope you have a great week! I´m really loving the missionary experience, it has made me grow closer to the Lord than anything else in my life ever has! I hope Elder Reber is safe in Baltimore with all of those crazy football fans, here the people could care less. Haha.
Con Amor,
Elder Hulsey
P.s. the picture without anybody in it is a picture of this church in my area. It´s just a giant pavilion where they always sing and play instruments on Saturday nights.
