Email received March 11, 2013
Hola familia,
Well I took a little bit longer writing my president this week because some crazy stuff happened (some sad but mostly all amazing!). But yeah, crazy week. I´ll start off with the sad. Benigno didn´t show up to his baptismal interview and we spent most of the night trying to track him down. Elder Williamson was pretty upset but I don´t blame Benigno, it´s a pretty big thing and he actually understands that. I was finally able to get ahold of him on the phone the next day and he said he´s not ready for baptism, so we went over there and we shall see when he´ll get baptized. But other than that this week was AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So the way our house is there is our little house and our front porch is our dueños back patio (our dueño is menos-activo). So on Wednesday night I was on a division and we taught this guy right in front of our house. It was a really powerful lesson. But that's just one thing. So like I said I was on a division with my district leader, Elder Funk, who lives in my house with me. Last week he had a meeting in Asunción and couldn´t go grocery shopping, so after we had got our goals around 8 he asked if we could go to the grocery store and he could pick up a few things. It was on the way so we went and then we were going to go visit the next door neighbors and teach them (because they´re menos activos). On our way home from the grocery store we were walking home behind this guy that was walking really slow and then all of the sudden he just stopped and put his head on the wall on the side of the road. Elder funk asked him if everything was alright and I told him that as missionaries, we´re just here to listen to people and talk things out with them. He was about 20 years old and he told us that he would like to talk. So we went under a street light a little in front of our house and he just told us all of his problems for about 10 or 15 minutes. He was crying and his life was pretty much as low as it can be. We had just had a big zone capacitacion meeting the day before about using the scriptures and bearing pure testimony about the doctrines of Christ. We started sharing scriptures with him and telling him about how he could apply the doctrines of Christ to help him right now. I think we shared probably 20 scriptures with him, all of them just came to us from revelation. It was so cool to me to see how the Gospel literally gave this guy hope that he had completely lost. It was also such a cool experience being able to bear pure testimony of the simple doctrines of Jesus Christ, because really it´s the small and simple things that bring to pass great things. We don´t need to know all of the fluffy things, we just have to be able to bear genuine and pure testimony and that´s what makes the difference in people´s lives. Afterwards me and Elder Funk were talking and it was just amazing how strong the spirit was. It really made me start to change the way I look at this opportunity I have to be a missionary. God trusted me to go out and help His children here in Paraguay be able to live better lives now and enjoy celestial glory in the eternities. That´s a pretty powerful and sacred trust. I love so much being here, I know I´m exactly where I need to be and I know that as we serve God with our eye single to His glory, and doing it in the way that He wants, He will continue to bless us and thus we continue being unprofitable servants (Mosiah 2 I´m pretty sure), but I think that´s the way He´s planned it. He promises to compensate us for whatever sacrifices we make (Matthew 19:29) and being on the mission I can really see that that´s true. I love you guys so much and I hope you have awesome weeks!
Con Amor,
Elder Hulsey
P.S. I had my first big mac here today, the salsa especial isn´t nearly as good as in the states.
P.S.S. Also here's a picture of this sign pointing to the Korean cemetery here (there´s a lot of Korean things in this area but I still have never meet a Korean here).
