Hola Familia!,
What´s good in the hood? (I taught that phrase to Elder Menchaca this week, I also taught him ¨who´s your daddy¨, I love teaching the Latins the English slang and sayings). So this week was tough because it rained like crazy! Monday, Wednesday and Thursday (I don´t remember about Tuesday) were so full of rain. I actually kinda enjoyed it because I just decided that I wasn´t going to complain about it because there is nothing I can do, so I just enjoyed it instead. I got all wet and muddy but it was pretty fun because I just didn´t stress it. The streets flood pretty bad at some parts here and at one point I had to cross a street where the water went up almost to my knees! It felt really weird because there was also a bit of a current in the little flood so it was like being in a river. But despite the rain Elder Williamson and I stayed out and worked hard and we had 2 investigators in conference. It was kind of interesting because there is this older less-active lady that's been saying she will go to church as soon as someone goes with her. We stopped visiting her for a few weeks and I think that made her a little sad so when we visited her again she was yelling at all of her grandchildren to come listen to us (so that we would come back and teach them). We told her that now she doesn´t have any excuses to not come to church because her grand kids will come with her, so sure enough she brought two of them with her to general conference (she came with them even though they´re both only 10 years old). One of them is named Diego and he´s super funny. He knows the bible pretty well and he seems to understand pretty well what we´re teaching him. This week we´re going to try and find more people to teach. So I´m pretty pumped for Spencer and Travis to get their calls. For Spencer I´m seeing Puerto Rico, and Travis I´m thinking Alaska or Australia, maybe Mexico. I talked to my mission president and he said that it´s fine if you guys call the office when Spencer gets his call and they will relay me the information as soon as possible. I like that plan, especially because I´ll be calling home in like 5 weeks for mothers day.
So conference was pretty sweet huh!? One guy talked about having only 25 words or less to write your family, I considered doing that but I felt like it would be to hard, so I´ll just stick to imagining it. It was pretty fun because we got together as a zone and us Americans (and a Haitian and Puerto Rican that prefer English to Spanish) all watched it together in a little room in the chapel. We bought tons of snacks and had a great time. I really learned a lot from the talks. A couple of them really helped me with a couple of personal problems I´ve been trying to fix lately. For some reason I just wasn´t getting excited about the work. I´ve been racking my brain trying to figure out why and I tried doing all of the things how I did them before when I was more excited, but I just wasn´t getting very motivated. I can´t really recall all of the talks that helped me figure out my problem (I remember some of them were Elder Bednar's, Elder Hollands, and Elder Christofferson's) but I realized that I have the tendency to close off my heart. I´m not really open to just loving people that quickly and I tend to kinda just close off my heart. I started thinking that I always did that I think to protect myself from the way the world defines love, which is more infatuation, and to keep myself clean. But after I believe Elder Hale´s talk in priesthood I realized that the world´s definition of love is not the Lord´s definition of love. Love is caring deeply for everyone and wanting the best for them, wanting to bless them and wanting them to succeed and have happiness. As missionaries we can help them do this by giving them the gospel. I realized that by loving the people (not just the Paraguayans but all of my comps, other missionaries, everyone!) that I will have more hope that they will progress and I will teach them with more purpose. It´s also really important to not give up hope on the investigators if at first they´re having a hard time. The Lord is used to working with imperfect people, so I can´t set my expectations at perfection for my investigators if the Lord doesn´t do that for any of us. He just expects our best and that´s all I need to do too. Love the people and have hope for their progression towards baptism and ultimately the temple. I realized that one day, someone that I teach the gospel to or maybe one of their children or grandchildren could be general authorities, that gave me a lot of hope. All of the General Authorities had to go through their own personal conversions in one way or another.
I´m sorry if this letter seems short. I love you all and I pray for you always. I know I promised pictures this week but I was in a hurry this morning and didn´t have time to look for my camera cable, I´ll do my best next week. Keep your heads up and trust in the Lord, He loves us all despite our imperfections.
con amor,
Elder Hulsey
