(No Subject)

Email received December 30, 2013

Hola familia,

I know I say this every week but this week really was wow! So many things. First off it was super nice talking to you all. I feel bad like I should´ve thought of better things to say but I was just so happy to see all of you guys (even though you all look like strangers haha). Then Christmas eve we had permission to be out until 11:30 if we were eating the traditional GIANT Christmas eve feast with members or investigators and a family had invited us over so we went with them. Then I got home and made my companion cinnamon rolls from scratch (because there is nothing pre-packaged here) and they actually turned out! I mean they weren´t Sister Allphin quality but I enjoyed them. Then Christmas day we got some cool visits in, lots of work with the less-actives. Then the next day we had the branch Christmas party. I decided to take your advice mom and invite our investigators, one of them showed up and they actually gave him a part in the live nativity, it was super fun. We brought pancakes that I also made from scratch, I´m learning how to make breakfast! Anyways when I called home I told you that I thought I would be finishing up the misision here in Mariano but it turns out I was wrong. So tommorrow I´m going back to Trinidad, but this time Trinidad A instead of B and it will be as the assistant to the President! I didn’t sleep at all because I was so nervous. So Elder Ellefson is getting a new companion to finish up his training, someone that has about the same amount of time as Spencer. I´m super excited to go back to Trinidad because Elder Beus is still there and he´s with my MTC comp, and my companion will be Elder Dickson and we lived in the same house in my second area so that will be pretty fun being his comp. President said that he wants to put a big focus on obedience with exactness, espeially since our mission is so young. It´ll be interesting to see what kind of adventures and challenges await me. Like I said I was super nervous but I started studying my patriarchal blessing and I found a lot of peace and confidence. I´m kinda bummed in some ways because we´ve been finding some super awesome people lately and we had our highest church attendance since I´ve been here yesterday, and we had a super cool investigator come to church and some super cool less-actives too but the Lord calls us to do things for His purposes even if it doesn´t necessarily make sense to us.

So this week I also had some super cool Spiritual experiences. So on Saturday we were doing our best to be able to visit everybody we could to get them to come to church the next day and we were pretty much running from appointment to appointment, but I felt inspired to go visit this girl that we hadn´t actually met yet, we just knew where her house was. I tried ignoring it but the thought was pretty persistant so I decided to just go. On the way down we crossed paths with this less active lady and we talked to her for a second and I felt like that was why the Lord wanted us to walk that way and I felt good about following the original plans again that we had put. Well the next day I was walking away from a visit from some american baptists (that was an interesting experience and it was something else teaching in english) and I saw this lady sitting in front of her house. She kinda looked at me funny so I waved and kept walking but then I felt like I needed to go and talk with her, so I did and before we even introduced ourselves she had us sitting down. She said that she has a son that is in deep with drugs and vices and she has a hit a point where she just doesn´t know anymore what to do to help him. She said she was talking to someone and they said to talk to the guys that always walk around. She said that a few days ago she was sitting down and some walked in front of her and didn´t talk with her and she thought they must not be the ones to help her. So she was praying a ton for something to help her son and when she saw us she thought that we were the answer but it looked like we were going to keep walking too, but then when we turned back and came to talk with her she knew we were the ones that could help. Then later that night we were walking home and I saw a girl with a baby just sit down on the side walk. I waved and was just going to keep walking because I usually try to avoid talking with girls but I felt like I should go and talk with her. So as I approached her I realized that she was crying. I presented my companion and me and I told her Jesus loves her. I asked her why she was crying and she just broke down. She was only 17 years old and she lives with her mom but in awful conditions and her and her mom don`t have a great relationship to say the least. She had gone to her baby´s dad´s house to ask him for some money to buy the baby some stuff and he started hitting her. She was so sad and I felt so sorry for her. She said she had to go because her mom would yell at her if she got home late but she gave us her address and said to come by and share with her, she has been to church before because the lady that lives behind her is a member and invited her once. I feel like had I not have followed the spiritual promptings the first time I might not have been as receptive to them the next times, where I was able to be the hands of the Lord in helping people that really needed it. I´m so happy to be a part of this incredible work and I know it´s what the Lord wants me to do. It´s hard to be trunky when there is so much to do so don´t worry about that, I´m fine. There are lots of people that the Lord is preparing and all I have to do is follow the Spirit and talk with everyone so I can find them. I´m not here to convince anyone or force our message on anyone either. I´m here to help people by inviting them to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel. The Spirit does the convincing and the preparing, I am just a messenger in the Lord´s hands (that´s not an excuse to not be persistent or diligent by the way). I think if we can really understand what is our role than we will do all we can to work hard and talk with everyone and have the Spirit (which comes by our preparation and obedience) and we will not get down-hearted. We will be sad when people don´t except the message or the blessings offered them but we never have to feel discouraged. I love this work and I love the Lord. New Years will be spent in Trinidad and I have until 11:30 at night again to be out and luckily I´m getting changed to an area where I already know the members and my comp so I won´t have to pass new years with strangers. I hope you have a prospero año!

Con muchísimo amor,
Elder Zachary J. Hulsey

(No Subject)

Email received December 16, 2013

Hola familia, hows it going? Como van con las preparaciones para la navidad? We`re preparing a full down here for la navidad. Sounds like you guys had a busy week, I had an interesting one but a pretty great one. So I finally got really sick! It was funny because last Monday or Tuesday I was telling Elder Ellefson that I`m made of steel and that I`ve never gotten hit by the double headed dragon, and that at this point I probably won´t get sick because I´m totally used to everything... boy was I wrong, haha. On Thursday night I was having a hard time sleeping because every time I moved I thought I was going to throw up, but I also thought that was all in my head. Finally around 4 am I just decided to go to the bathroom and see if that would help me feel a little better and as soon as I stood up I realized that was a good idea. I barely made it to the bathroom on time. Then for the next hour my insides were coming out of both ends of me! It was the first time I had thrown up in years! Then I cleaned everything up and took a shower and went back to bed around 5:30 and slept another hour. Then the day of Friday I had a fever. The fever went away though but I still don´t really feel like eating anything. Don´t worry though I´ve been talking with the nurse and I`M FINE, I´ve still been able to go out and work so I´m doing a lot better. Anyways the other super funny part of the story was then on Saturday for lunch some members made us the exact same rice with chicken and tomato sauce that I had thrown up the day before, yummy! Haha it was quite a weekend. Haha when I was explaining to Elder Ellefson how I had thrown up and such but not to worry because I cleaned it super well and sterilized the whole room super well he told me, "I guess that´s how you know you´re really a grown up, when you have to clean up your own vomit" haha it was so true. Luckily it´s super easy to clean up here because it´s all tile floors and the shower just sticks out of the wall so I just had to turn it on and rinse all of the vomit down the drain then just sterilize the floors really well. Sorry for all of the nasty details I was just super pumped that I finally got sick! I was expecting this months ago. Don`t worry about the mosquitoes because I`m actually really good about putting on bug repellent and as far as sunscreen goes... yeah we`re not going to talk about that. It`s better that I don`t use it because the smell of it makes me think of the pool I lived at, I mean worked at, before and fun happy summer time memories. But don`t worry because I invested in a nice sombrero that keeps me safe from the sun and I wear that all the time so I`m fine. Elder Ellefson has the exact same skin as Dad so he´s really good about putting on sunscreen everyday. He´s doing a lot better, doesn´t seem to be missing home as bad anymore which is great. His language is coming along. I got really blessed because I had a Latin trainer and the Lord blessed me so much to be able to just remember what I had studied about the language. At this point I´m focusing a lot on getting my accent really good (it´s hard because Paraguayans have a pretty funny accent that I don`t necessarily want, I this point I`ve kinda developed a half Mexican half Paraguayan accent, we´ll see where we go from here) and learning new words and phrases. The people love if I can say little idioms in Spanish like "it´s a piece of cake" or "be careful, he´ll talk your ear off" and fun little things like that. Also I don`t study guaraní but I´ve learned enough just from talking to people to be able to trick people for a little while that I speak it (I understand probably like 12 percent of what they say in guaraní but it´s enough to where I can just kinda guess at some way to respond and it´s a lot of times an acceptable response). I didn´t get the package that President Harris brought yet but I´m planning on going to the office as soon as I finish writing then I will go to the office and look for it. That`s cool that you guys got to see a pic of Elder Hulsey in the DR, I still haven`t seen one yet. He really is a great guy and I know he´s doing an awesome job in the spreading of the gospel out there in la República Dominicana. Also last week I told Megan the wrong day about los reyes, it´s actually January 6th.

So we had some super cool experiences this week with that family we´ve been working with. David, Rosa´s boyfriend, has really opened up a lot more to us and seems like he really wants to progress. Rosa came to church on Sunday! But David didn`t because he had a little too much beer on saturday night... but this week we´re going to talk to him about the word of wisdom and rosa says she´s si o si bringing him for next week so that should be really cool. They´re a super awesome family and I`m super excited to see them continue to progress in the gospel. The gospel truly does bless families. Something that Elder Ellefson has really helped me to recognize are the blessings of church attendance. I`ve had a pretty solid testimony for a while now about the blessings of the Sacrament which is the biggest and most important reason we need to attend church each week, but Elder Ellefson always points out just how good it feels being in church on Sunday. I never really appreciated just the calm and peaceful feelings you can have in church if you go in with the right attitude and if you look at it as a blessing to be able to attend the Lord´s true church on the earth every sunday. There´s always craziness happening around you with children and you get busy trying to prepare and teach classes and talks, but regardless of all of that we have to opportunity each week to completely set apart 3 hours or our time to worshiping the Lord and we can be 100% confident that there is absolutely no better use of those three hours at that time. We can go in and feel the Spirit and just feel peaceful. A lot of people use the excuse that Sunday is their only day off so they want to rest, well what better place to go and relax than the church! Others say that they want to spend that time with their family, but there is nothing that will bring more family unity than worshiping the Lord together, and that includes going to church. Elder Ellefson also always points out to me that the church is the same everywhere and that he loves that. That you can feel the exact same Spirit in the USA and in Paraguay and in Argentina and wherever you are. It´s a cool way that binds each member of the church throughout the world. We can all know that we all feel the exact same way as we happily attend our church meetings every sunday. I´ve really come to view it as the blessing it is rather than the chore that I thought it was. I´m super grateful for all of my leaders who worked so hard to help me have positive experiences growing up in the church, it´s different being on the planning end now. There are some amazing leaders down here that have taught me so much, but you also find others that it´s like pulling teeth to get them to fulfill their calling and I was always super blessed to have leaders and teachers that I felt like weren´t there for obligation but rather out of love. I invite you all to really try and focus on the blessings of being able to attend the true and restored church every single week and to invite someone else to be able to participate in the same blessings with you, you´ll notice that you enjoy it even more. I hope you all have a wonderful week and we will talk next week so prepare yourselves... Haha.

Con amor,
Elder Zachary J. Hulsey

P.S. so we´re doing our branch Christmas party next Friday (a little after Christmas) and they want us to prepare some kind of traditional american dish. If you could send me some recipes for next monday of some traditional american dishes that would be easy to make that would be great. Maybe things such as mountain man breakfast or some of my favorite casseroles that I used to like or maybe home made mac and cheese or spaghetti or tacos or stir fry (I know those things aren`t necessarily american but that's fine) that would be great thanks.

(No Subject)

Email received December 9, 2013

Hola che gentekuera,

How´s everything going up there? That´s so funny to me how cold it is up there, it´s super nice and hot down here, just the way I like it. Sounds like you had a good week. I really liked dad´s coaching video story, teaching is hard I know it. So the weather wasn´t as bad this week but it was still stormy. In fact the same thing that happened to us last week happened to us again this week where the power shut off in the cyber so we had to come back, but this week we anticipated it so we have a bit more time. Last week was pretty fun. We did a division and the areas in this zone are all super spread out so I had to travel an hour away and the buses were taking forever so when we finally got to the house of the missionaries to pick up one and bring him back to my area for the division it was super late so I just slept on the floor at their house and left in the morning. It was a fun little sleep over and the division was super fun too. The weather was nice on Sunday but sunday was also December 8th and down here in Paraguay that is the day of the virgin of caacupe where everyone goes to make promises with her in caacupe and that took its toll on some of the members we have that aren`t too strong yet. But we now know one thing to help them understand a little better so it`s all good. So anyways last week thanksgiving was a fine day, I also got your package and those little pies were perfect. This week we had some super cool experiences with some super cool investigators. So we`ve been working with some families that we found contacting and it we had a super cool lesson on Saturday. We were talking and they are two sisters, Rosa and Carolina, and their husbands and one of the sisters, Rosa, prayed last time and started reading in the Book of Mormon and loves it all and she and her husband really want to come to church. The other sister, Carolina, had a lot of questions but she had heard a lot of stuff about demons coming to you as you read in the Book of Mormon and pray and such so she hadn`t kept any of her commitments. We shared a couple of scriptures with her and I knew that this girl had a mighty prayer in her heart that she needed to express but she was so afraid. So then her sister Rosa shared her testimony about how she was afraid the first time and how it was super hard but that she felt so good after and she loves it now. She also helped her sister think of some reasons she has to pray for and finally we all knelt down and she offered a prayer. The prayer was so simple and direct but the Spirit was so strong. Carolina stood up and started crying and said she never imagined it would feel that good. She then shared with us some very personal stuff about her past and we just sat and listened. She said that she hasn`t felt comfortable sharing that stuff with anyone but that she just trusts us. We told her we`re here to listen and show her how she can start a whole new life in Christ. It was one of the most powerful moments of my life and me and my companion afterwords were just so happy. We were talking about how those moments make all of the tough ones completely worth it and more. We`ve found some other really cool people that seem super prepared. There was this one guy and everytime we talk with him we just notice how prepared he seems. So he`s got like 4 college degrees (so he`s super educated) and knows a lot of stuff. Our first visit we asked him what a prophet was and he told us a man called of God to represent him on the earth and teach his children. He also told us that not just anyone can be a prophet, they have to be called of God (first person I`ve taught that understands that). Then he started telling us about how Christ taught us about something called the plan of Salvation, which is God`s plan for us to be able to live with him again. He also told us that a very important part of this plan is something called free-agency, or the ability to choose between lo bueno y lo malo (yeah, he explained this to us and this is the first time he`s ever talked to missionaries from our church). We explained about the apostasy and he already knew what it meant and everything. We then explained to him the restoration and how Joseph Smith was a prophet called of God and given Priesthood authority to act in God`s name in things such as baptism. He then commented to us how interesting that is because it lines up just right with what Jesus Christ taught through his example of being baptized by John the Baptist who was an authorized servant at that time to baptize. We then told him it was that same John that gave Joseph Smith the authority to baptize. Anyways this guy is super cool, the only hard part is getting him to pray about the truthfullnes. He wants to know and understand it all first so that he can be more qualified to ask God if these things come from Him or not. But he keeps reading the Book of Mormon and he`s really interested in the history aspect of it so he and I get along pretty well. Anyways yesterday we had another lesson with him and he told us how he thinks that most of the world`s problems today are here because good family values are under attack and the family is being destroyed (prepared or what!). So we talked a bit about that and he told me something that he uses to raise his kids that really caught my attention. He said "No busco la perfección pero si busco la excelencia" meaning I don`t look for perfection but I do look for excelence. That really caught my attention and I realized I think that`s really similar to what our Heavenly Father expects from us. He knows we won`t be perfect in this life but He can expect excelence. I looked up what the word excellence means and a sinonim was superb, and the definition of superb I think describes it pretty well. The definition is of unusually high quality. The Lord expects his children to be of unusually high quality, and I think we can achieve that here in this life. I also decided to add my own little expectation and it`s that of excelence and constant progression. I believe that if we are excelent children who are constantly progressing that the Lord through His grace will make us perfect one day and we will be able to live with Him and our families forever.

So about calling home for Christmas, we are allowed to call home December 23, 24, and 25th before 6 pm Paraguay time for 40 minutes. My companion would prefer not coming to the cyber on Monday the 23rd to skype so if it`s possible the 24th or 25th would be great. I don`t know who to skype because in the past I always skyped to Spencer`s account but he won`t be there this time so if you want to figure that out then let me know or add me on skype and I`ll confirm it that would be great. I would love to talk with Spencer too but I think that might be a little difficult and he`ll probably want to be able to share all about his mission too and 40 minutes isn`t a lot of time for 2 missionaries to both share all about it so it might be wiser to do it at different times. I write to him every week that I can so we get to talk and next Christmas I`ll make sure I`m home to talk with him. I`m trying to help my companion not feel so homesick but it`s kinda tough especially during the holiday season, but I don`t think that should affect too much when I can or can`t talk with you guys because we live pretty close to some cybers so worse come to worst we just do it on different days. So if Monday is better for you guys I don`t mind at all. I`m pretty excited for Christmas this year because I`ve really been able to make some really cool connections with some members here so I`m hoping to be able to pass it with them. The members here are so awesome and I love them so much. This is a really interesting area because some things work really well and others not so much. We finally had a ward council on Sunday and the branch president put us in charge of coming up with the ward mission plan to present to the ward mission leader then he would present it to the branch presidency on Saturday. ¡Crazy! A little while ago I didn`t even know what a ward mission plan was but after studying Preach my Gospel and lots of praying I feel like I`ve come up with a half decent plan. The branch president just wanted our ideas and he`s going to try and see which ones he likes to make the final plan. I also asked him what we were planning as far as the ward Christmas party and he told me absolutely nothing and that we would talk about it in a few weeks. I pointed out that Christmas was in a few weeks and se asustò un poco and put us in charge of planning the ward Christmas party as well. So I`m thinking about doing a live nativity scene type thing where we have the youth and primary children present the story of Christ`s birth to their parents. I was thinking this could be a good way to get less-active families involved and recent converts along with active members so hopefully everything goes well. I also am planning my zones Christmas party for the missionaries, the last zone leaders forgot to do it I guess. So I think we`re going to go to an old person home and read to them Christ`s birth in Jerusalem and in America and eat some candy and pan dulce with them (one of my favorite parts of christmas here that I forgot to tell megan about. They all eat this really good bread with fruit in it called pan dulce around Christmas time and their big dinner is always a super fancy bbq). I`ve learned so much about being able to manage seemingly hard situations with the help of the Lord and managing my stress too. Can you imagine that I haven`t even stressed about this stuff yet and it`s basically all planned out now, yeah me not stressing, crazy huh? Well I`ve got to go now, I`ve got a birthday party to go to for this recent convert and I was in charge of making the cake, I sure hope they like brownies. ¡Que tengan semanas divertidas!

Con mucho amor y un abrozo,

Elder Zachary J. Hulsey

(No Subject)

Email received December 2, 2013

Hola familia! Como están todos? This week was pretty fun and pretty great. It rained so hard for pretty much the whole week except for a few hours Sunday morning so that people could easily make it to church, it was quite the miracle. It was actually pretty funny because all of the electricity went out and it`s pretty much been out since. We got half of our electricity back in our house but actually right as I was typing this email the power cut out again. I`m finishing this email now about 4 hours later. We`ve been doing tons of service trying to clean everything up because the storms have been pretty big. We`ve been cleaning up trees that have fallen over and everything. We actually were on our way over to the cyber when we found a guy trying to cut up a huge tree (with a hatchet and machete) so we helped him clean up his yard for about an hour and a half. It was pretty cool though because it really helped soften their hearts and the family was asking us tons of questions about the church and they committed to read and pray about the Book of Mormon so tranquilo. I`m super glad hermana cristaldo wrote you mom, that makes me super happy. I`m also pretty glad Brother Harris is coming down this week because justamente I have to go to the mission office this Thursday so maybe I`ll be able to find him there. We have Elder Zeballos from the area presidency I believe coming to talk with us so that should be super fun. The area is great and I am incredibly safe and happy. It`s definitely been tough trying to get everything figured out but I like hard things because they help me learn to rely more on the Lord. We had some really tough days this week but the Lord blessed us so much that it was all worth it. On Saturday we didn`t get in to anything all day and all of our appointments fell but I knew that if I prayed and kept at it that at some point the things would turn around and they totally did! We finally got into a lesson and they were liking it so much that they said they really want to come to church and learn more because they love what we were teaching. They also presented us to some more of their famlies so it was a great experience. Then I ran into a family from my last area and they were visiting some non-member family members in my new area and it they presented us to them and we had a miraculous visit. The Lord is continuing to soften the hearts of the people here in Mariano Roque Alonso as well and I`m super glad about it. I`m sorry but I have no time to write so I`ll try to write more next week.

Con muchísimo amor,
Elder Zachary J. Hulsey