(No Subject)

Email received June 10, 2013

Hola familia mía!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So pretty crazy week last week. We had changes...Elder Williamson left and he is switching to the south mission and I stayed in Piro´y so I will be staying here in la misión Paraguay Asunción Norte (I remember when I opened my call I couldn´t even say Asunción right haha). My comp came out here to die so I will be killing him (that´s mission talk for he´s going home in 6 weeks and I will be his last comp). His name is Zachary Landers and he´s from Highland, Utah (he didn´t go to Lone Peak because he went to that UCAS school at UVU). He´s a nice guy and he doesn´t seem too trunky...yet, haha. We get a long well at least and I just told him that he can decide what we do for P-days until we go home. Like I said he´s super nice so it should be a fun couple of 6 weeks. The other elders we live with also had changes and Elder Barker from Ogden came in and he is also finishing up his mission with my comp, but he doesn´t seem trunky at all. Super full of energy so we get along pretty well. We also got a new hermana in my district and she says she is in Ann Kawai´s stake, small world. So Dad congarts on the Job! I´ve been praying and fasting for you, I´m super happy for you. I´m glad you guys enjoyed the temple, it´s a great place, I wish I could go more. We taught the familia Cristaldo about how in the temple we can be sealed together forever and the hermana told us that to her it seems like a grand blessing to have a temple here in Paraguay and I realized just how true that is. Speaking of the familia Cristaldo we had an awesome lesson with them where we watched that corny church movie Together Forever and they loved it. They weren´t able to come to church because their little newborn´s throat swelled up and they had to go to the hospital, but he´s doing better now. It was a bit of a sad Sunday because there were only 27 people in church, but an old investigator randomly decided to show up at church yesterday so that was sweet! His name is Alexis and he also wants to serve a mission! He was hesitant to accept his baptismal fecha because he didn´t want to have to go up to the pulpit and give a talk yet, we told him not to worry about that right now. I can´t believe Blake Clark is going to Japan! I never would´ve guessed that one. Anyways so this week I was studying a talk called the 4th missionary by Lawrence E. Corbridge and I may have talked to you already about this talk because this isn´t my first time reading it but it talks about giving God our desires. I realized that I had gotten a lot better about not thinking about home or anything, but I was getting all sorts of distracted with other things like cool recuerdos and little things. I realized that I need to focus more on the people and my purpose in helping them. I´m here to invite lost souls to come unto Christ. I want to be able to help people feel the joy and the Spirit that I have felt, and unless I consecrate myself by giving ALL to the Lord, my thoughts and my actions, and serve him with all my heart, might, mind, and strength than I will not get to be as influenced by the Spirit and that is what I want more than anything. The recuerdos are cool and all of the little things that distract me aren´t bad things, but they´re not the best things. This week I´m going to try and sacrifice a little more and try to give my whole heart to the Lord and His service. It is a sacrifice because it´s stuff that I enjoy thinking about, but there is a time and a place for all things and during the working week I need to be focusing better on my work. I´m really excited to get better at this because I know that I will feel a greater influence of the Holy Ghost. I hope you guys enjoy the summer vacation and enjoy the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost that you were promised as you were baptized and confirmed a member of the true and living church, even La Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Últimos Días. Les quiero mucho!!!!

con amor,

Elder Zachary J. Hulsey

P.S. so you can keep sending stuff to the same address, nothing´s changed.

Yeah I´ve turned into a ranchero.

(No Subject)

Email received June 3, 2013

Mba´echepa

 

Hows it hanging everyone! Oh boy what a week last week was! So as of right now I do not know any changes yet but I will find out at any moment today so maybe by the time I´m finishing up this email I´ll have them. So this week was extremely spiritual and pretty funny as well. So two funny stories. On Thursday we did service in the morning and then we had a lunch appointment so we didn´t have time to go back to our house and study so I suggested that we just go to a park and sit under a tree and study (I´ve done that a couple of times before and it has been a pleasant experience). So we sat down in this park a little in front of a school and began to study. Within about 4 minutes there was a group of about 4 or 5 eight year old girls sitting down next to us moving closer and closer until they were RIGHT next to me. We didn´t know this but I guess the school had just let out. They started in with all of the normal stuff telling us how pretty our eyes were. So we thought since they were eight they would get bored of watching us study after like a minute or two so we were just going to ignore them until they left. Well these weren´t your normal eight year old girls because they sat and watched us for a Half Hour! Finally it just got so weird that we got up and found a different park. Haha at one point I pulled out my pen to mark something in my scriptures and they were gasping and saying "wow that´s so cool" Haha marking scriptures is pretty awesome. The second story happened on Saturday. So Elder Williamson is a very competitive guy, and for a while now he´s been wanting to arm wrestle me and he swears he´s never lost. Well on Saturday he brought it up again as we were getting ready to leave and I figured why not. So we were going at it and I beat him! Haha he was pretty upset and immediately wanted a rematch. I wouldn´t let him and it was driving him crazy! Haha he´s just super competitive so he started throwing all these things on the table. I finally agreed to rematch him today and he said if I loose then he´s going to buy me two alfajors (alfajors are kinda like the Paraguayan Hostess Ding-Dong cupcake but with dulce de leche instead of cream) and an oreo alfajor if I win (which is super good but a little expensive). Haha we´ll see if I can win again.

So like I said this week was also very spiritual. With Elder Maynes on Tuesday I learned a ton of awesome stuff. It turns out he served his mission here in the Paraguay Uruguay mission years ago so he went up a said a greeting in Guaraní, it was pretty sweet. Then I don´t know if you remember dad or mom (I feel like one of you were with me) but he came to a fireside once with us in our stake and told a story about how he had to sing a solo in his mission because he didn´t set up a musical number for a zone conference. Well he told us that story again but the cool part was we were in the exact same place where it took place! Some pretty cool things he said that I really liked were that the first vision was the first companionship teaching an investigator the truth in this dispensation. The second thing he said that I really liked was that the Holy Ghost can be our witness in the final judgment when we have to account to the Lord for the service that we rendered. The Holy Ghost can say that he was present at the lesson (if he was) and that we did our part in helping these people receive the restored gospel and come unto Christ. It was way cool. Another cool thing was we did a division on Friday and I stayed here with my zone leader to do a baptismal interview for 2 of Diego´s cousins. Both me and my zone leader were very worried about it because it looked like there wasn´t going to be anyone to bring them to church on Sundays so we wanted to wait to baptize them, but we didn´t know how to break it to them or their parents (because the last time we postponed the baptism the mom got pretty upset). We prayed and studied a lot and felt really good about just relying on the spirit in the moment, and he totally came through for us! The words we said were completely guided by the Spirit and we were able to get through a little bit to the Parents and they finally agreed to let us teach them! We really stressed the importance of the Gospel for the families and it was really powerful. We both felt really good afterwards. Then yet another super awesome thing that happened is that the family we´re teaching, la familia Cristaldo, came to church! The husband didn´t come but we figured he was just at work (he travels a lot). So I was praying so hard that the hermana could feel the Spirit and want to keep coming back. Well she ran into an old primary class-mate and she seemed happy and she asked us to come back after church. We told her we would stop by today, Monday, and share. Well last night we didn´t have anyone to visit and we were by her house so we decided to just stop by and set a time to return the next day. When we got there she made us come in and talk. She expressed that she and her husband had actually had a big fight and he left to go stay with his mom. I don´t want to give to many details but she was very sad and very worried about her family and really unsure what to do. She always tells us how it´s super hard because she wants the good example of a father for her kids but he´s never home and when he is he doesn´t set the greatest example and she feels really alone raising the kids. Well I guess one of the testimonies from a young women yesterday really touched her because the young women said we are never alone. The Hermana Cristaldo realized that she is never really alone and that God must have sent us to her right in this moment so she could come and here that and participate in the church. She said that she realized the happiest time in her life was when she was a little girl in the Mormon church. It was such a powerful experience to me because she is a real person with real problems and i´m just a little 19 year old kid here with a message from Jesus Christ, but this message is so much bigger than we even imagine. This message, when properly applied, has the power to bring light into darkness and hope to the hopeless. It literally brings joy! I know that Jesus Christ lives and that he has once again restored his Priesthood authority on the earth, thanks to this priesthood authority we can become clean from sin and receive the Holy Ghost as a constant companion. Those aren´t just words to me anymore. People aren´t clean and don´t have the Holy Ghost to help them always until they are baptized and confirmed, imagine how that must feel. I really took for granted the great blessing that I received being born into the true church with the real priesthood authority and to a good, strong, faithful family. I´ve started reading the Book of Mormon again trying to learn all I can about repentance and forgiveness. So far what I´ve learned is that repentance requires a change in behavior and desire, without both we aren´t actually repented. We as missionaries can try to help people to change behaviors, but it´s really only the Spirit that will help them change their desires. Once they´ve done that then they are ready for baptism and confirmation. It´d be extremely difficult for someone to feel that Spirit strong enough to change their desires, and they wouldn´t know how to completely change outside of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We´re needed as missionaries to help people, but we as missionaries need to Spirit to help people. It´s really cool being involved in such an important work and being able to work that closely with a member of the Godhead to do it. I love the Lord, I love this work, and I love all of you. I hope you have a great week (congrats on the graduation Spencer) and I hope that you love the temple.

Con Mucho amor,

Elder Hulsey

 

P.S. you guys never told me where Blake Clark is serving. Also see if you can find out how old Kyle Knickerbauker´s doing, and Nathaniel Adair. I´ve been thinking a lot about those two vatos lately