15 month mark

The difference between Cuauhtemoc and Chihuahua or Parral can be summed up in two things.

One: Wind.

Two: Creepers.

That sums up everything for this week.

I have many new names given to me by creepers this week. Miss Universe, Elena, my one true love. I accept them all with gratitude, knowing that a black been looks pretty all mixed in with the brown beans, but a black bean with other black beans is just a black bean.

On the work side this week, things have gone well. We have a few investigators, M and C, that have been going to church every week!! They got married and everything so that they can be baptized! This week they brought M´s mom to church and C´s brother. They are so excited to learn more about the gospel!!

A, a young women whose grandma is a member, is so excited she even participated in the young women´s program yesterday! Her mom, who has had so much fear to go to church, went to church to see her yesterday. We are so excited to see little steps of faith!!!

Other A was so excited to go to church this week when Sunday morning she fought with her parents. She then decided to not go to church. Crazy how Satan works so hard so that the good things don´t work out well. She was so close to going to church.

J was able to see a baptism last week and is so excited for her baptism this week!! Her 2 year old son sings with us every time we go to visit her, but he doesn´t just sing, he SINGS. I love it. Then when we stop singing, he folds his little arms SUPER ready for the prayer.

I am so grateful for the huge blessings Heavenly Father is giving us. I am loving being here in Cuauhtemoc!!!

Have a great week!

Hermana Hunt

this week I dont have time for a big email, so you will have to see what happened by photos!!

IT SNOWED THIS WEEK!!!!!! We were out at like, ten at night making snowmen. yay!!!!

she got married in a mini-er than mini skirt, but she got married. hahaha we love these people!!!!! they are amazing.

this is a gift we made for the couple that got married this week. it has little scriptures inside and delicious walnuts. walnuts are a big thing here. really big.

i am drinking nun milk.

MARRIAGE. It`s what bwings us all together.

Do you know how EXCITED I AM FOR THIS WEEKEND?!?! We have these really awesome investigators. We found them in like our first week in Cuauhtemoc. They are M and C. They have a son who is less than two years old. M and C are not married, and this week we went to talk to them about the law of chastity. We left a pamphlet with M and she read the whole thing, then she explains to her husband that they are commiting a sin. They are so cute! They decided that they are going to get married this saturday!!!! They are so wonderful. M and C have gone to church now three times and are super loving it. We also have a cute little investigator, J, who is taraumara. She doesn`t really know how to speak spanish very well, and we don`t really know how to speak taraumara very well, so we follow the spirit a lot. We have to explain her what little words mean like power and teachings. She is only 18 years old and has a 2 year old son.

 

I have learned this week about dilligence. In Preach My Gospel it says that diligence is a constant, steady, earnest and energetic effort to do the work of the Lord. Dilligence is an expression of amor for the Lord and His work. In this mission, it`s a pretty big thing to contact people in the street. We make the goal of contacting 10 people in the street every day, and many days we can do it! There are a lot of people that walk in the street because it`s not too normal to have a car here. It`s a great way to contact people and a great way to find new investigators! We hardly ever have to worry about finding new people to teach. Anyway, being dilligent means working the same way or better every day. If we were able to contact 8 people in one day, tomorrow we're going to contact at least 8. Being dilligent means never missing a single moment, and making sure you are working hard even when your plans get changed. 

 

“I have often said one of the greatest secrets of missionary work is work! If a missionary works, he will get the Spirit; if he gets the Spirit, he will teach by the Spirit; and if he teaches by the Spirit, he will touch the hearts of the people and he will be happy. There will be no homesickness, no worrying about families, for all time and talents and interests are centered on the work of the ministry. Work, work, work—there is no satisfactory substitute, especially in missionary work.” –President Ezra Taft Benson

 

When we work for the Lord, we find joy and satisfaction in our work. This week has been hotter here in Cuauhtemoc! We are grateful to walk around without the heavy coat. As you will see, I already burnt. Yay for Chihuahua`s wonderful sunshine!!! A few weeks ago, I almost lost all the photos I have taken in my entire mission, but a nice young man was able to help me take the virus out of my camera`s memory. Some of these pictures are old, but I am really grateful he was able to fix my memory. Gave me the biggest scare of my life ;)

 

Have a great week!!

 

Hermana Hunt

Hey hey hey!!! 

This week has been a week full of miracles! We are finding people so ready. So incredibly ready! We have been teaching a man named F in his work basically the whole time we have been here. He was a referral we got from another investigator. This week, we met F`s wife, T. As we were talking with them, T started to cry. She said that we are the answer to the question she has had her whole life. While her husband was already baptized in another christian church, she has always told him that he needs another baptism. She told us that she wanted to have an eternal family. We sang ¨I need thee every hour¨ and she continued crying. She couldn`t make it to church this week, but her husband went yesterday and loved it!! They are so ready!!

We found another lady that is an orphan. She is only 18 years old but has a two year old son. She doesn`t know how to read and only works one day a week cleaning houses. She accepted fast and wants to be baptized. 

C and M went to church this week again. They are reading ¨The family, a proclamation to the world¨ and have not faught in their marriage for two days now--something that happened every two minutes before. They want to have an eternal family.

There are so many more stories too!! Heavenly Father is definitely working hard. We just have to work as hard as He does too and everyone will accept the gospel!!!

¨Time is like a river. You cannot touch the water twice, because the flow

that has passed will never pass again. Enjoy every moment of life.¨ 

¨...they did all declare unto the people the selfsame thing—that their hearts had been changed; that they had no more desire to do evil.¨ Alma 19:33

Hermana Hunt

lots of birds in one tree. sign of the second coming? hahaha 

our leader sometimes talks to us so long that my companion falls asleep...hahaha

My companion got frustrated and sat down in the middle of the pharmacy. She gets frustrated a lot. I knew they were gonna put me with a girly girl one of these companionships. lol

This dog came up to me in the park the other day and just started giving me some love. Can I bring him home?

Our house is so cold you can see smoke (i don`t remember the word in english) coming out of our mouths when we talk!

Cuauhtemoc, my land!!

Here in Cuauhtemoc, it is really cold and there are a lot of menonites. Every day people ask me if I am a menonite. And the menonites look at me very confused trying to figure out if I am menonite or not.

My new companion, Hermana R, just made it from the MTC here. She is from Colombia. I teach her spanish. It is pretty cool. Words like un chorro and los cholos and una pluma. It makes me happy. She teaches me words like chi chì and pitìllo and nevera. She is very dramatic too. It`s just the culture, but I find it very funny. We have a rat in the house and she screams a lot. I probably should be a better companion and not laugh every time.

Here in Cuauhtemoc, things are moving FAST!! We are opening up an area where there hasn`t been anyone working for a little bit. We have a really great map and really great members, and that is a good thing, but we have still gotten lost a few times this week.

On Tuesday, we couldn`t find our house and it was already almost nine at night, so we found a little store and went inside to ask if they knew where our street was. Turns out our house is only two houses down from the store. Oops.

People here are really open to the gospel. We found a really wonderful family here, M and C, that are super ready to hear the gospel. They already went to church and everything. We are placing baptisimal dates with everyone--even the people we start to talk to in the street. It is a beautiful life and a beautiful time to be a missionary!!

Love you all!! No pictures this week--next week we`ll find a cyber that sends pictures!

Hermana Hunt

Last Day in Parral

This week has been wonderful!! Sister L is getting over some freakishly bad strep throat, and the doctors told her she had already had WAY too much antibiotics, but it just doesnt go away!! She´s feeling much better now, but we did go in to Chihuahua to have the doctors check it.

This week we have seen so much progress in the L family. They are so excited for their baptism this saturday, but they were starting to tell us they weren´t ready and they wanted to keep listening, but this saturday they went to another sister´s baptism, and when it was over the L family exclaimed: we´re ready to be baptized!! hahaha they are so amazing. They have changed so much in these few months that I have been in Parral.

These few months that I have been in Parral have already ended. Today I have transfers. Yikes. I will miss Parral with all my heart--and the people that are here. I love everyone I have come in contact with here, and many have my heart. Good thing there is a thing called facebook, right? Parral really is the land of miracles. I have seen how much the Lord really is hastening His work here in Parral. In a desert where they said that a year ago they didn´t have any success, Heavenly Father has really sped things up here! Soon it will be a stake and soon there will be a temple here ;)

We´ve been trapped up in the house this week because we´ve been sick, but we have not stopped seeing the wonderful miracles that Heavenly Father gives us!!

Love you!

Hermana Hunt

we made ¨buckeyes¨ for ohio state football.

chuey made us these lovely pictures when their whole family went to church! 

one day we went to eat pizza. i was really excited. my companion not so much. :D

When you enjoy liberty, protect it!!

This week has definitely been productive. At the beginning of the week, I was sick and Sister C told us we had to stay in the house and not work. Then at the end of the week, my companion got sick. Yay for only working a few precious hours this week!! But a lot of good came of it. For example, my companion painted one of the rooms in our house, we helped some sisters change houses and while carrying a mattress, one of them peed their skirt, we are finishing the books we have been trying to finish all our missions, and I got to try coffee. Picture evidence attached.

So this has been my week!!! But! It has not been in vane. I have been reading a lot and understanding a lot. Here is a lovely story for you all:

A pretty little bird was hanging out high up in his tree one day doing happy things and being happy when he saw a mysterious man pass by with a strange black box. The bird went down to see what was in the box.

¨What do you have there?¨ Asked the bird.

¨Worms,¨ replied the man, ¨but every worm costs one feather.¨

What a wonderfully easy way to get my food! And delicious too!! thought the bird. He carefully chose one of the smallest, ugliest feathers that he had to pluck it out. It hurt really bad to take it out, but after eating the delicious worm, he felt better.

Every day the strange man passed by, and every day the pretty little bird chose another feather and feasted on a worm until one day the bird took out one of his main feathers. He now couldn´t make it up to the highest part of the tree, but he feasted on a delicious worm.

Finally the strange man stopped passing by because the bird didn't have any feathers left. The little bird was not pretty anymore, couldn't even reach the first branch of the tree, and was very sad.

This is how Satan gets us. He starts out with something so small as the smallest, ugliest feather the bird had until all of the sudden we are giving him our most precious feathers. The feathers we have worked hard for. The most beautiful and expensive possession that we have. Satan does not try to tell a field that it should be full of weeds, but starts out with one little dandelion until the whole field is covered in bad.

¨Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.¨ Galatians 6:7

I hope we can all plant, even in our simplest of simple thoughts, good things, so that we will be able to harvest the good. If we let even the smallest of bad into our thoughts, that thought will grow until we only are able to harvest the bad. 

Plant good things this week!!! Protect your precious feathers!!

I love you!

Hermana Hunt

PS estamos tan hermosas.

Happy New Years!

New years is so different here. Nah, it´s not that different. Just that everyone shoots their guns in the air to celebrate instead of just some little fireworks. Happy you might die from a stray bullet day!!! That´s how you know that the new year will be a good one--if you stayed alive long enough to see the new year!! hahaha just kidding. It is pretty scary and we had to enter the house at seven, but all the houses are made of cement, so there is hardly any risk. More people died from driving drunk than from stray bullets.

This week I have been meditating a lot on a quote from Heber J Grant that says ¨That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do; not that the nature of the thing changed, but that our power to do is increased.¨ I know this year we can overcome the faults we have had the last year just by persisting in what we know to be true and trusting in Heavenly Father to help us.

I hope we can all have a wonderful new year full of one year goals, six month goals, monthly goals, weekly goals, and daily goals. This life is a life of goals, and if we are constantly trying to change and be better, we will have the spirit with us more strongly.

Love you!!

Hermana Hunt

We are truly marvelous

¨That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do; not that
the nature of the thing has changed, but that our power to do is
increased.¨ Heber J Grant

¨For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of
Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings
of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a
saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a
child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to
submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him,
even as a child doth submit to his father.¨ Mosiah 3:19

This week I have come to understand a little bit better what it means
to be pure or to purify the imperfections that you have. I have come
to understand how important it is to keep the commandments and be
clean of all impurity, and I have seen how much the Lord blesses us
for keeping those commandments. In order to make it back to Him, we
have to keep all of the commandments, and not stop! so that we will be
without stain before Him one day.

¨And now, my beloved son, notwithstanding their hardness, let us labor
diligently; for if we should cease to labor, we should be brought
under condemnation; for we have a labor to perform whilst in this
tabernacle of clay, that we may conquer the enemy of all
righteousness, and rest our souls in the kingdom of God.¨ Moroni 9:6

Lets set goals this year to WORK in the Lord´s vineyard!! Goals every
day, every week, every month, and every six months will help us to
change and be purified. I know I feel the Spirit a lot stronger in my
life when I am working on a goal, and something I have been doing
recently is having a goal every day and a goal every week. Later, I
check how those daily and weekly goals have helped me to accomplish my
monthly and six-month goals.

Hope you had a wonderful Christmas, and have a great new year!!!

Hermana Hunt


Christmas dinner (that they do the 24th)!!

I made a pumpkin pie! Sister T stuck her knife in it like, twelve
times. But it sure looks pretty!!

Then for Christmas Christmas we ate Chinese food at a Chinese
restaurant that then made me sick!! go Chinese food!! :D

We were in the newspaper Monday. I am so famous. Then if you read the
article, it says--there were a few white people in the choir that came
from the US and a lot of others from other countries. that´s why their
skin is so noticeably different. baha. ha. ha.

Parral.

what with more work you acquire, more you love. or something like that.

Feliz Navidad!!!

Merry Christmas!!! This week was an amazing week! We had a party in Chihuahua with all the 233 missionaries that are in our mission. We ate turkey and heard Christmas songs, hit piñatas, and above all, we drank soda. It was a crazy day! On Sunday we went downtown in Parral to sing to all the people here! We had a lot of success. Even people who didn´t know us were filming us and wanted to know more about who we are and what we do! It was a great opportunity to share the gospel! Sister L and I sang a wicked solo and we also sang one with an elder. Sad elder will never hear the end of that one!

The morning Sunday was a pretty hard day, and also a day where I learned something so especial for me that I cried. Allow me to tell you all bad things so I can get to the point of the story, which is a good thing. Sorry for the bad--it´s got a point.

We didn´t bring anyone to church yesterday, so we had to leave during sacrament meeting to look for investigators that could go to church. We left with a lot of faith that we could find someone who would be able to enjoy a few minutes of church, but as the people passed buy rudely not answering us or saying no, we started to get discouraged. Usually people say yes here in Parral. It was difficult when the people started to lie and say they don´t know their address or that they are so busy with Christmas preparations that they cannot listen to a Christmas message, or that they just didn´t want anything.

We didn´t find anyone that could go to church. We went back and went to relief society, where I had to ask the sisters who would be able to give the 8 elders and sisters food this week. No one raised their hand and no one wanted to give us food during this time of year. No one. December 24 was going to be a beans and tortilla in the house day. Then to top it all off, the sister that complained about giving missionaries food handed out a nice letter that said ¨wishes that the Christmas spirit can abide in your home this year¨ and her family´s name. I started to think about how people may say they have the Christmas spirit because they are buying gifts for everyone and singing Christmas carols, but not really have the Christmas spirit. I know with family parties and preparations, it is hard to find time for the missionaries. However, missionaries are representatives of Jesus Christ, and no one had room in their house for Jesus Christ this Christmas time--people in the street and members alike.

All of the sudden it came to mind the scripture in John 1:11 that says ¨He came unto his own, and his own received him not.¨ 

I understood how it would feel to be among your ¨own¨ like the members of the church are our ¨own,¨ but that no one received us. I understood just a little portion of what the Savior would have felt. His own creations that He loves so much--with a love eternal--and they didn´t accept Him. We don´t accept Him. Every time we commit a mistake, we are serving Satan instead of serving Christ. We don´t receive Him.

This Christmas I hope we will be able to serve our Savior selflessly. Without reservations. Give and not hope anything in return. ¨But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.¨ He is the gift. He is the most important gift. The reason for Christmas. It´s HIM. And nothing else. He is the gift.

I know Jesus is our Savior. He saved us. Literally. Without Him, this is not possible. We are not possible. This joy and love and peace we have in this live is not possible. He gave every single part of Him to us. Every drop of blood, every piece of everything--He gave it to us. What gift will we give to Him this year?

I learned a lot about Christ this week. I am so grateful for Christ and for His grand sacrifice. An infinite gift. The best gift. One so special that there was only one spirit able to offer it, and that is Jesus Christ. Yesterday, I was able to share my testimony of Jesus Christ in Relief Society, and I am very happy to say that the arms shot up to give food to the missionaries (don´t worry :)). I am glad to understand more this week about what it means to be a representative of Jesus Christ, and what His humble birth really means.

Have a wonderful Christmas, and don´t forget the reason for the season! It is Him!! I love you all very much!! Feliz Navidad!

all my companions from my whole mission in one place at one time. just that the first picture they cut off sister M, and the second picture sister Z already lost her patience, so almost all my companions in one picture. almost

singing downtown!!

we were the envied ones becuase we were the only ones who brought a blanket on the bus to go to chihuahua. hehe

piñatas!!!

my companion doesnt do normal faces

trio power!! finally reunited after a year.