WEEK #10 My First Baptism!

Well this week was amazing!!  I had the privilege of getting to baptize Kenya!!  My first baptism!!  It was such an amazing experience!  We got to the church at 7:30 in the morning because her baptism was at 8 and she was already there waiting for us!  She was all ready to go!  We had 2 little talks about baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost from members in the ward (there were about 12 people there in total) and then me and her walked out and of the baptismal water.

My first baptism with Kenya!

 It's been raining a lot here and when it rains the water that comes out of the faucet is like yellow or sometimes green and so this baptismal font was filled with green water but it was cool.  I said her name then said the baptismal prayer in Spanish.  I could feel that God was happy with her decision and it felt like he was smiling down on us.  Something I'll never forget.  There is so much joy in being a missionary.  We then had Kenya bare her testimony and she said, " I know that this Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is true.  I know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.  I'm grateful to have this church in my life and that these elders were able to find me."  It was so awesome and I felt the spirit again so strong!

 On Sunday we kinda had a spook cause church started and Kenya wasn't there.  She was just running a little late though cause she was picking up one of our investigators on her way to church.  She is sos awesome.  We are probably going to baptize her daughter in 2 weeks and we have Dony lined up for this week to be baptized and he is super excited and ready.  We also had Julia at church this Sunday with Kenya and Angie again!  It's awesome being a missionary.  Hope all is going well for you guys at home!  I'm gonna try to send some pictures but this computer is being dumb.  You'll definitely get some next week though for sure!! Love you all!!

Love Elder Hunt

WEEK #9 I Love Conference

Me and my buds!

So this week was amazing!!! Sorry I didn´t get to send a big email out last week!  Didn´t have a lot of time but my mom created this cool blog for me so you can check that out if you want its called hadenhunthonduras.blogspot.com  so check that out its way cool!  Wow where to start?? This week was absolutely amazing with conference and our investigators and everything! 

Second we have Dony´s baptism on the 18th!!  He is a supeer peela investigator which means super good

We are baptizing Kenya

investigator.  He always reads and does all the challenges that we challenge him to do!  I´m so stoked for him and his baptism as well!  and we got a new investigator and set a date for her baptism on the first lesson!  She came to all the general conference sessions along with dony and kenya!!  Shes the girlfriend of one of the members so hopefully shes taking these lessons for herself and not for him!  I can tell though that she felt the spirit during conference!

Thirdly conference!!!!  What a great opportunity we all had to listen to the Prophet who receives revelation from the Lord for us, and all of the apostles and other general authorities.  What a blessing we have to live in this gospel!  In this conference there were some talks in Spanish, in Chinese, and in Portugese.  That in itself is so awesome!  The gospel is being spread all over the world, and I am so lucky to be a part of that preaching the gospel down here in Honduras to these people.  Its funny I never thought about this before, but what a privelege and blessing we have to listen to the prophet in english and actually be able to hear his voice and the apostles as well.  I don´t know if you liked hearing the translator for those certain talks as well as you liked actually hearing the real voice of the authorities that spoke in english.  Hearing the actual voice of the people that speak is so cool cause you can hear exactly what they´re saying with tone and pitch of their voice.. when they´re feeling the spirit like Elder Eyring when his voice gets tender or Elder Holland when hes getting serious about something or feeling the spirit as well.  I actually just listened to the speakers in spanish when they spoke spanish so i could hear the tone of their voice and i could actually understand a lot of it which was really cool.  

We are so blessed in so many ways that we may not even see.  I think we take it for granted sometimes.   One thing that really stuck out to me in general conference was a talk in Preisthood Session and it was Uchtdorf who said, Lord is it I?  Of course this is when Jesus and his apostles were at the Last Supper and Jesus looked around and said one of you are going to betray me.  The apostles then asked Lord is it I?  I´ve heard that story so many times and I always thought that that question was kind of werid.. like wouldn´t you know if it was you or not??  But instead of pointing fingers and saying oh its gotta be him or him they looked inwards and said Lord is it I?   These conference talks are for us personally.  The words in conference and in the scriptures are for us.  Evaluate yourself.  Study the conference talks again when they come out in the Ensign and ask yourself what do I need to work on? 

 I promise if you will honestly ask God what you can work on, he will give you an answer.  We don´t need to make drastic changes but always be trying to better ourselves improving little things here and there.  Fine tuning is what it is.  More than all though as the Prophet said, follow the footsteps of the savior Jesus Christ.  Always steer a straight course back towards Eternal Life and always have your mind set on Salvation and Exaltation.  Always look heavenward for guidance.  Be an example for good and be a light up on a hill that stands out in the darkness.  We are members of the restored church of Jesus Christ back on the earth today.  We are different then the rest of the world.  Don´t hide it.  Devoted members of this church are missionaries.  If you know any sheep that are lost, bring them in.  Every member a missionary.    I love you guys!  The Lord is hastening his work and he needs all of us to be a beacon of light in a world of darkness.  Enjoy the fall colors and football for me!  I miss you all!

Love Elder Hunt    

The Elder's I live with who crack me up!

WEEK #8 Well Quick Letter to You Guys Cuz I Got To Go!

Washing my clothes

September 29, 2014

I love you all!  WE got 16 new investigators this week!  Things are progressing!  The language is coming the words one by one!  Thats the saviors teaching though one by one!  It says it 6 times in the Book of Mormon!  I only found 4 when I read through but Elder Bednar said theres 6.  Gonna teach these people one by one, take these days one by one, and learn and grow.  I miss you guys and wish you the best in Utah!!  Love you all!!  Oh ya and i have to wash my clothes which I actually enjoy its different!

Elder Hunt

WEEK #7 Investigators in Church!!

We drive past this a lot on the buses!

So life is good out here in the mission.  I have my ups and downs but its all around pretty good.  Its funny as I'm learning this new language i feel like my english is getting worse.. some kids that have been out here for a year and a half from america have a hard time speaking english sometimes!  Its not terrible but they'll forget words sometimes!  Its pretty funny!  I can't wait til I know that good of spanish that my English fails!  gotta while before that though!  Umm weather was pretty good this week I gotta pretty cool picture of my area this week to give you a taste of the streets and area i'm in!  Definitely not the beautiful changing leaves that you all are experiencing right now, but I like it haha!

We finally got 2 investigators in church this week!!!  We have baptisms set for them on the 18th of October so hopefully that all goes well.  They have to come the next 2 sundays in a row and be worthy to be baptized.  People down here have a huge problem with the law of chastity and the word of wisdom as you can imagine so hopefully nothing comes up too big when we talk about that.  Their names are Dony and Kenya!  Dony is a really cool dude who is a super good investigator!  he studies what we give him and always has questions for us!  He wants to go on a mission!  He's 20 right now.  We were actually talking to a man through a chain linked fence and dony was sitting on the bench behind him and listened in and was interested so he came up and listened too.   Pretty cool that through teaching the man who didn't really care dony was able to hear what we had to say too and that he wanted to hear more!  Kenya is a mom of 3 children and doesn't have a husband.  She's had missionaries visit her before and attended church for 6 months I guess so maybe, hopefully this time she will want to be baptized.  only time will tell though!  

So I finished the Book of Mormon last night and what a powerful experience that was.  I took Moroni's challenge and prayed to know of the Book of Mormons truth.  I know that that book is true!  I didn't have an angel come down and tell me it was true,  but I know its true because of the way i feel when I read it.  It makes me feel happy.  I feel peace.  It gives me comfort.  There's a burning in my heart when I read it that testifies of its truthfulness unto me.  One thing I've learned is that the Book of Mormon has all the answers to any of the questions we might have in our life.  I invite you all and challenge you all to start reading it if your not and if you have a struggle or a question pray to God with real intent and then read and if you do it with a sincere heart he will provide you with an answer to your question or struggle!

I love you all!  Would love to hear from all of you!  

Elder Hunt

WEEK #6 Spanish is Coming!

Les queremosss muchooo!! son los mejores!!!

We love you so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! you are the best!!

So this week was much, much better with Spanish!  Thanks for all the prayers!  Last week I hardly knew what was going on in the lessons and felt lost and this week i pretty much understood everything that was going on in all the lessons and even taught these past couple of days a little!!  The weather this week was a lot of cloud coverage and rain!  It felt so nice!  Much better than the hot sun beating down on us all day haha hopefully we will get lucky this next week as well!  At night it usually dumps a whole lot of rain and we get to fall asleep to the sound of rain pouring down which I love!  It rains super hard here!

So on Saturday we got to go do a service at the casa rosada!  We took a bus clear out into the middle of nowhere and hiked on this trail going to the house.  However there was a river that got in the way.  Usually you can walk on sandbags to the other side but the water had rose and so the sand bags were covered by a foot!  so we had to take our shoes off and walk through this nasty, nasty water.  We got to the other side and Elder Wing pointed at a log and there was gross lookin stuff up against it and he said you know what that is?  Is you can imagine it was poop.  so we basically walked through sewer water.  We wiped off our shoes on leaves and bushes the best we could and put our shoes back on and continued to the house.  We got there and it was this little farm house.  There was cows and pigs and palm trees everywhere!  We started helping them move bricks from one place to the other and there house was filthy.  There was tirantulas and cockroaches crawling around everywhere!  We moved all their furniture out and swept the house and mopped it and then moved everything back in.  It´s hard to believe that the people could live in that filth but they´re accustomed to it I guess.  I got to chopp grass for the first time with a machette!! It was legit!  It´s such hard work!  You have to bend down so low and try and get the blade even to the ground and then slice the grass over and over again.  I got blisters on my fingers.  You guys at home are lucky to have a weed wacker haha.  We also picked coconuts of a palm tree!  Basically you climb this ladder thats about 6 feet tall and then you have this pole with a hook on the end.  You balance on the ladder and try to get the hook hooked on a coconut and then yank super hard.  The coconut then falls and you never know where its gonna go..  Elder Marte almost got hit in the face but moved just in time and it hit his arm on the way down haha.  We then cut the cocnuts open and drank the juice right out of it!  It was super sweet and good!  Then we ate the insides as well.  Pretty cool experience!

so i´ve learned that the people here are super receptive, like we´ll give them a pamphlet and set an appointment with them and teach them the first lesson!  Then will ask them if they will follow the example that Jesus Christ set and be baptized by proper priesthood authority like Jesus was and they say yes.  Will teach them more lessons after that and set there baptismal date but they need to come to church 3 times before they can be baptized and none of them come to church.  Everyones kinda just uncommitted here and a little bit lazy..  They love talking with us and accept our message but they don´t act on it or do anything with it which is super frusturating.  It´s also kinda hard cause are area is about 3 miles away from the church we attend and its a 45 minute walk to our area every day so its hard for them to get to church.  We ask the members here if they can help carpool our investigators but they usually only have room for their own famillies.  So this next sunday were gonna wake up super early and walk to are area and try to get them to come with us to church!  We have 25 new investigators and 10 of them are progressing pretty good so hopefully we can get them to church.  If any of you guys have some good ideas though on how to get them to church please let me know!  Would love to hear some good ideas!

Thats it for now!  Love to hear from all of you!  Love you guys!  I¨m gonna send some pictures in a sec! 

Love Elder Hunt

WEEK #5 Vamos a la Playa

My companion Elder Ordonez from Guatemala

September 8, 2014

So my first area is the beach!  So stoked to be here!! I didn´t even think I´d see the beach cause my mission barely has any of the coast on it but I got my feet wet in the ocean today!!  My companion is a little guy from Guatemala.  He doesn´t speak a lick of english but is the nicest guy ever!!  His name is Elder Ordonez I´m in a city called Puerto Cortes and my area is called El Centrol!  So the main food that everyone eats here is Baleadas!  They´re pretty dang good!  Look them up if you get the chance!  And half the time we drink drinks here its Coca Cola!  Welcome to Honduras! haha  So my area is a bunch of dirt roads, and palm trees everywhere!  We have to walk like a mile or 2 to get to it every day and walk over this bridge overlooking the ocean that kids jump off!  it looks pretty fun!  like a 40 foot jump.  It is so, so, so hot here!  Being in Guatemala was like paradise weather compared to here!  I´m already getting that missionary tan line!  halfway up your neck and a huge farmers tan on your arms haha!   It is very pretty here look it up on the internet and you´ll see!  I met my mission President and he is awesome.  He´s from bountiful Utah and is the nicest guy ever.  He is very spiritual and just such a good guy!

 

So a cool spiritual experience that happened this week!  We were walking around on these dirt roads and we saw a lady hammering a board into a tree with a nail!  She was struggling pretty hard so we were like this is a perfect opportunity to offer service!  We asked her if we could help and she was hesitant shaking our hands cause her hands were so dirty.  She let us help though so i held the tree steady and my companion started hammering the nail in and all this wood flakes were falling on me.  We finished it up and then started chatting with her.  We asked her how here relationship was with god and she said it was good and then we asked if she´d like it to be be better and she said of course.  So we told her that god loves her and cares about her and that the gospel of jesus christ blesses families.  She started tearing up cause she could feel the spirit super strong and started crying.  It was really cool,  we talked more about the restoration and I bore my testimony and told her how the gospel has blessed my family.  Super cool lady!  I love feeling and having the spirit.  Theres not a better feeling.  We visited with her again and she is super receptive!  We challenged her to be baptized and she said she would so hopefully everything goes good with her!

 

Anyway tons more I want to say but we gotta go now.  So I love you all and here are a couple of pictures from this week!  love doing backflips on the beach haha

Love Elder Hunt

The beach scene would not be complete without a famous Haden flip

 

WEEK #4

September 1, 2014

Travelling to Honduras

Leaving on a little plane to Honduras