Christmas Week 12.22.2014

White Christmas

In other news this week was once again a week of miracles, really it seems to me that each week, or more truthfully put, each day is filled with miracles and blessings, and as we tune our minds and our hearts to God's will our ears and our eyes become more tuned in and enable us the recognize these blessings.

Here's a few that happened this week;

1. As a mission our focus is the Baptize, Retain, and Reactivate. In an attempt to do so my companion and I have searched these past few weeks for 4 of the 11 new converts in our sector who had completely disappeared, as in no address, phone number, records of them all that we had was their name. But through the mercy of the Lord and through great diligence on our part with week was made contact with each one of them. Some were found through random contacts in the street, others from calling random unregistered numbers in our phone. But we were able to make contact, get the dats and even help out with a move in the process.

2. We are teaching Ignacio, the son of two new converts, he is 25 and pretty shy, but he is extremely intelligent. (as in as we verified reading assignments from the Book of Mormon he quoted scriptures back to us that had called his attention) But this Saturday night his faith was tested, his father was called in to work the next day in the morning (as in he would not be attending church) and his mother (she is a little less 'firm in the faith') said that she had too much to do the next day to go to church...and as ignacio stated going to church should be a family experience, and at first he almost decided not to go to church, but when we explained the importance that it has in helping us to progress he firmly declared 'Ill be there'. and he was, with a newly ironed shirt on top of it. it is amazing the change that the Lord works in the very hearts of the people.

Those are just two examples of miracles which one sees every single day while in the service of the Lord, and we will recognize them as we develop eyes to see. 

I know that all things are in the Lord's hands, trust in Him and everything will be okay. I love you all and will be seeing you on Thursday.

Elder Huchins

Gratitude 12.15.20114

Whelp this week was a week of miracles, literally. Beginning with Monday we had an alright focus group of people that we were teaching, and by Friday each one of them told us that they didn't want us to come by anymore, that they just wanted to be friends (like one of those bad high school break ups) or that they were just sick of listening to us. 

As I pondered the state of our sector I said to myself If you want different results, you have to do something different that was Friday night when it seemed as though everything was going wrong. But I decided to do something different. I committed in that moment that each and every prayer that I offered would only include the things that I was grateful for. In other words I would not ask for an increase in blessings until my heart was full of gratitude at the blessings that I had. And I testify that since that moment until today the Lord has not ceased nor even paused in blessing us. I cant tell all of the blessings for lack of space and time but here comes a few of the many.

1. Ignacio is the son of two recent converts, he has never read the book of Mormon or come to church, this week (Saturday and Sunday) he did both, and more than that is he committed to a baptismal date for the first Saturday in January.

2. We received a reference of a family of 5 that we will be contacting on Tuesday and the members tell us that the family wants to join the church and get baptized. (Sunday at church) 

3. We found and taught a family that has been meeting with the missionaries for about 10 years, we committed them to church (Saturday night) and they came, then on Sunday they committed to baptism on the 10 of January. 

4. We are teaching an evantist (the religion that Emma white founded that worship on Saturday) but yeah, Islander is his name and he has been a missionary for the church for 5 years and he accepted a book of Mormon and came to church on Sunday (and he loved it, he was so excited about it that he said that he was going to invite his friends the next week!!)

5. We received a reference from the branch president of a return missionary who is inactive and his non member wife who want to start coming to church.

6. Sunday we received a reference of a woman named Andrea, so we went to visit her and we talked to her daughter for a few minutes (we found out that she is a less active member of the church) and then Andrea came in and you could tell right away that she felt miserable, so we said hi and she sat down and the room fell into a brief silence and I looked up at her and asked Andrea, are you happy? she responded No. As we asked a bit more and discovered the reasons why she was not happy I looked at her once again and said Andrea I promise you as a representative of Jesus Christ that if you complete the invitations that we are going to leave with you, you will feel happy. She committed to read the book of Mormon (mosiah 2) to pray, to come to church, and to baptism on the 10 of January. Then after she committed she looked at me in the eyes and seemed to stare into my very sole and said This promise of yours, it had better be true. And i cannot tell you how glad I was in that moment that I knew that I had been called and ordained by representatives of God himself and that my promise was as valid and god as if Jesus Christ himself had spoken the words.

7. I think that the biggest miracle of all is that in my heart right now there is nothing but gratitude and love towards my Father in heaven. 

I know that He lives and that His son does as well and so shall each of us. love you guys!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Elder Hutchins

Mini Exchanges 12.8.2014

This week was amazing. Enough said. 

Tuesday I was with Elder Flores from Bolivia in a mini exchange in a SMALL town called Longavi, I swear besides the four missionaries there, there is a population of 50 stray dogs, 1000 cows and maybe 20 people. But we made it fun, I love working with other missionaries, they always teach me so much. Also at the end of the day to show my appreciation to him I bought  the house a pizza. I think the best moment of the mini exchange, was just how we were able to pump each other full of energy and talk to everyone that we saw. In the end we talked to 40-50 non members and a few of them invited us the come by their house the next day.

 

Thursday was another mini exchange, but with the traveling assistants, I was with Elder Herrera a convert of 4 years, he is from Washington, but his parents are Mexican. It was another excellent learning opportunity for me. I learned the importance of inviting people to come unto Christ rather than invite them to: Read, pray, get baptized. The purpose of commitments are to bring us closer to Christ, not to say we completed _______ commitments. The prize moment of this mini exchange, was right after we got out of teaching a man named Hugo, it was close to a hundred degrees and the sun was shinning bright and hot, we were toast, literally. We went into a little store and right when we walked in a guy buying stuff at the counter immediately yelled, "AND GIVE THESE TWO YOUNG MEN A DRINK; THEY WALK ALL DAY!" the lady at the counter turned and took out two ice cold bottles of orange juice, just what we needed. Count your blessings!

One of the families that I am home teaching came to church this Sunday and really it filled my soul with joy seeing them there. I love it!

Elder Hutchins

Another Awesome Week 12.1.2014

Well this week was awesome.

On Saturday we had two baptisms, Miguel and Paola. They have been meeting with the missionaries for almost a year now and just a few weeks ago were married and Saturday were baptized and Sunday confirmed members of the church. It was a cool experience especially because miguel's less active mother (of about forty years) came to church on Sunday to see him be confirmed, it was powerful, we had a total of three confirmations in the Sacrament meeting and that is what I call a powerful batting order, starting it off with the line "Receive the Holy Ghost" but three times. 

Also our prayers were answered, for while now my companion and I have been praying specifically to find a family of five people to teach and yesterday at about 8:30 at night we found them, we found the dad at the door and persuaded him to let us show him the two minute Christmas video that the church has come out with (for those of you who haven't seen it christmas.mormon.org) after some convincing he let us in, right after we finished the video his thirteen year old son woke up and he wanted to see the video, so we watched it again, then Christians wife and two daughters came home and they too wanted to watch the movie, after we talked a little with them about some difficulties that they are going through and the mothers absolute love for Christmas. Then we decided to finish by singing Away in a manger and that was just like putting the cherry on top after our "angelical"(they said it, not me) rendition they were practically begging us to come back. The Lord answers prayers.

Que estèn bien los quiero arto

Elder Hutchins