Hey family and Friends,
We had another baptism Saturday!!! We baptized a very
energetic sweet 11 year old whose going to turn 12 this Sunday! Me and
Elder Toomey found him teaching an inactive family in my first few
weeks and he was like hey I wanna get baptized randomly in the middle of
one of the lessons. So we always go back but he was always out playing
with his friends and when we would visit him he already forgot what we
had taught the last time. So we had to decided if we should drop him, but I felt like we should still keep going back. So in the
last two weeks we spent a lot more attention on him and told him that its not a joke and if he wanted to be
baptized he had to read every day for the next two weeks. I thought
that was just going to make him lose all interest, but we came back and
he had read and was working on memorizing the first article of faith. He was still himself but
he literally changed he had a desire to really be baptized and change,
his mom said he could as long as she saw a change because he used to
swear and things like that and he completely changed in a matter of
three days!! He's such a good kid he cracks me up! He was super sad
yesterday when I told him I'm eventually going to go to another area but
that I'd try to come back one day and visit him, he really liked that
idea!! But it was so funny when I baptized him he said I didn't move
my arm enough for him to grab his nose, because I was so focused on the
prayer and getting his name right I forgot about his nose lol so as I'm
pushing him down he's trying to catch his breath and trying to come out
of the water hahah so i barely got him under and he came out and just
looked at me with a face of shock and said- hey... I couldn't breath!
which sounds horrible but if you were there it'd be a lot funnier
everyone was laughing he's a goofy kid but it was very sweet when I was
waiting for him to finish changing in the bathroom in the hall he yelled
Elder! I asked what was up and he said i've never felt this good in my
life before! I feel so beautiful inside!!! And I sat there feeling so
good then remembered to respond telling him that was so awesome!! He's a
funny kid though we visited him last night and asked him how church was
and he said, "I didn't like it... then we were confused and like why!
and he said BECAUSE I LOVED IT!!!" He's a good kid and I felt a sweet
spirit when we gave him the gift of the spirit that he will serve a
mission. It was awesome! Then Thursday we had divisions and I went with Elder Moehdano from Mexico city whose 1 generation newer
than me . He speaks Spanish lol but it was awesome we taught a
very simple lesson to a member family in bauchiguilato their area about
the importance of daily prayer and study and we teach extremely
well together and in the middle of the lesson the lady just burst into
tears it was a very sweet spirit!! We also taught the lady we taught
before from the last divisions that we contacted on the street that's
quote unquote catholic and she said you can come but I'm catholic so we
went to visit her and when we went in, here kids were screaming and it was
noisy and she was a little flustered and by the end of the lesson out
of no where she said "I feel very calm right now, I feel peace" and we were
so excited. We did wrap up well and its just a nice example of
the effect we have with the spirit to a lady who says she never wants to
change from being catholic can feel the spirit through us, it was a
very special experience! Then we had a family home evening with a family
in their ward and it was awesome it was to their new baptisms two
weeks ago they baptized 5 brothers and sisters this family and we went
and taught them and it was very fun and it was very easy to come across a
laugh in that home before it started we were just having a lot of fun
then when it was time to be serious we started teaching them the
importance of scriptures and Elder Moehdano that stud him he was
prompted to say - "were going to say a prayer for a scripture that will
show that we truly can receive revelation from studying the scriptures
prayerfully".- and I was sitting their in awe of his faith the whole time I was praying he didn't turn to a scripture that had nothing to do with
prayer.... so he opens up the
scriptures to a random page and it was Mormon 5: 21 and it says the I
the lord hear the prayer of the righteous and everyone including him were
shocked we received an answer that direct it was awesome! Me and him
get along super well and the whole night we were talking about telling
president we received revelation we should be companions haha we had so
much fun that night!
And two days ago we had a conference with all the zones in Culiacan area
so 3 zones and it was Pres. Cantus last time to talk to us and it was a
very good experience. The conference it was very
spiritual we had the chance to bare our testimonies and I got up and
shared mine and it was a very sweet experience, when you feel like you
should take any chance to bare testimony of Christ he fills you with his
spirit! While we were filing up the font Friday and Elder Smalley was
sleeping since it takes like 3 hours I started to clean the church to
show my gratitude for the lord for blessing us with a baptism and I was
sweeping and sing because I have been given much and then started
thinking another song but remembered the one I was singing I felt the
spirit strong when I sang it so I started thinking which song was I
singing and i couldn't remember for the life of me so I had a thought to
say a prayer and instead of rationalizing against it I did and I said "Heavenly Father I know its not a big deal but I would really appreciate
and receive a stronger testimony of prayer if you helped me remember this song and
three seconds or so after the prayer the song just started 'playing in
my head again. It was a sweet tender mercy from the lord to show me how
involved he truly is with us.
So now to some fun stuff, we were riding back from the Chulavista where Juvel and Louis live which is
like 3 miles away from our house( by the way I'm super good at riding my
bike without my handlebars now thanks to how often we ride bikes and I
rode there with the highway and turns all without hands super cool haha I was proud]) but we were talking and a German Shepard starts chasing
us. Now usually the big dogs are the ones that DONT chase us cuz they've
got nothing to prove but this guy was just mad for no reason so I kicked
out and they usually stop running after that but this guy was different
he starts lunging at me and snapping so I started subconsciously
yelling like a little girl as I'm riding my bike looking g for cars in
front of me and kicking the dog in the nose as hard and fast as I can as Elder Smalley starts cracking up lol. So when the dog stopped. Elder S paused
and said how was that and I just said "well sometimes the only thing you
can do in life is move on elder lol and we started laughing, we have a
lot of fun together and we work really hard. We have a lot of good talks
and its weird cuz he really is polar opposite of me but we get along
really well.
We were teaching a lesson
to Jose the guy who asked us when he could start preaching lol and some
kids started a water balloon fight and they started throwing them close
to us so Elder Smalley grabs one and chucks it at a kid running. A kid gave me one daring me to
throw it across the road at his friend cuz he thought I couldn't throw
it that far so I bombed it like 50 yards and it hits this tree bursts
and rains all over the kid underneath it haha it was so funny! Sometimes
its easy to get entertained when you typically don't have fun as a
missionary haha.
The people are so
kind here and I just remembered we taught a referral at the plan of
salvation activity and she is golden so ready for the gospel her and
here boyfriend are getting married the 17th of July and she accepted to be baptized but we didn't put a date yet but she told us when she went into
the celestial room a room the members decorated to show each kingdom of
glory she started crying because she saw her a relatives spirits that had passed away
and said she felt her son who died holding her hand! So after that I
extended a invitation to baptism and she accepted without hesitation!
She has three kids so we could possibly have like 6 baptisms this next
transfer which would be awesome!! And when we went to go pick up some
medicine in the mall in Culiacan which was suuuuuuuuuuuuper nice I felt
like I was home again even then it was like city creek nice and we were
waiting till it opened and this guy came down and started talking to
us he's Mexican and served a mission and speaks English so that alone is
rare but he's inactive and is pretty studied out in anti church stuff
but was nice and didn't want to bash us at all but he said he still believes in it, he's just studying things out to legitimately see whats
right and I feel like we helped him out the best we could and at the end
he said to me I don't know why but I can tell you will be a leader in
the church one day but like high up, which was cool I joked with him
saying "ya I'm gonna be the churches first man primary president" and he
laughed but it was an incredible miracle!!!
Have a great week.
Love Elder Hunt
