Week 5

It feels like i just had P-day mostly beacuse i did! Not a lot has happened since the last p-day. On sunday we had really good devotials. One of the talks was by Bednar. It talked a lot about becoming Preach my gospel Missionaries. One thing that really stuck out to me was he said before we teach someone we need to 1. Observe 2. Listen 3. Discern and 4. Teach what the spirit tell us to say. This is somethings i have lacked in my lessons. I feel a lot of the time i just run my mouth without really knowing what im going to say and when i do this i dont really teach what the spirit tells me to stay. So that is something i have been working on in our lesson this week.

We had our last lesson with Maria on Monday. We taught her about temples. After our teachers told us that we need to be more general when we teach about temples in the field. It was a really good lesson other than that. The spirit was really strong and i think it was a perfect way to end things with her.

Elder Daniel Jensen left this monday. We spent a lot of time with him while we have bee here so it was sad to see him go. But its cool to see him begin his mission. We leave for the field in five days. It feels a little surreal. Up to this point i haven't exactly felt like a missionary. I have felt more like a student. We have been learning how to be missionaries, how the Lord wants us to teach the people his message. One thing i have learned is that we are the mouth pieces for God. He works through  us. When we say something its not us saying it. Its the Lord saying it, and he can tell us what to say if we truly listen. I know in some of the lessons that we have given that there is no way i would know what to say if it werent for gods help. But to be a mouth piece of the Lord we have to be worthy of it. We cant just excpect the lord to put words in our mouth without working for it. We have to study the words of him. The more as i have been learning about the Savior the more i feel like i know him. That is my goal. To learn so much about him that i know him. And one way i think of doing this is walking a little in his shoes. I think thats what a mission is about. We get closer to christ as we teach people about him. We of course help people do the same. This is truly the lords work and we are instruments in his hand. None of this would be possible if it weren't for him. I know that Christ lived. I have felt his love for me and can't wait to go spread the word to the people in Texas in five days. I know that there is going to be hard times but when i rely on the lord i will be able to make it through anything.

I can't wait to tell you all about McAllen.

Love, Elder Hurst

District 18-D

Daniel and Caleb Jensen with Elder Hurst. Caleb is Elder Hurst's companion. Daniel is Caleb's twin who left this week for Peru.

CCM laundry

Week 4

So this week kind of felt the same as all the other weeks. The language is coming along well. Our lessons have gotten really good. The devotionals were pretty good. On sunday we had a talk by Jeffrey R. Holland that was amazing. It talked a little about the purpose of Preach My Gospel it was so good! Then that night we watched the Joseph Smith movie which really stood out to me! Its crazy to think about how much persecution he went through for all of us. I think some times i take for granite that i havent been persecuted and that i have had the ability to be a mormon. 

We only have one more lesson with one of our investigators and three more with the other. They both are pretty close to baptism and we have just been talking more about commandments. Im really nervous to teach tithing to them. I dont know how they will feel about paying one tenth of their money. But it is really good practice for the field. I can only imagine that tithing is going to be a hard commandment for some people to keep. Especially when they already may not have that much money to give. But if they know its true i hope they will be willing to give up anything for this church.

We got two new latino room mates this week they are pretty cool. They understand a little english and we can have pretty good conversations speaking spanglish. They asked us how are spanish was this week and we told them we were pretty good at talking to people about the gospel so they told us to teach them a lesson. So Elder Ivey and i taught them for a little while. They then wanted us to bare our testimonies in english so they could see if they could understand. It was weird baring my testimony in english. I can tell my testimony has been strengthed a lot by being here. They then bore their testimones in spanish to us. One of them is from panama and it was really hard to understand his spanish. But the other one is from Mexico and it was a little easier to undersand. Hopefully its easy to understand the people in texas.

Its crazy that i leave to texas in like 10 days! I feel like i just got here to the CCM. I dont think i will be ready for the field but i dont think i could every really be ready. Trying to learn a langage in 6 weeks is almost impossible and it will definately take me a while in the field until i feel comftorable speaking it. But im excited to start preaching the gospel and start changing peoples lives. 

The days here kind of all blend together and its hard to study for three hours straight so sometimes we lose focus. This week I continued to learn about Christ´s life. In the Jesus the Christ book there is some amazing analogies about happiness versus pleasure. It basically just says happiness it real and pleasure only seems like it is real for a little while. It was really good! I also learned a lot about the plan of salvation. I realized i kind of lack in knowledge in this subject and its kind of hard to teach something you dont know about so i studied this subject as well during personal study time. Ive learned a lot about it and i know it will help me on my mission to know about it.

I know this church is true and i´m so excited to start sharing the gospel in ten days!!

Para siempre Dios este con vos!

Love Elder, Hurst

This is a cool case i got for my scriptures!

This is Hermana Perez and Hermano Perez no relation. Hemana perez is also Maria Fernada one of our investigators. And Hermano Perez was Carlos and is now Abraham.

A picture of Kassin i mean Elder Jackson and I before he left!

The natives that left on Monday. And my new hair cut!

Week 3

So this week was awesome!! On sunday we had a devotional by David A Bednar. It was just a talk he gave a while ago but it was so good. Unfourtunatly only missionaries can watch it though. But it basically talked about how if we love Christ that is why we should serve. He told us to study about christs life and how christ was the perfect example.He promised if we do this then we will recive blessings. So every morning i have been studying out of Jesus The Christ and learning more about Christ. 

For our investigators sometimes its hard to know what to teach him. But pretty much every lesson we teach we recieve revelation on what to teach them. So for one of our fourth lesson with Maria we werent sure what to teach her. Shes commited to baptism and basically does everything we ask her to do. We were going to talk to her more about the plan of salvation but we were having a demonstration of teaching with the teacher before we taught Maria and i got the feeling that we should switch to Enduring to The end. So we did. when we got into the lesson she told us that her parents didnt want her to get baptized because they were catholics. So i told her that if she prayed god would tell her what to do. We then talked a little about enduring to the end. It talks about repentance and she asked what that was. So we told her about repentance and that she can recive a remmison of her sins. We asked her if she would pray about those two things and read Enos. We then asked her to give the closing prayer. She did and prayed for the things we asked her to pray about. During her prayer the spirit was soooo strong. She started crying and i was close but mangaed to hold back the tears. After the pray was over i told her this was the spirit and it was answering her prayers. She said she knew and it was an awesome experince. Its so cool to feel the spirit when you can barely understand what is being said. Its even more cool to not know what you are saying and literally are having words put into your mouth. Im not fluent in spanish and i proably sould like a three year old when i talk but God really does put words into my and i learned that today.

We also are teaching our other teacher. He is the exact oppisite of Maria. His name is Abraham. Its really hard to teach him because he says he doesnt know if God is real and is waitng for the BIG ANSWER. Its hard to teach someone to recive that when it took me 18 years to recieve! We keep telling  him if he does what we tell him he will blessed to know its true. He however wont do any work. So I felt like he needed a lesson about Faith. We read the brother of jared with him and talked about faith. We told him that he needed to start exersing his faith in order to recieve an answer. Hopefully he starts doing the things we asked him. We will find out tonight. We have planned to teach the repentance tonight but that could change at any minute! We usually always change our plan according to what the spirit tells us to do. 

This week has been amazing and strengthened my Testimony in so many ways. I know that the work here is possible it isnt going to be easy but it is possible. I know that peoples lives are going to be changed beacuse of us and that is our motivation to learn spanish. There is days i feel like i dont want to work and just lay in bed but thats not what god wants from us. One of the Elders gave us all an amazing poem that im going to try and send home to you guys. It talks about how christ has been through what we are going through and that through him we can be amazing missionaries. The work is real and i cant wait to get out into McAllen and tell everybody about it! I hope you are all doing amazing!

Love, Elder Hurst

This is Elder Jensen,Elder Herrin and Elder Millward. They are in our district and going to the same mission.

Didn't dare chance this lunch so had fruit instead.

Week 2

Thanks for the email and especilly the packages! But ive only gotten one... But we havent checked the mail yet today so it could be waiting. the packages are so nice! Feel free to keep sending them to me! 

This week was pretty good! This Sunday was fast sunday and it was proably the first time that i have fasted for 24 hours. One of the things i fasted for was to be able to bear the food. The food hasnt changed at all but the way my body process it is a lot better! That was just a little testimony to me of the power of fasting. 

We started to teach two investigators this week. They are both really are teachers one teaches us in the morning and the other teaches us at night. The male investigator was very hard. He doesn{t belive in god. But he wants to receive an answer. So we taught him how to pray. In the second lesson he told us he still hadnt recived an answer. He lives with his girlfriend and has two kids. I felt an impression that in our second lesson we should teach him chastity. So we did! There was a lot of awkward pauses but i think the lesson actually went pretty well. He told us that he would talk with his girlfriend about getting married. This week we havent been taking any notes in spanish to our lessons just english and we translate them. This last one we didnt even have english notes we just went in and taught him in spanish! Its pretty cool.

This whole week elder jensen has felt sick and the last two days ive started to not feel good. Today was a little better though! After our lesson last night we went home early and went to bed so we could get some sleep. But it will be good! Im sure this week will be better!

Today we got to go to the temple! It was about an hour away. It was nice to get out of the CCM for a little while! We went to the visitors center there and the spirit was so strong! I miss the temple a lot but i also feel the spirit here every day so it makes up for it. 

Theres a saying here in the CCM that the weeks feel like days and days feel like weeks. Its so true! Every day is so long but it feels like i just go here! Elder Jensen and I get a long really well. We are both pretty sarcastic so sometimes we pretend to yell at eachother and act mad but we arent being serious at all! Some of the other elders in our district proabably think we have problems! We are really close with the rest of our district and i can tell we are all going to be very good friends after the mission!

The shirts arent really wrinkle free but we have an iron in our room. I actually ruined a pair of my pants with it. I guess it was all the way turned up and burned a hole right through it. So when i get to texas i might need you to send me a pair of black pants if that is okay. If i ever get a chance to talk to president pratt i will tell him i know his cousin. I dont really ever see him! I wish i could have been home to see Villy and Ty they are the best! With the Tall program we just learn most of our grammer. I miss you guys! I hope school goes well good luck with that! (You dont need to put the last paragraph on the blog)

I almost forgot about the Plane story. Nothing really happended with it. she didnt really want to hear about our church. She said she likes our standards and stuff but there is some things she doesnt like. I just tried to bare my testimony to her and told her to read the Book Of Mormon. She is really intrested in Jesus and God so i told her that in 3 Nephi Christ visits the Americas and she said she might read that. But you never know!

Well im all out of words for the week! I love you all! I will send some pictures with this email! Let me know if there is anything else you want me to send you!

Love Elder Hurst

Glad Elder Hurst is adjusting to the food. Power in Fasting.

Then this is our teacher and investigator. His name is Fernado Perez. He just got off his mission to Panama two months ago! I like him a lot! I will take a picture of our teacher this week.

Elder Hurst and his friend from home Elder Mark Sheffield on Fast Sunday. Notice the ties. Jeffrey's group of friends all bought matching ties to wear on Fast Sundays.

The hole he burned in his pants with the iron.

The computer he uses to email us. Notice the two N keys.

Elder Hurst and Elder Jensen at the Mexico Temple.

Hermana Hurst. She is in Jeffrey's branch. Notice they switched name tags.

Week 1

Hola!! 

The CCM is pretty good. The food here is awful and Elder Jensen and I have to use the rest room a lot. Its no Bueno. But we do have some pretty good bonding moments while we are on the toilet so thats good. I will try and put on a couple of pictrues. I didnt even think to bring the cord for the camera. But you cant send that to the CCM theres no way it would make it here. But elder jensen has a card reader so that should work. I cant figure it out right now so i will ask somebody how to do it and come back later. Our schedule is probably just like that other elders. We pretty much wake up study in the classroom for a little while then eat breakfast then we are in the classroom until we have lunch. Then we have Gym right after lunch and then we have tall right after that. Tall is a computer program developed by the church to learn languages. Then after that we have more study time until dinner. then after dinner we teach an investagor! Our second day here we had to start teaching in spanish and it was pretty hard. We pretty much just read everything out of books and stuff. We had five lessons with our first investigator and then he becomes our teacher. So tomorrow he starts teaching us which will be cool. For our lessons we usually just wrote everything out before hand and read it off a paper but the last lesson we wanted to try and actually speak to him. It went pretty well! We "commited" him to baptism so that was pretty cool! For our meals we pretty much just have peanut butter and nutella sandwiches and ceral. Thats about all we can stand to eat. But every now and then there is a good meal that we will eat. So its really not that bad and we can make it! The temple is actually closed until january or something like that so we will not be going while we are here. But next p-day we get to go to the visitors center their and take pictures so that will be nice. Sundays are really nice here. In priesthood we had a really powerful lesson. We watched a movie called missionary work and the atonement and it was so good! I reccomend you all to watch it. I probably wont write and letters while im here because it takes so long for them to get home so if you want to talk to me make sure you email me! The language is coming along pretty good. We have been kind of lazy with it but i think we are starting to work harder for it. I enjoy it here hopefully i take advantage of my time here. Our district is really awesome. They are who we spend most of our time with. I will try and but a picture of them all on here some time today! I love you all! I hope you are doing great at home!

Love, Elder Hurst