Elder Jeffrey Hurst: Week 10: Brownsville

On Tuesday we had Zone confrence! Zone conference is pretty big. Our zone, the Brownsville zone and the Harlingen zone got together and had training. President Maluenda and his wife were there along with the APs. I just wanted to talk about a couple of things that I thought stood out to me during this confrence.

Basically whenver President opens his mouth it's just like you are listening to general authority speak. Because he was a general authority before he got called as president here. He was a member of the seventy. Basically every word he says is exactly what the Savior would have said. Sometimes when he is talking he stops and looks up to the corner of the chapel and thinks and then says something mind blowing. Most of the missionaries joke and say that when he does this he is proably talking with the Savior and saying what the Savior wants said. I wouldn't doubt that this is true! A lot of the training is in spanish. But every now and then he will say something in english that he wants us all to understand. One thing that he said to us greenies is that we need to learn to love the hard time we are going through right now. Every single missionary knows what it is like to be new and to feel lost and not know what is going on. We just have to learn to enjoy it and learn from it. My whole mission can basically be determined by the attitude that I have about the hard times. That was just one of the things that really stuck out to me. Then all the missionaries in the two zones that are leaving soon bare their testimonies. One thing that one of the APs said in his testimony is he wishes that he was one of the greenies who was just starting his mission. Being so young in the mission I have the opportunity to decide what type of missionary I want to be. So that has been in my mind a lot! I just need to decide the type of missionary i want to be.

Nothing really too exciting this week happened. We taught a lot of restoration lessons and the book of mormon a couple of times. Hopefully we can turn those lessons into more! Elder Curtis is a fantastic teacher. When we teach other people I learn something new as well. It's hard for me to speak up sometimes because I feel like he could do such a better job. But it is all a learning experince and there is a reason that the Lord has called us to teach in twos. I feel like I will take the way he teaches with me my whole mission. I've asked him to teach me how to teach the way he does.

We had to drop Papa Conde. It was pretty sad. We had big plans for him but he decided that he didn't want to become a Mormon. I hope more than anything that somewhere along the line he has a change of heart and accepts the lessons again. Elder Curtis and I were pretty shaken up and it's definitely a resonating effect. Also none of our invetigators came to church this week so that was hard for us as well. We had a church tour lesson with Janet and we had her pray in the chapel and promise God she would be to church on Sunday. When Sunday rolled around she said she was coming, even said she was on her way and then didn't show up. So that was hard. It was a pretty good learning opportunity. We need to do a better job with teaching the importance of church attendence. I think a big problem with this is the culture down here. Obviously the people here don't have a lot and have to work a lot and Sunday is one of the days that most of them have to work. It's hard to get them to leave their jobs and get them to church. We just need to get them to see the blessings that come from attending church.

On Sunday we were at Casa Linda our spanish branch waiting for it to start and President called. Usually when President calls its not a good thing. He asked for the address to Casa Linda. We gave it to him and he said that he would see us there. We were kind of freaking out while we were waiting for him to show up. But it turns out he just goes to a lot of the wards and branches in the mission to see how they were doing. But it was a cool opportunity to just talk to him and his wife. They are both such amazing people. We pretty much just had the opportunity to talk to them for 15 minutes before the ward started. He has a son serving in Ventura right now! So that is a cool little connection we made. I also bore my testimony in spanish this week. I don't know how much of it made sense but I was pretty proud of myself. I love the Casa Linda Branch. All the members are so genuine and would do anything to help us. We eat with a few of them weekly and they are some of my favorite people. They understand that I don't speak very much spanish and are more than willing to help me learn. They are the best people and I have a lot that iIcan learn from each of them.

Well guys I love you all and thank you all for supporting me on my mission this far. I wouldn't be able to do it without your guys help!

Love, Elder Hurst