11-19-2012

Buenas!

It has been a great week! We were able to find a lot of people this week that I think should be able to progress well.  Unfortunately I won´t be here for their baptisms :( but that doesn´t matter!! We MAY have one before I leave. I don´t think I have told you a lot about Yaqui (Jackie).. she is a 20 year old who lives with her 17 year old boyfriend and their 5 month old baby.  She is progressing really well and wants to be baptized.  She came to church all on her own yesterday! She has progressed a lot and feels really really good and has already recieved a lot of answers that it´s where she needs to be.  Her boyfriend and her also want to get married, which is also a big plus!! Now we just gotta help them decide to do it now instead of wait so that she can be baptized.  The work is moving along and things are looking up here!

So here in Argentina they don´t celebrate Thanksgiving, but I wanted to write a little bit in honor of that today! :) First of all... everyone needs to watch this video: http://www.lds.org/pages/mormon-messages?lang=eng#in-the-spirit-of-thanksgiving

then... everyone needs to do this activity! :) at the beginning of the year I posted an activity of thanksgiving.. I don´t think I ever shared mine on the blog but this time I am going to share it.  I did it again yesterday and I also changed the questions a bit.  Here are the questions:

Write a list of the following items of things you are grateful for:

1. 10 physical abilities
2. 10 physical/material things
3. 10 non-physical things
4. 10 places in the world
5. 10 things about today
6. 10 attitudes/emotions
7. 10 items of media (songs movies books magazines etc.)
8. 10 positive experiences
9. 10 difficult experiences
10. 10 things of the gospel

Here is my list:

PHYSICAL ABILITIES

1. write
2. learn/understand
3. progress/change
4. laugh and cry
5. express myself
6. love
7. listen
8. create
9. ponder
10. speak and sing

PHYSICAL/MATERIAL THINGS

1. camera/photographs/film
2. books/materials for learning
3. instruments
4. people (friends, family, acquaintances, strangers)
5. computers
6. transportation
7. clothes/accessories
8. journals/notebooks
9. stores
10. animals

NON-PHYSICAL THINGS

1. charity/love/service
2. music and sound
3. lists
4. change
5. cultures
6. knowledge
7. ideas/inspirations
8. communication
9. humor
10. an eternal perspective

PLACES IN THE WORLD

1. Argentina
2. EEUU (USA)
3. Europe.. Italy and Ireland above all
4. India
5. Farmington/Davis County
6. My schools.. especially Davis High and BYU
7. temples.. celestial room
8. all forests and fields
9. Mexico
10. Cities... SLC, San Fran, NYC, and Boston

THINGS ABOUT TODAY

1. EFY Music
2. bana licuado :) mmm
3. hector... after 2 months he still can´t remember that my name is Hermana Hunt and not Hermana Oont.. hahah. Good thing he just calls me ´la rubia´ to make it easier. Always a laugh with him!!
4. Yaqui!! She came all by herself! She wants to be baptized! :)
5. Jorge, Yaqui´s baby. Omg omg how he makes me want to have kids.. haha! The CUTEST baby in the world!!
6. Hugs from little Floriencia :) she´s so dang cute!
7. Hermana Miranda... seriously one of my heroes.. she is soo awesome
8. Church!
9. a nice breather/break since my comp is sick... time to WRITE! (like this list!)
10. FANS. haha.

ATTITUDES/EMOTIONS

1. positivity
2. inner peace
3. determination
4. trust/confidence
5. the feeling of laugther
6. bliss/deep joy... not the surface kind, but the real deep kind
7. sincerity
8. selfless love
9. achievement
10. gratitude

ITEMS OF MEDIA

1. all scriptures/words of prophets and apostles
2. mormonads/mormon messages
3. Christian/EFY music
4. the song ¨it never entered my mind¨
5. spanish music that I hear in the streets all the time and am super excited to look up without feeling guilty about wanting to listen to it!! hahah... such as ´jurabas tu´ by los del fuego and ´yo te esperaré´
6. any chill or jazz or christmas music
7. inspiring movies or movies that show real life situations in the world
8. 17 miracles and inspiring church movies
9. find art/film/culture photography
10. dictionaries/informatino books and internet for learning

POSITIVE EXPERIENCES

1. high school.. especially doing marching band
2. BYU photography program
3. all wards.. especially Farmington 10th ward and my last BYU ward
4. friendships and relationships
5. mission. obvio.
6. traveling/exploring
7. jobs... especially bingham and traverse mountain, photography, and even good old oakridge country club
8. church activities such as mutual, girl´s camp, youth conference, and EFY
9. family dinners, get togethers, reunions, and games!
10. volunteer work.. especially for Americorps and at the homeless shelter, and all the other random projects

DIFFICULT EXPERIENCES

1. mission. obvio otra vez. haha
2. mistreatment/abuse
3. not doing what I should do and having to recognize it and change
4. relationships (especially 1 in particular).. having to learn how to move on
5. Grandma´s death during the mission. not being able to be there
6. my best friend´s wedding. not being able to be there
7. trying to overcome difficult weaknesses and temptations
8. body/self-image
9. losing my testimony and having to regain it
10. work... jobs, school, and mission

THINGS OF THE GOSPEL

1. Jesus Christ and repentance=strength, change, freedom, and happiness
2. God´s love and mercy... my literal father
3. scriptures... knowledge and spiritual strength
4. the Holy Ghost... guidance, comfort, relationship with Them, enlightenment
5. all the prophets, before and now
6. temples... most incredible place on earth
7. church... the unity and family there and learning
8. baptism/sacrament... a new start and forgiveness
9. the truth/reality
10. the focus on the family

There´s my list!! I challenge you all to also make your lists, and send them to me!!! linsey.hunt@myldsmail.net . Some of you have already done it but I challenge you to do it again and see what is the same and what has changed! And those of you who haven´t... do it this time, and send it to me please!! :) I hope you all have a fabulous holiday!! Only 3 more weeks of email.... weird weird weird. I LOVE YOU ALL!!!

--Hermanita Hunt

11-12-2012

       Hermana Hunt with Cesar

                                 Cockroaches and the lizard that we killed in our apartment

Hermanas!

Zone Conference

  Hello Fam!!

Wow... what a week!! Here goes:

AWKWARDS INCOMODOS Y CHISTOSOS

• this week, for the first time in my whole mission, I actually got sick!! what?? Haha... well, not really really sick, but sick enough to stay inside the pension.  I think I got food poisoning or something. I never actually threw up, but needed to all weekend and was really light-headed and had a bad headache for about half of the week. I´m not really sure what happened, but I am feeling better now!
• we had some great adventures with critters this week!... first of all, I was sitting there peacefully eating my crackers, when I notice that they are covered in spider webs and there is a little white caterpillar trapped at the bottom. Ew ew ew ew!!! I hope I didn´t eat the spider without noticing!! haha. Also. It was really humid this week because it was raining a lot. Thursday night we came home to find SIX giant cockroaches in our kitchen!!! Seriously, we were just killing one after another, hahah. We also have a family of lizards living in our pension, and Hermana Ovando accidentally killed one by smashing it in the door.  You can see a lovely photo of all of the deaths in our pension this week... haha

AWESOMES

• this week we had a giant zone conference with Elder Viñas from the 70.  It was so awesome!!! I got to see a lot of old companions and friends, including Hermana Juarez, Elder Reyes, Elder Chafala, and Elder Bartholomew that I haven´t seen in awhile.  The conference was so great.  Elder Viñas is so awesome. He has such a great understanding of the atonement and the gospel and such a positive outlook on life.  He didn´t drop the cane at all (which kind of feels like what we are used to getting in zone conferences haha) but he talked about the importance of having our investigators really prepared to be baptized instead of just baptizing them, and also sticking with them after their baptisms and really  helping them progress and keeping them safe in the gospel.  It was such a good conference... I agree 100% with everything he shared and feel like our mission really needed to hear it.  It made my companion and I feel good about the work we are doing and the attitude we have towards the work.
• I also received a whole bunch of letters after the conference! Thanks everyone for writing me this week!! Grandpa... it was SO good to hear from you!! I loved reading your letter. Can´t wait to come visit you in the new house in just another month!! Also Jeff I got your letter! It´s about dang time you wrote me!!! Haha, jk jk. But it was really good hearing from you! Thanks for writing! And Loag if you´re reading this... I want you know that I am getting like 3 letters every week from you out of the 5 billion that you have written over the past 2 years but never sent. Hahaha! You are such a nerd!! I can´t believe one of them was from when YOU were on YOUR mission!!! But I guess better late than never, right?? haha
• Aaaaaand now, for the miracle of the week! Are you all ready? Drum roll.................... Cesar came to church!!!! Wow! It was incredible! Ok so this week we have seen HUGE miracles with him!! He wasn´t progressing there for awhile so we started seeing him a lot less.  The other day, we had the best lesson.  One of the very best of my entire mission.  We found him with his friend Walter and another friend and we taught them about the plan of salvation and the importance of agency and making decisions and deciding today.  The lesson was so powerful.  I felt the spirit speaking through me and as I spoke the spirit testified to me that I really am a representative of Jesus Christ, standing in His place, saying what He would say.  Walter felt the spirit, and felt a strong desire to change.  But it looked like Cesar wasn´t really getting anything from it.  In the end, we looked at him to say the prayer as always, and as always, he denied and wanted one of us to do it.  He has only prayed in front of us once because he´s really embarrassed.  A week ago we decided to just wait and wait and wait until he said it, but his friend was there so I think he didn´t want to do it in front of him. Anyway... so he promised us he would do it the next lesson, and I made a deal with him that if he didn´t do it the next lesson, we had permission to take away his alcohol and cigarrettes for a month, and he agreed! So in this lesson with Walter and his other friend, he still didn´t want to do it. So we reminded him of the deal we made, and he gave us his cigarrettes and told us he wasn´t going to smoke or drink for a month. Hah! We of course didn´t believe that that was really going to happen, but happily took away his cigarrettes and threw them in the cuneta.  So we went back to find Walter a few days later, and instead found Cesar.  He was in a REALLY good mood... we had never seen him like that before.  The first thing he said to us was that he had been behaving well... that he only drank a little with his brother and that he had only smoked one cigarrette that his brother gave him but hadn´t bought any (usually during our lessons he smokes 3 or 4 cigarrettes so this was already a miracle!).  We sat down to have the lesson and he told us he had already read (which he hadn´t been doing for a week or 2) and that he liked the chapter (Helaman 5).  Then we were about to start with a prayer and I asked Hermana Ovando to say it and Cesar butt in and said ´can I say it?´ WHAT?? We both sat there astonished, seeing if this was a joke or not, hahah. And... well, he said it!! And then he committed to coming to church. And he came.  We went to pick him up Sunday morning and he was already ready to go and had just walked outside when we walked up.  It was a stake conference, and unfortunately, well, I´m going to be honest.. it was a realllllly boring conference. Hahaha. I mean, it was good! But basically everything only applied to members, so I was really worried. But Cesar sat there and listened to everything carefully.  He met a few members, and looked around the church a little bit.  It was so cool.  As we walked in he was so scared and nervous... we almost had to push him in the door haha but he entered and after the conference he told us that he really liked it, and that it wasn´t what he expected.  He told one of the members that he wants to come back. WOW!!!! MIRACLES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We are so happy.  Usually when someone doesn´t come to church after about 3 weeks we already have to leave them because there are other people who are willing to come.  But we saw something different in Cesar and stuck with him, even though according to numbers and datos he wasn´t progressing.  He always had wanted to go, just needed some help getting there.  He didn´t even go out Saturday night.. which is another miracle because usually we find him drunk with his friends in the street Sunday morning haha. Anyway.... who knows what is going to happen with him.  But all I can say is that I have never seen such a big and rapid change happen in him.  I don´t know if it was because of the lesson we had or something else, but he changed a lot out of nowhere, and I think it´s his time. (or at least I hope so!) I couldn´t be happier!

Ok so this email is already pretty long but just one more LITTLE item of business....... I want to congratulate my BEST FRIEND and wish her and her soon-to-be hubby good luck this week! Leash.... I am so happy for you and wish you guys the best.  It is going to be the best day of your life, and I will be there in spirit and of course thinking about you here!!! I love you so much!!! For those of you who are going to the wedding, please please please take lots of pictures for me and send them to me before next Monday!!! Since I won´t be able to be there, it´s the closest I will be able to get and I´m so anxious to find out how everything went and what it was like.  GOOD LUCK!!! LOVE YOU!!!

Ok... that´s about it for this week! I attached some pictures (we´re in a different cyber this week so hopefully they will work!) A few random ones with different hermanas.... Ovando, Martinez, and Lao and then with Hermana Martinez´s new companion Hermana Adorno, also with Hermana Juarez and Hobbs (the old trio!!) and all the hermanas.  Our deaths of the week (the cucarachas y largatija) and a lovely pic with Cesar.. haha! He looks SUPER evil in this picture but he´s really not that bad when he smiles! :)

LOVE YOU ALL!! FELIZ SEMANA!

-Hermanita Hunt

11-05-2012

11-05-2012

Hey fam and friends!
Sorry... I have like no time to write this week but how is everyone??
We had transfers and I am going to finish my mission here in
Centenario II with Hermana Ovando!!! I am sooo so happy, it´s ending
out how I was hoping. This week we had some miracles and found some
GREAT people that really can progress... they are so ready for the
gospel! POR FIN!!! We have been working really hard these last 2
transfers... we MIGHT even be able to see a few baptisms before I head
out. We´ll see! But I am excited to get to work with these new
people. We are working a lot on using our time to find people who are
ready... we find a LOT of really awesome people and they read and pray
but are not willing to go to church, so we just can´t use our time
with them because they are not ready yet. Anyway... I feel like I had
a lot to tell you all but I can´t think of any of it right now! Haha,
sorry for the short email!! But I hope all is well there!! LOVE YOU
ALL!!!

--Hermanita Hunt

10-27-2012

Buenas!

How is everyone? Sorry this is going to be a short email... I really don´t have much to say for this week! Oscar and Cesar are doing ok... we are going to have to leave Oscar for awhile because he´s not progressing so much, and Cesar we are still teaching but are not going to focus on him so much either.  We met a bunch of his friends (which is nice because now we have this nice little system of protection in the streets because they all know us and stick up for us hahah) and we are going to try and work with some of his friends.  I´m pretty sure that once we start getting them all going it will be a lot easier for them all to change.. the biggest problem is the peer pressure and Cesar just can´t stay strong.  They all really do want to change, just have a long ways to go.  I forgot to share last week.. one of the best lies I have heard on my mission, hahaha. A guy didn´t want to talk to us, so he told us that his uncle is Osama Bin Laden and that they´re not cool with the states and if I want to be safe I better leave his house because Osama should be coming home anytime soon... hahahahah, seriously?!?!? It was hilarious. We both looked at him like ´uh...... FOR REAL?!?´ hahah. Ohhhh the things people say. Anyway... we have transfers this week and I will be starting my last transfer! Ayyy! I really don´t want to leave here, and I don´t want Hermana Ovando to leave either. I would be perfectly content with staying here until the end of my mission and staying with Hermana Ovando. But anything is possible! I guess we´ll see what happens! Anyway... thanks for all that you do!! LOVE YOU ALL!!

 

--Hermana Hunt

 

P.s. Hermana Heyman btw is doing a lot better and is recovering well and will be heading back to Resistencia pretty soon!! Thanks so much for all of your prayers!

10-22-2012

Hello fam and friends!!!

A list of the ´stuff´ of this week!...

• Feliz dia de la madre!!! Yesterday in Argentina was mother´s day... I think it is the only country that celebrates it in October. I was thinking a lot of all of my wonderful grandmas, sisters, cousins, aunts, friends, and of course my own incredible mother!  Thank you all SO much for your awesome examples!! Someday (and that day is still VERY far away by the way) I hope to be as good of a mom as all of you!!
• Also this week.... HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAMÁ!!! I hope you have the best birthday ever!! I´m glad you got the card, haha and it looks like you all had a blast celebrating it the other day! Know that I miss and LOVE YOU!!!
• Summer... I got the package!!! Thanks so much!!! The dress is so cute and it fits well!! Also.. thanks for the nice ´subtle´ hint that I need to pluck my eyebrows.. hahahah. Nah.. but seriously thanks for the razors I love them!! It made my whole week!! THANK YOU!!!
• This week has been in between super hot and super stormy.  We had a big storm the other day and a punch of power lines blew over and we were out of power and water for a day and a half! Also this morning they cut the power and we got to shower in the dark. Love this country... :) hahah
• Yesterday during Sacrament meeting, someone stole my rain boots!! Haha! I left them out in the foyer and put on normal shoes and came out and they were gone! The funny thing is that my old worn-out holey socks (which I left inside of my boots) were left out on the floor. I guess they didn´t want them! Haha. Luckily the last hermana here left her boots and they still hadn´t found anyone to give them too, so I will be borrowing them for my last transfer
• Cesar and Oscar... are doing well!  They won´t be able to be baptized for awhile, but they are progressing.  We taught Cesar with 4 of his friends the other day and it was a great lesson. They are sincere respectful guys who just grew up in a really bad environment, making bad decisions from the start.  They really want to change, so we are working with a few of them.  Oscar... well... lets just say he needs permission from the first presidency to be baptized.  He has a really dark past.  But he is progressing and changing SO much!! We just gotta help him stop drinking now.  The funniest thing this week is that we have been telling him that he needs to clean himself up... shower, shave, etc.  Everyday he has shaved just a little bit more. He keeps tell us that his razor keeps breaking, haha, so he is walking around the streets with a complete half-shaven face. Hahaha! He´s so great

 

I think that´s about it!  It was kind of a frustrating/reallllly stressful week... but things are well.  We are working really hard and improving everyday and I know that that´s what counts.  Love you all so much!!!

 

 

--Hermana Hunt

10-15-2012

Buen día!!

Como estan todos?? Espero que bien! It has been a pretty decent week! Things
are still a little frustrating not having people in church and not having
people who are progressing well towards baptism, however we did have someone in
church yesterday!! Wooohoooo!!! His name is Oscar, and we feel like he is
really prepared.  We found him a couple
months ago in the house of a former investigator and we wrote down his address
but never passed by.  We decided to go
find it a couple of weeks ago and we found him and set an appointment and then
he wasn´t home when we passed by. 
Randomly the other night we found him walking around wasted in the
street... he was really excited to see us and apparently his sister-in-law
kicked him out of the house so he has
been wandering around and sleeping in the houses of random friends and neighbors.  We set an 

apointment to teach him in a park and he needs a lot of help... he participated in the

war of the malvinas here in Argentina and since then has been drinking a lot because 

it messed him up so much.  He is such a sweet and sincere man and really wants to change. 

 We couldn´t find him again after that day so we figured he probably wouldn´t show up at

church... and then turns out he just showed up!! The funny thing is that he
came late and there are 2 wards that meet at our building, so he walked into 

the other ward´s sacrament meeting and attended all the of meetings of the ward

 instead of our branch.  We didn´t even know he was there until the end!  Haha.

Anyway... we are going to go search for him today and start setting appointments
and really teaching him.  Everyone in the branch really wants to help him out.

 This week we have also been focusing a lot in Cesar.  He still hasn´t come to church but we know it
is just a big obstacle that once he gets over it he will be fine.  He is seriously SO awesome!!He is progressing
really well and is really sincere and does his part.  Last week we left him Alma 32 to read and we
came back and he had read the whole chapter and copied the whole chapter in his
notebook!  He has a lot to get past but
he wants to do it, and last night he accepted a baptismal date.  He has been involved in anything and
everything... he grew up as a for real high-class chorro (thief) and for that
reason he has gone to prison so many times (I asked him yesterday how many
times he´s gone to prison and he couldn´t count.. hahah).  He also had a big problem with fighting and
hurting people with knives... but the REALLY good news is that he´s never
killed anyone!! The he said he´s never had any desire to do anything like
that.  The other good news is that since
the last time he went to prison he hasn´t been robbing, and really all he does
is smoke marijuana and drink with his friends..
although he says that those really aren´t addictions and he never craves it or
anything.  His big addiction that he
needs to get past is smoking cigarettes, but he´ll be able to get past it.  This week he shared 

with us a story about when a family went out of town and he entered into their house to rob
them.  He piled together all of their stuff... their tv, stereo, etc. in a bag and was about to leave, but couldn´t. He lifted up the bag, and he couldn´t move forward. 
He looked around and said he felt weird, and he set the bag down.  He lifted it up again and 

tried to leave, and something was just stopping him and he couldn´t leave.  He felt really

guilty and realized that these people probably worked really hard to be able to buy the things that they
owned, and it was completely unfair that he was just taking it all out of their
hands like that.  He opened the bag, and put everything back in it´s place and left without stealing anything.  He tells us a lot and has shared a lot of similar stories with us, and we can see that he really does want to do what´s right... he really does feel guilty and he really just struggles to do what´s
right.  We are going to be working really close with him to help him change his life around, and

 we´re all really excited.  Plus he is giving us great referrals of all his friends who also need

 to change their lives haha.  We are finding out that they are all actually
very sincere people, and are usually more honest with us than most of the
people we teach which is pretty sad haha. 
Anyway... we are excited to see his progress!!

I had an interesting experience last night. Cesar lives right in front of an
evangelical church.  They are really
popular here and at any given moment you can hear them from the street
screaming and shouting really loud inside their churches.  They often ´heal´ people and the pastor
screams and yells into a microphone over and over and over again the same
things to ´cast out devils´.  It is so
incredibly sad... there is absolutely no possible way to feel the spirit there.
While we taught Cesar about baptism and saw that light go on inside of him as
he pondered and responded quietly to what we were teaching him, I could hear
the church behind me.  I noticed the
great contrast in the loud screaming and shouting, and the quiet conversion
that was taking place in Cesar.  I know
without a doubt that this is the Lord´s church, and that that is how the spirit
works... through small and
simple things.  It´s those tiny but
constant moments that cause a real lasting conversion, and I am so grateful for that.
I hope you all have a fabulous week!!

 --Hermanita Hunt

10-08-2012

Buenas Tardes Todo!!

Sorry I have absolutely no time to write but I just wanted to write quick about the week!

• Conference=incredible!! I feel like there was a big theme of Christ´s life and stories from the new testament, a lot of people talked about being His disciples which is awesome because that is basically what we as missionaries focus on every day!
• ummmm is everyone else as shocked about the new age for missionaries as I was/still am?!? We were all watching together (the missionaries gringos) and we were all freaking out!! haha! How exciting!!!
• funny story from the week: we were teaching Cesar and his friend about the word of wisdom and I was explaining about why it´s bad to have addictions and I said ¨ok, lets suppose that you guys are stranded on an island, where there are no cigarrettes anywhere. What are you going to do? How is your body going to react?´ and he responds ´ we´re going to come back here and search and not stop until we find cigarrettes!!! and THEN we´ll go to the island!!´ hahaha... my comp and I were cracking up. He is so hilarious. Ok so he needs a little work but there´s a lot of hope for him and his friends!
• I am going to ask for your prayers this week for 2 things... first of all, Hermana Heyman the wife of my mission president had a stroke a couple of weeks ago.  She is recovering now and is doing alright but if you could please keep her and him in your prayers and their family as well that would be great. Also... we are still really struggling here in centenario.  It´s weird.. I feel like I am the best missionary I have ever been and that everyday I really am progressing and improving so much, and I feel like we work so hard and efficiently, but we are still seeing no success with church attendance.  Please keep our investigators in your prayers, and also if you could pray so that we can find people who are prepared and humble and ready to accept committments, and also that we as misisonaries can be in tune with the spirit to know what else we can do, that would be great! I´m also open to any advice :)

2 months left... time is flying by fast! Yikes. Love you all so much, thanks for everything!!

--Hermanita Hunt