February 29, 2016

Hi everyone! 

          So to be honest this week has just flown by and I am having a hard time remembering what even happened haha. We have kept ourselves really busy so that is probably why. We did a lot of tracting this week because our teaching pool was decreasing pretty fast. We tracted for hours on end. I really really absolutely hate tracting, its my least favorite thing to to as a missionary, but sometimes we need to do it so I'll just have to live with it. This mission actually had a no tracting policy about 2 years ago, it was because they wanted us to have more member involvement and get referrals from them. That would have been nice to serve during that time haha. We did teach a lot of people by tracting though, and we have a lot of return appointments, so I hope that will last us a while. I probably just sound super lazy right now haha. 

          We were supposed to have a baptism tonight at 5 but the lady that was supposed to be baptized said she wanted to post pone it to march. She is 22 and a single mother. Her baby just turned one. We have been teaching her ever since I got here so I was pretty excited for her. Hopefully we can help her to feel good about her baptism and be ready for that. I'll keep you guys updated. 

          Today we went out to the train yard again with Brother Carrol. It was a little bit different this time though. For one the other Elders weren't with us, I was kind of glad about that because they are pretty annoying sometimes, they're just weird, that is kind of rude....oh well haha. He also had steam engines there this time. They were pretty cool looking. They had all sorts of knobs and gauges and it was all fully functional. There was also some new track that had been layed down so we got to go on that. It was a fun day. I'll send some pictures. 

          That is really all I have for this week. I am learning so much here each and every day. I love it, even though it is really hard sometimes. A lot of people think that missionaries don't have problems, we do haha, lots of them. Anyways I hope that you all have a great week and stay safe. 

Love Elder Hudson

February 22, 2016

Hey everyone! 

          This week has been the best week on my mission so far. A lot has happened, so on Monday after we got done with our P-day at 6 we went to go teach one of our investigators named Lou. when we got to his house there were 2 policemen there and he was sitting on the hood of the cop car. Then an ambulance showed up and they took him away. So yeah he was gone for this whole week until Saturday. This is like the 4th time it has happened apparently. So that lesson fell through haha. Then that night when we were driving home we saw a huge group of motorcycles in a parking lot, so we went to check it out. They were all like doing burnouts and riding wheelies down the road and doing crazy stuff! So we pulled over across the road and took some videos, but while we were driving there we saw like 7 cops down the street at a gas station. We think they were all getting ready to bust them or something. It was like real life fast and furious!! Unfortunately we had to leave before we saw it happen because we have a curfew.....it was still pretty cool though. 

            So there was a play going on this week called The Book of Mormon. If you don't know what it is you probably shouldn't try to find out. The people that make South Park made this play. It is a really crude play and basically makes fun of Mormons. They also tell a lot of false beliefs about the church. We were told by the the head council of the church to go to this play and to stand up for what we believe in. Only 8 missionaries got to go to this play though and I was one of those along with my companion. There was 8 showings of the play starting on Tuesday and running till Sunday. They were at 8-11 on the week days and on Saturday and Sunday there was 2 showings, one at 2 and one at 7. We got home at about midnight every night, and still had to wake up at 6. I have been so tired haha. We actually had a lot of success with it though. We would stand outside the doors of the place (Ruth Eckerd Hall) and hand out Book of Mormons, restoration pamphlets, and free Book of Mormon cards. In total we handed out around 1200 Book of Mormons and just as many pamphlets. We had so much fun with it though. We took tons of pictures with people. If you look up #bookofmormonplay I'm sure you will find pictures of us. We got pictures with the cast too haha. It was so cool though because so many people now have a Book of Mormon or a pamphlet that they didn't have before and if they actually read it it will change their life. We just planted the seed for all of those people, we even got quite a few people that said they would like missionaries to come by so we got their information. We even got the security and valet guys a Book of Mormon. It was an awesome experience. 

          That is all for this week, I hope that you all have a great week and try to plant that seed for somebody, it could turn out to be something great. I love you all!! 

Love Elder Hudson

February 15, 2016

Hey everyone,

  So this week is transfer week. We just got the email saying if we are staying or leaving, me and my companion are staying. I was kind of hoping to be transferred or to be training. So me and my companion have 6 more weeks together. I guess we have some more work to do here.  

       We have had a pretty average week this week. Not a whole lot has happened. We did have 5 investigators at church this Sunday though which was really good. We had a valentine's dance on Friday night for all the adults and we were the photographers haha. It was pretty fun. We had a DJ come and everything. I got to listen to music other than the Mormon tabernacle choir for three hours, that was probably the best part of it. Some of the people there should not have been dancing though, it was pretty bad. Watching middle and old aged people doing the whip and nae nae was not a pretty sight. I will never volunteer to be a photographer again haha.

       There are so many old people here. I swear the average age here in our area is 95. With age comes wisdom right? No not really, at least not here, people are so stubborn and think they are "set." My favorite thing to do when we tract and someone answers the door and then immediately says "I'm not interested" is to say, "Not interested in what??" Most of the time they don't know what they are not interested in haha. It is pretty funny.

       My favorite scripture this week is in Matthew 10. The whole chapter is great but the part that hit me was when Christ said, "freely have ye received, freely give." I don't remember what verse that is in but I remember that phrase. This gospel doesn't cost a dime to receive. It may cost you 2 minutes to talk to someone about the church and it could change their life forever. We should all remember that we have something that everybody needs to hear about. Part of enduring to the end is sharing that message which you have freely received. You never know what kind of an impact it can have on somebody if you just told somebody that they are loved by God. I've seen it happen, I've seen miracles happen on my mission. I feel the most joy when I help somebody else realize that there is so much more to this life and that they are able to have a new beginning through Christ. It is amazing, it really is.

       I hope that you all had a good valentine's day and that you all have a great rest of your week. I love you all so much!

Love Elder Hudson

February 8th, 2016

Hey everyone! 

      So this week has been pretty eventful. We went over to an investigators house on Monday night to celebrate her 22nd birthday with her. Her name is Cheyenne and she is a single mother. We went over with Brother Rossel and we brought cheese cake and sub sandwiches. We bought those trick candles that don’’t go out for her cheese cake hahaha it was so funny! It was a good night though. 

     So there are these two elders that are serving in the same area as us and I guess they are having some issues with each other. They don’t get along very well. So my companion, being district leader, has to help them resolve it. It was like a mom trying to break up her two kids from fighting, ridiculous. We call our zone leader mama(elder) Cantu haha its pretty funny. So we had to deal with that, and then my iPad just decided to crap out on me. The LCD screen got messed up somehow and now I can’t see anything on my screen and it is all fuzzy. It has been like that since Tuesday, It has been rough, I feel so useless without it because now my companion has to do everything. Hopefully I will be able to get it fixed this week, we just have to find a local place that can do it. Other than that Tuesday was a good day. 

       We tracked this small apartment complex on Wednesday and it didn't take us too long. We found like 5 people that we taught and have a return appointment with. We were talking to this one last person and then the manager shows up and says he wants to talk to us, so we told him we would when we were finished. We continued to talk to her and he came out again and was a little frustrated and said he needed to talk to us right now. So I said hold on a minute we are talking. When we were done we went and talked to him and he was very unhappy. He was yelling at us and saying that we weren't allowed to be there and blah blah blah. There was no trespassing signs anywhere or no soliciting signs. He was saying he was gonna call the cops and we told him to please do, and when they get here 4 hours later they aren't going to do anything about it. Then he just told us to leave, so we did because we had already knocked all of the doors haha. Some people. 

        We went to Golden Coral on Friday after we helped a member move and that was such a mistake. We both ate like 4 plates of food. The next day we were so sick. Golden Coral wrecked us! It was so bad, I'm never going back there again. That was a bad day haha. 

       We have 4 baptisms lined up for this month so hopefully they all follow through! It is so cool to see the change in someone when they accept Christ into their life and want to follow him. It strengthens my testimony when I see that. I love being out here and I love teaching people about the Gospel. That is something I would not have said before my mission. I usually would just keep to myself but now I like talking to strangers and sharing something with them that can change their life. My mission has been such a blessing. I hope you all have an amazing week! 

Love Elder Hudson

February 1, 2016

February 1, 2016

Hey everyone!

           So this week has been full of ups and downs. We had a memorial service for a guy in our ward on Wednesday. His name was Jose Centeno. They are recent converts, they were baptized about a year ago. He was a really cool guy though, he barely spoke English so you could hardly understand him when he was speaking to you ha-ha. I would just nod my head and say "yeah yeah uh huh" His wife is having a pretty hard time with it but she is staying strong. He was about 75 but he looked like he was 50. So that happened. Then on Thursday we went on an exchange with the clearwater elders. I stayed in my area (Hudson) and my companion went to clearwater. So I spent the day with Elder Murat. He is from Haiti. He is a fun guy and is a good teacher. So I got to be totally in charge for the whole day, which was awesome, and I got to drive the car for the first time on my mission! I miss driving my truck....but it was good to finally drive. The whole day it was pouring rain. We had a pretty good day planned, we had some tracting to do as well even though it was raining. A lot of people let us in when we were tracting though so I guess that works pretty well ha-ha. We tracted for about an hour and taught 7 lessons. We had a lot of success. We were drenched by the end of it though so we had to go back to the apartment and change. It was a really good day though.

         So we had a baptism this Sunday before church! His name is Ricky, we have been with him every step of the way and he was so excited. Elder Nilsen baptized him and I guess the water was pretty cold. When he went under he like freaked out and started flailing his arms because the water was so cold hahaha. It was kinda funny, but he went all the way under so it worked. Then during sacrament meeting I was able to confirm him a member of the church and bestow upon him the Holy Ghost. It was a cool experience being my first time. I wasn't really nervous though, which was weird because I thought I would be. The spirit must have just comforted me and it went well. He was so happy it was great.

        This morning we helped our ward mission leader out and were digging some trenches for his drain lines for his septic tank. We had to dig about three feet down to uncover one pipe and dig a trench for another pipe. While we were digging we hit something metal. Well we found out that it was a 50 gallon drum buried in the ground. So we decided to dig it up. It took us awhile, the hole was about 4 or 5 feet deep by the time we got it out. It had some oil in the bottom of it that had solidified and I guess that it is a felony to have that buried in the ground. We have no idea why it was there, but it was, we had a lot of fun with it though. It was mostly sand that we had to shovel out, which made it easy because it was soft. That took us about three hours this morning. We were hoping to find something cool in it like some buried treasure or something, but sadly there was nothing in it haha.

       That is pretty much all for this week. Thank you all for your support and all that you do! I hope that you all have a great week.

Love Elder Hudson

Hole

Barrel

Ricky, Elder Nilsen, and Elder Hudson