September 26, 2016

Hey everybody! 

         This week was a pretty good one, but I;m short on time so this one won't be as long. Anyways we started off the week a bit slow. We were doing a lot of finding but only teaching a few lessons each day, it seems like everybody in Valrico has talked to missionaries before. Most people know who we are and claim to know our message. Everyone here is pretty well off too so that makes it a bit harder as well. There are people out there though, it just takes some time to find them. One weird thing that happened this week was we were tracting and met this guy named Johnathan who was super into our message and we prayed with him and set up a time to come by the next day. We were pretty excited about it and had some high hopes for him. Well the next day when we went by we knocked on his door and he just came to the window, looked through his blinds and stared at us. It was awkward, so we just left. Some people are just weird. 

       We were able to meet with Tiffany and Tony again this week and they had us over for dinner and a lesson. Since the last time we met with them they have been praying together every morning and are definitely seeing the blessing from that in their lives, its so awesome! Tony has begun reading the Book of Mormon and is liking it. We read some when we were with them and they both really like it. They are going to come to the church on Sunday to watch a session of General Conference with us and take a tour of the building. They are progressing really well! I know I shouldn't play favorites, but they are my favorite family that I have met on my mission so far. 

       We went out the the very edge of our area this week to visit some of the less active members out there. It was a pretty long drive. We were surrounded by open country roads and fields. We also found some rail road tracks so we took some pictures, my companion and I just like to take pictures sometimes, I hope you all enjoy them haha. That's all for this week. Great things are happening here in Florida, great things! Have a great week everybody! 

Love Elder Hudson

We decided to take some "modeling" pictures.  The frog we found outside our apartment.   The jungle is one of our investigators yard. We found a black stop sign, freaky!

September 19, 2016

Hey Everyone! 

          So yes this week is transfer week and......I'm staying! So is my companion. I am glad that we are going to be together for at least another transfer, I feel like 6 weeks is too short to be with a companion, but I am looking forward to what this next transfer brings! We had 2 missionaries go home this week, one due to illness and one due to home sickness. My last companion Elder Ashcraft who was my district leader is now being transferred and one of my zone leaders is being transferred as well. So we are going to be having some big changes this week. I love transfers though, it's always exciting to see new missionaries and get to know them. There are 18 more missionaries coming in this transfer and nobody is going home, so there might be a few new areas opening up, we will see what happens. 

         Anyways this week has been pretty good. We were on bikes this week and for some reason it seems to be more tiring than the last few weeks. It has been really hot and humid lately, I guess the hottest times are in August and September, good thing September is almost through! It has been raining quite a bit at night this week, we have gotten stuck in the rain a few times right before we have to head home. We try to wait out the rain because it usually doesn't last very long but it wasn't letting up these couple nights, so we ended up biking home in the pouring rain to make it home on time. We got pretty drenched haha, it was actually kind of fun. You just got to be careful with the lightning, I guess Florida is known as the lightning capitol of the world, and I definitely believe that. The lightning here is nuts. 

        Well I think I told you all about Tiffany and Tony a little while ago, they are the family of 4 that we has a super awesome lesson with. They have been rescheduling with us over and over again so we just decided to stop by. It went really well! we were able to meet with their whole family and have a really good lesson. They really have been busy, but are committed to acting on our message. They really like us and they were telling us that they felt something really string the first time we met with them, they just felt peaceful all that day. We were able to help them understand that that was the spirit. They are now super excited, they started to pray every morning together and read from the Book of Mormon. Its great! We also met some other cool people this week, we met a guy named Greg that has a family of 5 that we were able to set a baptism date with and we met a guy named Ronnie on the side of the road as we were biking that we also set a date with. There is some amazing stuff happening in our area! 

        Missionary work makes me happier than anything else in the world. I am so glad to be serving. It is the best decision I have ever made. I am soon approaching my year mark, then it will be a downward spiral from there! I can't wait for the next year, I am glad that I have at least that long left. I hope you all have a great week and stay true to what you believe in. I love you all!

Elder Hudson

There are strange faces on trees all over here

Feeling classy, we made a great dinner

raccoon and squirrel skin at a members house

September 12, 2016 (10 month mark)

Hey everybody!

         So this week has been pretty normal, nothing too exciting has happened. It has been pretty hot here though, I can't wait for the 2 weeks that it cools down haha. So we had a Zone training meeting on Tuesday and there were some changes made in the mission. President Cooper has loosened up on a few things. We used to only be able to listen to Mormon tabernacle choir, but now we are going back to the handbook and can listen to any music that is uplifting and directs our thoughts to the savior. I was pretty excited about that, I am starting to get tired of Mormon tabernacle choir. Also, now we can do service for members without there being a missionary opportunity there. I am not sure why that was a rule, but we are going back to the handbook for service. Member dinners haven't changed yet, but I think they will soon. President Cooper wanted to get some more advice on that one. 

      We went on an exchange with one of our zone leaders on Tuesday as well. He just came to our area so we were a tripanionship for the day. It went really well actually. He was able to help us and give us some good advice and tips on how to improve our work. We met this guy named Mario while we were parking lot contacting and it was almost time to go home. He was so happy to see us and just kept going on and on about how much he loves Jesus. He was even kissing the picture of Christ on the pamphlet we gave him haha. He said that we were an answer to his prayer because he has been looking for something more that he feels he is not getting from his church. We shared the restoration and set up a time to meet him. It was awesome! We have also started teaching a part member family named the Gleason's. They are super cool. The wife is a member and so are the kids, it's just the husband that isn't. He really likes us and we have a good relationship with him. We taught him the restoration this week and we committed him to read and pray about the Book of Mormon. We will see where it goes, his wife really wants him to become a member so they can go to the temple. 

      We did some service for this guy named Don this week. He is neighbors with one of the members and they are good friends. Don needed some yard work done and so the member called us and put Don on the phone. Don is about 80 years old now and can't do much, so we were happy to help him out. We cleaned off his pool enclosure, tried his bushes, cleaned out his rain gutters and cleaned off his fans outside. It was a lot of work to do, we split it up into two days. In total it took us about 4 hours. He is such a nice guy though, classic old man. He always had lemonade on hand for us and had enough to make 3 more gallons. He made us some soup for lunch both of the days too, he is great. We tried to teach him, but he wasn't too open. He has faith in Christ but doesn't belong to any church. He says praise the Lord just about every other sentence too haha, he's awesome. 

      Other than that we have just been knocking doors and doing a lot of street contacting. We have a few solid investigators, we are trying to get that number up, it seems like it is a little bit harder in this area, maybe because there is no ghetto. I am doing good though, this is the best time of my life! There is no doubt in my mind that this church is true. I love being a missionary! I hope that all of you have a great week, love you all!

Love Elder Hudson

Pictures of our sushi lunch celebrating my 10 month mark and my companions 7 month mark

September 7, 2016

Hey everyone! 

         So yes we did in fact get hit with a hurricane this week! Sadly it didn't hit the Tampa area too bad. There was a lot of rain and wind though. We were told to stay in our apartments on Wednesday and Thursday. We had a lot of time on our hands. It was actually really nice to have that short break to relax a little bit. We got a lot done while we were stuck in the apartment, we deep cleaned the whole place, got our weekly planning done, organized, and had plenty of time for some fun. We had a good time. We sat on our back porch for a while and just watched the rain, it got too windy though and the rain started blowing at us sideways, so we went inside. There was quite a bit of debris around, mostly tree branches and Spanish moss, that stuff is everywhere. Some houses got damaged pretty badly. We saw a house that had a huge tree fallen into their pool and had collapsed their enclosure, also their shed was tipped over and busted. A lot of fences were fallen over too, we have been using all of this as a finding method. We are going around asking if anybody needs help in their yard after the storm. So far nothing has come of it, but at least we are trying. 

       Other than the storm nothing too exciting has happened this week. We didn't get to email yesterday because the library was closed, that's why I am emailing today. We went to a picnic party thing yesterday at the church. They had it out in the pavilion and it was a bbq cook off. We got to have ribs, pulled pork and chicken. It was SO good! We played a little football after that too which was fun, I haven't played that in a long while. We play basketball every P-day at the church with about 8 other missionaries and a couple of members. It is always fun even though I am not very good, I am getting better though. Today we are having a zone training meeting and it is going to be about working with members. I think they might be making some changes with member meals and what not. We will see, I will let you all know next week. 

       We have a few really solid investigators but are struggling to get return appointments with anyone. last week was a tough one, hopefully this week will be better, we are definitely going to try to make it better. I am doing really good here and I am at my 10 month mark almost. Time is flying by. I hope you all have a very good week! I love you all!

Love Elder Hudson

Pictures of palm trees, our hammocks hanging in our apartment and my new pet frog Henry