It's cold here.

On Friday and Saturday, it was like 80.  It was soooo nice.  Sunday was 60s and it was still nice.  Then BAM.  Monday came and it rained all day and hit 40.  FOURTY DEGREES.  I thought I was going to die.  It was so cold.  I am a baby now :(  And on our way over here, there was some mountains in the back.  Guess what we saw?!  SNOW.  IT SNOWED.  What. The. Heck.

Anyways, not much happened this week.  Elder Anderson and Elder Morgan left and in came Elder Gibbons and Elder Chavez.  Elder Chavez is a greenie (like me!), but his parents are from Mexico, so they speak Spanish.  But, Elder Chavez can't speak Spanish, only listen.  It's a weird feeling not being the youngest missionary, but it's a good one too!

English classes are getting better and better.  We started pairing off in groups, and so it's one missionary with 2 or 3 other people.  I got paired in a one-on-one situation with one of the members, and it was such a neat experience!  I think I like it a lot better that way because I really have to focus in on what the person is saying to try and help them learn what is correct and what's not.  They usually just ask questions about different, random things.  I love doing it though, and teaching is improving my Spanish SO much!  It's awesome.  I love Spanish! 

Also had exchanges for my first time!  I went with Elder Gibbons and Elder Chavez went with Elder Price.  Elder Gibbons is a super good missionary; a lot like Elder Toronto.  He's not afraid to talk to everyone about the Gospel, even if the conversation is super awkward.  And we had some VERY awkward conversations.  But, it was actually a lot of fun!  And, slowly, I have come to start doing that more as well.  It's a good feeling. 

Yesterday was SUPER rainy, so we didn't have much opportunity to contact or teach.  One of our investigators, Olga, was supposed to come to a noche de hogar with us, but she had something at work come up.  She's a nanny. 

And that's my week!

I hope you all have a super wonderful week!  Sorry the email was so short this week!

Love, Elder Hunt

Start of the second transfer!

Somebody lied to me. They told me California was warm!  Almost this whole past week has been 40's :( I am just a baby, but that's cold!  I am going to be in so much trouble when I go back home next November!  I will need at least four jackets!  Utah is FREEZING.

So, a transfer is a six week period in the mission.  I don't know how to explain it...  Like, Elder Price has been here for two transfers and his starting his third.  Meaning he has been here for three months.  So, hopefully that makes sense. 

This week was a pretty exciting week for our ward here!  Last Saturday, we had four baptisms!  Four!  It was super awesome.  Three of the baptisms came from the other Elders in our area and the other one came from the Hermanas.  Saturday was crazy!  We had one of the baptisms at 12:30, because he had to work during the evening, which is when the other baptism was.  Then we had the other baptisms at 6.  I never realized how much work there is to do for a baptism! 

So, I think I told you about Olga, the referral from the Valdivia family that we had dinner with last Sunday.  We gave her a BOM and some other reading materials.  We went and visited her yesterday, and she has been reading!  She is so prepared.  She has a daughter too, who is 18, who is pretty interested in the Gospel too.  They both have a lot of questions.  It was pretty cool.  We are going back over this Wednesday to teach them some more, and hopefully will set a baptism date. We visited her yesterday, and she told us that if we had knocked on her door, she would have maybe invited us in, but probably would have said come back another time.  But, because she had a friend who was a member, and invited her, we are teaching her now!  I have grown a strong testimony of member referrals and how important they are.

Other than those few things, not much has happened here.  The days go by so quickly, and our area is so big!  Some days, it seems like we didn't get any work done!  But, over time, we are seeing lots of cool things happening.  Being a missionary is SO COOL!

So, just during my first six weeks here, I have already doubled my tie collection.  We went to say goodbye to Elders Anderson and Morgan yesterday (because they are going back home today), and they gave me like, five ties each!  And Elder Price has given me five ties too.  I will have to take a picture of my new tie collection, so you can see them all.  There's so many! 

I really hope Jaxon is okay!  I keep on praying for him, and hoping that he will be okay.  Whatever happened to him does not sound like fun...

I hope Maddy had a good birthday!  I cannot believe she's 12!  OMJ!  She's old!  How does she like Young Women's?

Sounds like a fun play you had!  I wish I could have seen it! 

You'll have to tell Zack Hunt Happy Birthday for me on Saturday!  I saw his picture on my calendar, and was going to send him a card, but I don't have any way of sending one :( :( :(  so, tell him Happy Birthday for me! 

And, when you get the chance, could you send some more BYU tape? :) haha.  You should see how much stuff I wrapped.  I saved those two Pringle cans, washed them out and got rid of the Pringle smell, and wrapped those in the BYU tape to hold my sunglasses for when I put them in my bag for transferring and stuff.  Elder Price showed me how to make a cardboard case for my BOM and I wrapped that too!  When you get my SD card (whenever I send it), you will get to see how cool all my things look now! 

That's all for this week.  I hope you have a super fantastic week! Love you!

Love, Elder Hunt

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY! 

So, this is the last week of my first transfer.  It's pretty insane how fast the time went.  I did not think time could go by so quickly!  But, it sure does!  There are two Elders in my district right now that are about to "die".  In missionary times, "to die"  means ending a mission.  So, they are both about to die and they have given me a lot of good advice.  They know how to work hard and what things work and what things don't work.  They taught me a lot of good things that will definitely help for the rest of my mission.  Everyone has told me that the first transfer is always the longest, and once that ends, time goes by even faster.  I don't know if I can believe that!  Time has already gone by so fast!  What the heck?!

This week wasn't a super exciting week.  Had my first Zone Conference on Wednesday; that was pretty cool.  President Cook, his wife, the assistants, and the zone leaders all gave trainings on different subjects: mainly the Book of Mormon.  Out of the two zones there (about 30 missionaries), my district was the only Spanish speaking (6).  I am super lucky to be in Spanish work!  After Zone Conference was over, Elder Toronto came out with us!  He is such a stud.  He has no fear of talking to anyone, and I have really tried to work that into what I do too.  He is a super good example, and it's going to be sad when he leaves :( He leaves in 3 or 4 months. 

And on Sunday, we had dinner with la familia Valdivia.  And they invited one of their friends to come to eat dinner!  YAY!  I have realized how much member work is important.  Most baptisms come from the member referrals.  We taught her about prophets and about the Book of Mormon and she said she wanted to learn more!  We are going to go to her house, along with la familia Valdivia, next Sunday for dinner.  I am super excited to see how it turns out!

I cannot believe I have been out on a mission for three months... It feels like so long, but other times it feels like I was just at home.  CRAZY.

I hope Jaxon gets to feeling better!  I pray for his health every night and that he will get to feel better. 

Send me some pictures of Dad's "new" office!  I haven't seen it clean for a loooooooooooooooooooong time! 

Zack never emailed, but that's so cool to hear he's going to Alabama!  I am guessing he is just doing English, because you didn't tell me a language. That's so cool!  Tell him congrats for me!

I did get the package!  Thanks so much!  The duct tape is actually perfect :) I was going to go buy some today, but now I don't have to!  With those new sunglasses I got, I wanted to protect them, so I put them in little boxes from pass-along cards that we had lying around the house.  They are just boring white boxes, so now I can decorate them with BYU! YAY! :)  And those little scriptures were EXACTLY what I wanted!  Thanks!  I like having the little one, so I can use it throughout the day and not have to carry my regular English scriptures :)

My companion is super cool.  He is from Denver, but his family moved to Utah right before he left for his mission.  His Dad works for Larry H. Miller marketing, so he travels a lot.  He comes from a big family; 5 kids.  He is the second oldest, has one older sister, and two younger sisters and a younger brother. 

To do email, we come to the library by our house.  Elder Price says I am going to collect a lot of library cards on my mission, because that's where most Elders go to do their email.  We shop at a Target close to our house.  And we found this really cool grocery store called Trader Joe's. 

I have my bike with me, sitting on the deck of our apartment.  I haven't touched it since I got here, which kind of makes me sad :( There are some days I wish I could ride it, but there's no way we could get anything done haha.  Our area is HUGE!

The weather here has been pretty weird lately.  Last Monday, it was about 80 and then Tuesday was the same and then Wednesday was FREEZING!  Like 40s... It was weird.  But the weather is good here!  I haven't needed to wear a jacket or anything.  And I only wear my suit when we go to meetings and church.  :)

That's all I have for this week!  I hope you all have a superb week!

Love, Elder Hunt :)

OMJ! WHERE DID THE TIME GO?

Has it really been a month since I have been in California?!  What the heck?!

So, this week was not nearly as exciting as last week.  I do not know if I have told you this or not, but every Tuesday and Thursday, we teach English classes to people wanting to learn English.  I have come to the realization that English is MESSED UP.  Thanks goodness it's my first language!  We have so many different weird rules and different pronunciations and so many weird things... Like, have you ever thought about words like, "I'll", "you'll", "we'll", "I'd", etc.?  How strange is that?!  Also words like, "taught", "bought", "sought", etc.  They have lots of letters that aren't even necessary!  English is super difficult...  I have a lot of respect for the people that try to learn English!  Also, during English classes, I taught them all how to say a prayer in English!  English classes are for everyone, members or not, so it was a good thing to teach.  I love teaching in Spanish! 

As I said, this week was not nearly as exciting.  Most of our lessons fell through, and all the contacting we did did not turn up any results either.  :(  But!  Yesterday, we had a really good noche de hogar con una familia en el barrio.  We taught about the Restoration of the Gospel.  Elder Price came up with this AWESOME game to explain the Apostasy.  It's a lot like the "Telephone" game.  What you do is you get pieces of paper for everyone, and at the top of the paper, you write a word.  Then, you fold the paper over the word, and the next person gets to look at the word, and then draw a picture.  Then the person after that gets to look at the picture, not the word, and has to write what he/she thinks it is.  Then the person after that gets to look at the word and draw a picture of that!  And so on.  It's a lot of fun and a really good way to explain the Apostasy and how, over time, the truth of Christ's teachings were distorted and changed from what they were really supposed to be. 

So yeah.  That's my week!  How was yours?!

I was looking through some of my older emails, and saw the picture of the Nintendo pins!  What did you do with them?

When you told me about your Primary class learning about Nephi brought a little something to my mind.  A few weeks ago, we had a noche de hogar with the Ward Mission Leader and his family.  He lives with his wife's parents, so we spoke English the whole time (YAY!) Anyways, we were talking about how Nephi broke his bow and how everyone, except Nephi, was complaining that they didn't have any food.  Now, we know that the rest of the bows were also broken (they lost their spring or something).  But, did Nephi ever complain?  Nope!  He had many chances to just break down and start complaining with the rest of his family.  But, he didn't!  And we should follow his example!  The more you complain, the tougher it will be.

President Cook has also challenged us to read the Book of Mormon.  But, when it talks about the Lord, we mark it in red.  When it talks about the Doctrine of Christ (faith, repentance, baptism, enduring to end), we mark it in green.  And anytime the Lord speaks, we mark it all in blue.  It's a really neat thing to do, especially on a mission.  I hope you read it all! 

I am glad you like the picture!  I really like it too, but it will be in a better place at home, where it doesn't have the possibility of getting ruined. 

I am super sad I missed the Super Bowl :( I am super sad I am not able to watch any sports too :( but, they will always be there for when I get back!  And you can send me important news about things that matter :) I am super glad you do!  I am always so excited to get sports news!  But, it doesn't distract me; don't worry :)

Maybe you could log on to my Facebook and post it as a status for everyone to see and ask if anyone wants to receive my emails.  I can't think of any other way to do it

Tell Zack to email me when he knows where he is going!  Like, A.S.A.P.!

Okay!  That's all I have to say!  Espero que todos ustedes tengan una buena semana!

Love, Elder Hunt :)

We went to the Oakley headquarters in Foothill Ranch. It was awesome!