Letter #8 - Noche de Hogar

¡Buenos Dias mi familia!

I would just like to start by saying that I LOVE mission work. I have learned so much here. I have grown to appreciate the way I was raised so much more. I appreciate the standards that I was raised on. All we do here is talk to people who do not have a purpose... They wake up, go to work, come home, sleep, wake up, and do it all over again. They live sad lives. I love the fact that the fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ gives us a purpose. Members of this church are some of the happiest people you will ever meet.

Alright, let's jump into my week!

Monday: After Pday finished, we went knocking doors. It is funny because we are Spanish missionaries, so we have to pick the spanish houses. You can really tell a latino lives their by the outside of their houses. They will usually have the following: christmas lights, kids toys on the lawn, any statues or pictures of butterflies and frogs, aloe plants, brooms, mops, mustangs, cars parked on the lawn, and Virgin Mary statues. So we always knock doors that have some of those, and we are always right. We did not have much luck getting new investigators though...

Tuesday: we gave out 3 copies of the Book of Mormon! It was a good day.

Wednesday: it was a very long day. We had a ton scheduled, but we would show up and nobody would answer. All of our appointments fell through... it was rough. Brother Ball from one of the English wards took us out to lunch at Applebees. He is a writer and encouraged us to write books about our mission experiences because of the personal revelation we can receive. It was pretty cool.

Thursday: we went to a less active family's house and raked their leaves! It was fun. That was the biggest pile of leaves I have ever seen though. Thursday night we had a noche de hogar (family home evening) with Hermana Cadenas and our investigator Lucero! It was incredible. Hermana Cadenas told Lucero that when she was baptized, she was unsure about her decision right up until the moment she came out of the water. That really helped Lucero out a lot. She felt a lot of relief. At the end of the family home evening, I bore the longest testimony I ever have in Spanish. I told Lucero the importance of reading the Book of Mormon and the importance of prophets in my life. She will be watching General Conference with us next week.

Friday: Friday marked 2 months on my mission! I feel like it is flying by, and that kind of scares me... but I do love the work here. We had a rough conversation about Joseph Smith with some Baptists in English.... they kept calling him a self declared prophet. Those comments really hurt me deep. Joseph Smith has done more for the salvation of mankind than any other man who has lived on the earth other than Jesus Christ. It makes me really sad that people do not realize how great of a man Joseph Smith really was. I want to defend him with all my heart, might, mind, and strength. We went to go teach a lesson to a potential investigator and her husband that night. They both are showing so much more interest. Elder Judd says that they ask too many questions to NOT be baptized. I thought that was funny.

Saturday: Things in the mission never go as planned. You set appointments, they fall through, and you improvise! We got a solid new investigator Saturday! Her name is Crystal. She is catholic, but she loved the idea of the Book of Mormon. She committed to reading Alma Chapter 5 this week! This Baptist man told us that he has seen Jesus Saturday night... it was... interesting. We had dinner with sister Rubio. She asked if I took Spanish before my mission. I said that I had only taken a little bit. She told me that she thought I had taken a lot because my first week here when I gave that talk in sacrament meeting, my accent was really good and my sentence flow was good. It made me feel more confident about my Spanish.

Sunday: no investigators came to church :( after church we ate with Ramon and his family. It was his birthday! He is 37. Afterwards, he came with us out east to Marshall to teach this member Maria and her Catholic friend. It was good, but Ramon served a mission before Preach my Gospel was released, so he teaches lessons instead of adjusting to the needs of the individual... he was kind of just throwing out knowledge instead of focusing on what they needed at the moment. It is n

ot a bad thing, it is just that the lessons go better when you slow down and adjust your lesson plan to fit their lives.

Today: i am writing right now from Henderson. We are here for a little and then we are driving to dallas in a van with 14 missionaries! We get to go to the temple tomorrow, but because we are so far east, we are driving there today.

Here are a few pictures... sorry, not a whole lot this week. We were pretty busy. Also, side note, I love pickled jalapeños.

Love y'all,
Elder Bullough