Week 56 (9/15/14)

Family,

HAPPY MEXICAN INDEPENDENCE DAY!!!! VIVA MEXICO!!! Things are starting to get crazy again down here in Mexico haha. We are now starting the party time of the year!!
We made the brownies Tuesday after the district class. We decided to do it after the district class so the sisters could be with us too. It was so fun. After we frosted them, that is where the photos come in. Sis. Hernandez put her hand in the frosting then hand printed my face haha well and hers -a little- then she wanted to take a photo so we took a little photo. Our district is so cool!!

The brownies we sent for his Birthday!!

We are going to make district shirts haha. It has been raining a ton this week! It flooded a little bit here this week, but all is well. On the missionary side. This was an interesting week. We are continuing to look for new investigators and to help the ones we have the best that we can. Our investigator Saul is becoming more and more difficult. He tries to escape the appointments we have planned with him. I feel like if we just keep trying maybe he will come around to accepting us a little more. The good part though is that we have an active family in the ward that is helping us by inviting him to their family home evenings. The only problem is that this family really doesn't want to work with us. But hey looking on the bright side I know if we put our trust in the Lord he will make miracles happen.
We found a super cool new investigator this week. His name is Edwin. He is a young man about our age that has assisted the church alot back where he lives. He loves the church. He now lives here on the weekends and has already been to church 2 times. We are trying to set a date with him but there is something that is stopping him and he wont tell us what it is. We worked hard and found some friends here in the ward for him and is slowly opening up to us. We have also been using him to help teach with us. We hope to have him in the water as well by the end of this week.
As well as our other investigators. They are progressing very slowly but are still progressing.

As you can see all is going great down here. Thanks for all your love and support. Hope ya have a wonderful week!! Love yall!

Week 55 (9/8/14)

Sorry about not writing hardly anything last week. I got like a super bad migraine and looking at the computer screen like hurt my brain hahah. But no worries all is going very well! I am still here in my area. The new Elder, Elder Garcia, is very cool. We are 6 in our district and of those six, 5 are Mexican haha I am literally the only not-Mexican in our district haha It is all good though, they are all super cool and we all get along super nicely. We are super close as a district, we are going to buy district shirts hahah.

Elder Garcia

So this week we did something special for some of the sisters in our zone that had their birthdays this week. We made some cakes for them. The cake that we learned to make here we made for them! haha So the day before the zone class we went to the church to make the cakes. Then we took them to the zone class the next day. They were so cool because they were like a bread kind of cake with strawberry jelly and marshmallows on top with some like Mexican ladies haha Lets just say that they absolutely loved the cakes!!! All of the sisters in our zone loved the cakes actually haha.

I absolutely loved the package by the way!!! Thank you so much!! The shoes are sooo cool and im 100% sure that they will last me for the rest of my life haha!! That little book you made was so cool!!! where did you get that at? That was one of my favorite things. Lets just say that, that package was my favorite!!

As far as the work goes. We are still working hard here. We got one of our investigators to come to church yesterday!!!! We passed by his house at like 7:30 om the morning and he wasn't ready but that is the coolest part, he told us he would show up and he totally did!!! everyone told me that he wouldn't but I had faith in him!!l We also have some other super cool investigators that are progressing very nicely. Glady and Minerva. We were able to teach them about the Great Apostasy the other day. And then explain a little about the book of Mormon! She absolutely loves to read the bible and seems to be very interested in reading the book of Mormon, we will se what happens with her. We also have a new family that just moved here from the northern part of Mexico. They are a super special family and are going through some difficult problems. So we took them to Family home evening with some active members. We started talking about faith. The daughters of the new family started talking about the problems they had, so the active mom, Hna Eli, shared a very personal story with them, the spirit was soooooo strong in this moment. To sum things up the family was so touched they reactivated again!! It was one of the coolest lessons I have ever had!! Well the coolest Family home Evening!
That is whats happening here in Mexico! I hope everyone is doing well.

Love y'all tons!!!

Week 54 (Sept 2, 2014)

Not much time to write today because of the transfers. Me and my companion are still here together. The Elders that live next to us, 1 had transfers so we had to watch his companion all day. We had a very busy week. We worked with a lot of future missionaries. We were walking around teaching this week with 6 young men. We split up into teams of 3 and went contacting in a park in our area. It went very well we were able to find a lot of investigators.

Sorry not a lot of time. I will write more next week.


Love y'all

Week 53 (Aug., 26, 2014)

Family,

Don't worry about the turtle egg thing. It is only illegal to harvest them, not to eat them.
This was another super good week. I now have a super good cake recipe for ya mom. We can make it when I get back. Sooooo good. We went over to Sis. Eli´s house to make it. It is like a family secret but she said I could take it to the Parduhn house haha. This is the same family where we ate the turtle eggs. They are super cool.

 We also had the opportunity to help and Elderly lady from our ward by going to her house and doing a service project. So the other Elders and I went to Sis. Paz´s house to cut all the weeds there. She is a very special women. She has such a strong testimony of the gospel. She has really impressed me.

This week was also our stake conference! So we started the weekend off with the talent show. A youth from our ward, Jorge, and some other YSA from the stake did a super cool dance. It was a authentic like tap dance type of dance. It was super cool. They way they dressed was super cool!

Then came Saturday and Sunday. The conference days. Pres. Morales came to talk in all of the session of the conference. The whole conference was themed around member missionary work. It was a very inspirational conference. I think that it gave our members a desire to keep working hard in the work. I also got to see my little bro Ezdras. He hung out with me at the conference.

 I had a wonderful week. I will talk to you guys next week. Love ya tons!!!!

Love,
Hunter

Week 52 (Aug 18, 2014)

I LOVE HIM!!!

Week 52 (August 18, 2014)

We had a cool little primary activity here this Saturday. You know how like our area is like the stake center area, so all of the wards came here. We helped them as they walked around contacting people and giving them old Liahonas haha. They are the cutest little things haha. The best part is, is that i was in my little brothers group!! Ezdras Mata. He is the mission Presidents first counselors son. He reminds me of Zack soo much. But ya he is the only boy in his family and so every time he sees me he calls me his big brother. U was able to help him. This little guy is very good at contacting haha he is so cool. He is like 11.

Other than that it has just been a super normal week here.

Love you all take care!!

Elder Parduhn

Week 51 (August 11, 2014)

Familiar,

This was a super great week, we had a zone activity with president this week!!! He took us to this place called ''The Mountain'' I would like to inform you that it wasn't even close to a mountain. It just had super tall trees so they called it the mountain hahah. So we went for a little hike. Finally I have been able to see real life wild monkeys!!! It was so cool! I also saw some huge spiders!!

Riding to the Mountains!! (Hunter is on the left middle)

When we arrived at the "Mountains"

Our Hike!!

Look Closely there is a Monkey!!

Pretty Bird!!

After we hiked for a bit we had a little Volleyball tournament!! It was so fun!! Then we sat down to a nice shrimp lunch!! They gave us soo much too!!!! It was really good. I enjoyed it alot. After lunch we had a little soccer tournament and then went home. It was a fun day.

On the right is President Morales and his Wife!!!

 As far as my investigators go, and on the spiritual side. We had a wonderful week. Here are some of the experiences that happened.

Tuesday- We were walking to an appointment when a man stopped us in the street. You could tell that he was upset and needed someone to talk to. Knowing that the gospel has brought relief in my own life, I shared a few scriptures I liked both out of the Book of Mormon and the Bible. He seemed pretty interested by that and then continued to ask me Gospel based questions. I happily answer all of his questions. After talking for a good 20 min. in the street, he insisted that we stopped by his house. The only bad part is that he wasn't there Friday. So we will stop by tomorrow.

Friday- As we are finishing our ward ''visits'' we came back to the church to report or work. That is when we found 2 ladies walking around in the church. I felt like it would be good to talk to them because I didn't know them. It turns out that they were 2 investigators who saw the church was open, and stopped by to see what was inside. So we got them to agree to let us explain the church. We had a powerful spiritual moment when we talked about the baptismal font and the baptism of Jesus Christ. We also had the opportunity to have them talk with the bishop, he helped them on some of the questions about who is the bishop.

I would also like to let you know that I have been working hard on inviting people to baptism on the first lesson. I had a cool experience this Sunday. We were with a few of the youth from the ward. When we stopped by and old investigators house. We started the process of contacting her to get to know her a little bit better. After teaching part of the first lesson I got the strong desire to invite her to baptism. So I did it. She said No. So being a little persistent I asked her ''Why?'' She explained her doubts and I helped her by answering her doubts. After I invited her again and she accepted a date!

The Work is going super well down here! I am learning so much and having a blast!! I'm am so glad to hear that things are going well back home!!! I hope school goes well. I remember this conversation a year ago in the MTC hahah Time is flying!!!!



 Take Care and have a wonderful week!!
-Elder Parduhn

Week 50 (August 4, 2014)

Week 50

Family,

This was just a splendid week. First off the pineapple plant is doing very well haha ;) This week started off with 2 sleepless nights. It all started off with a super bad thunderstorm, or shall I say lightning storm!! It was soo cool they were the loudest thunder strikes I have ever heard in my whole life. So at 12:00 thanks to the lightning the power went out, so we had no fans!! It was so dang hot that I couldn’t sleep. I don’t know how but about 3 hours later (4) I was finally able to get back to sleep. This is when the crazy part came. At 6:00AM I woke up because I thought my companion was shaking my bed, when I saw that he was still in his bed. At that moment he told me that there was an earthquake going on hahah. I’m sitting in my bed and it’s like a rollercoaster ride ok haha so we decide it would be best to leave our shaking concrete house and go outside. I will tell you what! there is nothing harder that trying to walk in the middle of an earthquake!! It was like one of the coolest things I ever experienced!!! All is well though mom, don’t fret. It only lasted like 2 minutes. We had a super cool family home evening this week. We went and saw this family that were having some serious marital problems, so they invited everyone over. The dad publicly apoligized and said that he wanted to learn more about the gospel. So he is now 1 of our new investigators! We are very excited to start teaching him.

Super funny!! My companion also had his birthday this week. His birthday was on Thursday so we had like a double b-day party in the house haha. We bought some pizza and some drinks. Then Saturday on my b-day we had a little party at Luis´s house. There family is so cool. They made sure that we had dinner and then they brought out a huge cake!!! It was soo good.

That was pretty much my week. Please don’t worry about the package mom, everything is just fine down here I can wait!! haha.

Love ya’ll tons!! Have a wonderful week!!

Hunter