Monday, April 18, 2011
Enough of that Rantingish
April 18, 2011
Dear Family and friends,
So I don't really have too much to really cover or talk about and I haven't gotten many specific things to respond to. This past week went by pretty quickly(tired of me saying that yet?) and every time I reflect on it, I find myself thinking, what could I have done that could've made it better and more effective. I say that because being on a mission(and even in life really), every day is important and can lead to greater success in helping others to find a belief in God and to find greater happiness and joy as they come to increase their faith in Christ and understanding of His Gospel. I don't know how many get the same feeling of regret, but it is something I absolutely hate. I hate it when I find out that I could've done better, but because of my actions I didn't achieve it. That's the life for missionary work, you know what your role is and what you are there to do, but how you act and react to that role is your choice. This is pretty consistent with the higher law that Jesus Christ brought about when he came to Earth for his mortal ministry. The higher law that he gives us the commandments and whatnot, but unlike the law of Moses, it doesn't tell us everything we have to do. It tells us what we are to follow, but as to how diligently we follow it is up to us and our knowledge of the accountability we have to God for. I love those days of missionary work where you have spoken to everyone you could have and you've worked as hard as you could because the feeling of exhaustion that you have when you get home is so rewarding. The knowledge that I have tried my best. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is all about us trying to do our best to follow all that God has commanded us. All about us trying our best to find happiness, which happiness can be eternal supposing we follow the commandments and what not. This happiness is explained in an address by King Benjamin to his people in Mosiah 2:41 of the Book of Mormon. Obedience to the laws and commandments in all diligence is what brings us happiness, like it does with me when I return to the flat knowing that I have done my best to spread the word of God to everyone I can. It's interesting to see how much God trusts us to make the right choice. When I look at the world today, I wonder why he has because lots of people aren't very good at making the right choice and it's frustrating to see.
Enough of that rantingish. This week was alright. We have had a bit of trouble with the people that we are working with, except for one or two. We had those two at church. One is a 10 year old named Morgan and the other is his cousin Jack, who is 11. They are really good and it's amazing to see the intelligence they have and how quickly they pick up and understand what we teach them. If only the adults we teach could be as clever and smart as them :) Like as we teach they ask really good questions, they can connect the dots to the principles we teach and they are so willing to follow what we teach. It's so much fun. And I can pick on them and what not, so it makes it much more enjoyable.
There were a couple other people we are working with who have been going through semi rough times, or at least tough times to keep going with the change that they have either made or are trying to make. I've been reading up quite a bit on prayer and it has really enlightened me as to the power of it and and the importance of relying on God for all the help we need in life. He is there just waiting to help us, especially if we ask sincerely and if we truly desire the change that we are wanting to make. So long as we do all we can and ask for his help, we can overcome and accomplish anything. One goal of mine is to get better at that- reliance on God and to have more sincere and specific prayers whether they be for my help or for those that I'm working with.
Oh, one fun thing that happened this week was that we had to unclog our drain for the sink. It got major clogged from oil going down the drain. my guess(since we have a deep fryer.....I don't like using it just to put that straight.) So it ended up to being a pretty dirty job and really nasty too. I'll include a picture of myself after having unclogged it. Like Elder K started the unclogging and whatnot and went down into the big chamber, but we couldn't unclog it from there and so we had to go by hand since the metal rods we had didn't work. It was soo nasty and smelt soo bad.
Other than that, my life hasn't been too interesting. The biking is still hard and super tiring, but that's life. What has made it worse is that Stourbridge has a car now and Walsall is in process of getting a car...... so unfair. They get them after I've gone and now I'm in Wales and i don't have one. What have I done to deserve this??? Just kidding, it's really not that bad, but a car would be nice needless to say.
I love you all and I will be writing quite a few letters today, so more should be getting them this week. I apologize for slow responses considering the time that you've taken out of your life to write to poor me in Wales. It's much appreciated! Keep going on and doing your best, especially in making others happy and finding happiness yourself. Until next week.
Love,
Elder Hulet
Sunday, April 17, 2011
We Love Pictures
The consequences of not having good shoes (cleats) for playing -- there is one on the other foot also.
They did finally score in their last game -- but, sad to say, lost all of the games.
Mission Football
April 12, 2011
Dear Family and Friends,
So Wales is just plain beautiful. It's basically like Pennsylvania, but with more hills all over the place. It's quite nice. It is filled with much more farmland and pastures than my last 2 areas. The weather has actually been quite nice, minus one or two days. It's reasonably chilly, but when the sun is out, it's nice. The work is going pretty alright too. When I came we were mostly just teaching kids(aged like 9-16), but we have been able to find some more that seem to be way good. One is a friend of a less active member who is looking to turn his life around. It's a good thing we have just the thing to help him do so! The other few consist of an 80 year old guy and his wife and a guy that stopped us in a store and said he wanted to meet with us. They seem pretty good right now. We actually just saw them for about an hour before we came emailing. They are so nice and so sincere. So yeah. We are still having to do some more finding so we can continue to build up our teaching pool.
Yes, yesterday was mission football down in Cardiff. It was a blast(even though we lost every single game and only managed to score in our last game). It's just always a good time to just play some sport with a bunch of others. I definitely miss that tons. With mission football, I did get some major sores on my feet. I need to get some new cleats next time. I guess that is what I get for a flat find. I'll attach a picture of my foot. It hurts pretty bad to walk and bike. So I'll be suffering with that for a while... I did get a niceish Welsh shirt for mission football though. You'll be able to see that in some pics too.
I'm really loving being here in Blackwood. The Welsh people are just so much nicer than the English. It's ridiculous. It's cool being here because of some of our ancestors coming from around here. I was able to make a cook connection with some members on Sunday though. You know how my BYU Men's Chorus director is from Wales. Well she is from Merthyr, which just 6 miles away from where I am serving right now and the members we ate at on Sunday knew her when she was younger. Now that's neat. I guess her brother is the Bishop of a ward in Merthyr and my companion served in the ward he is over too(Beacon Heights). It's just crazy the connections you make. It'd be way cool if I could go to the Mertyr area and meet her family.
Mothers day is slowly approaching, which means I get to call home again. I don't know how they do it here or if I could Skype again. That'd be cool if we could though. In regards with the speaking with a Welsh accent, I'm not sure how that'll work. It's kind of weird how my accent works though. It seems to change depending on who I'm speaking with and I promise I don't try to change it. I'll do my best in figuring out how to sound like them more when that time comes round.
This morning I was reflecting on the purpose of life. Each time I think about something we talk to many people about I try to think of it in an out of the box way. It is kind of hard to do it with the purpose of life on earth though. We read in the scriptures and can even figure out a couple of reasons ourselves. There are two that stand out to me the most. One is preparing to meet God, which involves our life being a test really. A time where we learn and grow from our experiences and do our best to be able to provide ourselves with a better life in the life afterwards(hopefully ending with us being with God and our families). The other is that we are on the earth to be happy, or find happiness. If you haven't noticed yet, I usually have something pertaining to that at the end of my emails. Well this morning I was reflecting on it more fully and going through scriptures and whatnot for solutions to how we can be happy or find happiness. The last one I came up with was based off of a couple of scriptures in Alma- Alma 41:14-15 to be exact. This chapter talks about the plan of restoration. This plan to me really signifies and defines the golden rule and those 2 verses hit it the best to describe it. I was thinking about that and happiness. What I've come up with is that if I am wanting to be happy, then in order to get that I need to do stuff to make all of those around me. So that as I do that, then I will get back what I give out which is making others happy. That is something I want to get better at- making others happy. If I can do that, there is no doubt in my mind that I can obtain an even greater happiness for myself.
This life is so good and important for us. It is a time for us to get closer to God, family, and to find happiness. To find that should be a goal of ours each day. Yes, life will get hard, but I'm sure there is always happiness to be found. I love you all and hope the best for you. If there is anything I can do to make you happier, tell me and I'll do my best to provide my assistance. I didn't have time this week to write any letters, so next week should be the week for a couple more to be sent out.
I love you all, so now I'll close and get some pics up.
Elder Hulet
Monday, April 4, 2011
Love Them Welsh
April 4, 2011
Dear Family,
So the first couple days of Wales has been good. It is super hilly, but it's not too bad because of the practice I got whilst in Stourbridge as well as a new bike and a companion that knows how to fix bikes. So right now my bike is in good condition and it is much nicer than the piece of rubbish I had in Stourbridge that died on me my last day there. It was definitely good timing and I'm grateful for the missionary that gave me the bike for free since he got it for free and was going home. So it was a fast weekend and first stint in the Welsh Country. It truly is beautiful and super duper green. It's quite exciting to see all over the country once on a hill(no fun getting up it, but that's besides the point). We in fact live on a hill, so every night involves us having to climb up a hill to get the the flat... A good thing is that the church is just like a 5 minutes walk from the flat. It's nice being close to that.
So, more about my companion. He came out in January of 2010... um.. he has 2 sisters and a brother..... um.. likes to fix bikes and computers. He isn't the most musical(at least in ability). He's been working out some theory on his own and trying to learn some guitar, except for the times when I take and play it(which can be quite often). He has served most of his mission in Wales(Caerphilly, Beacon Heights, Merthyr Tydfil, and now Blackwood). Um...He is engaged to someone from Germany or something like that. So yeah.... That's all I think of right now. He's nice and we get along, but he's kinda weird, but that's alright because we get along just fine.
The area and the ward here are nice(at least the people that I've met). We went to Rhiwbina to see conference. That is the stake center. You have to go to the stake center to watch it here in the UK because they don't show it in individual ward buildings. That was fun. I just love conference. It's just so good. I hope that you guys got as much, if not more, than I did out of it. I felt that it had a couple main topics that were addressed. The three I picked out were: Christ(faith in Him, the Atonement, following Him, etc.), importance of love and service, and lastly personal growth and progression. I thought the talks given on these topics were very enlightening and really pushed me to see what I can do to do better with those 3 parts. I really wanted to talk about the last one of those three since I think I kind of spoke about the first one last week.
Personal growth is such a huge aspect of our life. That's really why we are even on the Earth. We are here to learn and to grow and progress in our understanding of life. This growth happens in a couple ways. One is through our personal experiences- good and bad. They are what can shape up and help us to know what to do in the future to make life easier to cope/survive/pass. So our hardships and trials are stuff we need to do our best to overcome and then learn and apply them to our lives and then with the good aspects, we need to grasp those and see how they bless our lives and do what we can to keep doing them or getting those outcomes.
The next way we can learn is something that is a little harder to grasp and do. It is the learning that we can receive from God. We, in the church, call it personal revelation. This is something that is vital for us to be able to receive. It it how God answers and teaches us. It comes when we go to Him with questions that we have. He in turn can answer us in a couple ways. Ways I've seen His answers is: through others(like parents, church leaders, talks in church), the scriptures(Book of Mormon, Bible, church magazines, etc.), feelings(as in from answers to prayers, or questions in your mind, and your feelings confirm to you the truth of what is being said, etc.), and then you have the visions/dreams stuff(haven't really experienced that since I seem to never remember my dreams). These are ways we can learn truths and stuff from our Heavenly Father. The main ways I find these are from the first three points. These allow us to find truth and apply them into our lives. They, combined with our experiences, can be very powerful and essential to our personal growth as humans and children of God. We just need to search for it and find out how to better access this learning. Learning is essential for life, both temporally and especially eternally. We just need to make the effort to do so. To study the scriptures and other materials, ponder on them and our lives, reason the answer in your own mind, and then ask God. If we do that with a sincere heart, He WILL answer us in one of those ways. I promise you! Personal revelation is vital, so do your best to seek and use it.
I love life right now. We are working with some good people(lots of younger ones who are interested which is cool). I love my mission. I've grown so much. I don't know if you can tell from my emails, but I hope you'll see that when my time for serving the Lord is done. Keep going strong and finding the happiness in your life. Next week is mission Football again! Hopefully we'll win again. Can you say captain of the D??? Yessiree Bob. I love you all. 9 Month mark is happening this week. Now that's crazy!
Love,
Elder Hulet
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