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