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