Week 33

Dear Everyone,

Well at least this week the rain came and the temperature dropped pretty nicely. Gonna count that as a big blessing since the power has been super unreliable this week. Last night we got some cool weather and some wind so we got to pop the windows open and I actually slept the whole night through.

The Hutch was as good as usual this week. His crazy volcano infection on his hand is getting better. He is a little disappointed actually. He was hoping to get super powers from it haha! Even better, though, was all week he was avoiding shaking peoples hands, which as a missionary is near impossible, but he always messes with people when he shakes hands and so all week they thought he was joking and everyone was grabbing his hand and the crazy volcano! He didnt appreciate it. Also, I dont think Ive told you, but Hutch isnt the biggest fan of the little kids here, so when they annoy him in the road and grab his hand he holds them tight and says "Vou comer seus olhos." Aka Im gonna eat your eyes. They always freak out and try to get away but he holds onto them until he feels they are sufficiently terrified. I love it!

Yesterday in church we had 18 investigators and 6 complete families! Love it when a week of work pays off. During Sacrament meeting I was sitting with the little girl of one of our recent converts, her name is Diasy. She is a freakin cutie! At least I thought so until yesterday. She was super well behaved during the Sacrament, but afterwards she started trying to play around with all my stuff and then was close to tearing my BoM. I took it from her and said she couldnt play with it. Of course she started pouting and crying, but I told her I didnt care and she could cry all day. When she heard that she freaked and slapped me in the face twice and clawed me. Cut my nose and my chin. Like I said, she was a cutie until yesterday.

We were supposed to get Vasco e Josefina married and baptized this Saturday (28) but we didnt get the marriage process opened in time so we are pushing it back one more week until March 7. Still super excited, itll be my first family in 2 months! The rest of the area is doing great and we have some really good families that are progressing nicely, just because of time and documents they are all planned for sometime next transfer.

Nice, well I dont have much else this week. And I tried to load some pics up on dropbox, but the computer was being lame today, so fica para proxima semanam, desculpe! I love you all and thanks for everything.

Much Love,

Elder Hruby

Week 32

Dear Everyone,

Transfers came this week and I you all will be spoiled with another full transfer of "The Hutch" stories!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! In all honesty I am kind of excited too haha. My house stayed the same. Just me and Hutch and the 2 zone leaders, Elders Hillman and Douglas.

The big news this week is that the FIRST STAKE IN MOZAMBIQUE was created on Sunday! And President being a boss, shipped ALL the missionaries in the entire mission to Maputo to witness it. The only crappy part is its an 18 hour bus ride from Beira to Maputo... on Mozambican roads haha. I got to see the whole country basically so that was cool. I took some pictures but left my camera at home today
so I'll have to send them next week, sorry. President looked so relieved to have a Stake President called in Maputo. That takes a load off the entire mission since Maputo is now self-sufficient. All we have to do there is teach and baptize now, not any of the leadership stuff anymore.

We went down on Saturday morning and 4 am and got to Maptuo at about 9pm. The ride was actually not bad at all. I got to stay in my old area and old house that I served in my first transfer here. It was super osum to walk in my old area on Sunday afternoon. We went and visited Domingos e Christina, my first couple that we baptized. They are both active and doing super nice. Pridefully, one of the best
parts was everyone we visited was like wow Elder Hruby you speak really good Portuguese now. Considering I had been in the country for only a few days when I met all of them, I would hope I speak significantly better now, but still was an ego boost.

The trip back up yesterday seemed a lot longer than the way down. We blew a tire about 8 hours into the drive and it took them an hour to fix it, but we made it and get to do P-Day today. 

Ok the moment you have all been waiting for... the weekly Hutch story. First let me preface that Hutch doesn't take showers at night, only in the mornings. Which fine, you know at least he is showering once a day right? No wrong. We are so gross and sweaty and dirty after working all day I cannot comprehend how he gets into bed and falls asleep without showering. Anyways about a week ago this bite looking scab appeared on his wrist. Didnt look too serious, though. Then 2 days ago he comes up to me and puts both his hands up and says "Notice anything?" Uh ya I did one of his hands was fat as a balloon and twice the size of the other. The bite thing has turned into a nice little infection with a huge bump on his wrist that looks like it needs to be popped. He is super into those natural plant oils so he has been throwing all sorts of magical mixtures on that recently, and then this morning I hear him from the kitchen just yell, "Oh it popped! Yup
thats oozing." Are you kidding me!? I love this kid haha. So hopefully his hand doesn't fall off before he gets his antibiotics.

The are is going good. Not much to say since we were out of town for 3 days, but we should be having a wedding and baptism on the 28th!!!! Super excited, its been 2 months.

Other than that I don't have much. I did get the package from Matt and Connie, and the letters from the Randy and Heather, but from you Mom and Dad I think it was lost:( Well I love ya guys and hope you all get healthy and can enjoy beautiful Boise. The rain is starting to come here! Also our power is out every other night and they saw its gonna be like that for the rest of the year, but that's also Mozambican talk so we will see. But I will be racking up the bucket showers this transfer in the rain that's for sure!

Much Love,
Elder Hruby

Week 31

OH MY LANTA FOR THE STARS OF LIZA ITS BEEN HOT! I think this week I was officially given my welcome to Africa. I cannot remember sweating this much in my entire life. Walk outside for 10 minutes and I kid you not, my shirt is soaked, sticking to my body and you can see my skin through the shirt. Kind of gross I know. Here is the best news, our power has been super spastic this week so its been even hotter in the house. The houses here are literally built like an oven so it really is hotter inside than out. Saturday night the power went out around 7pm and didnt come back on until 3am. So bucket showers and sleeping in the heat. I actually didnt have that much trouble falling asleep but it wasnt a deep sleep, and then at midnight I woke up hearing Elder Hillman throwing up in the bathroom haha. I thought I was having a rough night with the sweat dripping down my face as I tried to sleep... Hillman definitely had it worse. I had to laugh, though because honestly his night couldnt have gotten any worse. So thats my Africa story for the week.


Ready for the Hutch story? I could talk about him forever, already have a million stories to tell haha. First, he literally never, NEVER stops talking. I have decided its because he played so many computer games in high school that now that he actually has someone in person with him 24/7 that has to listen to him, he is taking full advantage haha. But this week the Hutch has been a little sick and stuffed up. He has been blowing his nose into a towel all week, which fine whatever he can have his snot towel. The story comes into play when i saw him come out of the shower and had that very same towel, the "snot" towel, wrapped around him drying off! What makes it even greater is I realized he has been using that towel the entire week for both his snot and his showers!!!! Gotta love The Hutch!


We have one family we are teaching, Vasco e Josefina, who are really close to baptism. They have finished all the marriage documents, we are just waiting for all the legalization and signatures. They are a golden family. They are marked for Feb 28! We also taught a family this week, Fani e Crizalda, the Law of Chastity. It was actually a super nice lesson. After we finished our speal about how they need to get legally married before they can be baptized, Fani turned to Crizalda and asked "You wanna get married?" She replied "do you?" And super enthusiastically Fani "I definitely wanna get married, lets get married!" It was a super fun lesson. At the end when we were leaving Crizalda shook my hand and had this big ole smile on and told me that she loved our lesson today. Makes it worth the work things like that.


On Tuesday we had another sweet visit. Tad R. Callister came to Beira to talk to us. FYI he is the President of the Sunday School. It was beyond sick. He was personable and engaging and it was so totally OSUM. He talked a lot about the Atonement. He knows a lot.


I finished the Book of Mormon again and have started reading the New Testament. I am also reading Jesus the Christ alongside it because Talmage explains things a lot better than I can comprehend on my own. I am so ignorant when it comes to the Bible its embarrassing, but thats why Im reading it right? Just want to share 2 verses this week. Matthew 9:12-13. Christ himself explains that the whole need no physician, only the sick. He didnt come to help the perfect people, He came for the sinners. Good cause Im a sinner, so glad I got Him on my side!


Welp I love you all and hope lifes going good, busy as ever. I miss you guys, in a good way, and pray for ya too! Until next week.


Much Love,
Elder Hruby

Week 30

Dear Everyone,

Well this week I don’t have a ton to say. It was kind of an out of routine week, but still don’t have a ton to say.

We had Zone Conference again this Friday, and District Conference Saturday and Sunday for all of Beira. It was super nice having President and Sister Kretly up here like always, but we also had one
of the Area 70 here, Elder and Sister Ellis. Basically the entire 3 days they all talked about Tithing, the importance of the Priesthood, and the base of it all. Faith. It was a super nice weekend and gave a
lot more focus to our members and us as missionaries on what we need to help our areas with.

Something I really liked that was said that we are gonna use a lot and teach a lot is Elder Ellis said, "We don’t pay Tithing with money, we pay it with Faith." He explained that if we honestly believe the promises of Heavenly Father than we will trust Him and pay with our faith. I think that’s going to help a lot of our member here. Also Sister Ellis said something that really stuck out to me and I feel
like applies to all aspects of life. "Sacrifice is not a loss, its preparation for something better." Take what you may from that.

The area and families are kind of status quo because we didn’t get a lot of time in the area this week, but they are doing well. I am super excited for this next transfer to see some of them baptized!

I am about to finish the Book of Mormon again and I was thinking about how many times I’ve read the same commandments or teachings or what have you. Mom you said that its crazy how fast the Nephites let pride get to them and become a wicked people again after just a few generations after Christ visited them, because they stopped doing the little things so it became easier to stop the big ones. That’s why the scriptures say the same things over and over again. And we hear many
of the same teachings each General Conference or at Church every week. Its because we are idiots. Heavenly Father knows how easily we forget and justify, but luckily He is patient and willing to remind us every day in the scriptures. Someday it’ll get through our thick skulls right?

Well that was my week. Good, but no much to say. Love you all. Have a good week.

Much Love,
Elder Hruby

A BEAUTIFUL Mozambican sunset :)

This is a little overdue...Elder Hruby celebrating his 6 month mission-versary ;)

Elder Hruby and Elder Hutch with a family they've been teaching

Week 29

Week 2 with the Hutch! I have to be honest I am actually enjoying it, for the most part. I don't know if you guys remember Knittle from the Academy last year, but Knittle and Hutch are tied for the most unique people Ive ever met in my life! This kid is osum haha. The road discussion this week was this anime show he loves called "one piece." He started telling me all about it on Wednesday and still hasn't
finished. The nice thing is he is a pretty good storyteller and keeps me entertained. Also, if I don't feel like listening I can just tune him out and he doesn't even really notice/care haha.

The week went good. We are working our faces off that's for sure. We are walking a ton, but we are getting a lot of lesson too. We had almost 30 lessons this week. Hutch doesn't like to contact people in
the street so I have to do that on my own. We have a mission goal of 40 a week, and doing them alone I only got 28, but hey what can ya do? That's one of those things were I just let Hutch do his thing and I try to pick up the slack haha.

We had 5 families at church yesterday and 14 total investigators. Heavenly Father is helping us out a ton in the area. I hope so bad that these families we have all keep progressing. I think I told you this last week, but as of right now it looks like we could 4-6
families baptized by the end of March! That would be the COOLEST thing ever.

You know how people always say they learn more as the teacher than as the student. I always thought that was a load of crap. How can you learn as a teacher more than the student? You are the teacher for a reason... you already know this stuff. Well I am eating my words on the mission. I have realized that each lesson I am learning something new. Or at the very least each time we teach my own testimony is
definitely strengthened. Just another blessing of a mission I guess.

I finished 3 Nephi this week. Super nice. I think my favorite part from this week was chapter 27. In verses 11 and 33 Christ talks about how the wicked will have joy for a season and eventually that will
result in unhappiness. He also explains how straight and narrow the path of happiness is, but in contrast how wide open and easy to enter the path of sin and eternal sorrow is. It reminded me of when Dad
always says, "If it were easy, everyone would do it." Its not easy to do whats right all the time. Its not easy to always trust in God. That's something we have really been trying to help these families understand (and Ive been trying to learn myself). But the narrow, true path is sooo much better than the other, because Christ promises
happiness if we follow him, the other path is just for a season.

Welp I love you all and hope you guys get healthy and stay healthy. I am doing just fine here, other than you know the malaria and the AIDS, but yup I'm golden! Thanks for everything. Until next week.

Much Love,
Elder Hruby