Wednesday, January 27, 2016

Week 81


Two solid weeks in a row! After 3 months here I finally feel like Elder Ellingson and I have a good grip on things. For the second straight week we popped off 25 lessons and found 34 potential new families. Out of 34 maybe 10 will actually sit with us, but still we are finding a good amount.

Guess what? Joel e Sara came to church again! They were super early too. They were there before we showed up. Man I love good families. We had some pretty solid, spiritual lessons with them this week. He is starting to recognize the promptings of the Spirit and he is liking it. He committed to baptism, and we really hit hard repentance this past week so we can teach about marriage tomorrow. Hoping everything continues well. Your prayers are appreciated for sure.

Other cool news, on Wednesday night we had a live missionary broadcast. It was for all missions all over the world. It was the first time they have done one of these in over a decade! It was with Elders Anderson, Oaks, Bednar, Stevenson, and Renlund. The big emphasis... "We teach Repentance, and baptize Converts." We have too many recent-converts falling away because we aren't teaching them correctly before baptism, so we got a reenergized focus on teaching the gospel in the right order with the right focus. It was sick. And as always Pres e Sis Koch with the Senior couples took care of us all afterwards and bought us pizza! Oh how I love good food, not cooked myself!

I finished the Pearl of Great Price and now am onto my last book of the Standard Works, Doctrine and Covenants. Man I love the scriptures. They are pretty freaking sweet! Cant help but feeling good when you read them and you learn something every time you read.

As for the rest of the week... not a ton really. At least not a ton I want to write about... I'll keep some stories for in person;) Don't worry Mom, I didn't electrocute myself again or get hurt in any form. Actually in fact, Sister Kimball, one of the senior couples, made me take some sunscreen from the office on Wednesday and promise to put it on everyday. Apparently I was pretty sunburnt. Who knew? I guess Im just so used to it haha.

Well I love you guys tons, and am super thankful for how blessed our crazy family is! Have a great week.

Much Love,
Elder Hruby


Saturday, January 23, 2016

Week 80

Cool weather and some progress in the area, I'd say it was a pretty good week. Note super exciting as far as interesting life stories, but with investigators is was nice. Well it couldn't really have gotten worse than last week haha, but it was in all honesty a tender mercy this week. I think we may have found our family that can be baptized this transfer to send Elder Ellingson out the right way.

The family is Joel e Sara. It is kind of a wordy story so bear with me. 2 Sundays ago we were out working in the morning before church and this lady called us over in the road. We stopped to talk to her and found out she is a member that was baptized as a teenager 10 years ago. Not super rare to run into old inactive members, but whenever we do we try to take an opportunity to visit them and see their interest level in coming back to church. We ended up visiting her and her non-member husband, Joel, this week. Come to find out Joel already knew us! 6 weeks ago we contacted him in the road and marked a visit with him, a visit that for some reason never happened. We looked back at our planners from last transfer and Joel was the very first man we contacted! To make the story better we taught a nice Restoration lesson and he understood pretty well. Sara is super stoked to come back to church so she is helping a lot. We taught on Tuesday and went back on Saturday. On Saturday we just followed up, but at the end Joel e Sara wanted to share scrips they had read together in the BoM... super sick! And to top it of... They came to church! Originally he wasn't going to be able to make it because he had a work commitment at 13 which is the time church starts, but he showed up and said he had cancelled it to come... sounds pretty legit to me.

The rest of the area is going decently. Elder Ellingson and I have got a good hold on our area by now so we work it well. We are able to get about 25 lessons a week now... the transfer before I got here the area averaged 14. We are getting blessed for sure... even if we cant make people progress. There are always several families in potential that could become some legit investigators but we will see as the days roll on.

We had zone conference on Thursday. It was osum as usual. The training was actually basically the same one given to us 2 weeks ago in our leadership council, but this time it was to the whole zone so that we are all on the same page. Good stuff, and a good refresher. Sis Koch talked about Pride vs Humility. Quoted a lot the talk by Pres Benson Beware of Pride. I need to study that a LOT more. The other thing that stuck out to me was something Pres Koch said. He said that we do a lot of things and sweat and stress over the work but we forget why we do all of it. Not just in the mission but in life. We forget why we are evening busting are selves to get stuff done. It was a good little reminder.

Well thats about it for my week. I cant believe you guys bought an arcade machine... who are you people?! I love my family. You guys rock! Have another great week and treat the baby good for his BDAY!!!

Much Love,
Elder Hruby





Friday, January 15, 2016

Week 79

Well the weather took a break this week so that was nice, only had about 2 or 3 days that were deathly hot, the others were fairly nice. This week was pretty uneventful. We had a full week of just work. No meetings, no trainings, no nothing, just time to work which was nice.

The area... lets just say Ive had better haha. Actually this week was an historic week for me on the mission. It was the first time Ive had 0 investigators show up to church. Ya it was a little bit of a slap in the face. We finally thought we were getting somewhere with these families, but we are basically gonna drop everything and start from scratch this week to start the transfer fresh and let the Big Man work some miracles to help us hit our goal of 7 baptisms this transfer. Sometimes you just gotta put your nose to the grindstone and keep pushing forward. Read a great quote from President Howard W Hunter: "With your life and faith centered on Christ, nothing can go wrong permanently."

With the lack of progressing investigators Ive got lack of things to say haha. This upcoming week we have zone conference which will be nice. Oh also some big news for you! The last Sunday of this transfer, Feb 21, Elder Anderson is coming to Maputo! He is having a general meeting with the members in the morning, and in the afternoon and meeting with just the missionaries in Maputo, so like 30 of us! That will be super osum!

On a chapa ride this week I met the Mozambican Lil Wayne. The dude rapped to me for like 10 minutes right in my ear, and when he finished he started like playing his hand like a flute and going buck for like 2 minutes. Everyone in the chapa was plugging their ears and I was just busting up laughing. I think the guy took that as my approval so he continued until he got off at his stop. It gave me a nice little laugh halfway through the day, Im sure you'll like it too.

As for the transfers being moved up a week, they will just even out as we do 7 weeks this transfer so my release date is the same no stress. As far as planning through the mission the APs still haven't gotten back to me so when I know Ill let you know as well.

Much Love,
Elder Hruby

Friday, January 8, 2016

Week 78

Happy New Year family! Hope you guys had a good time. I sure did... sleeping through the new year, but its all good I love my precious sleep time. We actually had to come in early on New Years Eve, around 1700, to avoid the craziness. Mozambicans love to party thats for sure. So we got a little bit of extra chill time in the house this week.

On Wednesday we had the leadership council with Pres Koch. He flew all the zone leaders in from all the zone in the country and in Swazi. We had a training from 9-16h. Long, but super good. Probably the best leadership training Ive been at. We talked about some of the mission goals for 2016 and what needs to happen to get there. A large part of the training was learning how to be better leaders. Not like a sports team captain or a leader at the Academy, but a leader in the Church. We studied D&C 121:34-46. It was super legit, I enjoyed. Ive got a lot to work on. I was definitely trained and cultured into being more of a forceful leader on the field or in a workout so I took a lot out of the training. Always learning.

Transfers got moved up a week so today was the big news. Me and Ellingson are staying together for another transfer. It is his last! This will be our 3rd together, Ive never done 3 with one comp. Good thing we like each other.

The area is picking up, slowly but surely. Magre e Sarifa are getting better, there is just some little hesitation on her part about the marriage. They have had relationship issues in the past, but they are changing as they do the little things. Weird the gospel changes people. We also are teaching a widow with two 26 year old twin sons. They are doing good. We are hoping to baptize these 5 on Feb 13! Our goal for this transfer is 7 in total. I would be stoked.

I finally finished the Old Testament this week. Only took me like 5 months. I learned a lot, but probably will never read it from cover to cover again, but one time is worth it. It makes the New Testament and the BoM make a lot more sense actually. Now on the the PoGP and then D&C to get all the standard works done on the mission. Wooh!

Last thing, in the training from Pres he told a cool story that I liked, and I felt like it applied to my area recently. In short it goes something like this; " The Lord told a man to move a giant boulder from one spot to another, the man pushed and pushed for days upon days but was never able to get the boulder to budge, not even an inch. After a long while of this the man finally turned to the Lord and asked, 'why are you having me to this, it is impossible, Ive tried and tried my very hardest, but I cant even get this thing to move, whats the point?' The Lord then responded, 'look at your muscles. Look at your shoulders and your arms, and your legs. Look at how strong you have become because of this boulder." I thought it was a cool little story.

Well have a great first full week of 2016! This is gonna be a good year... I can feel it in my bones!

Much Love,
Elder Hruby

Sunday, January 3, 2016

Week 77

Man do I love skyping! Email is always good on p-days, but seeing all your faces and actually hearing your voices is just osum! The best part is even with all the growing up, and distance, we are still the good ole Griswalds! I love you guys.

Christmas was a much needed mid-week break. Last week wasnt the greatest and this week didnt start off on a much better note, but Christmas day was the best, and the last 2 days have been really good. We had 2 families back at church! Magre e Sarifa and Americo e Rosa are both back on the right track. For lack of time, and a good amount of preparation on their part, they wont be getting baptized this transfer. This will be the first transfer of the mission without a baptism. Kinda rough since I havent worked harder on my mission than I am now, but optimistically it looks like we could have 2 families baptized next transfer! Both these families are pretty willing to get married without a big party or anything so that makes it easier.

Dad was right, the weather was a lot nicer to us the past couple of days. I didnt sweat through my shirt until about 30 minutes after leaving the house, instead of the usual 5 haha.

I gave a talk in Sacrament Meeting yesterday. The second time on my mission. Bishop asked me to speak about..... Missionary Work. How convenient! It went well, but I had to rush because the girl before me went like 10 min over so I only spoke for 6 minutes.

This upcoming week we have a zone leader meeting with Pres on Wednesday. He is flying all the zone leaders in from all over the mission to attend the meeting in person. Im excited to hear what he has to say. New Years Eve we will have to be in by 5pm to avoid the party people... what a shame;)

Well thats all for the last week. I love my family, you guys rock! Did I tell you how much I dig skyping? Cause I do... a lot! Have a good week. And HAPPY NEW YEAR!



Much Love,
Elder Hruby