Wow you guys should see my inbox! Week 101, last one, last week, 1 more week, your done, haha its pretty ridiculous.
So here we are... it really is the end. This is the weirdest experience Ive ever been through in my life. Trying to explain how I feel would be useless, but its all good.
This week has been a little strange. Im actually no longer an assistant. Pres brought the new one in a week early and let me finish my mission where?... in Mahotas of all places! Im back to the promised land for my last week. Ive been here since Friday and have been walking with Elder Rispress, a West Point cadet. I couldn't have picked a better way to go out.
I'll be honest I don't really know what to write. I feel like at this point it would be better to just wait and tell you everything in person! So I guess I will end with just a few thoughts.
I think most of the experiences and things Ive learned on the mission I will never be able to adequately explain, kind of like basic training, but I think the Lord does that on purpose. We serve the Lord for 2 years because we love Him and want to help our brothers and sister, but in the process of growing closer to the Lord and learning to genuinely care about others you learn a lot about life and yourself. Im so grateful for this time and will look back on it with an ear to ear grin for all of eternity. I love this place and I love the people I have been priveleged to meet. I know the God lives and that His son Jesus Christ is our Savior and they love us and are merciful beyond all comprehension. I know the gospel changes lives for the better because I have seen it happen countless times. And I think of all the things that I have learned the past 2 years, the one that has changed my life, who I want to be, and what I plan to do is 2 Nephi 2:25 "Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy." I know we were created to be happy. That is the end purpose of all things and I know that true, eternal happiness only comes through the Savior and His gospel. I plan on being happy.
I love you guys and cannot wait to finally see you! Its been a fun ride, I'll tell you all about in 2 weeks! For the 101st and last time....
Much Love,
Elder Hruby
Triple digits!!!!!!!!! Just gets weirder and weirder every time I get on internet to write you guys... only 1 more time after this week. This past week was legit. Traveling is always a good time and seeing all the missionaries and old areas is a blast.
So Tuesday we had our first zone conference in Swazi. It was so cold! It was like 30 degrees Fahrenheit. I wore an overcoat the entire presentation. It was nice to start our week off in English, it made our training a little easier. The conference overall was a success. I think it was fun and entertaining for everyone, but also instructive and spiritual. Wednesday I drove us back to Maputo... it was kinda weird driving that long of a distance, especially with a manual car that Ive only driven like 6 times haha. Thursday we had our conference here in Maputo. Also went well, right afterwards we went to the airport and headed up to Beira! I love that place. Friday was our conference there. At the end President had all those that were going home bear their testimonies. So me, and all of my group that was up there; Elder Couch, Woolley, Ence, and Heald. That was a weird moment. We all just kind of looked at each other afterwards like, "Did that really just happen? Are we really done?" Cant explain what its like.
Yesterday I got to go to church in Chingassura! I got to see all my peeps there. It was surprising how many people remembered me. Last time I was there I didn't go to church I just passed by a few houses, but yesterday I saw everyone. It made me really happy talking to all of them and seeing how they are doing. When I told them that Im coming back in 2 weeks with my mom and dad to visit them they freaked out! Its gonna be such a good time. Our flight home got delayed until 23 last night, so we didn't get home until about 230 and I didn't get into bed until about 415 because we had to drop Pres e Sis Koch of then head back home and shower and stuff. Good news is today is Pday so we got to sleep a bit. Still a bit worn out, but I can make do for 12 more days!
One thing from zone conference that I did want to share was another good one-liner from Pres. He always ends with the best quotes/sayings. This time he used "Bloom where you're planted." He talked about how we are all placed in different places/circumstances throughout our missions and more so our lives and we don't always have the best situations around us, but that we can always make something of it. Just do what you can and make it happen. Successful people, happy people take what they are given and turn it into what they want it to be.
Well family... I will talk to you next week! Keep enjoying the beautiful summertime.
Much Love,
Elder Hruby
Greetings from the Kingdom of Swaziland!
Sorry for the late email, but I am writing you from Swazi. We are down here for zone conference tomorrow. Elder Stanley and I had a dope trip down. We left this morning around 8, but as we were leaving we realized our passports were at the office so we had to go into the city to grab those and with traffic we ended up leaving the city at 9 haha. To make it a real road trip we stopped in at the gas station and I bought us 2 bags of chips, 2 packs of cookies, 2 muffins, some bakery bread, and of course... a 2L of Coke baby! The drive was beautiful. It is probably the coolest road trip in the world. We got into Swazi about 1pm (I can use normal time now since thats how they do it in Swazi), and went to a local sushi place seeing as it is our Pday we decided to treat ourselves... beyond good! I ordered a 2 person platter but downed it alone, 23 pieces of sushi.
This whole week is gonna be crazy. We are here until Wednesday morning, then back up to Maputo. We get 1 day in our area, then Thursday we have zone conferece with the Maputo/Matola zones, then right after we drive to the airport with Pres e Sis Koch to fly up to Beira. We will be in Beira untilSunday evening! Im stoked to get 1 more chance up there. It'll give me the opportunity to talk to all the people we are going to visit and mark some visits with them! Crazy week... doesn' t really compare to Dad's travel schedule, but its an honorable mention.
This past week was solid. Each day was very standard. We knocked out several visits and got in the area a decent amount. We did spend a couple of hours finishing up our zone conf presentation, its pretty sweet. We are talking about how to find new investigators. We divided it up into 3 points; Referrals, Part-Member Families, and Contacts. And since all the best things are done in 3 we made a sweet, kinda funny, video to show. Its got the 3 stooges, a flea flicker from the Saints, mickey mouse 3 musketeers, the 3 amigos, a sick big 3 highlight with wade throwing an off the backboard alley oop to king James, and Steph Curry reinging a 3. Don't worry we are gonna transition it into a spiritual training, but we needed an attention grabber haha.
Fun story this week. Saturday the Secretaries had 3 baptisms so we went to support and help out. The font stopped filling up just below knee level so we needed more water. Well the Sisters brought their entire water storage done and we emptied it into the tank. I got a nice video of it. We emptied 74 5L bottles... thats 370L of water! It took us like 10 minutes. Good news is it made the baptisms possible and everything ran smoothly. Its these kind of stories that Im gonna miss!
Crazy that school is out! I still feel like Im a year from coming home... which I think is a good thing, but don't get me wrong Im super stoked to see you all! 2 more emails and thats it... weird. Life gets real. Have a great start to the summer!
Much Love,
Elder Hruby
Well everyone... I cant believe we are under a month now. Thats just messed up! I don't know about you guys but my mind isn't doing a very good job of comprehending it.
This week was a little bit of a mess, but not anything bad. We finally moved out of the mission office into the new apartment the Kimballs found for us. It is only about a 30 second drive from our old one, but its on the fourth floor of the complex. That made Tuesday a long, exhausting day. I ended up carrying both fridges, the washing machine, kitchen table, and a bunch of other stuff up those flights of stairs haha. I think I was born to move. 11 times before the mission and now 3 times on it. Some people are just gifted ya know? The good news is the apartment is nice and spacious. It has a great view of the harbor and Im a fan. We spent most of this morning cleaning up the appliances and getting everything orderly.
Wednesday we also lost most of the day in the area becasue we had to run errands for the mission. Not a bad thing, but just means we got almost no time in the area until Thursday. That being said, we still managed to have a fairly decent week. Almost no one came to church, but we can only give them the opportunity. Upside: we got 2 refferals this week and both families are pretty legit. I actually have an honest hope in them. One of the families, Elsidio e Pureza, is beyond cool! Pureza is a professional singer and also works for the state as like a womens rights protector or something like that. Elsidio has a doctorate in Physics and teaches at the university. They have the coolest 11 year son named Ed. He is special needs, and absolutely loves us. He always says the prayer when we are over there. He is really smart and is super attentive in our lessons. They told us he wasn't actually born like this. He was born healthy and until he was 5 almost 6 years old he was normal functioning. He got sick and they took him to the hospital where the doctor gave Ed the wrong injection. He had mixed Ed up with another patient that was super sick and gave Ed a medicine that was way too strong and it ended up messing Ed up really bad. He lost his ability to walk and talk for several weeks and he never really recovered. He can talk now, but he isn't all there and he has difficulties walking, but man he is a blast and his parents treat him sooo good. I love it!
Lloyd and Maria are still hanging on. Lloyd came to church like usual, but 45 minutes late... like usual. We are working hard to help the turn the corner and really start taking things seriously. Because of timing and documents, they are kind of the only family that has a shot of being baptized before I leave. Fingers crossed.
We taught a 7th Day Adventist and her family this week. It was actually a super sweet lesson. Elder Stanley and I were teaching in tune and we felt like we were throwing out good Bible scrips left and right for her to eat up. At the end we asked if she would pray about the message and she said she would. We then asked her what she would do if God showed her that this was the only true church. You know what that gutsy lady said!? She said," God and I would have an argument. I would stay up all night fighting with Him until he convinced me I was wrong." hahaha! You know what we did? We marked a return visit haha!
Another fun story for you all. My IDL and debit card came this week so I finally am driving. Elder Stanley had to teach me how to drive stick, but it wasn't too bad. There is actually a nice track close to the mission office so we just paid to go out for like an hour and a half for me to practice. It was nice, especially because it was realistic. There were goats, machamba mamas working on their gardens that are planted inside the track, school kids playing with their kites, go karts that almost ran under my truck, etc. Haha it was insane! Ive never seen anything like it. Oh I forgot we also saw two church services being held on the field inside the track. What the heck people?! Good news is I only stalled twice. And now Im driving normally. This place is one of a kind.
Well enjoy the last real week of the school year and the osum weather. Talk to you next week. See you in 4!
Much Love,
Elder Hruby
It was a quick week for me as well. It was a weird week too. Lots of random stuff that isnt usually on the agenda. I enjoyed it, though.
We had our big mission leadership conference this week. We flew-drove all the zone leaders in to Maputo. So Tuesday we spent a lot of time picking up Elders from the airport. The good news is in the evening Elder Stanley and I had time to divide and work in the area. He walked with Elder Coptizky, which is the Elder he trained about a year ago, and I got to walk with Elder Couch. It was a blast! I love that dude. Tuesday evening we had to go pick up the new missionaries from the airport so in total we made 3 airport runs that day.
Wednesday we had our meeting and it went really well. It lasted about 3 hours and Pres asked Elder Stanley and I to give a training for about an hour of it. I think it went really well. We got a good group of leaders and the mission is doing really well right now. In the next 6 weeks we are forecasting 210 baptisms mission-wide!!! Thats HUGE. Things are looking up right now.
Thursday we got stuck in the office and moving missionaries around to different areas so we didnºt get to our area until 19, or 7pm as Bjack would prefer. The good news is in total the week was actually very productive and I had a good time. We are working hard and I feel good about that, the difficulty is getting these families to come to church. This is by far the hardest area Ive had in bringing families to church, even harder than Liberdade. Speaking of which, I did a division with Elder Ball in Liberdade on Saturday and it was dope.It is always fun going back to an old area. He is still teaching 2 of the families that I was working with which makes me happy. They are slowly progressing, but progressing nonetheless.
I really hope I get to see some more baptisms before I leave. We have families, but they are all struggling with really committing. I think sometimes I dont realize how much the gospel, and the Lord in general ask-require of us. All these other churches are just show up and listen and you are saved. Christºs church is a bit different haha. It is hard to change that culture right away and for these families to really jump in and start acting instead of just listening. We are finding like crazy too. Since Ive been with Elder Stanley we have found 50 new investigators. Thats 50 people who received our first visit and accepted a second one. We are just now trying to find the legit ones who are ready right now. Im praying that we can get at least one family in this last transfer!
Well Im sure Boise is beautiful as ever! Enjoy! Summer time is right around the corner. Have a good week.
Much Love,
Elder Hruby
Well the 4th and final skype sesh has come and gone. I remember lastyear for Mothers' Day it was my first week training Elder Green and it was Elder Douglas' last skype as well. He went home 5 weeks after! To make things even weirder we woke up at 430 this morning to take the missionaries to the airport that are going home. The crazy thing is I wont take any more to the airport... my group is the next to go home.
It was great to see you guys yesterday! Thanks for getting up early for me... well not really early for you guys, just for Bjack haha. Its crazy how much has changed in 2 years, but how much the family is still the same. Seeing you guys in 6 weeks is gonna be great!
As for my week... this one was much better. We had 3 families at church, first time thats happened since I got to this area! Lloyd e Maria are doing good still, we are just fighting to get their docs done. They need to hurry so I can see them get baptized! Candido e Ana and Antonio e Cartilia are all doing well. They are 2 families of humbler means so we are just in the waiting process for money to do their docs. This week we were able to find a bunch of new potential families. We had 18 new investigators, meaning people we sat with and that accepted a second visit. Of those 18 looks like we may have 2 good new families so thats sweet! As I told you I went on a division with the Maptuo zone leaders and went back to my old area of Mahotas! It was too osum! I loved seeing Ramalho e Felicidade and their daughter Nilza. They are pumped to meet Mom and Dad. It was nice being
back there... lots of good memories.
This upcoming week we have a mission leadership council. We are flying all the zone leaders down here to participate so it will be nice to see some of my buds. Elder Stanley and I have to give and hour long training so we have/are preparing for that. The new missionaries get here tomorrow night which is always fun. We only have 2 coming this transfer.
Well Im pretty tired from the airport run so I think Im gonna go take a nap. Have a great week! Also, you all should start thinking of a couple things you would like as a souvenir. Ive got a couple ideas already, but let me know if there is anything specific.
Much Love,
Elder Hruby
