Week 60

60 is quite a number. I remember when I was with Hutch he was writing emails in the 60's... he goes home next transfer!

Well this email wont be as long as last week, but that doesn't mean this week wasn't as good. Just not a lot of news. Basically all our families are progressing well and making visible strides in their conversion processes and preparation for baptism and marriage! This Saturday David e Otilia are getting married and baptized! Super excited. And they are having a little party after so I will get to enjoy some BOMB food:)

Cool thing of the week, President Koch invited me and Elder Christiansen to a meeting with the Stake President, President Castanheira. We talked about the Stake's goals over the next 2 years and how missionaries and members are going to work to hit these goals. The nice part was they actually asked our opinions and thoughts on stuff. Feeling like a boss haha.

I was so annoying in the house this week. Each morning I woke up and would ask the house what day it was. I would then answer myself and say "its the last padded practice (wed)." orthursday I yelled its walk through day! I thought Bjack's game was Friday so I ran around yelling its GAME DAY!!!!! As you can tell... Im still a big fan. Pdays are so much better when football is here! By the way... nice job bro! Killed it. Whats new though. Look like a stud, play like a stud, you might just be a stud.

Have another great week. Im excited to send some baptism pics next week! Also I uploaded some pics from going to the zoo last pday. I bought a live chicken and threw it into the crocodile exhibit... ya it was as cool as it sound. They love them so live chirpin chicken:)!

Much Love,
Elder Hruby

This is Nilza and my companion. Nilza is Ramalho e Felicidade's 7 year old daughter and I'm going to adopt her!

Week 59

Super good week! This is the best Ive ever had an area going on my entire mission. We had 8 complete families at church and 23 investigators in total! We also had 3 less active families that we visited last week come! So OSUM. What is even better is all 8 of those families have baptismal dates and have already started documents! Legit all 8 are progressing. Never had that happen.

We opened the marriage process for David e Utilia on Tuesday! They are gonna be married and baptized onSept 5! Then Moises and Ana on the 12th. On the 26th we have 2 couples that shouldnt have much difficulty with docs, and 4 more that are shooting for that date! I know its high hopes, but it is completely possible that we marry and baptize 8 FAMILIES in the month of September! The Lord has got his hands all up in our area haha. I love it. It makes the weeks fly by and we are doing work. Me and Elder Christiansen get along really well and we work even better together. Ive never enjoyed the mission this much. I just hope we keep deserving the blessings that Heavenly Father is pouring out upon us. Keep on working.

So that is how the area is going. Sorry there are a lot of exclamation marks, I am a little excited haha. I sent a picture of 2 famlies. The couple on the left, Ramalho e Felcidade, are my favorite couple Ive ever sat with. The couple on the right is Moises e Milusha. Moises and Felicidade are siblings. Felicidade referred him to us, and now they are going to get married and baptized together on the 26th! Sick right?

Other than that I dont have a ton to say. We have just been working a lot so no other real stories at the moment. Oh that pic I sent of a lady with a huge pile of stuff on her head is at the dump. We have a family that lives behind the landfill and I saw this lady with a giganormous bag of plastic bottles on her head so I thought you would all enjoy. You cant even see her upper body the bag is so big haha!

Crazy that school is starting. Time is moving now! Im so pumped to hear about football. It will makes pdays even more osumer. Tell Chapman I said hi, and Kourtni Ball congrats! Kinda of weird to have someone my age engaged, I fell older now. Man life is good. I was actually reading in 1 Samuel this week, and the Prophet, Samuel, is talking to the children of Israel and getting after them for forgetting their God and falling into temptation. In his counsel to them he tells them to "Consider all that God has done for you." I found it fitting in this week with all the success, but also in the rougher times we still are so blessed and should give a sec to recognize how much Heavenly Father has done, and still does for us.

Well with that said, I love you guys! I got my package and Ive never loved a present more than that calendar. So thanks for that. Have a great week, good luck with school and work and football and everything.

Much Love,
Elder Hruby

Week 58

We did work this week! It was a good time. We were super blessed and things seem to be running smoothly. I forgot to tell you guys last week Irma Artimiza, she is the Primary President in our ward, called me at 630 Monday morning to sing happy birthday to me, in Portuguese and then English haha. She then made me Mozambican brownies. They aren't even really similar to real brownies but man they tasted good!

So this week we got a lot done. David e Utilia got the last of their docs and we are going tomorrow morning to open their marriage process for them to get married and baptized of Sept 5!!!!! So stoked. Ramlho e Felicidade also were able to get some doc success this week, they are looking good for sometime in Sept as well! Can you say blessed? Also, this week we were showered with references, well 7, but thats a lot for us. They are all pretty solid, and one of the families came to church yesterday! We had a big turnout, 3 complete families, 2 of which were new, and 15 total investigators. I love Sundays like these. The work is really fun when you have all the aspects in play, contacts, references (referrals), part-member families, less-actives, and Temple prep families!

Saturday we went down to the city to do a service project with the entire zone and Pres e Sis Koch. Because of church rules and children being at the school where we were going to work, the service got cancelled. Instead of wasting all our time and just heading home Pres gave us a "mini" Pday and we all went to play soccer and bball at another school. Pres played with us too. He is filthy at soccer... typical Brazilian.

So I'm working my way through the Old Testament right now... its a doozy at times. But reading the student manual alongside it helps a lot. I read the story of Samson this week and how he had so much promised him and given to him, but he kind of ended up throwing it all away pridefully, ending in his own death. There is a really interesting commentary in the manual that talks about how the one thing that Samson lacked was self-discipline. He had everything, the looks, strength, wealth, family, girl, and the backing of the Lord, but the one thing he couldn't control was himself. He ended up forfeiting his blessing because he couldn't be humble and listen to the Lord and let other things go. He also sucked at holding himself back from his impulses (for revenge, glory, girls, etc.). It was an interesting thought. Something that I have been working on, especially being disciplined enough not to argue with a drunk guy just because he gets under my skin haha.

I saw a monkey chained up as a pet at one of our less-actives houses so that is cool. I bought a camera, and yes all those transactions are right Mom. I bought a new shirt, and then I had to pay cash for the camera so to get enough out of the ATM I had to do 3 withdrawals. Thanks for keeping track, though. I uploaded about 20 pics, so I hope you can see them, just in case I'll send a couple through email. Well I love you guys! Cant believe summer is over. But its a good thing because next summer I'll be there to enjoy it with ya!

 Much Love,
 Elder Hruby

Week 57

I am 20.... Is that weird to anyone else?! That is a big number. 20 means like adultish. I dont feel like an adult. But hey one thing is nice, the Lord gave me a Pday for a bday present!

Super nice, Elder Larsen, one of the new Elders, woke up early and made me pancakes for breakfast. He came in at 625 to wake me up, but hey I wasnt mad it was free, good food! Today we are just gonna go downtown and Im going to try again to find a good camera, I didnt succeed last week. But I did find a NIKE store and had to go in and buy myself a present, so I bought a sick new workout shirt to motivate me to workout in the mornings... Im getting fat:( Its crazy to think about how Ive celebrated my last 3 birthdays, including today. 18th sleeping all day cause I had just finished basic, 19th in the MTC, also sleeping a good amount haha, and 20th... wishing I could sleep all day! Funny how life works. 21 is gonna be a doozy for sure!

This week was super good. We are working super hard, and I am more tired than Ive ever been on the mission. I struggle everyday to stay awake during studies, and almost every night I fall asleep at the table eating my yogurt and granola haha. But I really enjoy it. We are putting in work and getting blessed. We have 2 amazing families that we are teaching. These 2 are already in my top 3 families that Ive met here. David e Utilia are the most prepared family in the world. We taught them the Plan of Salvation and marriage on Thursday and they are already doing documents and we are going to try to open the marriage process this Friday. That would be a mission record btw! They are the best. We also have Ramalho e Felicidade, and their beautiful 7 year old daughte Nilza. Nilza has me wrapped around her finger. I love that little girl. We were walking to church yesterday and she ran up to walk with me and held my hand the whole way their. Makes a 20year old's heart melt. They are working on docs right now as well. We are looking for early Septemeber for them! Life is going good right now.

I dont have a ton else to say, oh we had our first Stake Conference in Maputo yesterday. It was super well run and there were really good talks. The stake is focusing a ton on sending families to the Temple. Out of 1,996 adult members in the stake, only 153 have gone to the Temple! We are working hard on that. Oh I also forgot, Elder Christiansen and I went and sat with the Stake Presidency this week and had a little Q&A with them for about 45 minutes. We gave a zone trainingon Saturday to the missionaries in our zone so we wanted to sit with the Stake leaders and get any ideas from them that we could relay to the zone. It went super well. So did the training.

Well now I dont think I have much else to say. I love you guys, thanks for the video and the emails! I miss you all and cant wait to celebrate my next birthday with some Red Robin and pumpkin pie! If I find a reasonly priced camera I will start taking more pics and send them your way!

Much Love,
Elder Hruby

A birthday shirt...and we disagree that he is getting fat. Still looks pretty ripped to us!

Some birthday pancakes

Birthday hammock time

Week 56

Its already August?! That kind of freaks me out! I still feel like we are in the first half of the new year. I wore my fast sunday tie yesterday and realized I only have to wear it 10 more times here in Mozambique, the 11th will be back home... weird.

This week was a good one. We worked HARD. Ive been pretty tired lately. I honestly fall asleep faster and sleep deeper here on the mission than I did during basic. I think within about 15-30 seconds of my head hitting the pillow Im completely asleep, not exaggerating! But hey its a good tired.

So i think I was kind of confusing in my email last week. I am companions with Elder Christiansen. We are the zone leaders together. We also were in the same room at the MTC together, so I know him pretty well. We have 3 other Elders in the house, waiting for the 4th to arrive from the MTC. Elder Johnson is in his 5th transfer training Elder Larsen whose in his first. Elder Holt is in his 4th going to be training the new Elder when he gets here this week. So thats my house. I am the grandpa in the house. Ive been out for over a year, and I turn 20 in 7 days!!!!!!! Thats stupid old. I feel like a 16 year old. Actually I want to be a 16 year old haha.

We (Christiansen and I) have a lot of stuff we are trying to do right now. We have a lot of ideas that we want to try and incorporate and see how they work. The super cool thing is we had a leadership counsel with Pres Koch this week and his big point was that he doesnt want to dictate every little thing we do. He has given us a lot of trust, and freedom as zone leaders to figure out what is best for our zones and to be creative. Its nice because Elder Christiansen is super creative and has a lot of ideas, and not to be prideful, but I am good at putting them into action and working them into our lessons. We work well together. We are tryign super hard right now to get one new family at church every week, but we arent too concerned with how we find them, so we arent entirely focused on doing road contacts, but also working harder to get references and find part member families. By the way, GIVE a reference to the Elders in our ward, it makes us very happy and shows that the members believe in the missionaries and trust that they can do what theyve been called to do.

This week we found probably the most prepared family Ive met so far. They are David e Utilia. Man they get it. They are one of the few families that seem to always understand and the Spirit is in our lessons. Not to be cheesy but they definitely got that light in their eyes. We found them this week, they came to church, and we really think they could get married and baptized this transfer!

Saturday night I got harassed by drunks. Not like physically but man there were a million of them that night and I was not rockin my best patience attitude that night haha. I think at least 7 or 8 drunk guys tried to take a pamphlet from me or argue with me. And how stupid was I? I actually tried to logically argue with a couple of them haha. Sadly, after all this time on the mission, and all the experiences Ive had I am still a weak sauce when it comes to being patient.

Well that was a lot this week. Sorry the pics havent uploaded yet, maybe theyll come in. But as a birthday present to myself Im going to buy a camera today, so dont be alarmed if money leaves my account! Nice well I love you guys, enjoy the last little bit of summer for me.

Much Love,
Elder Hruby

Week 55

Well transfer #8 down! Im a big boy now. So transfers came in today and I am staying in my area, but I will be comps with the other zone leader, Elder Christiansen. I'm kind of bummed because Woolley got sent down to Swaziland so Im losing him. The house is going to have 2 brand new Elders in their first transfers so I have to be a good example and not corrupt them haha. Should be fun.

This week was pretty solid, as far as work goes, the fight continues. We are constantly teaching and trying to find good new families. We are also really trying hard to establish a better relationship with the members so we are visiting everyone! It is nice cause we get to meet some super osum people. The members here are bosses! We actually got to eat dinner yesterday at the Bishop's house. He is pretty wealthy, and his wife is in medicine. She actually studied in California for a bit so they both speak english. It was super nice to get a meal cooked for me instead of doing it myself haha I know Im lazy.

Last Pday we had a zone activity and went to the mission office to watch Meet the Mormons. It was even better the second time. Afterwords we went and played soccer on the beach. Im still stupid bad at soccer but I try cause its sports and I miss being athletic. Also, Elder Ipsen went home last Pday! I got to see him in the mission home 5 minutes before he left! Man when I met him he had only been on the mission for a year and 2 months! Now he is already home... I was stoked that I got to send my trainer off, though.

Well I wont lie the highlight of the week had to be dinner with Josh. I got a call tuesday night from my old comp Elder Green. He was like, "uh Elder Hruby your british friend called..." I freaked out and told him to send me his number haha. I talked to Josh and planned out dinner for Wednesday night. Called Pres that morning and he approved it all so it was nice. Even better was I was on a division with Woolley so he got to enjoy the dinner and meet Josh. We spent like 2 hours at the restaurant. It was actually the same restaurant I ate at my very first night in the country! It was a blast. We havent laughed that hard in forever! Also, Im in love with Josh's hair and have been inspired to do the same after my mission! Just an fyi Josh and I decided we need to do a Hruby/Geddes family vacation when I get home, so get to planning you guys!

Well another week/transfer down. Another one to come. Should be a good one. Just so you all know... football season starts this transfer!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ok glad we are on the same page.

Much Love,
Elder Hruby

Also I forgot, I got peed on by a dog this week. Ok that is all.

We met the Geddes family when we lived in England over 15 years ago and have been friends ever since. Crazy that Josh was in Mozambique with the soccer club he works for and got to meet up with Grant!