Changes December 5, 2011 Letter #18

¡¡Hola!!

Well my life is pretty boring nothing way exciting!! I have a new companion! And I suck at changes and so the first few days were filled with crying and being upset but now they are great. I really miss Hermana Quartino but she is doing great I´m sure at home and we are doing great here. My new companion is Hermana Lefler, she is from Texas. She has a lot of excitement for the work and a lot of hope for this area which is exactly what I needed here. I was starting to feel a little down about this area but now I have her and she has a ton of excitement and so I´m excited about that. It´s always good to have a new companion because we have different ideas for the work in every area and that is what is happening now. Before Sunday she really didn´t believe me that our branch is about to die but after church and only having and attendance of 18 she changed a little bit and saw what we saw and so now we are working hard together to make plans to try to build the branch and to build the investigator pull here also.

We found a way awesome investigator this week!!!! Like way awesome. We were contacting her neighbor and she walked up and was like what are you guys talking about and so we told her and she asked if we could pass by the next day and so we did. Her name is Nancy and she is the mom of 4 girls and her husband of 30 something years died last year and she turned to stuff that really didn´t help like smoking and drinking and now she is really searching for inner peace, she wants to find God for real. After our first lesson with her she was really excited and the next day we passed by and she had already read and was really excited about everything and that she is starting to find peace and finding answer to her questions. We started to teach her the Plan of salvation but we didn´t get through it with the part that she had be with her husband forever and so we are really excited to teach her that. We have a lot of hope for her and her girls. We are also sharing with the 14 girl right now and so that is nice. They are both very prepared and we are really excited. We are also teaching a family with 9 kids right now. They keep saying they are going to come to church but they never come and so we will see after this next Sunday, if they don´t come we are going to have to move on. They are very sweet people and we really want them to accept the gospel but if they aren´t willing to do their part then we can´t do anything. We will see what happens with them.

But the area is moving forward I´m excited about it, we are working hard, we are finding a lot of people to teach and I¨m really excited bout it all. We have a lot of great plans for Christmas for our members and such. We are going to try to do a 12 days of Christmas thing with the branch where we are picking a member of the ward everyday for 12 days and going to do service or something for them and we will see. Then we are going to plan a big branch activity and hopefully people come but we are going to make sugar cookies for Christmas and then take the youth and share a little Christmas message with totals and then give them a little plate of cookies and so we are really excited for that. We are going to have the women of the relief society do all the cooking with us and then the youth and the primary to cut them out and to decorate them with frosting and then the men to put them on the plates with a little Christmas poem and then we are all going to head out. We are excited about this activity and just hopefully that it works out and that people come so that we can do it and everything can work out well.

Oh dad you asked about the language, well it´s great actually. yo puedo hablar y todos pueden entender y este es la clave, si todos pueden entender todo está bien. Mi compañera neuva solamente tiene 3 o 4 meses mas de yo entonces ambas de nosotras estamos aprendiendo todovia pero todo esta bien, podemos ensenar con el espiritu y podemos tener conversaciones.

But yeah that was about my week, I got to ride for around 15 hours in a bus which 7 of those hours was in the middle of the night so that was fun and I was quite tired after wards but it was fun I guess. My feet were way swollen after wards but they went down by the next day. Oh and mom I got your package, THANKS!!!!!! I´m trying hard to resist to open the Christmas presents but at the same time I don´t know if it would be bad to do so because my companion doesn´t have anything to open Christmas morning and so I don´t want to make her feel bad by having Christmas and opening presents and her not having anything. But we will see. But yeah that is about it!!! Oh mom tell all the ward thanks for the support, I really feel the love from everyone!!! I got a letter from Tanya Yamauchi today that was a really nice surprise and then the Kraus Family is writing me and that is really nice. It is nice to have the support. Monday is our day to kind of chill out and feel love and to prep ourselves for the next week so it is great to feel so much love!!! Oh also mom with those talks and you copy and paste them to me because I can´t follow the links because it is outside the web pages that we can use so if you can copy and paste the actual words that would be great!!!

Well love you all!!!!

Hermana Hubbard

Ultimo Semana November 28, 2011 #17 letter

Hola!!

Well everything here has been getting better. I´ve had a few rough days this week because I just feel the burden of this area on my shoulders. I just don´t feel quite ready to introduce this area to someone new. It really scares me but what ever it´s fine everything will work out. I had a mild break down last night as we were walking from an appointment but I have an awesome companion and we sat down and talked for awhile about what is going on and how I just need to have more faith.

Well Saturday we had Gloria´s baptism and it was crazy!!!!!!!! And I mean crazy, Hermana Quartino said that it was the craziest baptism she has had in her mission. Well we woke up and were studying and around 10 the branch president called us and was like "I have a surprise for you guys!!" We thought it was food or something . . .then he said "the water it shut off to the chapel because I forgot to pay the water bill" He sent us running to all the different fire stations throughout Encarnacion trying to find one that could come and fill the baptismal font for us. Well we found one that would do i for cheap and then all of their water trucks are in Asuncion right now and so we couldn´t use them. They told us of a different station on the opposite side of our limits and so we headed off basically running. Bought some Empanadas on the way and ate them while we were running. We got there and they said that it was 180mil to fill up the font wilt 1000 liters of water. Just so you know it´s 4mil to a dollar so you can realize how ridiculous that was. So we were like alright well we are going to have a branch building activity of everyone bring buckets and such and coming to our apartment and carrying water a block and a half to the church until the baptismal font is full. We called our district leader so that he could come and help and he called our zone leaders. Well they then called us and said that they were going to try and find something else to do because carrying water to the chapel was going to take all day. So we waited a while while they talked with President Callan abut what we could do. Well they called us and said that the mission was going to pay the passage for everyone on the collectivos to go to rama 2 which is about a 10 to 15 minute bus ride. So we hid that from the members because we knew they wouldn´t come if they found out that they ahd to ride a collectivo there. We called Gloria and her mom and they were fine with it. Well we got everyone in teh chapel and then we told them we were headed to rama 2 and well all the adults besides our branch president, and his counselor and the mom of Gloria stayed all the other adults, "oh I have a different commitment, sorry" Well we headed off with about 10 youth and these three adults. We called the elders to let them know we were coming and they said that they had just seen a miraclc because they had been in the chapel for the past 5 hours trying to get their font to fill up and then they discovered that the pipes the fill the baptismal font are completely rotten and nothing can pass through them and while they were trying to think of what to do the font started filling up and we had water. It was yucky green water, but hey i was water. Well we all got there. the baptism went great, ate some yummy cake and had a fun time and then headed off to catch the collectivo home. Well we walked from about 10 minutes to the bus stop and waited about an hour and it wasn´t coming and it wasn´t coming and it wasn´t coming. Then all of a sudden all we could see all these cop cars and stuff a ways off and we were trying to figure out what it was. Well it was a huge marathon, and so we watched a marathon while we waited and that was quite fun to sit and cheer these people on. Well after about an 1 and a half of waiting we decided to just start walking. So we headed out. It took about an hour to walk home but man it was beautiful, most of the walk was over this bridge that goes over part of the Parana River. We could see Argentina with all of i´s lights on one side, we could see the San Pedro Neighborhood behind us and then Encarnacion in front of us. It was beautiful. We finally made it home about 10 at night. We were way late, and way exhausted but it was worth it. Gloria was super super happy and that is all that matters.

Then Sunday was also really good. We had an attendance of 35 people we were way excited!!! At the end of the meeting one of the ladies that was visiting came up to me and gave me a big hug and with pain in her eyes she asked me to go and please continue to pass by her son and daughter-in-law they were baptized about two years ago and are now less active with 9 children. She just came to me, gave me a big kiss on the forehead because i was playing the piano and could giver her a proper greeting and then just said "please, PLEASE don´t forget about my son. Those are my grandchildren" She started to cry a little and I just watched as her heart broke in front of my eyes. We have stopped passing by this family because we have passed by so many times and every time they hide from us. But now I Have a new desire to pass by and to try to share with them. It was a pass oh so familiar that I say in her eyes, It really made me think of mom and I don´t want this mom to feel the pain that mom feels and so I´m going to work my hardest to try to help this family find the true path again. But that was a way good experience. It´s just amazing how the Lord works, he has ways of telling us what we need to do. I now know that I need to help this family. We just have to figure out a way to get in their door now.

But yeah that is about it this week. Oh and my hope in the ward, the one youth that has a huge desire for the work and wants to help moved yesterday. Pati Ayala, she is like my best friend here, I´m really sad about that!!! But oh well her family needs her more than I need her. But yeah that was about it. OH this week was thanksgiving, well me and Hermana Quartino had way big lans but we were both sick and couldn´t eat anything so I think I ate some toast and drank some water and that is about it. It was quite depressing we were excited for our thanksgiving adventures but oh well. I´m just glad we are better now. Oh and mom don´t worry we are eating well. the branch members love us and so they feed us almost everyday now. We have found our branch grandma too, there is a grandma that wants to take care of you in every branch or ward here and we have found her, our dear Palerma Ayala. She is a sweetheart, she is always bringing us little snacks to eat. And we usually eat at their house on Sunday but they were traveling this Sunday after sunday school and so she brought dinner to us in the chapel so that we could have dinner Sunday it was really fun. and it was delisos also!!!

Oh mom thanks for telling me when Tanner s coming home, you read my mind because I really wanted to know because i was gong to send him a letter but I think I´ll send it to his house now because I doubt he will get it. So will you get me the address to his house please!!!

Well thats all folks!!! Keep praying for me and for the people here in Encarnacion because they need your help always!!!

Love you guys a lot!!

Hermana Hubbard

What a Week! November 21, 2011 Letter #16

Hola

There really isn´t much to say this week. To say the least it has been difficult. I really want to try to be positive in my letters home but this week really was a test of faith for both Hermana Quartino and myself. Last night we came home crying. We lost one of our baptisms this week because one of the boys in the branch starting dating the girl that was going to get baptized and her sister freaked out and thought that the church is some dating system or something, she doesn´t believe that we actually follow the law of chastity or anything. Her sister is 12 and the boy that she is dating is 12 also, she is just worried that something bad is going to happen between them and so she doesn't want her sister to be part of the church. That was a challenge because she was golden, she has basically read the entire book of Mormon, has come to church and all the activities and already has a strong testimony but she isn´t allowed to leave the house and we aren´t allowed to come to the house and so thats, that. I´m going to try to pass by on January and see if her sister has calmed down a little bit. Well yesterday both Hermana Quartino and I gave talks and we both felt really inspired about what we talked about. Hermana Quartino talked about putting God first in our lives, no matter what and I talked about having Unity, Charity and being willing to do service for each other. Both of them were kind of strong and we taught doctrine and now our branch is mad at us. We tried to visit two different families (active families) last night and we watched the parents get up and leave the front room and send the little kids out to tell us that they weren´t there. It was heart breaking . . . we don´t have investigators and our branch hates us and then on top of it Hermana Quartino is leaving in a week and I don´t think I can do this without her. We planned two giant activities this week and invited everyone and had a lot of people that promised to come and well the first activity 4 people showed up and the second activity 2 people showed up and so that was hard because we focused a lot of our efforts on these activities this week and they didn´t work out. The most important thing is that we are working hard, we are being 100% obedient and trying to follow the promptings of the spirit. Hopefully things will get better, we know that the Lord is just preparing us for something that is going to come. I don´t know what it is but it´s going to be great because when we do our part the Lord does his part ALWAYS!!! We are just a little disanimados this week no mas. Hopefully things get better, especially for the last week of Hermana Quartino this is her last week and I really hope things work out, she has worked hard her entire mission and I just hope that the last week for her works out well. Well sorry for kind of the downer email this week. I´m going to try to have a better attitude for the next letter.

Love ya
Hermana Hubbard

!!!!!!!!!Hola!!!!!!!!!!! November 14, 2011 Letter #15

Well this week was pretty normal, just the usual. We one thing great
is we found a place that carries by favorite alfajores which was quite
happy because I crave them every second of every day and no one carries
them around here. But we had some pretty awesome miracles Saturday
that I guess I can tell.

Saturday was pretty cool I guess, we had a meeting with Brian Garay
who is going to help us with this project that we are starting for the
youth because our branch has more menos acitvos than active members
and so we really need to work on activating them and the problem is
is that Hermana Quartino and I can´t do it alone and so we are having
little MTC's every other Saturday and every other Saturday the youth
are going to go out and visit the menos act ivoes and so hopefully it
works and everything pans out. And then we taught mutual which was
fun, all the kids liked it a lot. Then we headed out and all of our
appointments fell, we worked hard, walked a lot. We finally had an
appointment that we were sure was going to happen and so we headed.
We got to the apartment complex and to get to the st airs to go up you
have to walk through this one car garage to get to the stairs. So we
started in and realized that there were 4 super drunk guys sitting in
the back of the truck was in the garage. We felt a little uneasy
but thought everything would be fine. So we headed in and go up the
stair s everything was fine. We definately had some gross comments
made and stuff but that is normal. So we got to the second floor
where Adriana lives and then knocked and knocked and she wasn´t back
from work yet. The problem is neither of us felt good about walking
past these men again. We sat and looked around for other ways to get
out of the apartment complex and there wasn´t so we sat down and
thought for a second. We had other appointments to get to and didn´t
want to miss them because they were with our two girls that are getting
baptized next week, so we decided to say a prayer and head out. We
said a prayer asking that these men would leave and that we could
leave in safety. We go done praying and they were still there and I
was scared to leave being the blond cleared eyed girl, well we headed
down the stairs. We got to the first floor and I didn´t want to go
any further but Hermana Quartino said that she felt everything was
gong to be okay and that she would stand between me and them and
everything so we started down. Then the miracle. All the super drunk
guys stood up, and walked out into the street, we were able to leave
the garage and then they went back in, it was way crazy and really
shows that the Lord protects his missionaries we just have to have
faith that he will do so. Don´t worry mom and dad that is the worst
situation I have been in here on the mission, Hermana Quartino grew up
in an area really scary and is super careful about everything and is
teaching me to not be so naive about situations.
The Second miracle of the day, we headed to our other appointments and
we taught our girls and then all the rest of our appointments fell
through and we had nothing to do, we headed to contact some references but
never could find them and we still had an hour left of the day and had
nothing to do, literally. Well we stopped and prayed and then we felt
the Lord guide us to this super churchie house, and Hermana Quartino was
like, no Hermana they aren´t gong to let us in let´s go find a
different house. I clapped anyways and his sweet lady walked out and
let us in and she is so prepared for the gospel. She is so confused
about what to believe and is so ready to ask the Lord and do what
he asks. she is great and really wants to do what is necesary to find
out. Then our last miracle of the week . . . .our branch president,
elders quorum president, and mission leader went out and visited a lot
of the menos activoes in the branch yesterday, that is an absolute
miracle we don´ know what got into them but we are super happy about
it!!!! Oh and this week we have to correct our branch president and
we are not excited about but it has been placed on our shoulders.
The branch president has interviews almost every week with every
member and then talks with all the other members about the
confidential things that are told in some of the interviews. We have
a few recent menos activos because of this, people who has super
strong testimonies but don´t want to come to church because everyone
knows their sins, and if they are paying their tithing and how much
tithing they are paying and everything. We feel bad about this and
we have to talk to the branch president. We will see how it goes ....
but the mission is going great. Sorry I really don´t want to write
more because my keyboard sucks and that is why there are a lot of
spelling errors and spaces and weird stuff, I swear this thing is
possessed it´s writing when I don´t even touch anything, so yeah. Well
love you all!!!

Love
Hermana Hubbard

A Week of I Guess You Would Call MIRACLES!!!!!!! November 7, 2011 Letter #14

Hey Family,

Wow the life is great. I love this place. I had a dream the other night that I got transferred and I woke up crying. I don´t want to ever leave ENCARNACION!!!! It is a difficult place, there is a lot of work to do, the branch is up and down every week, but I love it with all my heart. We have our family here, the family Garay (the dad is the branch president) They have 3 sons and one little princess that rules the house. Barbie, I talked about her last time, she is hilarious. The whole family just runs when she says so. Like this week we were in the church and Barbie started crying by the girls bathroom or somewhere around there. We were with Hermana Garay and Brian (the oldest boy) was in playing ping pong in one of the rooms, the other son was in the chapel, and the other son was playing futbol in the field. All literally ALL came running when they hear her, "mom Barbie is crying, what happened" you would think that she was dying or something. But all the happened is her friend had to go home. It was quite hilarious, but they really are our family here and we love them to death. Are miracles come in the form of three people, Clara, Lorena, and Lidia.

Clara. Her Uncle just moved here to live with her family, she is having a really ahrd time in life because her setp mom hates her and her dad just kind of follows what the step mom says. She is super shy and great. Her uncle brought her to church one day and we taught her and then they went to a different branch the next week and then we passed by to teach her, taught her once and she cired through the entire thing and then the next time we stopped by her dad told us that we need to respect their religion and leave their daughter alone. Well we left wen to a different appointment and then on our way back to encarnacion we saw her dad and step mom leave in the car so we stopped by just to talk to her for a second. We invited her to read the book of Mormon from the beginning and then she asked if we could meet her the next night in the big plaza in encarcaion we decided that that was ok and so we met with her wiht the promise that she would tell her dad that we were doing so. Well she pulls out her book of Mormon and she is in 2 Nephi already, in one night, she knows that these things are true and she is super happy now. Her uncle is going to work with her dad so that she can get baptized because she really wants to, really bad, she is willing to put in jeapordy her family and everything which is crazy but it´s worth it. Hopefully something can work out because at the end of the month her dad is sending her to be a catholic nun and so she and us fasted yesreday that her dad would change her mind so if you guys want to pray for Clara and her dad Ramon that would be great!!!

Next we have Lorena. She is the girlfriend of Brian Garay the son of president Garay. She is great. Her family is super super super catholic (like all of Paraguay really) and well she has already read all sorts of stuff. We had our first lesson with her Friday and she walked into the room and said "all I want to know is what I need to do to get baptized" . . .ok let us teach you a little. Well we had a lesson with her yesterday and she brought "the miracle of forgiveness" by President Kimball and siad that she found it in her house when she was like 8 or 9 and read it and loved it and now she understands where it comes from and eveything. She is amazing. Her parents are making one requirement from her first that she is confirmed in the Catholic church and then after that it is her choice waht she wants to do. So her confirmation is in December and so she can start coming to church in January and she has picked the baptismal date of the 21 of January. She is amazing. The first lesson I thought she was just doing it for Brian but this last lesson she bore her testimony to us and everything and wow she is so prepared for this gospel. Brian leaves on his mission somtime around January because his papers are going in the first week of December and so we will see. She is great.

Last of all we have Lidia. She is the friend of a girl in the branch that has investigated almost every religion out there. She was born Catholic and when she was 9 she started studying the doctrine and found out that she doesn´t agree with a lot of things and then she studied with the Evangelical churches and doesn´t agree with them either because you aren´t accountable for your actions and then she studied with the Jehovah witnesses for like 2 years and now with us. We shared the story of Joseph SMith with her yesterday and she said that she feels like him that she has looked and looked and looked for the truth and FINALLY the Lord has lead her to the place that has the truth. Her baptismal date is in two weeks and we are excited for her. She is so excited about the gospel. She reads and reads and reads and prays and everything, she is so awesome. We have a strong young women group in the church and so we are really excited for her she already has a lot of friends in the church just from coming to the activities this week.

Our plans for the future. So we have been working hard trying to figure out what to do to make people happier in our ward, have more love, and be more united. So we have come up with two activities that we are really excited about. First we are going to take charge of the branch nights because right now they are just everyone getting together with the kids playing futbol and the parents sitting around and gossiping about everyone in the branch. So we have a lot of fun games planned, lessons, and commitments for everyone, hopefully that will bring more unity in the branch. Next we have something we call project attack! This is for everyone between ages 12 - 30 (that isn´t married) and it is going to be awesome. So we have A TON of less actives in our branch, like around 200 that we know of and so this is kind of like a mini MTC. WE are going to teach the youth every week about how to talk to friends about the gospel and how to share about the book of Mormon. We are going to teach them how to give lessons, have practices, and then every other week we are going to put everyone in companionships and then assign them a less active to visit. They are going to go out for 30 - 40 minutes and share a message with this family and then we are all going to come back and share our experiences. We are really excited about this and so are all the youth!!! It is going to be awesome and give some excitement to the youth and then hopefully in turn we can have some less actives coming back to church. We are working with so many right now that want to come back but they just don´t have the support of anyone to come back so when it comes to Sunday they don´t have strong enough desires to get out of bed!! So we are excited about this and hopefully everything works out well!!!!!

Me and my companion are great, we love our area. We have a lot of our area that is just fields of trees and such (not really jungle but kind of) that there are no one to talk to and so we have made some funny videos of us just talking, I have taught her some songs in English and she has taught be some songs in Spanish and Guarni and so I´m going to try to upload them. Right now I don´t know that they are going to work but we will see. At least I´ll send some pictures.

It´s not super wet here actually, there are a lot of rivers and to my surprise there are very VERY few mosiquotes. It is beautiful and I love it here. The people are SUPER catholic. I thought they were bad in Ita Enramada but not even close to the people here. All the people are very closed and doen´t want to listen but it´s ok because the poeple that do listen are serious and I like that better because I´m not wasting time. We are teaching people that want to listen, to change, and to really follow their Savior.

My companion once agian she is absolutely great!!!! I just love her to death, we have so much fun, are 100% obedient, work harder than I have ever worked in my life, we walk until we are ready to cry, and really understands our purpose here and works hard to fulfill it. she is incredibule. It is a true blessing to have her as a companion, the Lord knew that I needed her to find out waht a real missionary is . . . So yeah basically she is great. I´m just sad that she is leaving after this change, we only have 3 weeks left together. But oh well I´ll have another companion that is just as great . . .hopefully!!!

But yeah that is my life, wonderful . . . basically. I have never been so happy or felt so fulfilled in my lfie. I love spreading the word of the Lord everyday and watching as people find out the answers to every question their is to this life. It is just amazing, this church is definitely of God, there is nothing out ther that can give answers to ever question, except for God and his gospel!!!

Love
Hermana Hubbard

A Little Bit Better.... October 31, 2011 Letter #13

This week has gone a lot better, we are still working hard but we have already seen miracles open up in our paths. Monday or Tuesday, I can´t really remember we came up with this lesson plan to go through with all the less active members that have strong testimonies and it has worked miracles. This week we worked with Hermana Baez, Hermana Almada, Hermana Aguirre and Hermana Carmen to try to get them to come back to church. Hermana Baez and her husband were the first members in Encarnacion and quite coming to church about a year or so ago and we are still working hard with them, hopefully someday she will come back to church. Her husband comes about every other week and only to sacrament meeting so we are still working with him also. The other Hermana Almada was baptized in 1982 and hasn´t been to church in 8 years. She stopped coming when her health got really bad about 8 years ago and then just has never come back to so we have been working hard with her. Her daughter is one of the really strong members of the church right now and we just love her (she does our laundry), so she has a great help there from her daughter to be able to come back. The next is Hermana Aguirre, she and her whole family of 6 children were baptized about 3 years ago, they were active for about a year and half and have been inactive for about a year and a half because her husband decided that he wanted to go to a different church that allowed him to drink and so she followed. Now after a year and a half she realizes that she is miserable and she misses the church really bad she just doesn´t have the guts right now to tell her husband that she isn´t going to go to church with them anymore and is going to go to our church. We are still working with her, she has a really strong testimony and I´m pretty sure that she is going to come to church this Sunday. Then the last is Hermana Carmen, she has been out of town for the past week and a half but we finally found her yesterday and we talked and tealked and talked with her. She doesn´t come to church anymore because her grandson (who she raised from age 3) fell away from the church and moved in with some girl and such and so she just feels alone now when she goes to church and so she doesn´t like to walk alone to church. She was one of the first people baptized in this area too and so we are working hard, we are positive that she is coming to church this Sunday so we are really excited. But it was amazing our assistance number last week was 23 or 24 somewhere around there and this week we were at 38 or 39, we were really happy it was nice to see the fruits of our labors. The miracle of this Sunday was Hermana Almada came to church. We were sitting waiting for some of our investigators to show up and then all of a sudden Hermana Almada walked up to the chapel door. We were so excited to see her, most of the people in the ward don´t know her, the branch president thought that she was just visiting her daughter or something and announced that we had a visitor over the pulpit and pointed her out so that was kind of hard for her but all the people that did know her in the ward just were so so so happy, we were really happy. When they walked in the doors her daughter came to us and told us that we just watched a miracle happen. It was the first time that she had walked into the church in 8 years, we were just so happy. After that meeting I went up and talked ot her about her experience and how she liked it and she said that she loved it and was so happy to be back. Then she said "thank you so much girls without you inviting me and inviting me I would have never came, because i just felt like no one cared whether I came or not". So we are watching the miracles happen. We are having a hard time with investigators. We had a couple with baptismal dates but they don´t want to so we are starting again from scratch. We are still working on going through all of our old investigators that are in the area book and finding them and talking to them. It has been nice to go through that and clean it out because a lot of the housing around here is just renting apartments and stuff and so people move a lot and so most of the poeple don´t live in the same place anymore. So we have been working hard, walking a lot, losing a lot of weight. Almost none of my clothes fit me anymore, no one feeds us here and we don´t have time to stop and eat ever so we just take a piece of bread with us or and apple and eat it while we are walking. We are tired and happy with what we have done here.

Our other project of the week, we got ot know our other city that we have in our area. Yeah we have two cities, well one is super city, like downtown Encarnacion and then we have a little town that is super super country called Cambryte or something close to that if you want to look it up on the internet and look at pictures or something. It´s really pretty. and it is quite large. It took us an hour and a half to walk there, a fell hour and a half in a fast walk. All the natives thought we were crazy to be walking that far. We got there went to the city hall to see if we could somehow get a map to be able to find our way around because there are no street names you just have to know where you´re going, so basically the knowledge is passed down from companion to companion, well for us we had no one to pass it down to us so we just have to figure it out for ourselves. So we got to the city hall the printed us off a map and then this nice guy sat and told us all the neighboor names and where all the points of interest are and such so that we could better find our way around. It was really nice of him. Then we headed off to find our branch president´s house, got a little lost, walked like 20 minutes past their house had to turn around and walk back, it was really funny. They finally had to send their son to find us. Then we had one ofthe most delicious meals i have eaten here, like it was so so so good, it might be the fact that we have been eating bread and apples for the past week and we were actually eating real food but it was so good!!! Our branch president´s wife is basically amazing. She took us around the all hte active members houses in the area and some of the less actives and some of the people that were investigators before. This is a funny story. So our brach president´s wife (Hermana Garay) has a 4 year old daughter that is super super super attached to her, like more attached than I have ever seen any child to a parent. Well when we were getting ready to leave the house after lunch Hermana Said that she was going to go take a shower, I was like what we need ot leave we have a lot to do, but then her son pulled us into the kitchen and told us that she was hiding in the bathroom and that we needed to get Barbie (the 4 year old) to take us upstairs to show us her toys and then Heramana Garay was going to go wait out on the street. Well we talked Barbie into taking us upstairs and then we said we had to leave, Brian was there (the 18 year old son of Hermana Garay) and siad that their mom was still in the shower so Barbie could hear, then we headed out. We found Hermana Garay hiding behind a bush and she said ok girls ready to run, and so we took off running, ran about a block where we were sure Barbie couldn´t see us anymore and then went off to learn about the area San Miguel. The area is beautiful. It´s a little hard because it is so far away from our house and such, but there are a ton of investigators and less actives out there, and we can´t be out there after dark because it is a little dangerous after dark, like most of our area. Really at night we can only be in like a 10 block radius of our apartment at night, the rest of our area is dangerous at night. We went to a members house the other night that we thought was okay to go to at night and after the lesson two of their sons walked us out of their neighborhood and so now we know that we can´t go there at night. The branch is super protective of us I think because our investigators that live in those areas say that it isn´t even close to dangerous at night but we are following the counsel of our branch presidency and the members because they know what is best for us. So at night we do a lot of wandering among the same 10 blocks because all are apartments and we can´t get into them without someone telling the guard that we can come in. But we are working on it, we have learned that street contacts are really important in this area because without them we wouldn´t get to talk to anyone that lives in the apartment complexes.

My companion is great, I´m loving having to speak Spanish all day everyday, my Spanish has gotten really good in the past 2 weeks because i have to speak it all the time. I never thought I would be told this but a lot of the members think that I have been out a year or more and when I tell them 3 months that are surprised, I tell you the gift of tongues is real because 2 weeks ago I couldn´t talk to anyone but I have to hear, one person can´t do all the work here because there is way too much work here for one person to do it!!! My companion is such a hard working, we are funny because we push each other really hard because both of us think the other is a harder worker then we really are and so I won´t stop because I think Hermana Quartino doesn´t want to quite and then Hermana Quartino won´t quite because she thinks I don´t want to quite so we just go and go and go and go. But we have a lot of fun, the mission president has given me the challenge and getting her speaking good English because she only has this change to learn better, she already speaks really really well but she just needs vocabulary and pronuncion help and so thats what I´m doing. She was baptized 7 years ago and so never got to be part of primary so I have been teaching her primary songs in English and she loves it!! So we have alot of fun, I suspect that she is going to be my favorite companion of my mission because she is just awesome, completely obedient in everything, loves to work hard, and knows what her purpose is here. I don´t know if I said this in my last email but she is so strong. Her dad died when she was out for 6 months and she stayed out, she is just amazing, I don´t think I would have the strength to do that, I actually know I wouldn´t. She is amazing!!!

Well that's about it for now, the work is moving on, this is hard, the mission president wrote me an email today and said to be patient and that everything will work out and that he knows that this area is for me and Hermana Quartino! We love the work here, it´s beautiful and it is not hot here!!! . . . YET!!!

Love you all

Hermana Hubbard

A Whole New World!!! October 24, 2011 Letter #12

Cherysh just wrote a family letter this week, so there won't be a blog. She has been transferred to Encarnacion, Paraguay, it is a 6 hours bus ride from the Mission Home. Hermana Hubbard and Hermana Quartino has just opened a new Sister Mission area. Hermana Quartino is from Uruguay, and has only been a member of the Church for 7 years, she is very hard working and completely follows all of the mission rules, Hermana Hubbard loves her. Hermana Hubbard loves speaking only Spanish with Hermana Quartino and her Spanish has greatly improved. There is a lot of inactivity in Encarnacion and so they really have there work cut out for them. Their area covers a very large area and they do a lot of walking.

Hermana Hubbard is so thankful to be in Encarnacion because the weather is not so hot!!! She also stated that it is very beautiful there and is surrounded by rivers.

Hermana Hubbard says, "we love the work here, it's beautiful and it is not hot here!!!....YET!!!!"

Hmmmm...what to say..... October 17, 2011, #12 Letter in Paraguay

9:29 AM (1 hour ago)

What a week, that is all I have to say . . .this week was one of the hardest, funniest, interesting, and nerve racking weeks of my life so I´m just going to go through it day by day.

Monday: So I was super sick all day this day, we weren´t sure if it was Dengue but it really felt like it. I slept until almost 6 and then got up got ready, took some Ibprofen and some Tylenol and headed out to work. It wasd a good night I was kind of just concentrating on not crying the whole time but it was a good day. I ran a fever all day and my body felt like it was going to explode but it got better. That night we recieved some great news though. Sunday me, Hermana Knapp, and Antonela fasted for her to be able to find a good job that worked with the hours of Venus´s day care and paid well. Well we showed up to Anto´s house and she met us with a big smile and said that she found a job that is from 8 - 5 and is right up the road from her house. She didn´t know how much they were paying her so we worried about that for the whole week and Anto has quite a lot of jobs before just because she doesn´t like it or doesn´t think that they pay good enough so we were really worried that we were going to show up the next day and have her tell us that she was going to quite her job because she didn´t like it. So that was the great blessing and the great worry of Monday and basically the rest of the week.

Tuesday: Guess what I woke up sick, with what i had the day before, and then on top of it a super bad soar throat and a bad cough and I didn´t have a voice. IT was really entertaining. Actually I felt really bad for Hermana Knapp, we went out and worked all the same but she had to do everything, she had to teach all the lessons, do all the contacts and everything. I couldn´t help her a bit I just kind of sat in the corner in a ball. We showed up to Anto´s house around 730 and she met us at the door with another huge smile and said "my job is perfect!!!!" we were so excited, she loves her job and the people. They feed her lunch everyday and everything and they are just a sweet family that have a family business and they are super good to her. We are excited for her. At this point we were just hoping they paid well. because we were worried that with Lunch and only working 8-5 that it wasn´t going to pay that well.

Wednesday:My voice was starting to come back a little bit that day but Hermana Knapp still did a lot of the work and everything, i just mostly bore my testimony at the end of lessons because that is all my voice could take. But we did have a fun lesson that day. WE were out knocking doors and here there are a lot of houses that are set up for the neighborhood to come and pray to Mary type deal. Well we clapped this house (and yes dad we clap outside the gates instead of knocking) and this guy came out and was like come in come in. Well we went in. We walked into the room with and realized that it was a small Catholic congregation praying to a giant Mary in the middle of the room. We didn´t think that were going to be very nice and we didn´t think that they were going to let us share but we thought we might as well ask and they accepted. So we sat down right in front of the giant Mary satue and began to teach lesson one to a small congregation of like 10 Catholic's. It was really interesting. The spirit was there and they let us talk and teach and they were really kind. At the end most of them said that they weren´t interested in listening anymore but one guy, Ceasar, said that he wanted a Book of Mormon and wanted to read it because if there was more scripture and more sources that teach about how to follow Christ he wanted it in his life. The only problem is he is so poor he doesn´t have a house and he just goes from friend´s house to friend´s house to sleep so we couldn´t get an address which was sad but oh well, he will join the church someday. But that was our adventure of Wednesday. oh and one more quick story. So we have been contacting old investigators this week and stuff and we found a guy that has like 6 assists to the church and such and so we thought we would contact him. Well we did last Saturday and we came to the church to set up an appointment with us for Wednesday. Well we went to pass by and we met him . . . so we thought. . . outside his house and he said that he was the twin brother and that both of their names were Jose and such it was really interesting and so we thought that this guy was crazy or something. We decided that we weren´t going to pass by again because we seriously thought he was crazy. Well Hermana Knapp was speaking on Sunday and who walked in. The twins José it was really funny and we talked to them and we are teaching both of them tomorrow.

Jueves: This was day of a rejection and we just aren´t going to talk about it. I was still sick and Hermana Knapp was getting sick and everyone . . . almost everyone rejected us. Our girl that was supposed to be getting baptized hid from us and itw as just a hard day so let´s move on to the adventures of Friday.

Friday: Well it was a pretty normal day excpet for the fact that we didn´t eat all day. We both woke up sick and didn´t feel like eating and so we didn´t and then it got to be like 6 and we were hungry. So we stopped and bought soem stuff to eat, we ate it. Then we went to Antonela´s and she fed us dinner. . . . everything was fine and dandy until we went to the birthday party of Erika Paniagua. We thought maybe we would have a little piece of cake or something but no Ramona Made a HUGE meal. We were already super full from Antonela´s and so we really didn't want to eat!! Well we went in and started eating. Both of us praying that we would be ok and would be able to eat all the food in front of us. I took a break half way through dinner and went to the bathroom and emptied my bladder trying to make just a little more room. Then I finished dinner. Thinking that was it. But then out came the cake . . . yes cake and we both looked at eachother with looks of death on our faces. Well they dished us up a piece and there we go. I took one bite and my body said, "nope, sorry not taking one more thing in!!" I asked very quickly if I could us the bathroom ran to the bathroom that is to the side of the kitchen that has a thin little door and where the light doesn´t work and puked my guts out. I have never thrown up so much in my life. The toilet was completely full. It came out my nose and everything. But man it felt so good at the same time, I hate being full to the point that I am sick and then I was really really sick!! Well I got up off the ground from throwing up and went to go flush the toilet but to my great delite the toilet didn´t flush. I didn´t know what to do, it just wasn´t working (which is pretty common for here) so I just left it, I really didn´t have a choice. I was really worried that it was going to offend Ramona, because she would totally get offended over that. She already didn´t like me much and so I was super worried but I couldn´t do anything. Well we got home, Hermana Knapp was sick just because she was so full and we just went ot bed because we both didn´t feel well.

Saturday: this was probably one of the best days of my mission, it was just so fun and had a lot of great memories with it. So we were at the chapel waiting to teach the English class with the Elders, just there waiting for people to show up and then all of a sudden Ramona Paniagua calls us (oh the story with them is their dad won´t let us come by anymore because he doesn´t want his girls to be part of the church, but basically he is a control freak and doesn´t want his family in anything that he can´t control). She tells Hermana Knapp that her husband isn´t there and that she needed to talked to us right then, like right then. So we told the elders that we had to leave, packed up and started running toward the Paniagua´s figuring somthing horrible had happened. well we show up and Elisa is like hey can I talk to you. I thought she meant both of us but she wanted to only talk to Hermana Knapp. I thought I was dead, I was in a room alone with Ramona and I had thrown up her food in the toilet that Í was positive she had cleaned up that morning. I was so nervous, I seriously thought that she hated me. Well we started a normal little conversation and then she asked me how I liked the food from last nigth and I told her I liked it and then she was like but you threw it up, then I explained to her that I had been sick all week and my stomach still wasn´t feeling the greatest. She was satisfied with that answer and just let it go and we just talked about her day and such. Well then Hermana Knapp comes out and we head off, we get outside and she was like "the Paniagua´´s all think you are bulimic" Romana kept telling me how skinny i was and how I was getting skinnier and skinnier everytime she saw me and such but I didn´t know she was hinting toward that. But it was really funny we laughed about it for the rest of the day. We calmed their fears though by telling them I was sick. The rest of that day we went contacting references. We were trying to contact this guy and all of us a sudden they shut down the street and we were wondering what was going on. The other side of the street was still open just not the side we were one. Then all of a sudden there were a bunch of bike racers so we watched this bike race for a couple of minutes and then we headed off to go knock some other doors, the guys that were giving water to the bikers stopped us and gave us water and just thanked us for doing the work of the Lord and teaching about Christ, that was really good to hear after having kind of a rough week, but it was nice. Then we saw Richard (Antonela´s husband) and we freaked out, he had no reason to be here, his parents live like an hour away and so we were worried, and then we got even more worried when Antonela was like an hour late from work. but everything ended up being ok.

Sunday: Well it was a normal Sunday . . . not really, I taught gospel principles BY MYSELF in Spanish. I was a little upset after the class just because i didn´t feel like it went very well but it´s ok the Lord was preparing me for what was going to happen later in the day. So that class was hard, I almost cried, and it was hard to teach a whole class in Spanish by myself, I was petrified but you know it gave me the confidence that I needed. I taught a whole lesson in Spanish, for an hour, by myself and I needed that. I will now tell you why I needed that experience. So we were on the phone with our district leader telling him our numbers last night and then all of a sudden Hermana Knapp starts freaking out because president Callan was calling (he never calls, only if something bad happens in the family or something big in the mission) Well Hermana Knapp answers and he talks to her for a second and I decided that it had to be her family but then I heard president say "is Hermana Hubbard there, I need to talk to her" I started FREAKING out!!! I thought something had happened to someone in the family, I was so so so worried. But then he siad that he needed to talk to both of us and to put it on speaker phone. Well we put it on speaker phone and this is what he told us.

Big news . . . it´s at the end of my email but I want to know your reaction, but I¨M OPENING AN AREA in the jungle with a latin!!!! I´m super excited!!!!

Well I´m out of time, love you all, oh and you can put this on the blog if you want to it´s not necessary.

Oh and I forgot to mention that Anotnela got paid really well and they paid for her passage to the day care and everything. We are so blessed and I love how loving our Heavenly Father is. It is such a testimony to me if we do our part the Lord will always do his!!!!

Oh and the last picture is of Ana and Pablo with their son Andreas. She is a member and we are working with Pablo.

We made the comment to be extra careful in the Jungle and Hermana Hubbard responded like this:

Everything will be great, president says that it is a really secure apartment and that all the members are really excited for us to come and it should be good, we are always safe. . . tell Dad to have a little faith, I know how to follow the promptings of the Lord and he will never lead me into a dangerous situation.

Love ya, Hermana Hubbard

DENGUE!!! Yes I'm sick! No Blog this week, just a family letter September 10, 2011 #11 Letter in Paraguary

Hey family,

First off mom don´t freak out and start calling the mission office and everything, I am completely fine and life is good just a little sick. So yesterday I wasn´t feeling the greatest in the world. Then last night around 2 in the morning I woke up with a 102 temperature that stuck throughout the night and it felt like my bones were crushing under my skin and my joints were about to explode!!!! I hurt so bad, I have never experienced anything like this, take like really really really bad body aches, times it by like a 1,000% more pain and you have Dengue!! It´s not super fun but I´m super druged up on Tylenol and Ibprofen and we are going working today, I am determined!!! At least to one lesson tonight with a great little family we found!!! But anyways Paraguay is great, and I love their random sicknesses.

Well this week was a little bit of a difficult one. We woke up Monday with the determination to have a baptism every week because president said we could do it, so we were going to do it. Well we found a girl of a menos activo that has been to church a million times and love hte gospel and was going to get baptized like a year ago and then moved and now she just moved back in wth her mom, we got a baptismal date set up for saturday and we were really excited. The lessons were going great and we were all really excited. Well Thursday night at around 1030 we got a call from Paola (the sister of Antonela, our recent convert) that said that Antonela´s house was packed with police and she was scared to go down there because she didn´t want to see anything. Antonela´s husband has a bit of a problem drinking and so we were really worried. We wanted to go down there ourselves but we knew that the district leader wouldn´t let us but we decided to call him anyways. We asked and he said no so we called the bishop to go down and see what was going on. We were worried that Antonela was dead or something, Richard is big guy and we were sure that he beat the crap out of her. Well the bishop and his wife headed out and said that they would call us as soon as they knew anything. Well we stayed up until around 1130 singing hymns and reading the scriptres and praying like mad. We then decided to try to get some sleep before the bishop called. Well the bishop called around 1230 and Hermana Knapp answered and didn´t understand a thing that was said and hung up the phone. I was kind of irritated because she didn´t understand because i was really worried but we just ended up going to sleep and decided to just head there at like 9 the next morning. We knew that shew as alive and that the bishp asked us to stop by so that was what we were going to do. So the next mornin we got up studied a little bit and then headed out. Expecting Antonela to be beating up pretty bad and their house to be a little bit of a mess. (And what I mean by house is a little 15X15 foot room) Well we get there and Antonela is beat up with her face and head a little swollen and a few bruises on other parts of her body. She told us that Venus was in sleeping still and so we went in to see if she was ok. We walked into their house and there was motor oil everywhere!!! Antonela began crying and telling us that Richard and tried to start the house on fire last night with them in it. It was super scary and we all can see the hand of the Lord in this because all he had to do was light a match and they would have been gone. So Antonela started crying and was really upset talking about how she didn´t have anythings, which she doesn´t because almost all her stuff got ruined by the oil, then she showed her faith, she just kept saying over and over again, I have my faith, I have my faith, I have my faith and that is all the matters, I have my faith and I still have Venus. She is such a strong woman!! We just love her to death. Well we called the elders that work in the other half of our area and they immediately dropped everything and came running to give her a blessing and to help clean. We grabbed a bunch of cleaning supplies from the church, moved everything out of her house and started cleaning up oil. We worked from aroun 1030 to 2 and got a lot of the oil pulled up off the ground. We got all the clothes and blankets and pillows but in piles to be washed and just tried to help her as much as we could. We sat on a blanket for awhile and sang hymns and read the scriptures and then the elders gave her a beautiful blessing!!! Anotnela had like 3 pieces of bread to her name and so we called a ward member and they made all of us lunch and so that was really nice and then Antonela (while we were walking her back to her house) sat down and just started talking about how all she really wants is a strong united family. She has never had that with her family and she definitely didn´t have that with Richard. She just started crying and talking about our families and how they are so united and loving and how she just wants something like that in her life. It made both me and Hermana Knapp step back for a moment and realize how great both of our families are. That we have parents that are strong in the gospel, have taught us what is wrong and right, and helped us because great people. It´s just amazing tyhe blessings that coem from having the gospel. Me and hermana Knapp were talking after wards about how big of a blessing it is just to have a dad that has never come home drunk at night, that we know is faithful to our moms and doesn´t look at pornography and such things, we are so grateful for number one having the gospel and the doctrines and principles that are taught and then number two to have faithful dads that have tried to hard to live by those doctrines and principles and by doing so they have been great examples for their kids and for generations to come. So thanks dad for being so great, thanks for living the gospel everyday, thanks for keeping the commandments and trying to follow the will of God, thanks for raising me in this gospel. It is the greatest blessing in my life, I´m so grateful that I know what a healthy relationship is, that I can have a husband that is faithful, that doesn´t drink, and I don´t have to worry about him beating me. Because of the gospel and being raised in a wonderful gospel centered home I have this hope in my life!!! But anyways the next day we headed out in the morning again to go and help her clean the piles and piles of clothes that she had. We called our district leader this time and his companion to come and help. We had them bring bleach because even thought we had gotten all the oil up there was still a really nasty oil smell in their house, which has no windows to air it out. It´s just basically a cement box with a door. so the elders came and cleaned up the floor again with bleach while we sat and did laundry (by hand) for about 2 hours. I do have to say that I am an expert at hand laundry now and getting stains out. We played with Venus, the ward went and bought Antonela food for the next week and we had the relief society president come and visit her and give her some advice. We were happy that someone had the guts to give her a frank talk about how if he does come back (even though Antonela doesn´t think he is) thtat she needs to request that he goes into a alocoholic rehab place down the street before she lets him back in. The ward ahs been so great everyone is looking for jobs and houses for her and it is just great, everyone has just pulled together. The best part has been watching Antonela´s testimony grow, it has grow so much in the past two days it´s incredibule. We gave her a lesson last nigth about the power of the Book of Mormon and how it helps all the aspects of our lives and she was like, "yep, I´m good at praying everyday multiple times a day but I suck at reading the scriptures so I am definitely going to do better at that" we are really happy that she is working hard toward becoming better and I know that someday she is going to get that happy strong family that she wants, if she just keeps doing waht she needs to do and being faithful in the church the Lord is going to bless her. But that was the experiences this week, a lot of my clothes have oil all over them but it´s ok it just made them less chuchi and my clothes were a little too chuchi for Paraguay anyways so I´m cool with it. but that was the adventure this week and it made me so grateful for the gospel, for repentance, for the Lord, and for a strong eternal united family!!!

Now to answer some questions real fast. So transfers are the 19th and I really think I´m leaving even though I don´t want to because i Love Antonela so much, we get instructed by our mission president about twice every six weeks in person and then a letter from him every week, Mom pray for the Lord´s help in your class and teach pure and simple doctrine. Speaking of which will you send me the talk "teaching true Doctrine" by presdient Eyering from the April 2009 ensign and you should read it too for your class because it´s awesome!!! We see the elders that share our area probably every other day, we have district meeting every week and so one. oh and conference was amazing, and I understood a lot of it!!!

Well that is all the time I have, keep Antonela in your prayers please she needs as many as she can get!!! Here is a cute little picture of Venus, she is a cute little stinker!!

Love you all, oh and the girl we were going to baptize we missed our lesson with her because we were with Antoneal so she couldn´t get baptized because we hven´t taught her everything yet but this Saturday she has a baptismal date so we are excited!!!

Love ya

Hermama Hubbard

Where did they send me......I believe the surface of the SUN!!!!!!!!!! October 3, 2011 #10 Letter in Paraguary

¡¡¡HOLA EVERYONE!!!

This week has been pretty chill not a whole lot of progress with the investigators but a lot of progress with me and my companion. First of all this week was ROASTING. I didn´t know that the sun and the air could make my skin feel like it was laying on a stove, but it can here, I was surpirsed I wasn´t getting blisters in my skin just from walking. It is so so so so hot. It was 100 degrees with 80% humidity on either Tuesday or Wednesday. We thought we were going to die, the other days were close to that but not quite so hot and sadly the natives told me this is nothing compared to summer. We are just in Spring . . . .YAY!!!! One of the elders was telling me that you knocked on every door you walked by just ot get a glass of water and by the time you make to the next house 10 feet away you have sweated off twice as much water as you just drank. Then he said that you don´t walk in straight lines in the Summer, you run from tree shade to tree shade. All I have to say is I´m excited!!! We went home and changed three times on the really hot day just because you could wring the sweat out of our clothes!!! Well yeah it´s hot . . . anyways on with my life . . . this week was a week full of AMAZING and I mean AMAZING meetings!!!

First meeting: We had a leadership meeting for my companion that they wanted all the new missionaries to come to too and so it was really good. We talked about the Book of Mormon and how the mission needs to up their baptisms. President Callan gave a really great 6 hour class and we learned a ton, were quite humbilied and have a whole new drive that we are really excited about. I just love President Callan, he is such an inspired man. He said everything that we needed to be working on and he is just great. President Callan sends out a letter every week of something to work on that week and then we have a zone conference every other change and then interviews every other change and now there is this leadership meeting for all the trainers, Distric Leaders, and zone leaders every other change and so we get to receive a lot of help and a lot of inspiracion from this amazing man!!! At first he seemed really quiet and timid but I have found that he is very funny and just amazing. I´m blessed to have such a great mission president.

Next is General Conference we have a couple of amazing and scary experiences with General Conference. I know dad has warned me about the rain but when you have investigators to get to conference then you have to push through. Well Saturday we wake up to a cloudy sky and then we call the Paniagua house to see if we were still going to eat lunch with them. Well Ramona answers the phone and tells us that a huge storm is coming and we need to stay inside. Well we just assumed it was being Paraguan paranoia about the storms but it was actually pretty bad, like we were in life danger but we were definitely wading through rivers and soaking wet within a few seconds. So I´ll start with the funny story of Saturday and then I´ll end with the spiritual one. So first of all it was like 9 and we headed out of the apartment to go find investigators for conference at 12 well we walked out the door of our apartment and there was a naked lady running our in front of our apartment complex. Both me and Hermana Knapp were really surprised, we live on one of the most public roads in Asuncion and the most public road in our neighborhood and there was this naked lady running around and washing her clothes in the gutter water coming off the roof. It was quite the surprise and we were laughing pretty hard. Then we spent the rest of the day with water up to mid-calf trying to get different places. Well we got to conference and they were trying and trying to get the satelite to work and it wasn´t working. Well no one showed up to conference because of the rain and so it was 14 missionaries and like 5 of our ward members sitting in the chapel. Well 12 came and went without the satelite working then 1230 came and went, we started calling around to the other chapels to see if someone had it working but no one had it working in the other chapel that was showing conference. Well we sat there until about 1 and then the zone leaders gathered up us missionaries and we headed into a classroom. We all knelt down and said a prayer that conference would work. We got done with the prayer and we all headed back to the chapel and the second, literally the second we stepped into the chapel, conference turned on. IT was such a miracle and we are so blessed to be able to hear conference and get the learn from the living prophet and apostals because they teach us what we need in these days, and what is important. We are truly blessed to be a part of this gospel and have the joy and happiness it brings, it doesn´t bring a temporary joy it brings a lasting, eternal joy. There is so much confusion in the world and so many problems but as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints we have the blessing of saying that we know who we are, we know where we are going, and we know the purpose of this life which is to have faith in Jesus Christ, repent and change those things that draw us away from Jesus Christ and Heavenly Father, come unto him through baptism, receive his guidance in this life through the gift of the Holy Ghost and then work everyday, try everyday to be better and read the scriptures, pray and keep the commandments of God. I testify this is where the peace and the joy is, this is what life is about, nothing else will bring that peace or that joy, NOTHING ELSE!!!

Love you all

Hermana Hubbard

September 26, 2011 #9 letter in Paraguay

show details Sep 26 (4 days ago)

Hey Everyone,

So there wasn´t much this week. A lot of dropped appointments and a lot of trials but we are starting fresh today and going to start with new investigators and everything and we are really excited. We are going to be bold and find people that are willing to run to the gospel with us. We know that as we make these goals and keep them that the Lord will bless us and put people in our paths and we are excited and ready!!

So we do have one good investigator that we found this week. Last Saturday (the day of Antonela´s batism) we ate with the Familia Leneri and they were like you can visit our next door neighbor we don´t know them at all and haven´t talked to them at all but they seem like nice people. Well we go there and we talk to her, her name is veronica. She tells us when we had just contacted her that her mom and a couple of her siblings are members of the church and we were really excited. Then we found out who her mom is and she is one of the strongest members in a different ward that the elders work in. Then we got really excited. Well we then set up an appointment and the first appointment she wasn´t there and we were a little upset but it´s ok. Then we just decided to go back the other day and she was there and we had a great little get to know you lesson. We just talked a little bit and got to know her and she is great. She has three little girls and is ACTUALLY married!!!! (that is really rare in Paraguay, hardely anyone gets married here). So we got excited about that. Then we were talking to her about her religious beliefs and she said that she is Catholic. We asked her why she likes the Catholic religion and then she was like, I´m just going to be honest with you guys. "I hate the Catholic religion. The worship Mary and Saints, not God and Jesus Christ. The Bible says to avoid worshipping idols and that is exactly what the Catholic church does." We were like ok well do you ever attend, "oh no, I would never attend their church!!". Us . . . "Well you read the Bible then?" Her . . ."Yeah I love the Bible I read it almost everyday, oh and I gues I have to add in there that I love the Liahona and I read it every month." (the church magazine the Liahona) Well after that we got really excited. We are really excited about her. We have another appointment with her tonight and we have really high hopes for her and her cute little family.

This week we started teaching English classes. We didn´t make it very well known so we didn´t have anyone show up for the first 30 minutes of class. We were about ready to leave and then one guy showed up and we let the Elders teach him while we listened and kind of helped him. Hermana Knapp is a English major so she is kind of good at it.

Then the last experience was the baptism that the Elder´s had. His name is Jorge and he is amazing. We are really excited for him. He used to be a massive achololic and such and had some pretty bad stuff on his sin list but he is realy good now. He is absolutely dirt poor, doesn´t even have a place to live and his third Sunday to church he had bought himself a pair of church pants and he was just beaming. His baptism was the most spiritual experience I have had yet on this mission. You know that he knew what he was doing, he know that he was making a covenant with God and that it wasn´t a joke. He already has a strong testimony and he strengthened all of our testimonies of the power of the Atonement and Repentance. We are really excited to watch him continue to grow and become better and better. Oh and he has not touched beer in like two and a half weeks and is doing really well. Now with the help of the Holy Ghost I think he is going to do well!!

Well nothing much more so I hpe everything is going well for everyone and I hope that everyone has the desire to write me . . . . hint, hint, hint. Oh and we have no money, literally so I have written a lot of people (Alex, Sari, Elder Kraus, and Elder Davis, Angie and Dustin) but I don´t have the money right now to send them out. But now that I wrote you guys!!! I´ll send them out next week when I have money.

Love you all!!!

Hermana Hubbard

P.s. These are pictures from last week (the baptism of Antonela) and some from this week.

Drowned Rats, September 20, 2011 Letter #8 in Paraguay

¡¡Hola a Todos!!

Well this week was probably the most exhausting week of the mission so far. Oh not probably but WAS the most exhausting week of the mission so far. All I know is we need to get better at delegating because we can´t plan a wedding, baptism, teach lessons, and try to plan another baptism all by ourselves. But I´ll just start with the stories of the week.

Monday: We had FHE with Antonela and the Familia Sanabria (the bishop and his family) it was really fun and it really felt Antonela feel involved in the ward. The bishop is so sweet and just took care of her little girl and everyone was great. It was funny at first because the bishop and his wife have all their kids grown but non of them are married yet and so they are not used to having little kids in their house. The whole family was running around chasing after Antonela´s little girl trying to make sure she didn´t get hurt or didn´t break anything. It was quite entertaining to watch. But we taught the Word of Wisdom and we used a little example that someone used in Relief society back in my student ward at BYU-Idaho and it went over great. Antonela´s already has a strong testimony of this has she has watched it destroy her brother´s and her husband´s life. But then we had a funny moment too of course. Well me and Hermana Knapp think the hymn "In our Lovely Deserte" (I think that is what it is in English) is hilarious and we talked about how we would never sing it with investigators just because it is a little frank. Well We asked one of the Sanaburia boys to pick the closing hymn and what did he choose, yes this hymn. Me and Hermana Knapp had a really hard time holding it together, we were laughing so hard. But we made it through the song and it was good and Antonela didn´t get too freaked out.

Thursday: Our investigator Yvonne, I think I´ve mentioned her before but she is amazing, very smart and is a lawyer and works a lot by logic. But this week we taught her the last part of the Plan of Salvation. We explained the Celestial Kingdom and what that means and for most people the fact that we are going to live with God and Jesus Christ and our Families forever is enough and they don´t question any further. Well for Yvonne this wasn´t enough. She was like "oh so you guys believe the same as every other church out there that we are going to sit in heaven and sing and just be happy. I don´t know about you guys but that doesn´t sound very fun to me, I would like to go to a place where I can continue to do more and to get better everyday" Well we were really tempted to teach her the deep mormon doctrine of that we are going to continue to progress until we become like God but we didn´t, we just told her we know that we are going to continue to progress in the Celestial Kingdom and work, this kept you satisfied for now. We love Yvonne and being abel to teach her deep stuff and such we are just worried that she isn´t feeling it spiritually and so this week we are going to try to move off the facts of the church and how it make sense logically and move into how she needs to gain a testimony spiritually as well.

Friday: This was a miracle this day. So we found an old investigator name Maria Ester. She is a widow and all her kids live in the States or way way far away and so she is super depressed and just hates life. She told us the last time that the only reason she liked us coming was because it was someone to talk to because she was so lonely. Well at the end of that lesson we challenged her to read and pray. Well we went back on Friday and she had read but hadn´t prayed, but she read. Both me and Hermana Knapp were in awe, we couldn´t decide if it was the same person, she had completely changed. She participated in the lesson, she prayed at the end, and actually told us all of her feelings and how the Book of Mormon made her feel and then said she would come to Antonela´s baptism and to church. Well she didn´t come to church or the baptism but hey we are making progress with her.

Saturday: This is the reason for the title, because this day we were literally drowned rats. Well we woke up to rain, which is a blessing because it means it´s not roasting hot and so we were excited. Well we have one problem with the rain, we don´t have an umbrella. But it was just a light drizzle so we thought we would be fine. Well One of the ward members had made the baptismal program paper thingy and such and it was like a 7 to 8 mile walk from our house so we left early and headed on our way. Well we got like a mile into it and it wasn´t raining anymore and it was a little hot so we took off our rain coats and we were stuffing them in our backpacks and Hermana Knapp was like watch as soon as we start walking again it´s going to start raining. Well sure enough this is what happened, it started pouring, like POURING!!! IT was crazy!!!! Well we got to the house all of our stuff was soaked we were soaked and then we had to get the baptismal program and hope that it stayed dry until we could get to a photocopy place to photocopy it. Well we get back down to the main road and it was completely flooded, like a torent river was flying down the road. We couldn´t get across it or walk along it and so luckily there was this young kid that was walking in front of us so we just kind of followed his actions. He just climbed onto a chainlink fence and climbed along it until you could get somewhere where the river wasn´t raging as bad. Well we did the same, I haven´t climbed on a chainlink fence like that ever in my life, it was crazy. we were just hanging on because if we fell of there is a giant pit of open sewage that was below us. So we just hung on for dear life and climbed. Finally we made it to the other side of the road where the water was drained off of it a little and such and headed on out back to the chapel. Well we are walking, it´s still pouring, we are laughing because it was quite enjoyable. I found out my coat works great and Hermana Knapp found out her 20 dollar raincoat doesn´t really protect against Paraguay rain storms. Well we are walking we had a police car stop and all sorts of people stop to give us a ride but we aren´t allowed to so we didn´t. We made it to the chapel and started filling up the baptismal font and decided to go find a photocopy place while the font was filling up. Well the rain had gotten worse and all the streets were super flooded, all the people on the streets had just given up and all were just walking through the water. We tried to avoid it for awhile but finally we just gave up. We ended up walking around for like 40 minutes trying to find a photocopy place that was open, in Paraguay when it rains EVERYTHING shuts down, including schools, stores, and basically people, no one does nothing!!! Well we found a photocopy place and then started running back because we were worried about the font overflowing. We then got the font turned off and headed off the lunch which some ward members. We ate at their house all wrapped up in towels trying not to get everything super wet. We then headed up to our house to get changed into drying clothes. Then one of the people that was supposed to bring food for the wedding canceled on us so we had to run to the grocery store and get buy pizza and make pizza for everyone which was super stressful. We told Antonela that we would be at her house at 4 to help her get ready for her wedding. Well at 4 it was still raining and we were having a hard time getting there on time. We were worried that no one was going to show up if it was raining and we were really worried because Antonela is the type of persone that needs a lot of support and she doesn´t have any family around here so we really wanted all the ward to come to show her that they are her family now. Well we knelt down and said a prayer for the rain to stop. We walkd outside and 5 minutes later the clouds cleared and the rain stopped. We were so happy, I tell you we are so so so blessed!! The Lord is so good to us. Well we headed off the Antonela´s and got there and her and her boyfriend were fighting and we were freaking out because she was supposed to be getting married in less than an hour and their little girl was coughing up a storm and everything just seemed to be going wrong then. We were quite paniced. Antonela came out and hadn´t even started to get great so we started to freak out even more because the Judge would not wait for us. Well we said quite a few series of prayers. Then they ahve to have a copy of their birth certificate for the wedding and they never went and got one and the only photocopy place that was open was probably about 3 miles away and we don´t have a car and neither does Antonela so we started freaking out even more. Well Anotonela went in to change and such and we prayed a couple of more times then made some calls. at 515 (the wedding was at 530) we got ahold of the bishop and he said that he could come by with his truck and pick us up and take us to get the photocopies. Then we realized that we didn´t ahve the money to pay the judge, the pop for the wedding, toys for Venus, a knife for the cake, or the shirt for the top of Antonela´s dress, it was all at our apartment. Well the bishop came and Richard (the boyfirend of Antonela) said that he didn´t want to ride with us that he would just walk there. Well this worried us, we were like is he going to ditch like what is up?? So we headed off anyways saying prayers in our hearts that he would show up. Well we had the bishop stop by and I´m quite impressed with ourselves we were in, got all the stuff and back in the truck in a matter of 2 minutes. We got the photocopies and got the wedding like 5 minutes late. Oh and we even said a prayer that the judge would be late. Well we got there the judge wasn´t there yet got everything set up and everything went off very smoothly. A lot of the ward members came and Antonela had a lot of support. After her baptism she was sat in the bathroom and cried, she was so happy and so relieved. It´s just amazing the joy and love the gospel brings to the lives of people. We are really happy and so is Antonela. Her confirmation was great also, and we had a great lesson with her last night and she is just amazing we are excited for her!!!

Well I´m out of time but I love you all

Love

Hermana Hubbard

Antonela Petrocheli Letter/week #7 in Paraguay, September 13, 2011

¡Hola Everyone!

This week was all about Antonela. Antonela is 24 years old and has two little girls. One lives in Argentina with her mom because Antonela had her when she was like 16 or something. Venus is 1 and is the cutest thing known to man!!! Well the reason this week is all about Antonela is because SHE IS GETTING BAPTIZED!!!!!! We are super excited. We found her by obsolute miracle and now it is a miracle she is getting baptized. So we found her when she was staying in the house of her sister Paola who is a member and we were picking Paola and her kids up for church and well Antonela was there because her boyfriend was super drunk and went crazy. Well we invited her to church and she came and was super happy to come. We later set up an appointment with her and then realized who she was and that she has been taught by the missionaries for over two years and has never wanted to get baptized. Our first visit with her we found out that when she is in Argentina and other places in Paraguay that she likes to go to church when she is feeling a little down and she has come to our ward like 5 times already. We were excited until we read her old register and it said that she was super receptive and really enjoyed learning from the missionaries but when it came down to it she did NOT want to get baptized. Well we decided to approach her from a little bit of a different angle and try to help her teach herself and help herslef realize why she needs to get baptized. Well last week we asked her to be baptized and set a date for the 17th of September and she was quite hesitant. saying "that is really fast, and too soon, and I don´t think I´m ready" We were nervous about that answer. Well we didn´t see her all weekend, except for church, and didn´t really get to talk to her until Wednesday. Well we get there Wednesday and she tells us that she has been praying and she is really excited to be baptized on the17th and knows that she is ready to be baptized. We were so so so so excited, like me and Hermana Knapp walked out of that lesson freaking out about it and really excited. Then we realized that we had to teach her the Law of Chastity and ask her to be married. Well we taught her the next day and she said she would talk to him and see but she didn´t know if he would agree. Well she talked to him and on Saturday we stopped by her hosue and she said that he wouldn´t give her an answer. We were kind of freaking out, like a lot!! Well we prayed really hard all that day and that night. We stopped by Antonela´s house Sunday morning to walk with her to church and as we are walking she says "hey I have some news for you guys . . . . he said YES!!!!!!!" Both me and Hermana Knapp were on the verge of crying and we were just so so so excited. We jumped up and down and everything, it was quite mature of us. But man the lord sure does answer our prayers, And like it says in 1 Nephi when the Lord commands something and when we are willing to follow that commandment he will prepare a way. Well the Lord definitely prepared a way for Antonela and we are really are grateful and excited about it!!! So we have a wedding and a baptism to plan this week and we are excited. We are having her wedding Saturday at 5 and her Baptism at 6 and we are super super super excited!!!!

The rest of this week has been pretty normal. A lot of appointments a lot of them falling, finding new people, and the usual adventures. Me and my companion have become really good friends and we have a lot of fun together. The language is slow but it is coming. I´m getting more and more comfortable with trying to share experiences and trying to teach and I´m getting better, i¨m not super great but I´m get better.

I´m sending some pictures of one of the less active families we are working with. I only have a picture of the mom, Estella, and one of her sons, Manuel (he is autistic). Hermano Gauna and Ezekiel were sick and sleeping when we were there so we didn´t get pictures of them. But we love the Familia Gauna and they just make me happy!!! They are trying to prepare to go to the temple as a family but we are having a little bit of a hard time getting Hermano Gauna to church but we are wroking on it and hopefully he will start coming because I would love for them to go through the temple!!!

Well that is about it this week. I hope everyone is doing well!!!

Love

Hermana Hubbard

Fleas...I believe! Letter/week #6 in Paraguay, September 6, 2011

Hey EVERYONE,

So this week was a good week. We had a lot of lessons and we have had a lot of success. We have a baptism for this Saturday of a 13 year old girl that just started coming to church on her own and we just barely started teaching her this week and she asked us if she could be batized so we are quite excited about it!!! And then we are still teaching Antonela and she is progressing and has a baptismal date for next week and so hopefully that happens we just have to get her married first.

Miracle of the week: So yesterday all of our appointsments fell and we were kind of disappointed but we were walking and we saw this mom and daughter sitting outside their house so we decided to go ahead and contact them. We ended up having the most powerful lesson I have had yet on this mission. When we first talked to them the mom was like "we are catholic, so we aren´t interested" We presseda little bit and asked them if we could sit down with them for 5 minutes and just share our believes with them. So we did that and then we come to find out she was born Catholic but hates the Catholic church and thinks they are ridiculous. So that was interesting to hear her beliefs and her opinions. She became very open to what we share because we believe praying only to God and she hates how the Catholic church prays through Mary or Saints. Then we had a powerful lesson about Joseph Smith and prophets and we ended up pulling out a conference issue of the Ensign and reading it with her and it was just awesome. Both her and her daughter are super excited about the gospel and when we left they said that they had never felt this good about something in a long time. So we are excited to meet with them again and help them come to the gospel of Jesus Christ because they are ready for it and prepared.

Another great experience: So out at Yukyty we have a less active older woman and we just started teaching her daughter. Well we love teaching them because all of Clotilde´s (the older less active woman) granddaughters adore us and they are just great. We taught the first lesson with them this week and itw as great to have like 8 or 9 little girls around us. You could just feel their simple faith. I love feeling their faith and it really touched Marianna (the daughter of Clotilde that we are teaching). The faith of a child is really waht all of us need in our lives because if we have the faith of a child then we will feel the love of Christ easily and we don´t let the stupid things of the world get in our way of feeling the love of God and that we are his children.

Funny Story of the Week: I have officially decided that I am the biggest clutz in the world!! So we were teaching one of our investigators Fabiola, she has been investigating the church for 5 montsh and she finally has a baptismal date and is coming to church os we are really excited. Well she is having a hard time recieving a yes or no answer from God about baptism and so I prepared an experience from my life to share with her. I spend one personal study writing it down in Spanish so that it made perfect sense when I told it to her and such. Well when we finally got to teach her I go to share this experience. I really wanted her to hear it and to feel the experience and realize that it could be an answer to her prayers. Well I leaned a little closer to her and the chair fell over. It was so funny all three of us were laughing our heads off. IT was quite entertaining.

Another Funny story of the week: We were getting ready for bed all those that know me know I have to sleep with ear plugs (the worst habit in the world by the way, never start!!!) Well I had my earplug in my hand and then I laid it down to go turn off the light and when I got back to my bed I realized that it wasn´t where I had left it. So I looked for it and then asked Hermana Knapp to had be the phone so I could have some light to find it. Well I leaned off the bed a little and reached out my hand and I see the telephone light go on and start flying very quickly toward me. Before i knew it, it hit me right in the middle of the forehead and bounced all the way across the room. We laughed for forever. We were both crying and our stomachs hurt and it was just funny. (this may be one of those you have to be there to think it´s funnystories but believe me it was super funny!!)

Oh this didn´t happen to me but I thought I would share. So one of the sisters here in the mission Sister Plumer. Well she was walking with her companion, you know tracking, and someone dumped a bucket of human fecal matter all over her from a floor up. She was quite tramatized to say the least.

Oh and the reason for the title, yes I believe our apartment has fleas, we are really excited!!!!

Love,

Hermana Hubbard

3 Month Anniversary!! Letter and Week #5 August 29, 2011

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Hey Everyone

Well Í have now been on the mission for three months!! It is truly crazy to think about it. But it has been a great three months, there has been challenges and hard times, but most of all there has been more blessings than I can even count!!

So we will start this week talking of the familia Paniagua. This may be the last time that you really hear of them because we decided that we need to have faith and drop this family that we love so much. They are difficult and last night was just the last straw. We have talked to them again and again about prayer and about how we can know these things for ourselves. But when we asked them last night who they are gonig to ask about these things they said "padre" or their pastor. It was difficult to see that bcause we really thought that they were progressing. We do love them a lot but last night we just realized that they weren´t progressing and they haven´t been since we started teaching them. One good thing about it is we are going to lose some weight. Ramona also gives us fried food at like 8 at night and A LOT of it, she is the main reason both me and my companion are gaining weight. So that is going to be a blessing from it!! But we love the family and they are our next door neighbors so we will still stop and say hi we just aren´t going to spend time teaching them anymore.

We have found our golden investigator. I talked about her last week, Yvonne, she is amazing!! I love her and we are really excited about her. It is difficult because she can only meet with us once a week and so we have to make sure our lessons are powerful every week but she is amazing. THis last week we taught her about the book of Mormon and we couldn´t get out the door fast enough for her to start reading. She wanted to read it so bad and was so excited to have one in her hands and have the opportunity to read it. She is amazing. This last week we came with a plan to teach her in depth about the Book of Mormon but she always has amazing questions and so we spent most of the time answering her questions. She asked us about the organization of the church and how there is only one prophet and how does he acutally get around and take care of the church everywhere in the world and so we got ot talk to her about the perfect organization that exists in the church. She was very impressed and talked about how no man could form a church that was that organized and all the people worked for NO salary. Then she asked about temples and why people can´t go in them unless their members and how you can get to go in them. We explained to her the process of trying to become better and how in the temple we make sacred covenants and that is why not everyone can just come in. That they have to be prepared and have a strong testimony of God and of Jesus Christ and of this church as the church of Jesus Christ. She then was like, "I want to meet the people in your church, because they sound like they have found out how to be perfect" we then got to explain to her that we are made perfect through Jesus Christ and through daily repentance. She was just amazed and we talked about how all of this came about because of Joseph Smith and because of the Book of Mormon, She desperately wanted to read this Book of Mormon so we taught her about it and read the introduction with her and gave her some chapters to read and she started reading because we even left. She is truly amazing and we are so grateful to have her.

Next we have Bautismal Dates!!!! This is so so so so exciting after we haven´t had baptismal dates for FOREVER!!! But we have a family and Miguel. Both are amazing and we have been teaching them both before I even got here so they are all very prepared and ready to take this step. Fransisco and Fabiola (the family) aren´t married so we have to plan a wedding for them but we are girls, and that is just exciting. We don´t really know how to plan a wedding but we will see if it turns out, we want to make it special for them so we are going to work hard to do so.

Last of all the Sunday miracle. We always have a Sunday miracle. So we have the less active family that we are working with, the familia Gauna. They are truly great!!! We love them to death and they ahve such a strong testimony of this church but they have a prblem. They have a 7 year old son with severe autism and so it is really hard for them to come to church with him. Especially the dad has a problem, he is kind of embarresed about his son and doesn´t want him to be in public really. Well Sunday morning we called them expecting to get the same old excuse of different things. ANd of course they had one, they had a cough so they couldn´t come to church. Well the meeting started and my companion was up playing the piano and she all of a sudden looks at me with big eyes and mouths "Hermana Gauna". I turned around and was so excited to see Hermana Gauna with her two sons. The great thing is the meeting was amazing. The talks were amazing and Manuel (th autistic son) was great!!! He barely even amde a noise. Afterwards I told Hermana Knapp that I had never prayed so hard and so much in my life in a sacrament meeting and she said the same, we had both prayed and prayed and prayed that he would remain calm throughout the meeting. It was a miracle. And then we have a great and awesome ward. After sacrament meeting the whole ward came up and gave her hugs and welcomed her and just helped her feel welcomed. We couldn´t even get her out of the chapel because of all the sisters that were around her. We then went to Sunday School and Manuel went to nursery for a few minutes but then ended up in class with us. The teacher just gave him a piece of chalk and let him run around the room and draw on the board and everyone was so excepting and willing to let him just play so Hermana Gauna could enjoy the lesson. Then he got a little crazy and one of the men in the ward just stood up and helped manuel make a little bed out of chairs and manuel laid down while this brother stroked his head until he fell asleep. It was amazing how much the ward became like family to Hermana Gauna in just a few short hours. Everyone pulled together and helped take care of manuel so she could enjoy the meetings and she did great and basically taught the entire Sunday school class. She is an awesome women!!! We are grateful to get to associate with her.

But this week has been great and we are loving the mission!!! Oh will everyone please keep my best friend Alex Reeves in your prayers, she is in the hospital and she can use as many as she can get!!!

love

Hermana Hubbard