Baptism postponed, "You are God?", McLoving Abinidi, carrot/walnut yogurt

Monday was probably one of the trickiest days of my life. We were absolutely estatic, because we had E.'s baptismal interview all scheduled. On Monday, we had to have the interview with one of the counselors of President Camarillo. Everyone got to the chapel on time and all was well. We were so pumped, because he is doing so well, going to church, and reading a ton of his Book of Mormon (about to finish Helaman).  In the interview, they decided to postpone the baptism for another two months. So pretty much that was a rough night for me, and if you ask my companion, I was a wreck.

Luckily, on Wednesday, we all had our personal interviews with President Camarillo. Pretty much, the dude is one of my all time favorites in the whole world. I love that man so much, and he helped me out a ton. At the end of the interview we were chatting and I told him thanks, because he had helped me a lot. (He always talks to me half in english and half in spanish, because he likes to practice) and he said "I am glad". But his accent is hard to understand, and I thought he said, "I am God." I questioned him "You are God?" because that is what I heard. Needless to say, it was funny and awkard, but all is well.

Today we had to go to the mission offices, because Elder Mar is in his 12 weeks training, so we were on the buses all day and there is no time to write stuff.

Read the Book of Mormon lots. I blew myself away, because I was studying the life of Abinidi in Mosiah, and there was tons of stuff that I had never noticed before and I was McLoving it.

I bought a very delicious homemade yogurt, that is carrot and walnut flavor. It has carrots and walnuts and we are friends.

All is well, I find life ever so lovely because Elder Mar and I are such good pals - it really makes a huge difference, and time is flying by too quickly. Also I learned that Elder Mar has been a bit shelterd in his life. I taught him how to clean a bathroom for the first time, and we have plans to make pancakes. He has never done either of those two things.

I came here to serve God, and that is all I want to do right now. I am loving it here in Mexico and I love you guys even more, I pray for every single one of you on the daily. 

Realize that the gospel has the things to answer our questions and doubts and what not, but we have to search it all out.

Love you all tons

Elder Hulme.

SON.

Shrimp octopus cocktail, bounce house, King Benjamin's grand speech, large iguana

April 21, 2014
This week was a killer one for food. Especially on Friday, I think it was Friday. For our lunch / dunch appointment we ate molé. My body has made this rule:  I wait until I am nice and full, and then I usually eat double.... It was mole oaxaqueño, which I  don't like as much as poblano, but it was tasty tasty.

Then we went with and had a lesson with Eduardo, and his dad made us the tastiest hot shrimp cocktail. It had shrimp, octopus, avocado, tomato, cilantro and other herbs, and it was so tasty I wanted to cry.

This week was a good one, Eduardo is doing super well, but his wife is about the most awful creature. (I should be nicer, but it is hard.) All she does is cause problems in his life. I don't fully understand the situation, but when Eduardo is with her, she makes him sad, for no good reason.

Yesterday Elder Mar and I gave talks in sacrament meeting. I was asked to talk about why the sacrament reminds us of the atonement. It was a really easy topic, and I liked studying it. I love how the mission has made it super easy to prepare a pretty good talk in 45 minutes.

Mexico is getting really really toasty warm, and it has also been quite humid lately. We do our fair share of sweating.

Here in Mexico they don't celebrate Easter, but they have other crazy traditions. They have semana santa, or holy week, in which they have some wack job traditions, but they just use every excuse to get drunk. Which makes for interesting missionary work. Also when parents and all their friends want to get drunk, but everyone has 4 kids, they just rent a huge blow up bounce house, and plop it in the middle of the street so the children don't interrupt the intoxification.

Elder Mar still eats a lot, but only at night right before bed. Last night was yogurt, 2 sandwiches, a banana milkshake, granola, and fanta soda. He honestly doesn't do anything that bugs me, except he never cleans up after himself, but I have learned to clean up after all my companions because none of them do.

Right now I am reading in Mosiah, when King Benjamin is giving his grand speech. Honestly I don't know If there are chapters of the Book of Mormon that I love more.

Last night we taught some investigators how to do a family home evening. It doesn't work out so well when the people teaching didn't really do family home evenings growing up, but we made it work.

I sure love missionary work, and I sure love you all so much. I have some really good photos to hook you cats up with, so be on the lookout.

Hulme

Elder Hulme, Elder Rey

Elder Rey and I had divisions, and we traded ties, and I draped it upon my brow, and it has bikes.

The family of eduardo captured us a large iguana, it took me a minute to be able to touch it,
but i did it.  i did it guys. elder mar did as well.

Chinese buffet, ceramics

April 14, 2014

Coolest ceramic stuff in Tonala. It costs a ton of money.

Add caption

We had an interesting experience with an investigator who is a Jehova's Witness. We were talking about their church after the lesson, and the LDS member said, if the Jehova's Witnesses had priesthood power, I'd be one of them. It was one of the funnier things I have heard in a good while.

This week had its fair share of ups and downs. Big down, The family of five is passing through some major problems right now, in which they are without work and searching for it all day, and when you have a family of five, and you are living day to day, every day gets harder. So pretty much they have told us to give them a lot of space, which was probably the most heartbreaking thing in the world. I felt like I had just been dumped by a girl - hard...

BIG UP. Last week, after Eduardo's wife left him, and we had a lesson with him, we gave him a blessing of comfort that everything would be alright. The next day he found new work in which he doesn't work on Sundays and he finishes working at 3pm every day. There is probably not a man I love more than him in the mission, (I will send a photo, he does not look happy, but he is!!!) He came to church yesterday, and bore his testimony. It was powerful.

Elder Hulme, Mini Eduardo, Eduardo, Elder Mar

Little Eduardo. Cutest kid.

There is a guy who helps us out a ton in the ward named Ivan Diaz Pacheco. He is the best. His wife lives in Indiana, and he lives here. He helps us out a ton coming with us to appointments and is super funny. He is a convert and I love his guts. 

Me, Rudi, HNO Ivan Diaz

Elder Mar and I are super good. The kid eats a ton in the night. Last night he ate 2 sandwiches, 1 cup of noodles, 1 mango, some orange juice, some little candies, and something else. But I like him lots. We don't have a ton in common, but we get along great, have a good time, and he likes working hard. Also, he runs with me in the mornings which is grand.

I am ever so jealous of your Oregon trip. It seems like you guys do tons of trips together these days. I like that and envy that. But I am glad you got to have fun. Also, I think I like reading now, ever since the mission where you read and study for 3-4 hours every day, you learn to like it or hate it. I like it lots now, and want to read cool books some day, when they are approved.

Today we went to the Chinese buffet to eat. It was not very good. But what is better than a small Chinese lady speaking English? A small Chinese lady speaking Spanish.

Glad to hear that all is well.

Things to do.

Buy your preach my gospels, because it is now commandment, because it came from an apostle. study it.

Also your scriptures are important.

Also your prayers.

Have the best weeks ever. Love you all tons. and tons.

E.Hulme

Tortas ahogadas, 1st week with Elder Mar in Tonala, Conference, sweat is abundant

April 7, 2014

One of the foods that is native to Jalisco (the state) is Tortas ahogadas. Or drowned sandwiches. They are nuts tasty. I have had them before, but today was a good day to write about them. They take your sandwich, put it in a bowl sort of thing, put a lot of onion, and a special super-easy-to-make tomato soup-like sauce and literally drown it. The beauty of it all is they use a nice bread that is pretty tough, so when you drown it, it all just comes out tasty as can be, WITH, half a liter of mexican coke, you are good for the day. That is what I ate today.

Fresh out of the womb of the MTC. On Tuesday Elder Mar, from Veracruz Mexico was greeted here into Tonala. He is super great, and is not afraid to work hard with me. I imagine with every new elder there is tons of having to teach them the rules that they don't know and stuff like that, but he is very open to obeying all the rules. He gets really stinky really quickly, but that is alright because we love him. He is very very open to sharing, and really kind. The only problem I have run into is he mumbles everything into 1 long word. If he were to say. ¿a qué horas salimos para ir a la capilla ? it sounds like ¿okaoraslimosa lucupiya? So i am having to listen very, very intently. But all is well. He is 19 years old, and eats mayonnaise like a wolf.

Conference was super killer. I only fell asleep for about 17 minutes in total, a little bit in both of the morning sessions. It was really great because I watched every session in English, except for the priesthood session. I understand everything in Spanish, but let's be real, Boyd K. Packer should sound as crusty as he is. (not meant to be harsh, just reality). I enjoy how pretty much all the talks on Saturday were directed to the youth. I hope that a lot of the youth can realize that if they don't shape up right now, they´s a be in big trouble. I really really loved Elder Bednars talk about carrying around a spiritual load, and that we should not worry so much about the things that do not matter. and that we need to push through all the loads we have. Also Pres Uchtdorfs Sunday morning. Really I was loving Sunday morning more than everything else, but they were all really good. I took a ton of notes but I forgot them in the house, so the next week I will throw some more notes in. EVERYONE FOLLOW THE INVITATION OF THE ONE ELDER AND GET A PREACH MY GOSPEL AND STUDY IT.

This week was a bit tough for the Pacheco family and Eduardo. Lets just say that the lord is hastening his work, but unfortunately the devil is as well. Yesterday Eduardo's spouse left him, and I have never felt so bad for a guy. I don't know if I know anyone one else who is so whole-hearted, and humble, but yet it seems like everything turns against him. We had a very spiritual lesson where we explained that if we are obedient to the commandments of God, after this life we will live in pure joy, so we should do everything we can to endure the trials and do everything to get to the celestial kingdom.

This week was really good with Elder Mar. Things are good here in Tonala. It is toasty warm and sweat is abundant.

I LOVE YOU GUYS

Elder Hulme.

Primogenito, Transfers/Training, Pacheco Cancelled, Museums Closed Mondays

Firstborn. On Saturday I got a text message from our mission president, asking me to call him. I called him and he told me that Imma going to train a new elder, fresh out of the oven from the MTC. There are only 2 elders coming into the mission this week, so it´ll be one of them. And for today and last night I have been with Elder Hernandez, he is the other elder who is going to train. So the next week I will have all the information about my firstborn child. I am really excited to train. He will probably be latin, and we is gonna have a party, I can feel it. We have to get up at 4:30 in the morning to take 2 buses to the mission offices. We will have a training, and then receive the new elders.

King Kong on da tires

Sam totally shattered his bone, he showed that bone who is in charge, but poor kid that doesn't look like that much fun.

General Conference this week. All the information I've got is that it will be in a different chapel. Our chapel is super tiny, and we are going to a large one to watch conference. Almost everyone watches it in their homes or in the church. I don't know if I will be able to watch it in English. I would prefer to, but now that I speak the both of them it makes things easier, but let's be real, the translated voices lose a lot of their power. I am super excited, especially because in the past few months I have learned a lot more about the power of  the words of the prophets. It makes me wish I hadn't slept during General Conference in years past, well at least not through the talks of the big dogs. 

We drink plenty of juice in a bag. This one is just called "Fruit". It has tons of sugar and mashed up fruit and is tasty stuff

This week we had a big old bummer. We had lessons with the Pacheco family. On Wednesday, the night before the baptismal interview, the mom was expressing a lot of doubt, and saying that she was not ready. She has the concept that to be baptized you have to know a ton of stuff, but we explained to her that you don't need a ton of knowledge; you need to be willing to follow the commandments. But she was still just a stresss bucket.

Then on Thursday afternoon she called everything off. We have a feeling that she talked with one of her family members convinced her to not be baptized. I know that God is going to help us how, in the near future, to save these souls, but it was a huge bummer.

Yesterday I spent 5 hours on buses. wahooooooooo. We had to go to the mission offices to bring Elder Hernandez here just to work with me. But it was cool because we talked with 16 people on the buses.

Today Elder Hernandez and I went to search for the museums. The bad news is both the National Ceramic Museum and the other one we went to close EVERY MONDAY. So that is just fabulous, but we live. We walked up this hill called Cerro de la Reina which is at the top of Tonala, where you can see all the city. The only bummer is that the air quality is pretty scummy right now.

Mom and dad, its crazy that you guys are growing up to be empty nesters.

That is all for this week. I hope you all have stellar weeks. 

Elder Hulme. Son. 

The Ex-Zone

Elder Hulme, Elder Cruz, Elder Hernandez. I am with Elder Hernandez today while we wait for the delivery of our children.

On top of the world

Cerro del la Reina. The temple-like building is the one that changes colors at night.

Hit the numbers, dog bites, all the Sundays of my life, bakeries & shoes

March 24, 2014

Unfortunately there was no mole this week, but once you have a little bit of time in the area, some of the members start to pick up on how much you love vegetables, and so sometimes I get to eat those as well. Those are some of the best days.

This week was really a good one. Saturday was I think one of the best days of my missionary life, right now we have a standard of excellence in all  the things we do, for the number of lessons we have to teach, the amount of people to talk to//contact, to put new baptismal dates and a whole bunch of other statistics. All of these numbers are incredibly high, but Saturday we were shredding up a storm and for the first time we completed everything.

With the Pacheco hernandez family, we are trying every thing possible to get them all set up to be baptized, they are doing super great. We have tons of help from the ward with them, and every time we get to teach them it is the best. Their youngest son is 4 years old, and he is about as hooligan as they come, we are convinced that him and the other munchkins are going to set the church on fire, sons of Mosiah style.

This week, Elder Cruz and I both had dogs bite us. Luckily only about 1 drop of blood in total was shed, but semi-ironic that dogs are slowly leaving my list of things I want in life.

Mexico is a lovely country with lovely bakeries and shoes, and with those two things, is there more you could ask for?

Yesterday was a heartbreaker, our investigator is passing through some massive problems in his life right now, and just took up a new job, in which he has to work all of the Sundays of my life. I have never met an investigator who reads his Book of Mormon so much. He has been reading consistently for a month and a half, and is already in Alma 37. He is a champion. But we have to figure out a way to bring that boy to church. Getting people to come to church is the hardest thing to do, but we are getting there.

Missionary work is kicking right a long, we are teaching tons and that is my favorite thing in the whole world. There is not a better feeling than the feeling that you are helping people in the world.

Do Service

Sure love you all so much and you guys get lots of prayers from over here.

E.H.

This member's husky had 9 puppies. As much as dogs bug me right now, they are the cutest things in the world

Eating after church with the Islas family

What exactly 10 American dollars can get you

Mole, Members Helping Missionaries, Zone Act. in Guadalajara, Spanish is Good

March 17, 2014

My whole first transfer in Tonala, we didnt eat mole, until this transfer and we have had it about 5 times, and it is the best thing in the world.

I would like to hear the talk given by the missionary about how the members can work with the missionaries, I would also like to know what it is like to be a missionary in Utah, because there are so many members, and it probably wouldn't be so hard to find a member to work with you. But really if they ever invite you to work with them, GO WORK, because when there are members it seriously makes a huge difference, With all of our investigators that have baptismal dates right now, we have a ton a members that help us out with their teachings and everything, it helps them feel a lot better and a lot more comfortable. Last night we had a lesson with the Pacheco Hernandez family, we had 2 members with us and taught the law of chastity, the both of them bore super powerful testimonies, and when the investigators see that real people (not just the two goofballs teenagers) live these laws and rules, it helps them a lot too.

This week was a pretty normal week, it went by crazy fast. Unfortunately none of our investigators came to church, E. finally found work and went to work, and the mom of the family got kidney stones and has been going to the hospital with frequency, she also might be pregnant.

We had divisions with the zone leaders this week, I was in my area with elder Mcclellan from POCATELLO, Idaho. He is a cool guy, he finishes his mission in two months, but is still working extremely hard, which I like a lot. A lot of times you run into the missionaries that aren`t really there to work, which frustrates me. Why on earth would you dedicate yourself to one thing for two years if you are not going to give it your all. **If you go on a mission, work your hardest, there is nothing better to do, and it is not worth having the guilt of wasting God's time.

Today we had a zone activity in Guadalajara. It was good, we ate pizza and I brought stir fry, and some other stuff,  we played capture the flag, all a good time, but we lose 2 hours in the bus and 2 hours in the activity, leaving us with not many hours. 

Mom, I think I sent you a list of the items I needed, also I am dominating pants some how, my favorite brown ones have pretty much gone to pot. But don't worry about it, I can buy them here. 

The spanish is really good, I've been about a month where I don't ever have troubles understanding the people, especially in lessons, 

I have been sleep walking a ton lately, mainly when I get up and start getting ready for the day. Last night at 12:28am I got up, started the water boiler, sat down to do my morning business, and that is when I realized that my body was not ready because I had only been asleep for 2 hours. Silly body.

Sure love you guys. 

Do your family prayers dangit.

LOTS OF LOVE FROM THE SON AND BROTHER

In Guadalajara, the church La Luz Del Mundo was formed (The world's light/the light of the world.) They have a huuuuuge temple and they light is up with all sorts of fun colors every night. We can always see it from my area, and let's be real - it's really cool.