mail

Hello,
I must admit it has been a loooooooooonnnnnnnnnnggggggggggg week, but some cool things have happened. I got to baptize my first person ever on Saturday, and confirm her sunday. I was way excited, and nervous at the same time but it was super cool. I also got to go on 2 exchanges this week, and both times I got to take over the area and both times we found a ton of new people. Elder Shapiro is having a hard time keeping up with all the new people we're finding.We found out that our Bishop is moving to Utah (go figure), so our ward is going to be bishopless until the Stake President calls a new one. He had a meeting with all the auxiliary heads and had a "Come to Jesus" meeting, which basically meant he was trying to get the ward excited about missionary work, because it's become more tedious than fun because of all the meetings and such. Then I found out that I'm being transferred again, so I'm all packed and ready to move again. I think I'm just going to not unpack from now on, because I finished unpacking last week finally, and now I've repacked everything, and since President King likes to move me around, it makes sense just to keep as much as possible packed. Elder Shapiro's birthday is today, so it's been a pretty fun day. We had a super cool district meeting today, that I really enjoyed. As far as I know I'm not becoming a senior companion or anything, so nothing to worry about there. I'm being stalked by a Jehovah's Witness that we talked to while on one of the exchanges, she really wants me to come to their celebration of Jesus' death, but I don't really want to go, so.............yeah. I'm really going to miss this ward, it's such a nice place, but I guess the Lord needs me elsewhere. Well, have a good week, be safe, and may the Lord watch over you.
Love, Elder Hughes

.....Hello...

Hello World,
I am sorry for the delay, but I have recently mailed out responses to almost all of the letters I have received so you shold get them soon. This week was pretty good, we did a LOT of service. We dug a drainage ditch for one of our investigators, and helped another one put up a fence. I fixed a water heater for some members that live in town, so it was a busy week. We didn't get to do much finding, but we did get to spread some of Christs' love in Monticello. Our investigators that we've been trying to get to church forever came, so we get to baptize them on Saturday. I'm super excited about that, and I'm actually on exchange with the District Leader, and we're going to do the interviews as soon as I'm done emailing. I get to be in charge of my area for a day since my senior companion is up in Covington, so I'm kind of nervous but at the same time excited. We had district meeting today, and we got a chance to ask questions and talk about them together. I brought up a question that someone asked us recently which is: How could Satan talk to God like it says in the Book of Job? My companion realized that he was talking to Jehovah, and that cleared things up. Though I still don't understand it here's the answer I came up with: Jehovah had not yet received a body, and had not inherited his Celestial Glory so Satan being cast out of God's presence wouldn't affect the situation, and would allow Satan to communicate with him. This isn't doctrine, it's just what I came up with. Things here continue to go well, but we're trying to do better always. I love you guys, and I hope all is well. I pray for you all the time.
Love, Elder Hughes

Finally... We KNow Where He Is!

Hello,
Greetings from Monticello Georgia, Jamie figured out where I was, so I can tell everyone now. But I must say it took ya long enuff yall. So yeah, I'm in Monticello in Jasper County and this is the southernmost point in this mission, and conveniently used to be in the Macon mission (I was hoping my someone would get the reference to that since I have a cousin that served there). It's a cozy little town of about 2400 people, but geographically is ginormous. We cover all of Jasper county, which is like 6 times larger than my last area, and we do it on 900 miles a month (which is straight up ridiculous because we have to drive 53 (one way) to get to Zone Conference, and 30 (one way) to get to District Meetings and Interviews and such). So things are really interesting. But, we have some good things going for us here. We're really well known in the community, and the town really likes us, and we actually just started a Q&A news paper article that covers the entire county. So we have a lot of resources, and we do a lot of teaching and service, but I love it. This week we had Zone Conference, and it was all about obedience and putting forth the effort to create the miracles rather than wait for them to happen. We also talked about safety since it's Tornado season now. It has rained here quite a bit, but the weather has been very nice off and on. We had a district P-day yesterday, and I got to try and teach 2 other missionaries how to golf, which surprisingly went well. I got to go on exchange up in Covington, which was sweet. I taught 2 of the wackiest lessons I've ever taught, but had fun doing it. One was just a random discussion, and the other was about the Plan of Salvation which transitioned into the Restoration, then went back it was super long. But it was fun. Thank you guys for the mail, I got back from exchange and I had like 8 letters (more than I've gotten in the last 9 weeks) so it was really nice to get some updates on what's going on in the real world. I have interviews tomorrow, so I wont sick President King on anybody....Yet....But you better stay on your toes. We didn't have as eventful a week as last week, but I'm sure the next one will be great. Thank you guys for all your love and support, and I want yall to know that I'm doing fine, I've adjusted to being a missionary really well, and I'm enjoying myself a lot. I have learned how to eat more foods, but I'm still working on that. The people here are super nice, and it does bug me that they don't keep their commitments, but that was another thing we talked about in Zone Conference so we'll see how that goes now. I miss you guys too, but not as much as you miss me I'm sure, because I'm focusing on the Work, and I love you all and I'm praying for you too. I wish I could tell yall everything I've learned since I got here, but I don't have enough time to type it. I may rescind my ban on personal letter writing, but that's not for sure yet. Have fun, and take care.

Sincerely, Elder Hughes

Do you know where he is yet?

I just realized I didn't tell anyone my guesses from last week. They were supposed to be characters from a book:
Bogart
Jasper
Hancock
Pembrock
Tucker
Covington
I put Covington on the list because it was on his bank statement. That is why he said I was cheating.

Mail;

Hello,
First of all thank you for the news, it was very refreshing to actually have an email or two to read. You're all doing rather well at guessing where I am, but I must admit my mother is cheating. She is using illegal information gathered from inside sources to calculate the location. Unfortunately for her, she can only get close because since I know what she's doing, I'll make sure to avoid it. I would've thought that someone would've figured it out by now, but I had no idea there were so many ironic places for me to be in this mission. Anyways, your clue for this week: If you took a map and found a place called the middle of nowhere, I'm right in the center of it. No, but seriously that's true. That was a joke people, the real clue, is that this area used to belong to the Macon mission, but was recently re-opened in this mission. This should be a significant hint as to the geographical position of this place, and fyi, my mother has included the City and County in her guesses, but doesn't know for sure which ones they are.

Anyways, back to the Lord's work. Things here are going well, we had a really good week last week (for this area). We miraculously found 7 new investigators. Which is interesting, because I've never baptized anyone on my mission that I found, but the average is 1 in 100. I'm almost there, so we'll see if that really holds because as you all know, I'm definitely not your average type of person. We found a new family, that came to chruch sunday, and is loveing everything we teach. they've already been receiving answers to their prayers, but they hadn't prayed about what we had asked them, so during one of our lessons, we knelt down with them at the end, and started to offer up a prayer to know if these things were true, and as soon as we started, the phones rang, and someone knocked on the door, and we were angry. Satan won that round, but luckily, we know he can't win the war. We have a bunch of new people that we recently started teaching, and are excited to visit again to find out where things go with them. Last week, during weekly planning we made a list of all the people we needed to see this week, and we have no idea how we're going to accomplish it all (that's a good thing for missionaries) so we're pretty stoked. Funny story about that, we were at a member's house, and an unknown number called us so Elder Shapiro didn't answered the phone, and no one was there. So a couple minutes later it called again, so the wife offered to answer the phone, but Elder Shapiro decided against it. So he answers the phone and I here "Hello Elder Shapiro it's President King," Boy let me tell you I just about had a heart attack. We've been speculating a lot about what would've happened if we would've let her answer the phone, but man it wouldn't have been pretty that's for sure. Anyways, he was excited to hear that we're doing well, but had some bad news that the church isn't quite ready to set up a branch yet. So that's kind of a bummer, but the work goes on. Another first, we've been doing service for a carpenter in town, and he had us replace the sewer line to his house, so saturday we dug it up, and today we put it in. So I've officially ran a sewer by myself. So, overall this week has been pretty sweet. On a more serious note though, Friday was one of the weirdest days of my mission. We got to dinner, and everyone got there, and we were chatting, and they finished dinner so we said the blessing, and we started to dish up. Well I just sat down to eat, and a kid comes running towards the house screaming, and within a matter of seconds, the house was empty, cars were peeling out of the driveway (we were out in the woods with dirt roads and such), and Elder Shapiro and I were left standing on the porch not knowing what to do. So we said a prayer and tried to follow, but got lost and just decided to go back. As we were getting back to the house all we could see was a cloud of dust, 2 ambulances, and a police cruiser. We pulled up and one of the women filled us in about what had happened. The kids had been riding around with one of the adults on one of those big ranger things (losing my memory of anything but gospel topics) and it had flipped over. One of the passengers was a little girl, and her arm was crushed, but luckily there were no other serious injuries. We found out at church, that she had to have surgery. We did get to give her a blessing before she left in the ambulance, but if you could pray for her I'd appreciate it. I'd tell you her name, but I'm not supposed to use names, but the Lord will know who she is. Anyways, I was really touched by how fast her parents reacted, and how well they took care of her. If you would've been there you probably would have been to, but it was a real testament to me of the love that parents really have or their children. Anyways, I love you all, and I hope you figure out where I'm at soon, because i'm running out of clues.

Love, Elder Hughes

P.S. Due to library complications, I'll be emailing on Tuesday the remainder of my time in this area.

Just to Let You Know

Craig is keeping his new location a big secret as you can tell from his letter. I got out my atlas and looked through all the town names. Here's what I Found...
Aragon (one of his favotite movies)
Bulloch County (we live in Bulloch Circle)
Monroe (great hunting spot)
Monticello (sister lives there)
Panthersville (mascot from high school)
Pineview (name of high school)
Temple (just sounded good- he's a missionary)
Washington City (we live in Washington City too- diferent state obviously)
Washington County (Duh)

He told me to keep trying... but my guesses were funny.

A Day Late is Better than NO Mail

Dear Peopleagenesses,
It has recently been brought to my attention that some of you think that my withholding the knowledge of my current location is rather cruel, but I would like to make a few comments on this issue, and explain my reasoning for doing so.... So first of all, I have given and will continue to give hints, second of all, I get like no mail at all, because apparently nobody loves me, so this is was one of my ideas to give people a reason to write to me, thirdly, it's really sad when your Mission President has to offer to get involved with your family, because you have no idea what is going on in their lives. Next, there are a number of you (and you know who you are) that told me you would write to me, but have not yet seen fit to do so, so this is a perfect opportunity and reason for you to want to. I was really tempted to sick President and Sister King on you guys, but I was nice enough not to so I would appreciate it if you would eliminate the need for such drastic measures. The next time he asks me how my family is doing I would like to not have to tell him "I have no idea". So this is your official warning...and yes, I'm being serious. President King does not like his missionaries to be left in the dark.

So as for this weeks news, same old same old, no one comes to church, still haven't met all of our investigators, still being frustrated by the adversary, and of course still wishing people would keep commitments and such. I'm really trying to think of new ways to find people to teach, and it's been interesting, but there is still a long way to go. I've been reading in the Bible a lot lately, and man I can totally understand all the interpretation errors, sometimes that book is soooooooo confusing it drives me crazy, but on the bright side I know what most of it means. We do a lot of service here, which is really fun. I had to crawl under someone's house and change their hosebib this week, which was really interesting. Plumbers in Georgia do things really weirdly if you ask me. We also got to help a carpenter clean up his shop, and build some stuff for him. Overall, it was a pretty good week, other than the lack of people keeping commitments.

On the bright side, I did get to play golf yesterday, and did fairly well. I have definitely gotten rusty though, because my entire side is sore from swinging. It was fun though, and the weather was beautiful. As for my hint this week, the city is located inside a county that shares a name with a character in a book series. Anyways, hope things are cool out there, sounds like the weather is terrible, but it is here too so don't feel bad. Anyways, Love ya'll, and dont' forget to cut the lights on.

Elder Hughes