ASK, AND YE SHALL RECEIVE!!

Dear Family,

So here’s how the week went:

Monday (22^nd) – Got kicked off the library computers early because other people needed to use them, which was a bummer because we didn’t get to finish emailing.  But the rest of the day was good.  At one point we went to teach a discussion with Chris, and when we got there his whole family was out on the deck eating dinner.  We talked for a bit and set up another lesson time.  None of them were against us in any way, so we might be able to teach the whole family.  Then after that, we came across a family out on their porch.  We talked a bit and they invited us to come on their porch and share more.  It’s a family of 5 and we had a really good experience with them.  The dad was very interested (the mom had to take the kids to a sports practice), and is going to read and pray.  I’ve really been wanting to teach and baptize a family, and it’s been cool to see more families being put in our path.  

Tuesday (23^rd) – We had our district meeting, and I did an exchange with Elder Dupin back to Houlton.  We contacted a family of Puerto Ricans and they invited us right in.  I’ve never had an easier time being invited in!  They moved here 3 weeks ago and have been so prepared to hear the gospel!!

Wednesday (24^th) – Elder Dupin and I did some service at Tarbells cutting wood, and doing a lot of weed-wacking.  While we were working, some Jehovah’s Witnesses came walking up to us, not knowing we were LDS missionaries.  When they noticed our name tags, we had a nice friendly chat and gave them our card. 

That evening, Elder Edmond and I did splits with Pres. Carter and Bro. Sides.  We were able to see a few people, and also found a really cool potential investigator, who scheduled a return appointment on Friday.

Thursday (25^th) – This was one of those “not-so-good” days when it seems that every appointment falls through, and things can spiral down pretty quickly.  I don’t like these days much at all, and I’m glad they don’t happen very often!!

Friday (26^th) – It rained and downpoured all day.  And things have been a bit discouraging.  BUT, when things are going bad, that just means that a miracle is coming our way!!  In the evening we had dinner with Wendy, who has been less-active.  But it was good to meet with her, and she also made homemade bread, which was really good. 

I also had district call-ins from the elders in our district.  It’s a big responsibility to listen to their trials, feelings, etc., and to know how to help them as best I can.  I wonder if raising five daughters would be easier?  Ha!!

Saturday (27^th) – Elder Edmond woke up sick…throwing up throughout the day.  So my day was relatively uneventful…scripture study, watching New Testament videos, playing chess against myself…I’m a pretty worthy opponent!!

Sunday (28^th) – I love Sundays.  Mike came to church (he’s been working on Word of Wisdom stuff), and he stayed for all of the meetings.  During Sunday School, the teacher (an ex-Pentecostal preacher) related the following:  “Last week when the Elders came to visit me, Elder Hunt told me that I needed to repent!  He said the issues I was having were due to my own stubbornness and that I needed to repent!  Well, over the next couple of days, I kept hearing his voice saying that, over and over in my head… ‘you need to repent.’  So I repented…and by golly, Elder hunt was right!”  Bro. Lee then looked at me and said, “You were right, Elder Hunt, and blessed be your name for it.”  Well, I’ll just say, it feels good to know that the Lord works through his missionaries, and we get to help people change their lives.

We also got to go to the Peters for dinner.  Ben and Molly were there, so we were finally able to teach them again.  I got to meet baby Noah, and hold his cute two-week old body.  We had a great testimony meeting with the entire Peters family.  Molly even bore her testimony that she knows the church is true.  It was a really neat experience to have every single person there bear their testimony.

 

 

So, I guess the recap of the week is, there are good days and hard days as a missionary.  When the hard times come it’s important to remember they aren’t ALL like this!  The good days are GREAT and even “little things” like praying to have families to teach, and then having three in one week brought into our lives, is really cool!  Don’t forget to pray for the things you want.  Heavenly Father answers our prayers.  It may not always be the way we want, but He does answer them for our best good.

Love,

Elder Hunt

Sons of Thunder...Literally?!?!

MEMORY LANE. . . Peter Pan goes on a mission!!!
But what's with the blue tongue, Elder Hunt???

Dear Family,

Well, some fun things, and not-so-fun things...like usual.  Last Monday night was a rough night of sleeping since our whole district got together, and I ended up sleeping on the bare floor in a room that 

Elder Thompson and Me

was about 90 degrees and no AC.  It wasn't much of a night of sleeping, but more waiting it out til morning came.  But it worked out okay, and then we all headed up to Moncton for Zone conference, which was really great.  Elder Thompson and I were asked to do a musical number, but we never had time to practice, so during lunch we found an arranged medley of Amazing Grace, Now We Take 

The Sacrament, and How Great Thou Art.  We played through it once before we performed and it went pretty well, all things considered.

One night this week we went to a Pentacostal Bible Study meeting a lady had invited us to.  Our appointments for the evening had fallen through, it was raining like a hurricane, so we decided to go.  It was very interesting and was a good experience.  We had some good talks with people there and we probably talked to them more about our missions than they talked to us about their doctrine.

Another day we did some service for Lucky, gave another investigator a tour of the church; we stopped in at Ben's and Molly's.  She dealing with a lot with the new baby and everything, but she's still reading and praying and wanting to be baptized.  She even took the Book of Mormon to the hospital so she could read there.  Later we got eaten by bugs again, but came across an English Riding Course.  We talked with the people there and also saw some beautiful horses!  We did a lot of walking and knocking, just steady going.  Lots of work is getting done and time goes by fast, even though it's really humid and hot out here!

Friday we were out contacting when a big thunderstorm rolled in and we got drenched!  I've never seen thunderstorms roll in so fast as I have out here...blue skies one minute and 10 minutes later there's no blue sky in sight!  For dinner that night we went to Janice's and had a great meal with her and her parents, then an amazing lesson.  She definitely gets the "Best Recent Convert" Award!  Afterwards, we stopped in downtown Woodstock to take pictures of the incoming storm.  The clouds were nearly BLACK!  There were lightning strikes going on like crazy for nearly an hour.  The clouds were funnel clouds...aka tornado style...and we could see them swirling pretty bad.  I was surprised we didn't have an actual tornado, considering there was one a couple of days earlier that tore up the town of Danforth (30 minutes south of Houlton).  But we did get an incredible sunset!!

On Saturday we helped a member build a big, wooden fruit/vegetable stand.  Elder Edmond and I masterminded the design and built the doors for it.  It was pretty fun since Elder Edmond knows carpentry really well, and I enjoyed working with him.  After that we went straight to a dinner hosted by Donald (the chef guy), with him, his wife and 4 other guests.  During the course of the dinner we were offered wine and beer...which we declined.  Later we were offered coffee and tea...declined again.  But in both cases it gave us the chance to talk about the church and what we do as missionaries.  It was a great evening of discussions, and also Donald made me play the violin and piano for everyone.  By the end of the evening we had become really good friends with everyone, and now they love us.  I got invited to each of their church's in town to play for their services...to bad they conflict with our meeting schedule.  One guy (Roger) liked us so much he had us follow him home to his place and showed us his huge art studio.  He's quite the phenomenal painter and is also a 2-time Maine chess champion!

Sunday was a great day at church.  Our investigator, Mike, came for the first time.  He actually knew some of the members, so that was great, and things went very well.  After meetings the branch had it's Linger Longer, and we took a bit longer getting out to work.  I thought it would either be a really not-so-good day since it took us longer, OR it would be a great day so the Lord could remind me how great it is to get out and start working.  Well, after I thought that we knocked on the door of this 19 year old kid.  He instantly came onto the porch and invited us to sit down.  He had just started reading the bible a week earlier (after not doing anything with church since he was a little kid).  We taught him the restoration and he is so stoked about the gospel!!  He even committed to baptism on Sept. 14th!!  A really cool thing happened with that too!  It's just so great getting to be a part of sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ!

I hope you have a great week.  Keep praying for the missionary work to go forward.  It helps!

Love,

Elder Hunt

 

 

   

Elder Hunt...the Country Boy!!

Dear Family,

Last week our P-day was really good.  We went around to a bunch of different music stores, playing around on instruments, and looking for a recording mic for me to use.  Nothing too great turned up today, but I'll keep looking.We taught a few lessons that night, had some interesting experiences with being offered weed and heroin...to get rid of us...and it worked.  But also met some good people, too.

On Tuesday I did an exchange with Elder Evanson (a zone leader in Frederickton) after our District meeting in Caribou.  It was really fun because we knew each other back in the city and got along really well.  He's from Lethbridge, Alberta, and he plays rugby.   We had a few lessons throughout the day, and then we walked downtown Fredericton...MUCH bigger than Houlton...bigger, but not necessarily better!)
There were so many people there, and it's just a very different feel than back in Houlton.  Did some contacting on the big walking bridge.  Talked to a lot of people there.  Then we met some guys that were chipping golf balls from their front yard grass, across the main road, into a grass field with a hole in it.  They offered me a chance to try it, so I chipped one with a club...a perfect, one-hopper, right over to the hole.  :)  It was a great exchange day all the way around!

Wednesday - I got to go to a second district training with Elder Evanson.  It's always fun to have a "double-dose" of trainings.  We then had a lesson with Cassie, a great 19 year old investigator who's getting baptized next week.  Then we went down this street that was super ghetto!  We talked to tons of people from Congo, Africa, Columbia, Russia and the list goes on.  Even threw a rugby ball around with a guy who is on the New Brunswick Provincial Rugby team.  After that we drove back to Woodstock and exchanged back  We had dinner with the Marshalls and then we went with Bro. Marshall to visit Janice.  We had such a good lesson with her.  She's speaking in church on Sunday!  Only a month after her baptism!  What a special lady she is!!

On Thursday I learned that taking two allergy pills is NOT a good thing.  It was also a day of people not answering their doors, or hiding from us, etc.  We had dinner with the Spinneys and then I used his metal detector to see if it would help me find a special ring I lost on the 4th of July.  No luck.
Sister Peters also called to let us know that Molly had her baby that night.  Baby Noah weighed 7 lbs 1 oz and was 20 inches long.  I'm so happy for Ben and Molly!

Friday we did some more service at Brother Bosvert's house.  We finished digging our 5' deep square for him to use for a wood pile.  It took us a little while, and was pretty hot again, but I really enjoyed going over there and helping him out.  After our service, his son took us down and showed us some of their horses.  They have some big Clydesdales, Belgians, Norwegians, and stallions.  Some great, big work horses that double as riding horses.  If I'm still here in the winter they're going to hook up their sleigh and take us for a carriage ride!!

On Saturday Bro. Robertson took us to the Tarbells.  We did service there, and cut up a bunch of wood.  I got eaten alive by bugs again, despite my bug spray.  Even had a big moose fly bite a pretty good chunk out of my head and it bled a lot.


Had a skype interview with President Leavitt in the evening, then made some home-made meatballs with spaghetti for dinner.  After that we had a contact referral.  It was for a member in Preque Isle who's mother lives in Houlton.  They have an incredibly nice house, complete with a HUGE, nice yard.  She invited us in, got us lemonade, and for the next 45 minutes talked about what the missionaries do, and the conversion of her daughter's family.  Then, the next 45 minutes we taught the restoration.  A lot of really cool things happened, and it's exciting to see the way the Lord has been preparing her and her husband to be receptive to our message.  It was a really special experience, and I'm looking forward to teaching them.


The Country boy in Elder Hunt is really starting to come out!!

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday was a great day at Church.  It was really geared toward missionary work and our branch is doing a really good job with trying to implement the new technologies to help do missionary work.  After church, we were walking down an old country road with only about a million trees around us, when about 30 yards away a big shotgun went off.  It scared us half-to-death because it sounded and felt like someone was shooting at us.  We kinda took cover for a minute before we realized they probably weren't aiming for us.  It was a pretty startling moment.

All in all, it has been a pretty good week.  We are being blessed with some really good people to teach, and I love being in this area!!

I was so excited to hear that Harrison is now in the MTC.  He's going to be such a great missionary!!  I love knowing that we're "in this together!"  Missionary work is HARD, but it's also GOOD!  It's amazing to be a part of the great work that is going forward.  There is no other place I would rather be at this particular point in my life.  I know the gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored to the earth, and I'm so glad I have this time to serve as a missionary and share the truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Hope you all have a great week!!

Love,

Elder Hunt