From: Kyle Hudgins <kyle.hudgins@myldsmail.net>
Subject: Hola!
Date: 20 Aug 2012 08:51:53 AM MDT

Hello my dear family and friends. This week has been a good one and I also recieved some very nice packages in the mail today! So thank you very much! It looks like all is in order and nobody stole anything.

Well with this week I´ll start off with the service that we did with Silvia and Oscar. Oh man what a day. We spent about 3 hours picking some weeds, and I mean some big weeds. But it wasn´t too bad, it was a little fun in a way because in Argentina, they don´t belive in throwing away leaves, weeds, branches, stuff like that in the garbage. They just burn it. So we made a huge bon fire at the end so that was pretty sweet. I think that is something we should adopt in the United States, no? It makes things a lot easier. But the cool thing that happend after. Silvia and Oscar invited us to eat some tortas fritas and some tea. While we were eating Oscar said that he would come to church with Silvia Sunday. And yesterday they both came. Elder Hernandez said that after that he finally understood the scripture in Mosiah 2:17 “os digo estas cosas para que aprendáis sabiduría…” Usually when we look at that scipture we focus on the second part. But we sure did learn some wisdom in this situation when he said that he was going to come to church. I´m excited to see how this turns out and hopefully we can teach him more of the gospel.

This week we have also been working really hard with Ariel. He understands everything that we have taught and likes everything. This week we taught about the plan of salvation and about baptisms for the dead because he had a few questions with that. This lesson strengthened my testimoney because it shows that salvation is available for everybody. The only thing that I believe is holding back Ariel is that he isn´t accustomed to pray. He doesn´t have a very strong testimony of prayer and hasn´t asked if these things are true. So we are going to focus more on that and hopefully we can help him.

Well this week I have the wonderfull oportunity to have a zone conference on my birthday. How convinient haha. So hopefully it will be a good one. I love you all and I hope that all of you have a wonderfull week!

Elder Kyle Hudgins

From: Kyle Hudgins <kyle.hudgins@myldsmail.net>
Subject: Hello Family!
Date: 13 Aug 2012 08:42:48 AM MDT

Hey family and friends! It looks like you all had a great time this week in Park City. Thank you for all the pictures. Its always nice to see your faces.

Well this week was a tough one with a lot of citas that fell through so we had a hard time following with some of the commitments that we made with our investigators. We were able to follow up with Ariel though and he is doing great. He really liked church last week. We talked about priesthood authority because he doesn´t think that he needs another baptism. We really had a great lesson about it and he was able to understand. That was our biggest concern was if he would be able to understand it or not. But he asked the perfect questions and we were able to have the perfect answers for him. It was really fun. He asked the question how did Joseph Smith get this power and it was awesome to be able to testify of the restoration of the priesthood. We then invited him to be baptized and he said yes. So hopefully we can answer all his doubts and get him ready to be baptized in these next coming weeks. Its really exciting.

We are also seeing some progression with Silvia. The past month or so we haven´t really seen her much and stopped progressing. But this last week we met up with her and she said that she is preparing to go to Buenos Aires to do the things for her divorce. The other day she showed us he backyard which is a mess and asked if we could come by and do some service. We said yes of course but tomorrow we will be doing a lot of service haha. But that will be fun.

Sunday was a little down though. A lot of people didn´t come to church. Ariel, Silvia, Javier, Gonzalo, and Rodrigo all did not show up. So that is something that we are going to have to work on. In my mission I have realized how important it is to attend church every Sunday and to partake of the sacrament every Sunday. The church is where we are able to learn and grow and recieve a remision of our sins. Isn´t that great. That we can receive that every week! Its one of the things that I think is often overlooked. So hopefully we can work with all of those people and help them recognized the improtance of church.

I´m sorry I don´t have too much this week. I´m still waiting for my package. I haven´t checked today if it arrived or not but I don´t think so because the office hasn´t taken money out of my account. All I can say is thank you for the packages but now I am going to have no money haha! Oh well I´m sure it will be well worth it. Love you all!

Elder Kyle Hudgins

From: Kyle Hudgins <kyle.hudgins@myldsmail.net>
Subject: Hello family!
Date: July 30, 2012 8:30:08 AM MDT

Hello my family. It sounds like all is going well over there in los estados unidos so thats really good to hear. Thank you for the letters every week. It always make me happy to hear from you.

Well this week was good but we were not able to reach our goal of baptism this week. Javier said that he still has problems with smoking and he didn´t feel ready. So that was a little disapointing but he is still progressing. We were able to re-put the fecha for this coming week so hopefully we can help him for this week. We shared with him Ether 12:27 and we did an extensive study of it. It was really fun and I was able to learn a lot from this little verse. I can´t remember what it says in English but in spanish it uses the word gracia. In the guia de las escrituras in the back of the spanish scriptures says that gracia is the gifts of the atonement of Jesus Christ. We used that and how you have to have faith in the atonement of Christ. We then talked about being humble and we referenced the begining of 2 Nefi 31 where is says that Christ was baptized to show that he is humble to God. So we shared that if we have faith in the atonement and we humble ourselves (by being baptized) our weaknesses will become strengths. So I think that helped him a lot and also it really helped me understand more of this little scripture.

This week we also were able to have a little fun. Our district organized an activity. It was a night of singing songs. A talent show type thing. It was really fun. All of the organizations had at least three representatives that sang songs and stuff. As missionaries we were the judges. We all had a good time. Its really fun to be part of things like that. I never really realized the importance of activities. They really help with the members. The members get animated from the activities and they always are a good way for them to invite friends. Hopefully in the future we can plan another one because they are both fun and very effective. Im sorry to say that I wasn´t able to take pictures because Rawson has exactly 0 cameras. I guess thats what happens when you shut off importation. So I haven´t bought one. Today I´m going to send it in to repair and hopefully it wont take too long.

Sorry I don´t have too much for the week. But I hope you all have a wonderfull week and you guys too could send me some pictures! As much as you guys like recieving pictures of me, I like recieving pictures of you. I love you all and hope you have a great week.

Con cariño,
Elder Kyle Hudgins

From: Kyle Hudgins <kyle.hudgins@myldsmail.net>
Subject: Hello family!
Date: July 23, 2012 9:22:51 AM MDT

Well it has been a good week here in Rawson which is really good. We did some fun things this past P-Day as well. Last week we went to Playa Union to check out the wales and the dolphins. It was pretty awesome, and the first time I had ever seen wales. I didn´t have a camera but we took some pictures with Elder Hernandez´s camera so I will steal his pictures. I promise I will go and buy a camera today!

The week we also made a lot of progress with Javier. He went to visit him on Tuesday and he told us that he had been feeling pretty down the Saturday before. He was thinking of going back to Formosa. He told us he said a prayer before he went to bed and then he woke up on Sunday with a lot of ganas to go to church. I loved church and for that he stayed. We set his baptismal date in stone for the 28th so this week we should be having a baptism. So thats really exciting. He has really showed what its like to have a broken heart and a contrite spirit. He is so humble and willing to do what it takes to be happy. We committed him to quit smoking a little over 2 weeks ago and he hasn´t smoked since then. In his words “I´m doing the impossible.” With the help of the Lord there is nothing impossible.

This week we also had a really crazy experince. As I mentioned last week we started to teach a less active member Angel and his grandson Rodrigo. We went by there house this past Monday and his daughter (the mom of Rodrigo was there as well). We entered and the daughter was in tears and everyone was just really sad. We found out the recently before we arrived that the boyfriend had came and taken her baby away from her. Elder Hernandez and I had no idea what to do or what to say so we had to trust in the spirit to give us the words. We were able to talk a lot about faith in Jesus Christ and we also gave them both blessings of comfort. It was really an amazing experience. After the lesson the spirit was in the room and everyone felt better. It really strenthened my testimony and I´m sure the testimonies of this family were strengthened as well. Hopefully this will be the boost that they need to return to the church.

Well thats about all I have for the week. Its amazing to see the hand of the lord in the work and one of the biggest blessings of being a missionary. I love you all and I hope you have a great week!

Con cariño,
Elder Kyle Hudgins

From: Kyle Hudgins <kyle.hudgins@myldsmail.net>
Subject: ¡Hola!
Date: July 16, 2012 9:01:04 AM MDT

Hello familiy! I hope everyone is doing well this Monday morning. It was another great week here in Rawson and things are looking really good!

I´ll start with Javier. He is doing really awesome. I don´t know if I have told his story but he is from Formosa and came down here to be with his kids who are members. He is really awesome and really humble and really wants to change is life around. We have been teaching him for about a month now and he has been coming to church regularly. But he has a big problem with cigarettes. He smokes a lot. So we taught him the word of wisdom this last week and he was on board. We took away his recently opened pack of cigarettes and threw them away for him. His is really excited about it, and is preparing well for his baptismal date for the 28 of July. Also this week we took Gustavo with us in the lesson. With Gustavo it was like letting a little puppy out of his cage. He had been wanting to go out and visit people and in this lesson he was testifying left and right telling him that baptism is the best thing he could do. It was awesome.It was really awesome to see a person converted like that. It doesn´t get much better than seeing a convert testifying that they know that the gospel is true.

Last week we also recieved a reference for the bishop of a guy named Angel who had been menos activo for many years and came one day after church to pay his tithing. He told the bishop that he wanted to return and wanted to baptize his 8 year old grandson that is living with him. We were so excited with this reference but we couldn´t find the hose for a week. We called him a couple times as well and he said that he would call us back because he didn´t have time. We were a little discouraged about it. But we talked with the bishop to get more details about where he lived and we found it yesterday. We entered and were able to talk to him and his grandson. He told us that he didn´t understand how to work his phone and for that reason he couldn´t call us back. But he was really happy that we came by. His granson, Rodrigo, had been telling him that he wanted to go to church and get baptized so that was awesome to hear. We put a date with both of them for the 11 of August so Rodrigo and prepare to get baptized and Angel can prepare to baptize him. It was an awesome experience and I´m really excited to work with these two.

Also this week we met our new mission president, President Lovell. We all had interviews and is was a pretty sweet experience. The first thing he mentioned was that he met you two. He then said that I was lucky to have such loving parents. And thats very true. We only talked for about 10 minutes but I know that President Lovell is going to be a great mission president. It will also be interesting to see the changes that come into place but I know they will all be for good.

Well I love you all and hope all of you have a wonderfull week!

Con cariño,
Elder Kyle Hudgins

From: Kyle Hudgins <kyle.hudgins@myldsmail.net>
Subject: HOLA FAMILIA!
Date: July 9, 2012 9:03:15 AM MDT

This week wasn´t such a bad week. Elder Hernandez and I were able to work and find some new investigators and two families! That is something that we have been trying to focus on. We have been looking through the lists for some of the less active families for kids that might not be baptized and also big families that all live together. We were able to have a lot of success with this method this week. We were able to find the familia Donaide. The mom and the oldest son are members but less active. The husband and three other kids are not members. They had talked with the missionaries a lot in the past but it has been more than 3 years since they have had contact with them. So we talked a little bit about the atonement with them. We didn´t have much time but our testimonies were able to bring the spirit and the mom was in tears at the end of the lesson. We are going to continue working with this family and hopefully we can get all of them going to church.

Another less active family we found was the familia Savedra. The mom and all the kids are members but they haven´t gone to church in about 10 years. They are a really big family and the kids are a little older but are living there with their girlfriends and boyfriends. They also have a young son living there (Who has the redest hair I have seen here in Argentina, its also long, very Shaun White-like) We taught about the Plan of Salvacion and really focused on the family. They were really animated about the idea about families lasting forever. They were really receptive for us and had a lot of questions and had a desire to learn more. So were are going to pass by more with this family and hopefully we can help them progress in the gospel.

We were also able to find a family this week. The familia Bravo-Rojas. We were able to teach the mom, a daughter, and a son but they have 5 more members of the family that weren´t there. We taught the evangelio de Jesucristo and really focused on repentance. It was a really good lesson and the mom shared some really spiritual experiences that have happened in her life. They also said that they were recently thinking that they wanted to start going to a church but didn´t know which one. We put a fecha with them for the 28 of July so hopefully that will go through (they are already married!!!). We left them a folleto of the plan of salvation and we told the mom to share this with her husband.

So yeah this week was really focused about families. Its really awesome to be part of helping all these families know more about the gospel and the blessing that come from it. I love seeing the familia Chemin progressing so well. Gustavo is really animated wants to magnify the priesthood that he has. It was awesome to see him bless the sacrament and to see Tomas pass it. The gospel has done so much for this family and it just strengthens my testimony of the gospel.

I love you all and hope you all have a wonderfull week!

Con cariño,
Elder Kyle Hudgins

From: Kyle Hudgins <kyle.hudgins@myldsmail.net>
Subject: A week full of asado!
Date: July 2, 2012 8:58:45 AM MDT

Well this week has been a good one. I got a new companion Elder Hernandez. He is from Monterrey, Mexico and has a year and 3 months on the mission. The first week was pretty good with him. We were able to make some progress with a lot of our investigators and also see a lot of progress with the Chemin family. I have never had a comp like Elder Hernandez. He is really direct and makes sure the people know what they have to do and what will happen when they don´t do it. It always makes the lessons very interesting and also really exciting. It was sad to see Elder Rivera leave but I´m looking forward to working more with Elder Hernandez.

So one thing we really tried to do this week was to get Silvia baptized. We let her know of the options she had. She really does want to get baptized. We told her to pray about it. The next day she told us she wanted to stay with the guy she is living with and wait for all the paper work to finish and marry the guy she is living with. She wants to do that because she wants to give him a chance to hear the gospel. Silvia is awesome and has such a strong testimony of the church and of the Book of Mormon.

So another highlight this week was Gustavo and Tomas both received the priesthood yesterday. It was a sweet experience. We had taught them about the priesthood during the week and they were really excited to receive it. Its awesome to see them progress even after baptism. You can just see how much more happiness they have in their lives and how much gratitude they have for us. And they showed that gratitude by inviting us to another asado yesterday. I can easily say that I love this family a lot.

That brings me to my next thought of how much asado we ate this week. On Thursday, Silvia had some left over asado that she gave us and also on Saturday night we stopped by a member because Elder Hernandez needed to use the bathroom. And it just so happened that they were preparing asado and invited us to eat. So that was awesome. The members here are great and they really know how to keep our moral up.

Well thats about all I have for this week. I love you all and I hope you have a great week!

Con cariño,
Elder Kyle Hudgins