April 6

What greater gift for easter than being able to listen to the voice of the profeta and the special witnesses declare of the divinity of our savior jesus christ?? I loved conference! haha it was fun watching it in spanish. a little different not listening to the booming voices of the apostoles. :) we had 6 investigadores go to conference so that was our little tender blessing.

This is the last week in transfers! i cant believe how fast time goes..hermana duron and i have been working super hard with this area. we have 7 people with fechas ahorita. we are going to baptize Aaron this wednesday! we are super excited for him. its so cool to see the changes in people. in our first lesson with him i think he spoke like 3 words. he is really really shy, and now we have to stop him from talking. hahah he is super excited as well. :) 

This friday we are going to have an activity in the church to help with the PLAN DE AREA. the missioaries are in charge. we are going to do like a little skit where we are doing a "broadcast of breaking news" and we are going to interview the members during the skit about how theyve been helping this plan be carried our. - diezmo, historia familiar, compartiendo el evangelio - we are super excited for it! 

We had a meeting with Presdiente this morning.. it helped me realize a lot of things that i need to work on as a missionary and as an individual. this weeked was a really good time of reflection. I loved the theme of all! the family was a huge one.. Being in a mission has really opened my eyes to looots of different things. I loved the talk about the learning how to dance but listening to the music.. it is so important that we listen to the music! a lot of the times we go through the motions of life... do the things that we are suppose to do just because its the script, but we will miss out on the JOY of LIFE if we truly do not listen to the music, if we dont let the Spirit soak in our souls and truly apply this doctrines and principles to our dance steps. like my wise brother jake, we must understand the WHY of the things that we do to really experiement este potente cambio en nuestras corazones. and there is hope for ALL because christ knows of our VALOR as children of god.

I truly love my savior.. I loved the hymn selection this conference.. the consider the lilies was a big hit for me. I loved seeing the familiar face of melanie wilcox as well. in the final hymn it truly touched me that JESUS CHRIST IS REAL. he is the savior of the WORLD! he is my amigo fiel. we have the h o p e to become like him. let us seek that divine promise..

I LOVE YOU ALL

hermana hobbs

March 31

This week was full of lots of different experiences that I will never forget.. 

I am sorry that I didnt write to you yesterday, I forgot to tell you our Pday was being changed becasue we were able to go to the TEMPLE again!! I had found another name, Henry Henderson that I was able to take to the temple. It was actually a really special experience.. Our zone leader Elder Alberto, hes from the Dominican Republic, a convert of three years (his story is literally so amazing, such a hero to me), I was able to do the ordinance of his grandma.. He was super excited because he has worked super hard to find the dates for her and everything, and had asked me if I would do the ordinances. He is the only member in his family. It really was a powerful experience.. Wow so many wonderful things happen in the mission! so many experiences...

We are continuing to have success in the area! We are working with our "Lady Gaga" (the hermana who is the picture) right now. She is so funny!! we are working on getting her married so she can be baptized. she is a little bit hard to teach because she likes to talk :) I think i told you about her last week, the Hermana Lourdes from gospel principles? she has lived a very very hard life.. she was abused in many ways as a child, but she is ready to start over. she is the most generous lady I know and SHE IS A HOOT. jajaja on sunday her sister was over and it was like i was in my home listening to Thelma and Louise (mama joanne and auntie valorie) haha she is super great.

I hit my 9 months on wednesday.. I dont want to think about time in the mission.. praying these months go by slow..

On saturday we had a lesson planned in the house of the family romero to teach aaron (who will be baptized the next week!!) when we arrived we heard screaming and yelling, but I didnt think much of it because their little abuelita who has altheimers always fights and yells like that when they try to bathe her. But then we heard the two little daughters of hermana Letty yell Hermanas!! so we went running and hermana letty came out crying saying something about bees and ran into her house. we were so confused. the daughters ushered us in the house and turns out in the backyard there were abejas africanas.. like killer bees. hermana letty was home alone with all the children of everyone because hermana justina was going through the temple becasue shes getting married this week. Aaron was there as well. The bees were in a refridge box in the backyard and the little grandma had thrown garbage and distrubed the bees and they came out attacking, there had been thousands! it was like a black cloud! hermana letty was able to get her grandma in the house but many were stung by the bees, but what was crazy is that the bees didnt attack them, but they went to the dogs that were barking and going crazy. We arrived exactly at the time to help hermana letty with the kids and get them in the house away from the bees. We had called the fire department to come because we couldnt do anything. we couldnt leave the house becasue they were everywhere! I took on the role of taking care of grandma becasue of her althimers wanted to leave the house. haha I took a couple good swats from her. 

The dogs ended up dying because they were trying to protect who they loved most... something really tragic.. but also a blessing. it was a miracle that the bees had went after them and not Letty or her mom or the kids.. It was the saddest thing to see the dogs out there being tortured and stung by the bees. when they had rescued the dogs they had over 300 stings all over the body, but they did it out of love.

It made me think a lot about the love of our Savior Jesus Christ.. the love of our father in heaven.. 

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should notperish, but have everlasting life."  

In a round about way, the dogs were like our savior.. taking the stings of life upon them, so that the family was saved, so that they could continue on. And boy was it hard to watch the dogs out there helpless.. being stung by every tempation, sins, and affliction.. But the savior took upon all of our burdens, because of the LOVE he has for every single one of us..  In the end we were all saved, and we know the dogs will live again, just as our savior lives. how he is truly with us in every moment.. 

Sorry this letter is a little scrambled. haha I love you all! I hope your all looking forward to easter conference weekend like I am! LOVE YOU ALL.

Hermana Hobbs

Another visit to the temple with Hermana Duron

We love Hermana Zenteno

Love Hermana Lourdes too!

March 23

this week was seriously muchisimas mas mejor esta bien :) hahah thats been a joke going on in our district because in the area of our DL is a little pueblo and they were teaching a mayan man about the restoration and had asked him how he felt and thats how he responded. jaja. so hermana duron and i have been using that term a lot because truly in the work of our savior everything is muchísimas mas mejor esta bien. why? because we are áre part of his work.. and he loves us. 

we had lots of success this week! we found 10 new investigadors this week and many more blessings. Last night when Hermana Duron and I were reviewing the week we had we realized that truly we are just instruments in the Lords hands, that he always puts his children in our paths that we need to care for, his lost sheep. we are surrounded by people everyday.. but are we losing opportunities to teach or finding them? one cool experience of how we found Claudia.. I had contacted a lady on the  bus the other day who lives in the very far corner of our area. We were looking for her for a lonnnng time because she didnt give us her direccion completo. we were just going to come back another day because it was already dark. a member was with us who is preparing to leave on his mission and we have been "training" him as well. so we challenged him to contact this mom and daughter that were outside of their houses. he starts to talk to them and soon we are explaining about the church. the daughter who has probably 17 years soon nos pregunto why are there so many churches?? we started to bear testimony of the restoration.. ive taught that lesson so many times but never before in my life have i felt the spirit so strongly while testifying of the vision of joesph smith.. of how the lord has truly promised us that we will never be in darkness again.. how we truly have a prophet who guides us.. such simple truths, statements have such power to them. We are super excited to start teaching claudia!

as well with Lourdes and Carlos. I cant remember if ive told you about them?? Lourdes is a lady very very fun. she has a character muy fuerte. haha rejected us like the first 2 times we went but somehow we always winded up teaching her. shes a reference from hermana rubi romero, one of her clients who struggles with lots of different emotional things. i really love her! she was telling us how she was a lady full of problems, how shes very grosera, mala, and how lots of people dont fall well with her. she needs people to love her and thats what weve been doing. :) she came to church this week and had PROMISED us that she would not be saying one word because she is only a listener when soon is the gospel principles class she told the WHOLE story of how we found her, how we refused to drink coca cola how she hid in her house every time we came around, but that we wouldnt let her be! and so finally she agreed to listen to us and how she has never felt so happy or peaceful in any other place then the church. hermana rubi the gospel principles teacher had to cut her off becasue she cut into like 30 minutes of relief society. hahaha we love hermana lourdes!! 

we have a baptism scheduled for the 4 of abril! conferencia!! we are super excited. i wish i could write to you all about all the investigadores we have, about all the experiences im having, about the testimony i have about our savior jesus christ. i have never been more happy in my life. this is the hardes thing. in the beating sun, walking around, being rejected by many, but i have never been happier.. herman duron and i were reading in one of the missionary manuels about adjusting to the missionary life and the "demands" it has and we were laughing because they describe it very hard. we were like why are we doing this, why are we here?? because we love our father in heaven.. because we love our savior jesus christ. because like nikki said, we accepted this plan before we came here. we decided to give everything we are to this cause. we agreed to suffer a little bit so that we could learn, and reach our potential. and thanks to our savior jesus christ, thanks to the potencial that he saw in who we could be, in the love he had for us, we have this wonderful opportunity, this wonderful life! and we should be happy :) 

I love you all so much. I know that true happiness comes from the evangelio de jesucristo. I know that it comes from strict obedience, through hard work, and even through suffering. I know that the lord works mighty miracles through US his instruments. :) i hope you are all as excited for conference as I am!!! 

love you all!

hermana hobbs