From: Kyle Hudgins <kyle.hudgins@myldsmail.net>
Subject: ¡Hola!
Date: December 12, 2011 7:22:24 AM MST

Hey everyone back at home, I hope everyone is doing good and getting ready for the Christmas season! Anyway, this week was another tough one. I still can´t understand everyone very well but its getting better every day so thats good. I´m starting to participate more in appointments. I can understand pretty well when we are talking about gospel stuff but not really when its just every day conversation. I hate to say it but this week was a little dissapointing. We had distirict conference yesterday. President Peterson came down, the whole district presidency and an area 70 we all there for the conference. Elder Clark and i spent most of the week sending out invitations to the menos activo families. We thought we made some pretty good progress and were expecting at least some of them to show up to the conference. Unfortunately we only had 4 people total (Presidente Ganga and his wife and another regular member and his daughter) make the 30 min trip to Esquel for the conference. It just sucked. Even though none of the menos activo families didn´t show up i hope our presence and us talking with them will make them a little more willing to go to church in the coming weeks. One familiy we talked to, the mother found a new job so now we will be able to reteach the lessons a again and hopefully get them going to church.

There is a lot of work to do here. The members are a little wish washy and most of them are old and feel like they have already done what they need to do and can rest now. I wish we had more people at the conference because thats what they stressed a lot. MEMBERS NEED TO HELP DO MISSIONARY WORK! just a message for everyone at home.

Anyway we had a couple cool experiences this week. We were doing service at this guys house (menos activo). He is like 95 and his daughters are always there and they are way nice. We shared a message at the end and invited the daughter to listen. We talked about prophets and the restoration a little and she agreed with it. She said to come back on Tuesday so that she can give us lunch and wash our clothes. Also the other day we were meeting with another hemana (another menos activo) and she had a friend there. We shared the message of the restoration and she said that she would like to listen to our lessons. So hopefully those go through well. I haven´t really taught too many lessons yet and don´t have many new investigators but now with conference out of the way hopefully we can find some.

So with Christmas i know i can use skype on Christmas day. If you could make a skype account for me and set it all up that would be sweet. Im not exactly sure what time yet. I´ll probaly go up to Esquel for that because i don´t think any of the computers here have cameras.

So yeah. Hope I have some better news next week. Just gotta keep on working. Gotta keep experimenting on ways to get this branch going! I know we will find a way.

Les amo,
Elder Kyle Hudgins

Kyle Hudgins <kyle.hudgins@myldsmail.net>
Subject: Well, missions are hard!
Date: December 5, 2011 7:14:24 AM MST

This sure has been a crazy week. Its crazy to think that im in argentina right now. It is definitely a shock. When i was in the airport, i was just like thinking oh my goodness what im i doing i cant understand anyone! And i still cant understand anyone! it is very frustrating. We have had a few lessons and i haven´t said anything in them because i have no idea what people are saying. It is probably the hardest thingk i have ever had to do. But really i have only been working for a couple days now. im just being impatient. I know it will come with time, i just want to know it now! But yeah Trevelin is pretty awesome. But there is so much work to do here. Its a very small branch here. yesterday at church we only had 25 people there. There are like 15 menos activo familias that our branch president Predidente Ganga has been really stressing us to get to work on. Pres. Ganga is very concerened about the work here. The members of the branch do really do a lot to help out with missionary work. He feels that the only poeple that do that is him and the missionaries. We are a little by ourself here in Trevelin. The district president who is in Esquel hardly ever comes here to a sacrament meeting and he is just very stressed out because of all the work. There is a lot to do, we just need to change some things that we are doing around here. But thats really hard for me when i can´t understand people and can´t speak very well.

Anyway, yesterday was pretty awesome day at church. We had a confimations of an hermana who was baptized last week. She had been investigating the church for 20 years and finally got baptized last week. It was really cool to be part of the confirmation. Also yesterday in tesitmony meeting i felt that is would be a good idea to introduce myself to the brach. It was my first testimony i have given in spanish in sacrament. I was a little nervous but Elder Clark said that is was perfect spanish so that was cool. Elder Clark is a pretty awesome guy. He is from washington and has been out here for about a year. We have been getting along really well and we are doing our best to change this branch around.

I had my first Argentine meals this week. All in all pretty good. On saturday we had lunch at pres. ganga´s we had this raviolli stuff and it was really good. Elder Clark said thats pretty much the norm. Yesterday to break our fast we had chicken milanesa. Its like chicken fried steak but with chicken. It was really good. So yeah im pretty excited about the food here. The milk is delicious and so is the cheese.

Well i hope you have an awesome week, i love you all!

Les amo
Elder Kyle Hudgins