2nd Week in the Provo MTC

Elder Armstrong, Elder Hurley, Elder Kitchens and Elder Frame

Provo MTC Missionary Group

Elder Hurley & Elder Armstrong

Provo MTC Companions

May 25, 2011

Hey everyone!

It's good hearing from all of you. Glad to hear courts got my letter. I love you all and I'm doing great. My visa must've went through since I already have my flight plans. Leaving June 1st , my flight leaves at 6 AM then goes to dallas then miami then I arrive in Lima at 9:20 pm. I think I get to call you at the airport which would be early, hopefully i can get you more info on that before its time. Thanks for all the stuff, the popcorn was way delicious. Don't send me any more treats haha I'm gunna explode with all the food. Mom I got my typhoid shot and immunizations are good. I have enough cash and there is an ATM here too. My missionary mall fanny pack thing still hasn't come so maybe you could check on that. A rain jacket may be nice to have, but i think I'll be fine without it. Dad thanks for your letters. Pres. Mortenson is awesome I love him. I'm excited for the change and crappy smells of peru. It made me happy to hear max was missing me. Give him a kiss for me. And ma so you know P day is just like any other day really haha. Hard work. Except we get to go to the temple which is awesome. But we have classes and this thing called TRC from 6 on too. Elder Armstrong and I are doing great, another Elder complemented us and wanted to know how we were proggressing so fast. Elder Armstrong is from Arizona, he comes from a big yours mine and ours family he being the ours. Its fun to play B-ball with him every day pretty much. Except yesterday he hurt his ankle which is no good. Whit thanks so much for your letter I loved hearin from you. That would be awesome to read your blessing, if you send a copy, do it before I leave to Peru in a week or it might get difficult. Loved hearing from courtney and Matt and everyone. Love you all.

This week was pretty amazing again. We learn so much and it's a lot of hard work. We have 3 "investigator's" and its really hard and good to find out what they need. One of them is one of my teacher acting as herself before she was converted to the church, which is way cool. Have courtney tell you bout miguel. He's interesting, he kicked us out one time, even after he said he'd be baptized. But He has a lot of faith. and Edwuardo is a quite man who lives with his girlfriend and works on a farm all day every day. We're teaching edwuardo and flor (my teacher) compeltely in spanish which is really good practice. Miguel speaks spanish but understands our english haha, he is progressing fast and said he'll "try" to keep the word of wisdom. There is a lot of surprise factor here at the MTC maybe they do that to keep it interesting haha. But for church, everyone in the branch prepares a talk in spanish, and then after the sacrament president mortenson randomly calls someone out of the audience, haha kinda scary but awesome. Haven't talked yet. Also we don't know who speaks at the devotionals or firesides until we are there. Yesterday we had the opportunity to hear from Elder Russel M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve. When he walked in we all stood up and I could feel the spirit. His spirit filled the room and I know he is a true apostle of God. He said we will be safer on our missions than we would be if we were at home going to school. Hope this gives you comfort ma :). His wife talked mostly on obedience, and a brother on sunday spoke on this too, saying we need to be exact, even sleeping from 10:30 to 6:30 a full 8 hours. Before this Elder armstrong and I would wake up 30 min. early to do push ups and sit ups and stuff but now we sleep till 6:30 haha. Obedience brings blessings, exact obedience brings miracles (sister nelson) My teacher hermana perzioni is really good at finding investigators. This thing called TRC is all members that act as investigators, except Hermana got permission to get a bunch of real investigators. So tonght me and elder armstrong are teaching a real investigator from peru who doesn't speak any english. Scary and exciting! It should be awesome though. The time is flying by so fast here it is crazy. Oh yeah I got to sing in choir for Elder Nelson too. I love to sing. We sang the song "this is the Christ" which is an amazing song that Pres. Faust wrote the lyrics to. One line that stuck out was something like" how many drops were shed because of me?" It focuses on the atonement and it's true. Christ Shed drops of blood for every single person, RIghteouss, wicked, short tall, everyone. It's important to remember this as we look at our fellow siblings. In my patriachal blessing it says I sang in the choirs in heaven and singing on earth brings feelings of my pre earth life. As I sang on sunday I truly felt this feeling. I love it so much. The gospel is really simple. In the mission we teach the simplicity of the gospel really, faith, repentence, baptism, holy ghost, and enduring to the end. We are mostly all at the enduring part. I Invite anyone who reads this if there is anything amiss in your life to just fix it with the help of Christ and continue to endure to the end. You will be so much more happy. We are all followers of Christ. I love you all so much and wish I could write more but I only have a minute left. Love you

Elder Hurley

1st Week in the MTC

Hello Everyone!

The first week here at the MTC has been amazing! You guys can all email me from this email which ischristopher.hurley@myldsmail.net. However while I'm in the MTC I would suggest using dear elder throughout the week instead because I only get thirty minutes to email, and don't want to use up all that time reading letters while I could be writing more. So dearelder is best for now and it has been great hearing from all of you. if you do email that is still great i'm pretty sure i can print it off.

some housekeeping stuff:

could someone send me courtneys email so I can email her? I would love that. Also mom my favorite scripture for the plaque is second nephi: 31:20-21. I loved the package! thanks mom. I'm not sure what to do with the tupperware though so i may try to mail that back or something. If you could, I need some more regular t-shirts and more white socks. Any shirts my size are good from the closet, and maybe 3-4 more white socks. we work out every day, and we do service once a week, and stuff so these items would be much appreciated if you could get them to me. My shoes came from mish mall. still waitin for the pack though. I really like the backback so thanks so much!! If you want (i'll be fine without) but I have really been using that 5 star mead notebook that we got from walmart, it has no hole punches but the pages rip out, and it is perfect for taking notes and stuff, so if you could get me another one of those that would be awesome. its smaller than regular size paper.

MTC itself:

Really awesome being here. The food is really good but I think I am doing a good job at keeping my diet balanced. Gym time is always fun. I think basketball is my favorite. played some horseshoes too ha ha so thats fun. Me and Elder Armstrong get along really well and have similar work ethics. I think we work harder than anyone in our district haha. we mostly have classes all day long which I heard from many people is really boring and long but I have absolutely loved the classroom. Our teachers hermon jarman and hermana perzioli are so great. Its so fun to improve my spanish and learn better teaching skills. speaking of spanish..

the spanish:

I am excelling really fast at learning the language already. I remember so much from high school here its crazy! and when I learn new things I remember them usually here. It is truly awesome. Yesterday me and Elder armstrong taught the first lesson to some elders in spanish. I didn't memorize but I actually taught it in my own words (in spanish). It was really cool. Tonight we have a thing called TRC where we contact investigators and teach them. Normally the first four weeks are in english, but our district is teaching it tonight in spanish. I think they are pushing us harder partly because me and elder armstrong are leaving in two weeks. which is awesome. The other district in our zone has been here for 5 weeks and tonight is their first time teaching it in spanish. So i am very confident that I can learn this language and it is really fun to speak in it. I will try speak mostly english when I write you guys though. Herman perzioni (our teacher) doesn't speak any english. So we thought. Everyone said she didn't and the first few days she really didn't, and she didn't understand anything we said, and we had to teach her (as a mock investigator) in spanish the second day here!, (because she doesn't understand english). Eventually she told us one day that she does speak english. I told her to keep speaking in spanish haha. it was SOO funny though, when she started speaking in english for the first time, one of the elders in my district thought that he was receiving the gift of tongues and understanding spanish perfectly and speaking it. hahaha! even though it was english. But I carry around my dictionary everywhere and if I don't know a word I look it up which is a good habit. I really like singing in spanish so that would be a good think if you want to send me something, i would enjoy listening to the hymns in spanish. Elder Armstrong and I are really learning fast though and at this rate I think by the time I get to peru I will feel pretty confident with it. It was kind of cool though, one of the elders came up to us the other day and told us the reason we were learning so fast is because we had the spirit with us and he has seen that. I know this is so true and it is so much easier to learn with the spirit. speaking of spiritual..

spiritual:

I think that is so awesome that whitney got her patriachial blessing! if she wants I would love to read it. I don't think I ever had a chance to read courtneys either. But last week during the MTC i was feeling kind of bummed, because I was expecting to feel the spirit very very strongly. I prayed I would each day, but I wanted to feel what I felt the day before I came in with the stake pres. I was impressed to read my blessing. I felt the spirit so strongly as I read and God really knows us. I have felt the spirit so strongly ever since this. I don't have much time left, but someone forward this to matt, tell him I'll write him personally when i get time and he doesn't need to write more than once a week. I have so much more to say but I will get it next week or in a letter. love you guys so much and i hope you know I am doing really well. Love all, serve all

Elder Hurley

Missionary Farewell (Mother's Day 2011 5/8/11 )

Aunt Hollie and Aunt Heather

aunt Jacque, Christopher and sister-in-law Cristyn

Some friends who came to support me

Here they are again

Christopher, Ty and Courtney

Jaylie, Whitney, Kynlee

Some people who came to my farewell!

Grandma & Grandpa Holt, Grandma Richards,

Corinne, Jessica and Mr. and Mrs. Mull

Me, My Momma and My Sista

Get me to the MTC today . . . I'm ready to go!

Delicious Dessert Bar!

The day Christopher entered the MTC was a special day for me as his mom. I took the day off work so we could spend our last few hours together before he left. Shawn made him waffles with strawberries and whipped cream. We went through his suitcases to double check he had everything. We met Shawn at the hospital to visit grandpa Hurley who had just had surgery on his foot. There were some specialists in Grandpa's room so we had to wait a while before we could visit. Matt had met us at the Alta View Hospital and we had some time to visit. It was nice from a mom's perspective to watch my 2 sons interact in those final moments before a 2 year separation would occur. Those boys adore each other and I never realized how much until it was time to say good bye. We visited with grandpa who had his usual sense of humor. Then it was time to head to Missionary Mall to pick up Chrisopher's 2nd pair of shoes, and his book bag. All the way to the freeway we sat next to Matt at every single stop light. One more chance to say good bye to Matt about 5 times. (5 lights) It appeared harder and harder every time. I would roll down my window to see if there was any thing else he wanted to say, and Christopher teased me that I was twisting the knife in Matt's heart having to say Good Bye one more time. We then got on the freeway and Matt had to go to work so off to the Missionary Mall we went. I took a cute picture of Christopher in front of the Map wall pointing to his mission. It was perfect! We then went to JCW's near the MTC to wait for the rest of the family. Whitney was coming from work on her lunch break, and Shawn was checking Courtney out of school a little early. It was nice to visit about how Christopher was feeling about life! He was so excited to leave on his Peruvian Adventure he couldn't stand it. We saw several other missionaries there entering the MTC that day as well. One dad teased Christopher that he wasn't supposed to get dropped off at the MTC by his girlfriend. That made us laugh! Soon everyone arrived and it was time for the big goodbye. Whitney and Courtney jumped in the care with us and Tom drove to meet us separate. They don't give us much time, so we tried to say our good bye's before we got into the car. We pulled up at the MTC, there were guards and other missionaries waiting to gather his stuff, one last hug and off they went. It was a somber moment, but we knew Christopher was doing what he had waited his whole life to do... serve a mission!