Good morning everybody!
Life is amazing! This past week has been one of the fastest and busiest of my mission! I don't know where all these blessings came from, but I am eternally grateful for them and the experiences they have given me. We were able to find quite a few familes to start teaching this past week - all of which are honest, sincere seekers of truth. No more of these bashing, hating on Mormon people! We started to teach Chance Johnson. He is an unbaptized 9 year old who has been attending church regularly with his aunt for the past 3 months. His mom is currently in prison and finally gave her consent for him to be taught and baptized, which is his heart's greatest desire. Teaching him is like teaching a nursery class though - very little information, a lot of repeating, and everything is as simple as we can get it. He is mostly deaf and has a hard time speaking. He also suffers from severe ADHD and so it is very hard to keep his attention focused on anyone thing for more than 3 or 4 minutes. It has been fun though to try to teach as simply as possible, get down to the bare basics of the doctrines needed to understand for baptism. He also suffers from short term memory loss - he very much reminds me of Dori in Finding Nemo the way that he acts and speaks and does things. It's not bad, just different than anything I have ever done on my mission. We really love him a lot though and he is set to get baptized on February 5 after his uncle gets back from Surprise, AZ so he can baptize him. Another family is the Garcia family. They are both not members but walked up to the bishop while he was shoveling his sidewalk and asked to be taught about the gospel. We were so excited but it took us so long to find them! They live in a mostly Hispanic home and there has to be about 30 people living there - 5 or 6 families. Everyone that lives on the top floor where the front door is had no idea what we were talking about. Finally we got someone and pointed to the bishop's house and asked for who wanted to be taught - they led us to a door in the backyard and we finally met Sister Garcia. She and her husband have been very prepared for the gospel and really want God and the church in their lives right now. Both of them were soaking in the scripture we shared on Sunday and were excited for us to come back this evening. They are amazing! We also starting teaching a Native American lady named Juanita and her two daughters. Juanita has been meeting with missionaries for over the past 20 years before she moved into the apartments that she lives in now. I don't know how she has managed to not get baptized for so long - the Spirit was there so strong last night as we bore our testimonies and shared about the Book of Mormon. She gave us a little test though asking us why we were on our missions. We all answered truthfully and apparently passed the test because she set up a return appointment. She said she hates "fake" missionaries and that you can always tell the missionaries who lie about their testimonies and who aren't out for any of the right reasons. We all bore simple, humble testimony though and apparently that was what she was hoping for. She broke down in tears towards the end of the lesson and agreed that she deserves to be in this church and to get an answer about the gospel. She doesn't feel worthy of it though or that other people in the church will accept her - she doesn't trust anyone. She barely trusted us after feeling the Spirit so strongly last night. We are excited to keep teaching her and working with her, but she has some major struggles ahead of her, I fear so we will see what happens.

In other news, Sherry Thomas has finally managed to get Sundays off so she can attend church this Sunday and shooting for baptism on the 29th of January. She is so excited for baptism and has a strong testimony of the gospel and Book of Mormon. It was great to finally see her put her faith in God and ask for Sundays off and have the belief and promise that she will still be provided for in the future. It took her a long time to get to that point, but it was a miracle and blessing to watch her get there.

The Beckstead family is doing great as well. They are loving the scriptures, praying, coming to church, you name it they have turned around 180 degrees and are now accepting and embracing it. What a miraculous change! We hope to be able to get Gavin - their unbaptized 9 year old - baptized this Sunday after church is over. Then to keep working with the whole family to help them get to the temple sometime in the next year. They are amazing and we love them as well.

We are also meeting with a man named Steve Wright. He is from Texas and a Baptist. But when we went over the Restoration of the gospel last week, I really think he was struggling to hold back tears. He accepted the Book of Mormon and was excited to start reading it and praying to find out if it is true or not. He believed everything we went over with Joseph Smith and where the Book of Mormon came from and was so happy to finally learn the truth that Joseph Smith didn't write the Book of Mormon but translated it. His face lit up when we read that from the Introduction page and he got excited about it.

Jennifer Golson, a less active member, is excited to attend church this Sunday. She fed us dinner on Monday night because she wanted to give us something in return for helping her find the gospel again. She has been praying constantly for the past few weeks and her face has really started to change and light up. That is one of the coolest parts of being a missionary is seeing that transition on people's faces as they start to swith from dark to light and the smile that comes with it.

In other news, I got the fruit box from Sister Hord. Boy, was that a surprise when she called me, haha. She just dropped the fruit off at my apartment and I got it later in the evening last night. I was so excited to open it and see what was on the inside! I am going to be pigging out on grapefruit for as long as I can! And oranges! Delicious! No more of these cheap supermarket oranges that taste so nasty, but the real stuff! We were also having a heat wave with temperatures in the 40's the past few days, it was great because we didn't have the car. Today though, it is snowing and snowing quite a bit so as always Utah proves to be bipolar and shift back and forth between weather patterns. Biking the past week though was really great and we are all sore from it, we have also been working out pretty good in the mornings. I do 100 situps, 500 crunchies, and about 20 minutes of running or jumping rope or doing stairs. I don't think I have sweat so much in my life as I have the past week from doing all those things! Swimming was so much easier and you never felt gross, haha. But I am enjoying it and it has made a big differnce - I have more energy throughout the day and can sleep a little bit better at night. Also throw in some lunges and shoulder workouts as well. I still can't do a push up - my shoulder kills me after doing 3 and it hurts for the whole next day and half. So I stopped doing those and just do stuff that doesn't hurt. I am ready to never eat sherbert again in my life! Every dinner appointment we get more sherbert because that is about the only dessert that Elder Noll can eat, which is fine and great. But the family doesn't ever want to eat it, so they make us finish the whole half gallon before we leave, lol. So after my mission, I will avoid sherbert at all costs. That and I have discovered how much I truly love eating meat and how much I miss it. But at least lunch and dinner I can get a protein kick from making my own food. It is not bad, but I could never be a good vegetarian, or at least a happy one haha. That is still crazy to me that everyone is starting to come home and the difference it makes. I am so not ready for that moment yet - there is way to much work still to do! I hope everyone is doing well and loving life!
Much love and prayers,
Elder Hughes