Hello everybody!
Well life has been going fairly well. Elder Noll has been transferred and it was pretty weird to get a new companion. You just get so used to being with someone after a few months that change is weird. I don't know how else to describe it. My new companion is Elder Gomes and he is from Cape Verde off of West Africa. His native language is Portuguese and he is excited to not be covering the Portuguese assignment at this point. He has been out about a year and seems like a good guy. This will be my first companion from a different country so I am kind of excited for it. Plus now dinners can start making protien. I will actually get meat! haha, I didn't know how much I have missed a good pot roast or barbecue chicken or stuff like that until I started thinking about the things that would change after Elder Noll got transferred. Also, it will be an interesting experience to go introduce Elder Gomes to all of the people we are teaching and all the members because I think he is the first non-Caucasion missionary this area has ever seen. That will be very good. Not a whole lot new is really going on. We are playing the finding game and are so far losing terribly at it. So we need to pray harder and exercise more faith. Thomas, who was on date for baptism, has now fallen off. We finally were able to get out of him that he is not "legally" married, just "traditionally" married (whatever that really means to people from Sudan). It was hard to get him to understand the difference and why he still has the need to be legally married in order to live God's commandments. His wife has thrown up a fence because she only wants to be married in Sudan where her family is and so wants to wait a year until they can save up the money to fly home and get that done. Thomas isn't going to move out (they have kids) and he doesn't have the money too anyway. So there was one brickwall. I don't know how we are going to break through it yet, but we will keep teaching the gospel in their home and see if the Spirit can help them to change and become converted so they will get married. At least he is keeping the rest of the commandments including no drinking or coffee and paying tithing. But the marriage thing is the hold up. Life can't ever be too easy. Our apartment is sparkling clean! Elder Noll and I thoroughly deep cleaned all of it. All the floors, all the clutter, all the you-name-it and it looks awesome. There also happens to be a lot more room now that we got rid of all the junk that previous missionaries had left behind. There is something amazing about living in a clean home. Our landlords were very impressed as well (I don't think anyone had ever really cleaned that basement apartment before - not their kids or other missionares) and my goal is to keep it looking as good as possible. Well, that is my report this week. I love you all and pray for you all!
Elder Hughes