Hello family!

well i put alot of what happened this week into my sound bite, so i wont have to say again what ive already said in the soundclip. that part is basically like a general thing about the week and all, if you are doing a blog you could totally throw it up there if you wanted, i dont know. 

mom,  jenny sounds like me. i always knew what was right and wrong, but i got frustrated sometimes that everyone else had all this spiritual understanding that seemed out of my reach. just help her to pray, and look for her responses. she needs to be like any investigator or anyone, she needs to look for help through prayer. so! about transferring, i think i could get into byu provo. one thought: with this new missionary age, i think byu provo would be in higher demand for students right now, so maybe i could just go straight to there! please look into it for me, we´ll talk more on tuesday. 

dad, that was really nice how you did that for the young men with the preach my gospels and such. you are reminding me of brother millet, who did simple but heartfelt things like this, and i remember it made all the difference. one time he brought me and joe out to ritas, just to talk. something so simple, but i remember how i knew he wanted the best for us. thats what youre doing with them! also, i feel like my entire life has been this sort of furnace of growing. like i just got transferred to apucarana, and its better here, im happier, and its wayyyy harder in regards to missionaries. but like you said, its all preparing me for the next step. my favorite talks have always been those of elder eyring, about always preaparing for the hard times. its my entire life, but thats the way it has to be. i just want to have a wife who can help me through it, that would be a nice help. i really appreciated that quote by president faust, im always loving those type of quotes!

so basically my new area is sweet, as you will hear in the sound clip, and on tuesday. about the skype call..

the time slot that i have been given is 5:00 in the afternoon my time, is that ok? i hope it can work out for you, were using it at the house of the district president, and my companion and one other are going at 4, so its for me to be at 5. i hope that works! its not possible for me to do it at 1 because of lunch, or 7 because i have a dinner that members are giving me. so 5 oclock my time! if thats ok

i wrote down the skype name, and exactly 5 you guys wil be getting a call! i am way excited. 

so this area is basically all hills, all hills! my companion is awesome! he is taller than me (just like one inch), and we are pretty similar in personality, so its really nice. 

i am having trouble being happy recently, and im trying to find it, but its hard. its not like im consciencally sinning or anything that would bring that. i honestly feel like alma, or basically any prophet in the book of mormon. it feels like my soul is being weighed down, or like elder eyring says, being streched. president eyring said that sometimes we have so many mountains that it seems like our soul is being stretched, and thats how it grows. well thats how i feel. so im trying to be happier and all.

i love you guys, and today is christmas eve! its way hot, but that doesnt mean im going to eat lots of sweets, listen to christmas music. also, this morning i was teaching the missionaries in my house to waltz slash swing dance, and that was entertaining. 

i miss you guys, alot. im not getting necessarily "trunkie", but i am already 2 thirds done with my mission, and i only have 8 months left. this is the home stretch, and its going to be the hardest 8 months on my mission (thats the way it always is, the next month is harder, but thats not a bad thing), and so im really excited to be able to just like come home after all of it and see you guys. i also cant wait to study whatever i want in regards to the gospel. 

so thats about all i got for this email, im trying to figure out how ill organize my thoughts in the soundbite and the email, but whatever! until tomorrow, when i get to see you guys for the first time in a year and 5 months! so 5 oclock my time, i really hope its ok for you guys, that was the best i can do. the call is only able to be 40 minutes long this year, but i need to obey because i need any blessing possible. until tomorrow!

Elder Hoskin

so i dont have too much time with transfers and all today, but i am going to let you know a bunch of stuff in order to get everything in order.

i am getting transfered! finally. i am going to apucarana, a city an hour out of londrina. it is the oldest district in brazil, because all the other ones have become stakes, but this one never managed to. so thats going to change! i will have time info and all about the christmas call next week, but i need you guys to tell me the availibility of time. i imagine that it will be in the afternoon, but that is just a general guess.

so onto ther missionary work type of things, we have a white christmas "natal branco" at our church, where we basically had a ton of baptisms together, and made a big event out of it. it was great, the chruch is true, those are other photos of my zone as well..

this week me and elder thomas just worked in the area of an elder called elder griner, the really blonde white one. his companion had health problems for the last 4 weeks, and this was his last transfer, and he was way depressed that they couldnt work slash baptize someone. so last week, his companion got sent to stay in the mission office with the secretaries till he gets better, and me and elder thomas went to his area the whole week, and found someone to baptized. i can explain more at the christmas call, but it was basically one of the best experiences in my mission, going to help him end his well.

i love you guys

Elder Hoskin

ps, i havent gotten grandmas or your package yet, but it should get here real soon.

Hello family! 

Dad, thats sad to hear that hockey may not happen this year. Without me being selfish, if it has to happen, im willing to accept it this year. it sounds like the stake choir went really well. that is CRAZY about the increase of missionaries in the mission, especially with regards to the sisters. its going to change the dynamics of all the missions! thats awesome that Amanda murray is going on a mission! i hope the best for her. that scripture she used in john 14:18 is one of my favorite bible scriptures, which is a nice coincidence. 

mom, i havent gotten my packages yet, maybe today because we have two elders who have to go to londrina and back today. so if its there, ill get it today. anyways, i wont use anymore money, this week was rough because we had to pay for a lot of stuff with all the work that went around opening a new area and moving all the stuff. i am needing to buy more garments, but that will literally be the last thing i use money for for a while, so its all good. also, garments are cheap. i have had a ton of experiences like you did, where peopel say stuff that makes no sense, and you would never imagine saying anything like that. its a test of patience, i just hope there werent investigators listening. 

so! there arent enough computers for all of us to use them at the same time, so im going to have to be relatively short in my email.

basically this week has just been a bunch of chaos, like last week. i worked in my area just one day today, because we have been with another missionary there in another ward in maringá. 

we had a family come to church this week, olivio and juliana with their little kid. they are awesome! they need to get legally married in order to be baptized, which means that i wont be here to see their baptism, but whats important is that they will be. they totally got to know everyone in the ward and everything, and they loved church, so they are going to start attending weekley now, and this week we are going to go with bishop over to their house and make some more concrete details on their marriage dates and all!

that was like the best part of my week. this last month has been the most stressful of my life. there are alot of missionaries with certain things going on which will remain nameless, but at least i am getting to talk alot with Presidente Tavares.

this last week was christmas conference! that went extremely well. our mission president gave a presentation on the atonement of jesus christ that was one of the more spiritual experiences of my mission. i remember lehi, when he had his vision, he went back to his house exhausted, and went right to his bed. well the day after i was sooo tired, it was ridiculous!

also, the wife of president tavares asked me to sing a duet with a sister, like an hour before we had to. we sang as the last song after al the training "lord i would follow thee" in portuguese. it went well! i was nervous, its not like ive ever sang for anything, but i think it was alright.

so this week was really rushed, and this next week seems just the same. i am 100% sure that i am leaving next week, just to give you a heads up. i cant say negative things about anything in the emails, but there are problems in about every area in our zone, with missinaries. as i was talking to president again yesterday, he told me "when tranfers come, you wont have to deal with these exact problems anymore, but you will still have other problems as you lead other missionaries" so im going to get a little head start on packing my bags. 

i love you guys! sorry i couldnt write more! until next week

Elder Hoskin

Hello! 

Dad, i think that america has so many good traditions, that its easier to do activites with the youth or in general in church. for example, you made wreaths, and i dont even know what people here would do as a christmas activity. i didnt get to see that christmas devotional, but im sure it was great! here in this city, there are a ton of christmas lights, which was not happening there in marilia, so that a good thing. about the only sign i have of christmas here! yes, that was my companion in the picture i sent. that sounds like the temple was wonderful! we will totally do that once im home. 

momma, i didnt see the devotional, but i read a talk by elder eyring a couple of weeks ago called gifts of love, that talked about how to give a gift with love, and talked about christs gift to us and all that, so yeah ahah. that is truly a universal truth, and axiom as ayn rand calls it. people think capitalism means big business, and taking over an industry. but its really justy making something for yourself. thats why wee need practice, nothing is or should be free. just like if you were to practice and become a tennis pro, or i was to design and build my own house by myself, we can also look back on years of activity in the church (or in my case, the mission) and see the testimony we have developed, and how we are progressing. i have a quote by Elder Maxwell that is one of my favorites. he says that in a mortal world, we are immortals commanded to live immortal principles. woo!

so, this week was one of the craziest weeks on the mission. let me start out with some inital things to say so that mom or no one gets scared. i am completely unharmed, as well as my companion, or the people we were in the car with, or anyone else. 

but! yesterday, i got into one of the more serious car accidents of my life. let me explain!

so i got to church 9 am on sunday, and got a call from the missionaries in cianorte, one of the outlying cities that is part of our zone. they had a baptism that was arranged for the branch president to do the interview, because of the distance from us, but that same morning one hour before church his wife went into labor, and had the baby. so, because of this, we had to find a way to interview the baptismal candidate.

so there was an older couple who were in the other ward who shares the same ward building as us, who knew the woman being baptized and were going to drive up there to see the baptism. so we asked them for a ride, and traveled the hour and a half with them by car up there. the baptism went really well, it was all spiritual, i did the interview (ps, i am doing tons of interviews lately! just this weekend i had 7, i am getting proficient at it), and all went really well.

so we ate lunch there, and started on home like 2:30.the car ride was just like the one out there, and about halfway home it started to rain alot, and the woman who was driving was sort of driving fast. anyways, we are on the highway, and we get to a part where we are like 10 minutes out of Maringá, and there is a semi truck that is in front of us, going really slowly because its a semi truck. so there were like 8 or 9 cars behind it, including us, and the woman who is driving the car decides to drive on that part of the road that is on the side of the road, its not really the street, but still is asphalt. where when you pull over, you stay. 

so she went on that in an effort to pass some cars, and eventually the semi truck, and she did that 2 times, each time it went well, she passed one or two cars, whatever. so she does it a third time (my companion is sleeping) and while she is side by side with a car going in the same direction, we see up ahead a part of the side of the road that is wayy raised up, like a huge bump. 

so we all start sort of freaking out as we see it, and she cant pull back into the road because shes side by side with a car. so we go over it, and you hear this horrible noise right underneath the car, and then once we pass it the car starts turning lightly in the direction of the field slash ditch on the right side of the road, and she yanks at the steering wheel to correct herself. as she does this, we stop curving to the right (the field), and fly to the left, where we cross both lanes of highway, in doing this, we hit another car that is coming in the opposite direction of the side of their car, and then pass, continue drifting accross the highway to the right, drift off the road, and into a ditch, where a tree stops the momentum of the car (see the other picture,of that silver car in the grass. i was seated inthe back with my companion)

and so thats basically how it happened. i am completely fine, and i know that i was protected by the lord. when we went in to the ditch, i felt the feeling like we were going to roll, the car i mean, but the tree that was there stopped us from doing so. the car was really small, and i am tall, and so the car not rolling really was a life saving blessing.

so i called President and Sister tavares afterwards to tell them about everything that went down. president tavares told me this "Elder Hoskin, i promise you that your life was saved, and the others with you, only because you and your companion are following the rules of the mission and the commandments. it is because of this that you were protected" crazy, right?! the more i think of it, there are so many small details that if they would have been changed my only fractions of seconds or things like that, it would have been a whole lot worse. if it was delayed a half a second, we would have hit the car going in the opposite direction head on, ect. but i am ok! i know the lord protects me. so that was a nice experience, what matters is that we baptized.

onto the next great part, so monday night my companion was opening his journal, and he opened it, and there was a bug that jumped onto his hand, without him realizing. he then went to casually itch his eye, and the bug released some sort of liquid directly into his eye. he said that it burned like nothing else before in his life, and he started screaming, literally doing anything to wash it or get the pain out, he was going nuts! so i called Sister tavares, and then called a member (this was 10 oclock at night), and we went to the hospital, where the doctors washed out his eye for like 20 minutes. well, it literally burned the skin around his eye, and luckily they washed his eye. his vision was blurry for about 2 days, and now its almost all better. he couldnt go out in the sun for 3 days, and even after has had to use sunglassed for a week, and has a burn mark on the skin around his eye. crazy, right?

third part of the week, the assistants to the president are working in all the zones on the mission, so this week was our turn here. the entire week, i worked in my area only sunday night 6pm to 9pm. all the other time, i was either in the hospital with my companion, traveling and getting into a car accident, or in other areas in our zone, helping missionaries, interviewing investigators for baptism and all that. it has been one of the craziest weeks on the mission! 

whats important is that im okay, and doing well. i love you guys, have a great week! and dont get worried, its all done. on monday morning last week, i prayed for mountains like elder eyring did, and oh how they came! i love you guys! have a great week, and until next week!

Elder Hoskin