Email: January 16, 2017

Hi family!! 

Was kind of a strange week but in the end was good and i learned a lot! Oh man our president challenged us for this month to find lots of new people to teach, so sis gouveia and i wanted to participate in this. We knocked so many flipping doors this week that we both had dreams about it! every night we came home super tired but with a peace knowing we were trying to do all that we could. Man we also met this atheist that talked our ears off (but in the end we left a book of mormon with him and told him the only way he could return it to us was at church!) and jehovah witnesses that talked and talked and also just a bunch of peeps that didn´t like us buuut after every time sis gouveia and i talked about how the spirit was telling us the truth and our testimonies were strengthened!! we also tried contacting people from our area book and everything and in the end only found 2 new people to teach!! but they are really cool and we have lots of hope for them. i´m grateful for the spirit that is always helping me know what to say, where to go, and feel comfort!! 

haha this week i also gave a talk in church and translated for someone. and every week i lead the music. haha im grateful that sis lundberg taught me how. I was kind of nervous to give a talk but i think it went alright!

transfers came and i am staying with sis gouveia here in braga! first time im staying with my comp. im excited to see what this transfer has for me, the last one went by super fast. 

glad you guys are doing well! thanks for that thought about the atonement mom! i like to be happy and the atonement will help me! im praying for you guys! OOOOHHH and i received my grammy jammies and christmas package! thanks so so so much i love everything! a couple came to do an inspection and brought it to me (also i met elder and sister lam who have family that live in lindon, they are super cool!) so i immediatley tried on my jammies but had to wait until night to read the note so i could cry like a baby! 

love you guys! 

Sister Emma Hulsey

i promise i will send pics of my grammy jammies next week we forgot the cord to send the pics! 

Email: January 2, 2017

Querida Familia!

Oh sorry that you´re sick! everyone here is too, everyone has gripe. But sister gouveia and i are healthy so that´s a blessing! holy cow where did megan and ren  have this party. sounds like fun. Hope grandma Huggy called on new years. I can´t believe it is 2017 either! what a wonderful year 2016 was! i am jealous that you guys are teaching sunbeams, besides a missionary that is the best calling in the world. 

We had a great week and a very happy new year! we did some family nights this week which went really well! we had entire families participate! i love how the gospel of jesus christ that was restored through a prophet unites family! these are the miracles most special for me to see because i know that my family has been so blessed by this gospel. Through any hard time or whatever problem the gospel is the answer. Saturday night was interesting because our appointments fell through so we went to knock doors and pratically NO ONE was home. so we just kept trying and said we can contact peeps on the street but there was NO ONE on the streets. but we kept going and knocking but the miracle came the next day when we had 2 less actives and 2 investigators come to church, early in the morning after new years!! i was so happy to see them. oh at midnight there were SOO many fireworks it was super cool. 

I love you guys and i am excited to see what this year has in store for me! 

Sister Emma Hulsey

Email: November 29, 2016

Hello Family!

Sounds like you guys all had an awesome thanksgiving and black Friday. How great! Also that megan got her wisdom teeth out. Now she can be dumb with me. Wow and we will get 2 new cousins this year!!!! how awesome. oh man i can´t believe you guys already got my package, i only sent it like 2 weeks ago. Good job portugal mail system! I am glad caleb had a happy birthday and that the play for Adam went well. Oh good times at cookie night, and making cinnamon rolls with gma. 

It was a crazy and really great week! We had a really awesome zone conference. President talked a lot about how we cannot judge others. He had us do an activity where in 10 minutes we make a list of everything we have to repent of. All the missionaries had at least 10 things written. he suggested that we do this monthly and then throughout the month work on all of those things instead of worrying about other people´s lists. It was awesome! then we learned about how we can make every moment, appointment, or visit a sacred experience. This conference was on thanksgiving, and to our surprise we had a wonderful thanksgiving lunch! usually for conferences we always eat mcdonalds so it was a good surprise. I forgot my camera dang it but it was really good to see other missionaries. 

On friday night we received news that sister maingot would be transfered the following tuesday so we were preparing for that and then we received another call that it would be saturday and then another that it would be friday, so it was a bit complicated! this week she was finally given the news that she could walk for a little bit so we were glad we got 1 day to work with her! on saturday we worked hard and were able to teach a couple lessons and find new people to teach! and then on sunday we had 4 investigators come to church it was a miracle! This one guy  we contacted  on the street and he invited us to his house so we (tried) to teach him the first lesson and then he offered to give a prayer. I don´t know which religion he is from but wow it was interesting. We were given blessings and everything but the next day he showed up at church! He has a really great spirit. But in the end, yes sister maingot was transfered and we already miss her so much, but are excited that she can get back to work!  The Lord is really blessing us here! Our mission has a goal to have 25 baptisms by Christmas for the month of december, and sister barboza and i REALLY want to participate. We are excited to work hard this week to reach this goal. 

 I love it here. Sure some moments are hard but overall it is such a privilege to teach and testify all the time. To be honest i used to not really like teaching because it was hard and i never remembered the words or anything but now i look forward to it so much! I am really excited for the Christmas season. Also the video campaign the church has this year is BEAUTIFUL! be the light! i invite everyone to participate in this.

Love you guys and love our Savior Jesus Christ! 

Sister Hulsey

sister maingot e barboza surprised me with this 5 month lunch. They made chicken nuggets haha!!

  

Email November 21, 2013

Hello! 

Just to let you all know i love reading your letters every week! I am not good at writing letters, but just always remember that i love you all very much! and also that i love being a missionary. It is amazing how every day and every hour we can see miracles. We had a great week. We are having a hard time helping our investigators progress but we have a lot of faith that here shortly they will. We knocked a lot of doors this week and found quite a few new people to teach. On thursday we were able to teach the family of dani and after we knocked some doors. We found an old woman who when she answered she told us she was really sick and didn´t have any money. We told her we were just there to share some good news and we were able to teach her! the spirit was really strong. I told her how i had a brother who was very sick last year and the only source of peace we had was the savior. We are going to visit her again this week. And right after talking with her we found a woman in the street who was trying to get into this one house and couldn´t so we asked if she needed help and she said no but we continued to talk to her. After explaining who we were we asked if we could have her number to set up a time to visit her and she asked if we could share our message right then. HAHA it was awesome! she seems to have a lot of interest and we totes will visit her again this week. It seems to be just when we think our feet are going to fall off and we have no more energy the Lord blesses us to be able to teach a lesson. And somehow every morning we are ready to do it all again. Sister barboza and I had  a goal to talk with EVERYONE this week. The standard for our mission is 50 contacts a day and we want to reach that. Although it is difficult because we are always running late but we figured we could just try our best. Sooo we play this game where whoever passes one person has to contact the next 2 and then it just keeps doubling. it gets pretty fun. One time there was this man on the other side of the street that i saw coming so i told sis barboza i will go contact this one and ran across the street and then all the sudden he switched sides of the street so i did too and then he switched again. i tried really hard to talk with him but he wasn´t having it. Anyways i know the lord blesses our efforts! 

Also in church one of the speakers said something that really touched me. He asked us how would we fulfill our callings if Jesus were the bishop of that ward? it made me think what kind of companion or missionary would i be if my comp were jesus? anyways, the cool thing is when we don´t live up to our potential we always have the chance to try again. 

I hope you guys have a very happy thanksgiving and caleb HAVE A VERY VERY VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAAY!! i cannot believe he is 5. holy moly time is flying. Yeah i don´t think portugal celebrates thanksgiving :) but i will still eat a lot that day to celebrate. Hope black friday is awesome this year too!  I will pray for you. Tell all the family that i am very thankful for each of them and for the gospel of Jesus Christ! Love each of you very much! 

Love 

Sister Emma Hulsey

the only photo from this week! just a selfie as we are doing email :) haha

Email: November 7, 2016

Family! 

Sorry i don´t have a lot of time today.... but just know that i am happy and i love being a missionary. Portugal is such a strange and awesome place! It is getting pretty cold here but not too bad. Me and my companion just laugh all the time. wE SAW MANY miracles this week. Like 3 times we had lessons with investigators and the investigator invited friends and we taught them too! I am so glad you guys are doing well! I love serving with a brazillian, my language is getting better and i am a lot more focused! IF everything goes well this week, we will have another baptism this saturday! sorry i have to go but thanks for your letter! Love you ! 

Sister Emma Hulsey

Email: October 31, 2016

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!! 

This past week was probably the most crazy ever! With receiving a new companion (actually 2) and having a baptism things have been insane. BUT SO GOOD!  Well, i received 2 new companions. First, i work with sister Barboza. She is a hilarious brazillian who doesn´speak any English. The best was when i had to go find her, i was just wandering around alone riding on metros but all is well because somehow i found her! The other is sister Maingot, a sweet american who has the best attitude ever. She broke her leg. She lives with us but stays in the house all day. She is amazing. Both these sister are great and they have already helped me so much. Sister barboza is awesome, and i think my language is improving. She helps me learn a lot and we laugh at all the mistakes i make!  She is an amazing missionary. Both these sisters love their missions so much and are great examples for me.   I feel so happy this week and also i can understand how people love their missions. 

DANI WAS BAPTIZED!!! it was amazing. Things were absolutely crazy trying to plan everything and get everything ready for the baptism, but the lord blessed us and it was a beautiful service. Dani invited a ton of her family and we invited all the investigators we could and we had 28 investigators at the baptism! it was amazing. Me and sister barboza after ran around talking with all of her family and making plans to visit them in the future. It was awesome. Also it was just the coolest thing ever to see someone go through the process of completley changing their life to follow the savior. Dani had the biggest smile on her face when she came up out of the water. She also bore a very sweet testimony and will be such a strength for this ward! 

Other than the baptism we have been trying to find new people to teach. We have knocked some doors and i think it is so fun. I get so excited when people open up that i start talking really fast and the people don´t understand but then i just try again. I just get to bear my testimony twice! 

SO glad you guys are doing well. I can feel your prayers. I am loving being a missionary! it is the best. I love you guys! 

Sister Hulsey 

Email: October 24, 2016

Dear Family,

Loved reading your letter! We had a great week this week, filled with many miracles! We were able to bring a lot of members to our lessons this week, que benção! Also we had a family home evening this past tuesday and we watched the restoration film! i love that film! and joseph smith! every time i hear the story of joseph smith i learn something new! I gain a stronger testimony every time i watch that movie. It was very spiritual and a great family home evening! We were able to teach some great lessons with dona l and our other investigators this week. Also, we have been trying to contact this one family for weeks now and have not been able to get a hold of them or find them in their house. we randomly (no- through the spirit) decided this week to try one more time. As we were walking to their house we walked passed 2 guys. Me and sis nagliati both had the impression that those were the people we were looking for. Well, the guys ended up stopping us and it was d- the dad of the family! we were able to set up another appointment to come back and visit them. God is so good. 

Yesterday was stake conference for us and it was SO good. we talked a lot about how members need to help the missionaries. We were able to bring d and f! dona l was SO ready to go but of course she didn´t sleep well saturday night and she woke up with a lot of pain and stuff. She told us she had everything laid out ready to come with us - her dress, her bag everything. but in the end she couldn´t come! We were heartbroken but have faith that she will come this week. Rain or shine i am dragging her to church this week. She is really making a lot of progress, She is having a hard time changing because she is pretty elderly and pretty catholic. But little by little she is changing. She also has a very hard time remembering stuff and so she will say prayers but only if she can repeat our words. so in her prayer the other day we had her ask for help to leave virgin mary and she hesitated but said it! And then me and sis nagliati sneakily took 3 of her virgin mary pictures. The next day we explained she received and answer to her prayer! haha she said she is thinking of jesus a lot more now! yay for dona l.

Well transfers are coming tomorrow and i will be receiving a new companion.  sis Nagliati is going to be transfered. I am really sad to leave her, but it will be good. It is hard because we are having a baptism this friday! i have so many feelings. I am really nervous to have to lead the area agian, to try and prepare everything for the baptism, but i am glad i have this opportunity. I am learning.  . I know everything will work out to be good, i am just a little nervous!  The atonement is such a needed thing. I am beyond grateful for a savior. 

Sounds like you guys had a great week, how fun to keep up the tradition of lagoon. Looks like it was really fun. It is always nice to have a break from school. Thanks for activating my card. I hope this week goes well with our baptism on friday! keep praying for D! She is going to be such an amazing member, i just hope everything goes smoothly. I am glad i get to be a missionary, because every day and week i learn how much more we need a savior. I know that heavenly father sent his son because he loves us so much. He wants us to be happy now and forever. I hope we can all find more ways to rely on our savior and become more like him! 

Love you Guys,

Sister Emma Hulsey