January 13

Dear FAmily,

Sounds like everything is fun back hom huh! it's been pretty cold over here still but is recently been warming up. haha I keep getting tempted to buy warm clothes but then tell myself no cuz I just have a few weeks left but it's in the 60's and 70's now so I've been loving it.

This week was pretty fun we had our family we've been teaching show up to church and they will be planning on getting baptized this Sunday to come. We will also be working with 2 other people who will be baptized this Sunday that have been coming to church we'll just need to work out some commandment issues and with the other one we are just working on meeting with him he's a busy guy.

I've so far loved Elder Hill as my companion he's a great guy and very diligent so we've been working really hard together and have been very involved with our zone. We are still arguing who would have won that championship game if jordan would have beat Bingham my junior year. haha

 We got special permission to go to McAlllen this past Sunday to have Elder Hill do a baptism for a couple he had taught down there and it was a good trip we rode with a member who was a gangster and a guy who had been in prison for over 10 years.... haha it was a fun little trip and to tell you the truth a pretty spirtiual one we got to hear the story of both of their lives changing and the influence of the missionaries in their lives it built my testimony on the doctrine of repentance. My favorite part of the whole thing was that they never knew the missionaries names(when missionaries strories are recounted in conference you seldom hear the names of the missionaries) and as I thought of that I told them that that was my favorite part and the reason behind that is cuz there's only one name on our badge that matters for the two years and it's the name that few people truly recognize of who we represent and it just meant a lot to me of the actions we need to take in order to carry the name with pride and with honor.

But that was my little lesson for the week I love you all and hope you all have a great week and stay safe. 

Elder Hobbs

January 6

Dear Family,

   It was nice to see you all on skype and see how well your all doing. This week has been quite the adventure me and Elder Hill have had tons of fun we've been getting along well and talking trash on each other for the little Jordan and Fremont rivalry we had and have had some good times already. I'm very excited to have another companion with a very good work ethic and great attitude.

   We had a baptism this last Sunday. We helped Delylah get baptized by her father who received the Aaronic Priesthood the day of so it was very special to see the baptismal service they were both on a very spiritual high. After that all of Delylah's little brothers and sisters were wanting to get in the water it was super funny to see their excitement and desires they had to get baptized also but they'll just need to wait till they're 8.... haha but she's  one of the pioneers for the family we've now been teaching 3 other people in her family that want to be baptized also so that's created a wildfire in the family. haha

   We also had a kid named Trey come to church who is a solid guy he'll be preparing for baptism for the 19th and already loves the church and comes to church activities we'll just need to work on helping his family support him and come out to it. And than the Pena family has been being worked with also but they have missed church for a couple of weeks for different reasons each time but they're committed to come the next two weeks Bro Pena has decided to finally give it his all. (He's a very busy man they're working on moving in, he's working, and taking care of a family of 8 that lives in 3 different places for the moment. haha)

   Our mission ended the year with 995 baptisms out of the goal of 1000 so it was a bummer we were short by 5 but that's the second highest number the mission has baptized so we weren't super bummed.

   But I hope you all enjoy the new years and have made those new years resolutions for big old 2014! 
Love you all have a good week

Elder Hobbs

December 30

Dear Family,

   I hope that everthing is OK with y'all this week cuz i didn't get an e-mail. Maybe the letters just aren't going through I know how mom and dad are with technology. haha. But cool news. We will be able to watch a video for new years eve. The lion king, mulan, or finding nemo so we will be deciding on that. Also transfers are happening tommorrow I will be staying and receiving a new companion. Some of you may have already heard of him his name is Elder Hill and he was acctually the qb for Jordan high my junior year the one that beat us in the 1st pre-season game. He's a good missionary and I'm very excited to go hard with Elder Hill. We are still working on the same investigators they have been busy trying to move into a house so they've been working on Sundays but they're still wanting to do it.

  But thank you for the skyping it was lots of fun to get to see everyone. It seems everyone is doing great. Everyone looked the same other than Heston looked like he's been eating his veggies and Sam looks like he's hit the gymn since last I saw him. haha but hope you all enjoy the holidays and have a Happy New Years and enjoy life. Make sure to find the time to study during the holidays. 
Love you all!!!

December 23

Dear Family,

This week was a great one we've been teaching a 9 year old girl and working on getting permission from her mother to be baptized (her step father is a member). And we've been teaching her other daughter that just came to church this last week who is in her 20's and has 3 little kids. So things will be looking a lot better with her other daughter investigating the church. We are also working on the member to get the priesthood so he can baptize his own daughter. We have also been teaching a family of 9 that is a part member family. The parents were baptized and the older kids when they lived here a couple years back they moved to Idaho went inactive and showed back up in Robstown and the parents have wanted to get their kids rolling in the church. So we've helped them and they are an awesome family we are working on helping the older son that is 16 receive the aaronic priesthood so that he can baptize all of these kids they range from 14 to 8 so 5 kids can be baptized it'll be great!!! They are so fun to teach too. Kids are a lot easier to teach than adults i can tell you that much. It's just opened my eyes to what the scriptures mean when they say "humble as a child".

   Anyways thanks for all you do for me. I was recently reading my patriarcal blessing and I have been reflectin on how much blessings Ive had and how great of a home I've been raised in and I just want to thank you for being great parents thanks for all your love and support and for all the basic principles that you've taught me as a kid I'll always be in debt to you both. Also to the rest of the family thank you. Saren, Sam , Maisie, and Heston. Keep being who you are and seek to build your testimonies daily.

Love Elder Hobbs

p.s. so as of skype information i will either use that account or the one that the members have. So thanks for setting that up i have your account dad so i'll make sure to call you up. Be expecting the skype at 7:00 and if not i'll be going second so it'll be  closer to 8:00 that should be the window of when i call. So that's texas time you'll have to figure out what that is in utah time. haha

December 16

Dear Family,

 I got the Christmas package thank you for sending it to me. I have opened a few presents so far and I've liked everything. The week was good we have continued to teach some people we are just struggling a bit with getting our peeps to church. It's a bit of a struggle cuz it's kinda rural and also some of our investigatros work on Sunday. But things are going good we have some plans with some members and have been working on getting the young men more involved in the work that we do. But thanks again for all the support you give me and thanks for the letters have a great week!!

Elder Hobbs

December 9

Dear Family,

Great news, this upcoming Saturday Tad R. Callister from the 70 is going to be in our mission for the mission tour and he will be meeting up with us in Corpus with 2 other zones including ours so we are all very excited for that and I'll let you know how that all goes. But it was a crazy week. We have set our goal for 150 this month as a mission and we will need miracle tras miracle to accomplish it. As of the mission year goal we are going for 1000 and we will be looking like we can hit well over it we will need around 90ish in order to hit our thousand. But numbers don't matter lets talk about the peeps.... 

This week we were working hard and asking for a lot of miracles and on Sunday we had a family that we recently had found show up to church it's a family that is from Robstown but lived in Idaho for a bit and now they moved back and should be here to stay and they have 4 kids that want to get baptized and also a friend that they brought to church with them. That was our miracle from our mission fast this last Sunday so my testimony on fasting is soaring right now.. haha 

But other that that the weather is killer we've been in the 30's and we have no central heating in the little house we live in just 2 little space heaters and the oven but it keeps us warm enough to sleep comfortably we just do not enjoy our study room as comfortably as we could but it's fun it spices things up. It's quite the change from sweating to death. We will just be praying for some snow to come soon if it's going to be this cold we might as well have snow you know what I mean. But l love you all family keep up  your testimonies 

Elder Hobbs