He made it!

[Letter we received from Elder Bessey's mission president]:

Dear Brother and Sister Bessey,

What a pleasure it was to welcome Elder Hunter Dane Bessey into the Utah Salt Lake City South Mission.  His first day with us included breakfast and orientation at the mission office, a training session, lunch and of course, meeting his first companion. I am impressed by his desire to serve.  He is well and in high spirits as he anticipates the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.  Please be assured that we will be watching over him while he is here.  I'm attaching photographs taken as he was welcomed at the mission office.

After prayerful consideration, an excellent missionary, Elder Bottari, has been assigned as his trainer and first companion.  I am attaching our Family Guidelines which we urge you to follow.  We have learned from experience the importance of family and friends following these guidelines.  Please share the guidelines with those who may write to him.  Your compliance of these guidelines can reinforce your missionary's willingness to follow the guidelines in the Missionary Handbook.

All hard-copy letters and packages should be sent to the mission, addressed to Elder Hunter Dane Bessey at the address listed above. 

Thank you for raising such an outstanding young person, worthy and willing to serve the Lord full time in our mission.  I know you will be blessed for the sacrifices that make his service possible.  May the Lord's choicest blessings be yours.

Sincerely,

J. Christopher Lansing
Mission President

Goodbye Mexico, Hello Utah!

[We received this email from Elder Bessey's mission office last night:]

Dear Bessey Family,

We wanted you to know that Elder Bessey arrived safely to the Utah Salt Lake City South Mission this evening. We will send more information and pictures tomorrow when we have transfer day!   But did not want to wait until tomorrow to let you know he is in the mission.

Sister Jeffries J

Becoming Truly Converted

This week has been a hard, awesome week. This last half of my time here my Spanish has felt like it has Plateaued(sp?) big time, so we´ve started hanging out with these Latino´s across the hall, we played some basketball and four-square today. Probably futbol tomorrow. We also started sharing testimony meetings with them after devotionals. 

We had a ton of awesome devotionals this week, specifically from Elder Bednar and Elder Holland. In Elder Bednar talked about the difference of obtaining a testimony vs being converted. And basically he said that a testimony is receiving a truth though faith and the Holy Ghost but conversion is continuing to act on this faith. Nobody is ever done being converted. He also talked a lot on the character of Christ, the humility he had and how much he turned outwards in service even in his weakest moments. 

And really this is my purpose as a missionary, to live as close to Christ as possible and the best way for me to do that is to always look outside myself and find ways to help others. He had two great quotes, ¨The most important investigator is yourself, but if that is all are focused on then you will never find success.¨ Also ¨If you go looking for yourself you won´t find anything, but the moment you forget about yourself and turn yourself over in service of the Lord is when you will discover yourself¨. He also emphasized on how the lessons and principles alone won´t be what convert people but how much they feel the love of God during the discussion is. 

Hollands talk was similar but focused on the importance of personal study. When we completely understand the gospel ourselves, we are more likely to teach an individual rather than a lesson. I loved this, and started to try to teach investigators based off what they need to hear most through questions and stuff. We felt the spirit much more in our lessons and had confidence that our discussion legitamely helped who we were teaching. Anyways I highly recommend listening to both of these talks cause they´re just great. 

I can´t wait for it [fall in Utah], especially since I´ve never seen Utah then and it is just constantly raining here. I´m ready to enter the field and start teaching. I´m going to miss Mexico but I am super ready to head out.

Te amo mucho,

Elder Bessey

Mexico Independence Day!

On P-Day and gym times I usually run now which is a great stress reliever for me, so running this week combined with seeing Taylon has really boosted my motivation and happiness. I am learning so much here and I really love Mexico. However I am very ready to enter the field. Today is also Mexico´s Independance Day so there is a lot of celebration both inside and out of the CCM. We can hear outside what sounds like Mariachi Bands or something and its been super fun. I´ve made up my mind that the first thing I´m eating when I get back to the States is a delicious burger and I know Salt Lake has tons of great options. 

Love and miss ya lots!

Te Amo,

Elder Bessey

Week tres in Mexico!

Today has been my first P-Day that we haven´t gone to the temple, and as much as I love the temple I am so happy I had time today to run and play frisbee with my district, the plague is definatly real, everyone in our district has gotten it but me so far. Everything here is pretty awesome and I´m pretty stressed and ready to enter the field but overall my experience here has been awesome.

I had thought that Taylon was supposed to arrive last tuesday so I was looking everywhere for him and have been pretty worried, super glad to hear that he´s actually coming down the 13th. Things here have been super awesome and really spiritual for me. I feel that I am close to completely understanding the language and don´t think that my time here has felt as long as I thought it would. I have began to feel a bit homesick for family and especially Stanley but I know this is where the Lord needs me and has given me strength to overcome any negative feelings that would disrupt the teachings of the spirit. I have a huge testimony of prayer after these few weeks.

I´ve definately been humbled while here and really prayed for help a lot. I´ve read a ton of stuff about humility and have been trying my best to be exactly obedient. Because of this obedience I feel that the Lord has really blessed me a ton to overcome my weaknesses. Do what is right and Heavenly Father will help you so much. 

Today was our first real P-Day since the last 2 weeks we spent all day at the temple, I love the temple here, but today I got to go on a run with Elder Dalton, a XC runner whose going to BYU-I and I feel so much better. After we played a ton of frisbee against other districts and it was so much fun. I definatly needed this rest today. 

However, I have become strangely attached to Mexico even though it is pretty different. It makes me envy those going to Central and South America, especially since I still am not sure exactly the reason for my call. However I have a much greater testimony that my call is specific to me and also to a family or investigator I have not met yet. 

I love Bednar´s talk about being a PMG missionary. This work is not about me and it will never will be. My purpose to live as worthily and obediently as possible to be a representative of Christ so that the Lord can use me as a vessel to speak directly to those who need to hear his message. When I am feeling depressed or stressed it is my job to work my hardest to overcome and ask Heavenly Father diligently for help. I love the gift of tongues and have a strong testimony of its power. When I open my mouth to speak with faith that the HG will give me the words I can feel the blessings.

Te Amo,

Elder Bessey

Week 2 at the CCM!

[Hunter didn't write us a ton this week because he didn't have as much time, but here's what we got from him:]

So my companion is Elder Flores, he´s from Ft. Worth Texas. He´s a sick breakdancer and yeah everyone in my district is American, I should be able to send a district picture in a bit. We are going to the Temple again this week, the temple here is super awesome. Its all scheduled though and we´ve had it two weeks in a row so far. We really love going to the temple but it takes up the entire P-Day, which makes it kinda hard to tackle the rest of the week, but its been going great at the CCM our district is like  a family and the teachers are amazing.

Te amo,

Elder Bessey