Snail mail letter received 29 Aug 2009

last pix before we leave

1. Me with Elders Harvey & Klemm. They're pretty intense

2. This is my district with our teacher, Brother Merrill, and the lady teacher my district wanted for him to date. Brother Merrill is a champ.

3. Elder Jefferies and Elder Thomas. They look pretty sweet, huh?

4. Just some of the differences between me and my companion.

more emails

(No Subject)‏

From:	Zachary Hill (xxxx@xxxxxxxxx.xxx)
Sent:	Thu 8/27/09 7:27 AM
To:	quiltingqueen57@hotmail.com

hey ma. hows it going. i'm not really feeling that up to email, but ill send you a
quick one. i thought i figured out a way around the time limit, but i ended up just
wasting time, so i'm a bit put off. i'll just send qhatever i was gonna say by snail
mail. oh speaking of mail, for dear elders, if you want to send me one, you're gonna
have to send it before noon on friday or i wont receive it. so from then on i'll just
have to email you. it's gettin pretty down to the wire, but it's pretty sweet. i'm so
excited to leave. every thing i hear about the mission is so sweet. so what's been
going on around home? that's pretty sweet that you got to go see a.n. is dad back at
school yet? well, before i leave, i'll tell you a bit about what's been going on. so
we've just been teaching a lot. we've been continuing our progressive investigator
project, and we have our main one committied for baptism. haha. i don't know how
realistic these scenerios are, but it's pretty sweet to get at least some experience
before i head out. i was sick for a bit, but i'm on the mend, so no worries. i had a
pretty bad cough for a while. everyone thought i was dying. but ever since i had
bronchitis i cough like crazy for a while after i get sick. but all is well. i'm
enjoying myself immensely. also, it's pretty sweet because every tuesday we have a
devotional where we normally get someone from the quorum of the 70, but this last
tuesday, Richard G. Scott came to speak to us. it was so awesome. he said that as
an apsotle he has the opportunity to bless people from time to time and then he
conferred the gift of tongues upon us so it will be easier for us to learn. as a
district, we had been praying for the gift of tongues for a while, and we realized
that that was an answer to our prayers. it was pretty sweet. anyways, i gotta go mom.
i love you and i'll send you a letter a bit later.
love, elder hill

From:	Zachary Hill (xxxx@xxxxxxxxx.xxx)
Sent:	Thu 8/27/09 7:41 AM
To:	wodenowl@hotmail.com

salut papa. ça va ? j'ai pas beaucoup de temps, alors desolé pour les erreurs. mais je veux commencer a pratiquer français, car je l'ai oublié beaucoup. alors, est-ce que tu peux m'envoyer des lettres ecrit en français ? si c'est bien, je serais bien heureux. mais je suis toujours heureux de recevoir de lettres de toi. alors, si elle est ecrit en anglais, ça va. mais tu as commencé à travailler encore, n'est-ce pas ? comment ça va ? comment sont tes nouveux étudiants ? j'espère bien. je suis content de ne pas devoir aller à l'école, mais j'ai trouvé qu'il y a beaucoup plus de devoirs à l'mtc qu'à l'école. mais je l'aime bien car j'aime les langues et aussi l'evangile. nous avons des professeurs qui vennaient à la malaisie en mission, et ils nous ensignent le mots malaisie pour que nous pourrons parler mieux. j'ai hâte d'y aller pour pratiquer parler. si je te parle au téléphone, peut-être que je vais parler un peu pour te montrer comment elle marche. mais moi, je dois y aller alors.. je t'aime et je te parlerai plus tard.
oh j'ai presque oublié... les #s pour mon account ce sont: xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx. j'espère que ce sont ce que tu cherchait. mais alors... à plus tard
love, elder hill

letter from 20th august 2009

more zany pix from the monastary

Email home

From:	Zachary Hill (zrhill@myldsmail.net)
Sent:	Thu 8/20/09 6:58 AM
To:	quiltingqueen57@hotmail.com

hey ma! it's zac again. i'm just chillin here at the mtc like i normally do. it's
pretty sweet around here. so how are things with you? how was your trip to kentucky?
it's been a while since i heard from you. anyways, have you been getting anymore sweet
pics of your hummingbirds? i havent seen any around here. i guess it's too crowded at
the mtc for humming birds. there's lots of plantlife and flowers here tho. the
gardeners are pretty sweet. anyways, life is just going along. time has been going
really fast lately. it feels like my last preparation day was yesterday. but i'm really
 excited. we have 11 more days of the mtc after today, so i'm almost out into the
real world. we should be getting our flight plans today, so i'll let you know how
that's going a little later on. we're all really excited. we've been trying to speak
in indonesian as much as we can lately to prepare, but it's still pretty scarey to
think about not being able to use english. it's crazy because we recently got
another teacher who served in singapore, so we've been learning more and more malay
words so it will be easier when we get over there. it's funny how many words are
different. so we speak indonesian with a handful of malay words. but the two
languages are really similar. it's just a difference of some vocabulary. my teacher
says the two are 75% the same, so that's pretty good. we've been teaching a lot so
we can be prepared for when we leave. ive had teaching appointments pretty much
everyday this week. and scheduled almost everyday until i leave. it's pretty sweet.
we still have the progressing investigator project, but one of our progressing
investigators brought a friend into the meeting. the friend i guess wanted to
disprove our message so we talked with him for a bit and now we are going to meet
with him today, so we turned our one investigator into two! it was pretty cool. the
investigators that we teach are just our teachers role playing. also, sometimes they
bring in pictures of people they met on their missions and discribe them to us, and
we have to plan and teach them. so we're always teaching. it's really fun. oh yeah,
we got to be host missionaries again. i hope next week as well. it is the coolest
thing to help new missionaries come into the mtc. i helped 4 elders and 2 sisters,
so i was really busy. most people only help 1 or 2, but my district volunteers for
special assignments, so we get to help the people who park across the street and
walk into the mtc. for some reason we get to help more than most people that way.
it's so cool. new missionaries are awesome. oh, did i tell you that my comp and i we
made zone leaders like a week and a half ago? basically we get to talk to the new
missionaries in our zone and give them a tour around the mtc. we talk to them about
a few things like the rules they have to follow and activities at the mtc. it's been
really fun. new missionaries are the best. also, i did receive the package, i forgot
to tell nyss. thanks so much for everything you do for me. i appreciate it so much.
tell everyone that i love them and say hi to everyone for me. my times about to run
out, so i'm gonna have to go. love you mom,
elder hill

letter from aug 13, 09

emails from zac

(No Subject)‏

From:	Zachary Hill (zrhill@myldsmail.net)
Sent:	Thu 8/13/09 7:31 AM
To:	wodenowl@hotmail.com

hey whats goin on dad. how have things been. yeah so i cant really make anything out
of that genesis chapter you sent me. haha. but i do have a special request for you.
could you send me periodically some lists of words in french so i can memorize some of
them too? i found a preach my gospel in french, and ive been reading that, but i'd
just like a little something extra to try to maintain my ability in french.. if that
would be all right i would appreciate it. but yesterday while i was hosting i got an
elder who was from montreal so it was pretty sweet. his parents were from france,
so i talked to him a bit, but yesterday was our syl day, so indonesian words kept
creeping in since we had spoken indonesian like the whole day. it takes me a few
minutes to switch in between languages, and it's pretty funny to see the look on
peole's faces when an indonesian word comes out while speaking french, or a french
word comes out while speaking indonesian. i love it. anyways, how are things going
for you? how are you feeling? how long are you staying in kentucky? im sure you're
on your way now, so good luck! let me know how everything goes when you get there
and how everything is going at home. anyways, i love you. talk to you later.

elder hill

(No Subject)‏

From:	Zachary Hill (zrhill@myldsmail.net)
Sent:	Thu 8/13/09 7:22 AM
To:	quiltingqueen57@hotmail.com

hey ma! how's it going? i'm sorry to hear about the flight time you had this morning. i hope everything went well. and i hope you're makin sure you take care of yourself. but yeah it is pretty crazy that summer's almost over. before you know it, i'll be in singapore! so pretty much everyday I learn stuff that makes me think that my mission is the best in the world. my teachers tell us stories about the people and how theyre so friendly and it really makes me excited to head out. also, we had a teacher who served in indonesia bring in pictures of all these sweet things and he said that indonesia looks pretty much the same as malaysia. it's so green! i cant believe how many plants there are everywhere. and there was some sweet architecture everywhere. he had sweet pictures of the mosques, and im pretty sure ill be able to get some really sweet pictures for you when i get there. it'll be so exciting. also, thanks for sending the replacement part for my camel back. i havent received it yet, but i'm so glad you sent it out to me. i really dont drink enough water throughout the day without that thing. also, the other day i had a tiny case of the sniffles, but im all better now. everyone else in my district has gotten sick except me. because of the swine flu scare, the branch president has people go to the hospital if they start feeling sick to get checked out, but i havent had to go. it's pretty sweet. so is my plaque cool? i hope so. oh that reminds me that i saw taylin whil i was bein a host elder. it was pretty cool but neither of us had a camera so we probably wont get a pic together. oh well. also, the host missionary thing was so sweet! coolest thing ive done here so far, besides the teaching of course. i got an elder from boise idaho which was pretty funny. he had a crazy accent tho that mede it hard to understand him. also, if you got any new elders this week in the ward, they were probably in my zone because we just had a group of elders leave for las vegas from my zone. pretty sweet. i hope everything is going well with you mom. take care and keep me informed on how you're doin.
love, elder hill

Snailmail received 8/11

This letter was delivered to the kind folks at 2425 Calico st rather than 2525 where we live! The kind gentleman delivered it today after receiving it last Saturday.

august 6th letter

(No Subject)‏

From:	Zachary Hill (zrhill@myldsmail.net)
Sent:	Thu 8/06/09 6:56 AM
To:	wodenowl@hotmail.com

hey dad
how's it goin? when are you going to see adrienne? pretty soon right? yeah im sorry to
hear that you'll be goin back to school soon, but im not stayin here any longer than i
have to. plus, time is really flying by. every time i turn around another week has
gone past and it's p day again. so pretty soon ill be out in the field. i'm pretty
excited for it. we have a teacher who is from indonesia and he served in singapore
and malaysia, and he's pretty much the coolest guy ever so i'm hoping that most
people from singapore are like him. he just laughs at everything and likes to have
fun, and he says that malaysian people are like that. also, i hear people are really
nice over there, which i'm really excited about. and they are a really optimistic
people. when answering questions, instead of saying no, they answer "not yet." i
thought that was pretty sweet. also, i hear they don't really like to say no, which
is kinda tough for a missionary because it's harder to figure out if someone is
really interested in the message or not. but i hear the work over in east malaysia is
really moving. one of my teachers got a letter from one of his former students who
is in malaysia now and he had like 15 baptisms for his first month. also, since we've
got a teacher who served in malaysia we've been taught some malay words which is
really sweet. my teachers ar preppin me well, so im really excited to get out and do
work. anyways, i gotta go.
love you,
elder hll

(No Subject)‏

From:	Zachary Hill (zrhill@myldsmail.net)
Sent:	Thu 8/06/09 6:50 AM
To:	quiltingqueen57@hotmail.com

hey ma
how's it goin? not much goin on here. it's pretty much quiet round these parts. all the days are molding into one, which i guess is all right. we're on to teaching the third lesson in indonesian. it's pretty sweet. we have lots of activities to test our ability to teach to investigator's needs which is really helpful. we have 2 speak your language days a week now and they are so much better. i feel like we can say a pretty good amount which is sweet for only 5 weeks. we try to talk all the time, but there is still a good amount we dont know how to say. it kind of feels weird because we can talk about gospel topics, but there are some normal everyday things that i have no idea how to talk about. it's pretty weird but i love indonesian. and my mtc stay is flying by. on monday i'll only have 3 weeks left of it. richard tells me to enjoy because it's way different out in the field but it's kind of hard to enjoy the repetitive nature too much. having class all day does a number on my back. it's nothing nearly as bad as before, but every once in a while it hurts. i bought some stuff here at the mtc store so nothing gets too bad. but yeah, if nyssa doesnt tell you, i could use a replacement nozzle for my camelbak because my other one broke so i cant use it for water. but it's all good if you can't. oh yeah, so i saw taylin on his first day, but i haven't seen him since. when he got here, he didnt know anything about his schedule so when i asked him i didnt find anything about how i might see him later on. i did see john quite frequently. i saw him like 3 hours before he left, which was pretty sweet. lucky him. i cant wait to get out. but about him signing up to have me teach him, i dont know what that's all about. i havent heard anything about it exept from you. and i havent heard anything about being a host either. i think it would be pretty sweet. the host i had told me they started when he had been here 6 weeks, so maybe next week i'll be a host. that would be pretty sweet. ill keep you posted if anything comes up. oh and about it being the snacks that are making me gain weight, i dont think it is. i mean, have they ever made me gain weight before? it's most definitely the crazy food they have here. it packs on the pounds. there's an elder in my district who has already gained 15+ pounds. i weighed myself the other day and found out i'm at a solid 165 which means i lost a bit of weight. ive been hitting the weight machines and going jogging, so im hoping a little of my weight gain is muscle lol.it's pretty crazy that it's 106 over there. it's pretty darn cool here. well at least i think so. the other elders in my district always complain, but i think it's nice. a few days ago our a/c stopped working so everyone felt like they were dying, but i liked it haha. i think i was the only one who still slept with a blanket. it reminded me of those nice warm vegas nights. anyways, take care ma. i must be headin off.
love you,
elder hill

08/01/09: the letter

And some more pix!