Week 18

So, I finished JTC like three four days ago great book I Yeah, I baptized Valentin; He is Maria Luna’s spouse - yes I The kitchen is huge and on Tuesday our like hot pad thing broke, so we couldn’t eat anything... I haha my comp took it apart but we´re getting a new burner hopefully soon. Yup strong as every, I get an hour less study time this change because I’m not being trained anymore, I have like 4 months in the mish, and if you count back wards from the day I’m l gonna leave I have like 5 months. haha don’t worry I’m not counting down. I’ve got mission on the mind and like nothing more. haha

So my comp is leaving this change we think, he got the phone call that said he was being changed but within the zone, but as we thought about it more, they might just take him to the change meeting to make him a DL which would be dumb to make him pack all his stuff, but its very likely I’m getting a new comp and yeah I don’t think I’m dreaming in spanish.... haven’t really been remembering my dreams. I bet I use spanish words though, its actually pretty difficult to speak in spanish all week have things happen in spanish and then later try and talk about them in english.

Soooo this week. I don’t really remember.

Love you bye.

Haha, but honestly who knows what happened on Monday. We taught a ton of lessons I can tell you that. haha so this Renaldo I might have talked about earlier, husband to a baptism like a months ago so last week, I was in divisions and we had a lesson with him, Elder Zubi told me to put a baptismal date with him, so we go and we talk about all the answers he´s received that the BoM is true and then what the BoM means if its true, all me teaching this cause my comp, Elder Tepoz, doesn't know the family or what we´re going to teach, and I didn’t really want him to teach cause who knows what he was going to say, anyways I ask him if he´ll get baptized by the correct authority or however I said it and he kind of hesitated and tried to escape the direct question and so I asked again directly, and he said I’ll answer next time. so this week we go and meet with him and my comp challenges him to get baptized and he said he´d been thinking about it and stuff like that and that yes he´d get baptized this saturday, super cool. haha and yeah we baptized him oh and did I say he went to the visitors center at the temple with his daughter in between my lesson and the lesson with me and my comp when he accepted and he said he wants and eternal family. and after I baptized him when I pulled him up out of the water he just looked and me and said thanks. It was a cool moment.

I got like jabbed with a knife in my back as we were walking in the street, jabbed kinda hard, I'm sure if I wasn’t a missionary- had garments, I would've had a knife in my back haha. we just kept walking and this guy didn't know what to do he just stood there looking at me.....haha don't freak out. god protects and provides and have testimonies of both of these things already.

Umm what more. idk. My comps leaving I love him, I think we´re kind of similar we both don't really speak if we don't feel like speaking. idk. but we have a great time chatting and laughing while walking in the streets. idk I'm going to miss him if he leaves and I really don't want a dead companion someone leaving soon or who doesn't want to work or is a frito.

I've grown to love the ward and I know a lot of the people I was thinking that I would be sad to leave this area too, idk.

I kind of lost the will to keep writing....

Javier, our inv. that is only 18 but he´s pretty darn cool, a little awkward, but pretty golden, finally came to church its going to be weird having appt.'s with him cause he has all the lessons he just needs church before he can get baptized, and we have to keep meeting with him to teach him more but the lessons are up. idk theres definitely things we can teach him but who knows.

My favorite catholic lady is hard to find now, Virginia, idk I really like her she is idk 55-60 so like a mother-grandmother figure she´s way cool and I just really want her to be teachable so we can bring her the happiness of the gospel. and teach her daughter and her granddaughter. this area has a ton of potential still, if I get a half decent comp we can continue to baptize every week here which is cool.

The pic after the other elders baptism, it was his birthday so some members bought him some cake and made hime that card and if you look closely you can see they spelled his name wrong. haha

Love you.

Elder Blotter

Week 16 - I.D.K ... a lot.

Haha about keeping the commandments -  I literally told someone yesterday that it was a sin to go and buy stuff on sunday and then she handed her daughter some money to go buy soda for us. Haha less actives for the win.  They just justify everything in their lives by saying “when I got baptized I changed all of this stuff....... and I made a big change didn’t I?”  “Well, yes you did, but a half change of heart isn’t what the Savior asked for.”   Maybe your’e just programmed to be zealous on the mission and you see and hear everyones problems so you know all the crap. 

Its all a little funny -  we hold leadership to a high standard pretty much ward counsel (consejo de barrio) idk the meeting with all the leaders, that meeting just includes all the members who are like active/converted.  Converted because I’ve realized converted means a lot more that convert. idk Converted is something that every member needs and I think it’s why a bunch of missionaries go on missions cause the lord needs to convert them. The members here who have gone on missions - you can tell that they just understand everything about the gospel way more.

I.d.k. what more to tell you that happened this week.  Hopefully we’ve found a couple of cool people to teach. oh the mother of a member whose wife isn’t a member nor his daughters have gotten baptized, we’ve tried to teach his brother and we tried to baptize his wife, she’ll get baptized she just needs some time, but his mom and his sister came to the activity and his mom told him that she wants to have a big family dinner and that she wants to invite the elders. hopefully we can teach her. that would be so cool to teach the whole family.

I Love You - 

Elder Blotter

María Luna and her husband Valentin

Everything that my kitchen entails. a blender a mini fridge and a hot plate.

Week 15 - Climbing the Mountain

This past week began with climbing the mountain.  It was actually pretty tough.  I realized I didn't bring any shorts here, so I just rolled up my jeans.  It was pretty sick! It's going to be the style when I get home, just sayin.  The hike was really cool though.  The city is huge, and the other side of the mountain has a cool view of non-Mexico City.  At the top of the hill were two giant crosses... catholics.

This week blew by and I honestly don't remember the first part of it. These last couple days were tough.  We had to quit an investigator, and we had a really tough lesson with the daughter of an investigator.  None of our investigator came to church, and we haven't had a baptism in two weeks.

What I've learned:

Fighting with catholics isn't productive. At. All.  It's so not worth it.  You can point out as many flaws or scriptures that prove the Apostasy, but without a desire to learn, they aren't going to listen. That's not saying I fought with this catholic, but instead I sat there.  I did, however, feel the spirit leave when the member, who was with us, tried to fight.  It was seriously a super tough lesson.  I don't even know how to explain it, but I now understand why this investigator has a hard time coming to church and why the other daughters don't listen. The oldest daughter has closed herself off to the spirit. 

Other peoples agency: the investigator we dropped wasn't keeping their commitments, and his "faith" wasn't true faith.  He was trying to create God in his own image, not the other way around.  One of his biggest doubts was that our agency was bad, or not true agency because there are requirements, and consequences.  He wanted Satan's plan. 

None of the members here understand Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy: The old bishop works on Sunday and when he's not working he has employees running his shop.  The meal on Sunday is always supplemented with things purchased 15 minutes before you eat, and in this case, this Sunday the wife handed her husband a wad of money and told him to go buy us food. 

I've been studying obedience and commandments a lot recently, as well as teaching by the spirit.  There are some awesome scriptures of those topics in the English topical guide.  The first part of Jeremiah has a ton of scriptures that apply to being a missionary.  Jeremiah said "I'm too young" and God was said "Go forth and I'll tell you what to say."  I think that that is so cool and so applicable to missions.  I've been trying really hard to follow the spirit recently,  and my spanish has improved along with my ability to teach and to feel what to teach and what to say.  In both of our hard lessons I felt prompted to say very specific things.

Love you guys!!!!

Elder Blotter

Week 14 - Poop

Responses To Questions:

So piano? Yeah, I play the opening hymn but none of the other ones, because the bishopric member conducting announces like 10 seconds before the hymn is sung, so I can't prepare at all.  They are terrible at singing so, I have to play perfect or I'm screwed. It's hard.

Work For This Week:

We worked our tails off.  Our investigators progressed but, at the same time, they all stopped progressing.  

Virginia, the really cool catholic lady, went out of town, so she couldn't come to church.  Her daughter apparently lives in a different colony during the weekend, so she can't/doesn't come to church.  

Fernando, who is like a rock compared to his family, (they're members) decided he couldn't come cause his studies were more important.  He is becoming a lawyer and has a big test coming up.

Maria Luna and her husband are being super frustrating.  They are willing to accept what we teach them, but recently they've been terrible at applying it.  Specifically, they are struggling with the Word of Wisdom.   No one here has understood the importance of the B.O.M and actually asking God if its true.  That is why there are so many less-active members here in Mexico - because they, as investigators, don't learn how to pray.  It sounds like something easy -  "You can just teach them the importance of reading and praying..." But after an entire lesson about the B.O.M, and the importance of it in conversion and praying to ask God if its true, you ask them to give the closing prayer of the lesson and they don't ask God if its all true in their prayer.  This prayer happens like ten seconds after asking them to pray and ask a specific question and they don't do it!  Discouraging...

This week I've been focusing on "commandments" and "obedience" in my personal study, there are some pretty wonderful scriptures about those.  One thing I found really intriguing was about Noah, in Genesis.  It talks about how Noah was perfect before God and just and all this stuff, and then if you look in Moses it says that Noah was obedient.  I think that's really cool that he was perfect before God.  Obedience is something based in love.  If we love God,  then we obey.  When we obey we receive blessings, when we disobey, Leviticus 26 says that there are some bad consequences.  If you act in rebellion there are some terrible consequences. One of my favorite scriptures on Obedience is 1 Nephi 3:7 "I will go and do..." and there's a part at the end of 2 Nephi where Nephi says, "I've written these things because the lord has commanded me and I MUST obey."  I want that in my character.  I don't know if I've shared this before: in Jesus the Christ it talks about Peter the Zealot.  and how he needed to tone his zealousness down to become an effective apostle.  He had to learn meekness and charity but his attribute of being zealously obedient made him a powerful apostle. 

Embarrassing Story Of The Week:

I felt weird all of yesterday, had like burps that tasted terrible from like the second I woke up till night time.  I felt weird in my stomach too, like I had to go to the bathroom all day.  At the last appt. of the day my stomach decided to die.  Not like "I felt sick", but  "If I didn't use a bathroom right then I'd curl up on the ground in a ball in pain," so I go to use the bathroom.  The door is a curtain and its about 7 feet away from the kitchen table were we were all sitting.  All I'm saying is that it wasn't quiet.  And I knew they were hearing practically everything. Pretty much I have just accepted the fact that everyone poops, and to not be ashamed.

Even funnier... another Elder in my ward pooped himself this past week.  They were really far from their house, so they took a taxi back, and when they got out of the Taxi, he left a nice little spot on the seat...... hahaha.  A day later the taxi driver came and was like remember me? Ya, I found the spot... and the Elder payed him a decent amount of money (for Mexico) to like clean it and to not get beat up.

well I love you guys!

Elder Blotter

This is the baptism I talked about in my last email.  She was baptized at age 7 and they lost her papers.

Selfie I took with the mountain we're going to climb today 

Week 13 - La Semana Santa

Answering Questions:

No eggs filled with flower here, Easter was a water fight!  Easter was a week long here.  It's weird. Everyone leaves for vacations, so Easter was just harder work.  No one is home and Catholics actually feel Catholic for at least one week of the year.

No, I didn't feel the earth quake, but all the people that we visited did.  They said it was pretty powerful, but we were in the church and didn't feel a thing. 

Update:

I don't have much time today to write, my bad.  It rained a ton this week - like poured.  Oh!  We baptized a member ;) haha.  She got baptized at age 7 and they lost her registry so we baptized her again.  

I'm having lots of fun down here in Mexico.  I have one funny story:  we have a recent convert that is legless (handicapped).  We visited him and he happened to be showering with a bucket, when we came by.  We waited until he came out in a towel and he talked with us.  He was completely nude but with a towel on.  He tried to keep himself covered, which was nice, but near the end he had an itch... He scratched with his right hand, then shook our hands goodbye. hahahahahahahahahahaha...

love you!

Elder Blotter