Week 100 - See you in two.......... days (Last Post)

Soooooo....

Any last, profound words? Not really.

I love you guys a bunch and I'll see you on Wednesday.

This week was cool we had a baptism on my last Saturday. she is super cool, her name is nancy which surprisingly nancy is a common name for teenage girls here in Mexico. we told her about the baptismal interview and she was like dang i have to be super prepared for that. hahaha she read all her pamphlets again watched the Thomas s monson video, read her book of mormon for like an hour hahahaha she wanted to be ready and she totally was.

What else I had a very cool spiritual interview with pres. talked about careers marriage..... awks..... hahaha and my service here in Mexico and what impact it had on my life. how to be more optimistic. idk it was a wonderful experience. to have the president say that christ saw my efforts and my work and he was proud of me.

umm what else...... i love Mexico and my converts and the people that helped me along the way.

and I'm going to be in mi casita on Wednesday.

Loves!

Elder Blotter

Week 98 - I'm dreaming of a white christmas too...

HEY

sorry im writing sooo late its cause i went to visit guelatao, my old area today. hahaha that was super super great! but..... it took all day......

but it was super super great. idk i really loved visiting my old area today adn the people that i taught... like a plus and a huge con, is that im still the last missionary thats been there. sooo they all were like hey elder blotter!!!  its been sooo long are you back here to stay? and i had to say like noooo... in going home.... soon.... hahaha but it was super nice i love the people there.... hahahahaha i really disliked the ward, but the people there are super wonderful nice, dont really work in callings or visit... but i love them, a whole lot has changed babies born actives gone innactive, new people moved into the ward, idk tons of changs.

this week in teh area it was tough, haha had meetings or weekly planning idk i felt like the days just got swallowed it goes by sooooo fast now, sooo fast, its already december 7th, thats insane, our inv cousin died so she couldnt go to church, that stinks... but we had like another 17 less actives. there is a family here with the hourd of children that i really love. hahah the kids are just so genuine and i love them they have come to church twice in a row now which is awesome.

ummm love my comps, we live 5 in the house and its always a party i try and help them stay on task which i find backwards..... cause im the one with 23 months.... hahahahaha we started waking up early to go to the gym, feeling great. my comp is a homey and likes cooking sooo he makes brecky.

ummm... i was studying and idk its been weird for me to study these last couple weeks cause i feel like ive studied, and i dont know what new to study... not like ive learnedd it all but like what do i study at the end of my mission? so ive been reading old general conf talks and i started reading Doctrine and convenants. and this week we visited the family with tons fo kids and i fely like i needed to share a scrip which is in like DC 6 talks about rich is having eternal life not money, cause this family is poor, and are kind of focusedd on working and its a problem but she was like elder why did you share that? im like idk, i read it this morning and i really liked it, and she says elder i felt like that was just for me, the ear tugging i needed. and then she came to church for the first time in a long while, and brought her mother and oldest daughter who hadnt come the week before... ie the only onther week i went to church here.

next week is insane, deárture interviews, then zone conf then have like 2 days of not leaving the house the temple dedication, then in two weeks is the mission christmas party then my generatino is going to the temple.......... as in chrustmas is cool but almost impossible for missionary work.

LOVE you guys tons. ahhahaha yes mom i watched the christmas devotional live. super cool you went, im sure it was better in english.

my comps father showed up to church this sunday.... hahaha oops? hahaha it was weird.

idk, highlight of the week was probably going and visitng my area today. im still pretty happy. such good people stinks hard that the ward is unsafe, hahahaha id be willing to go back. hahahaha

Oh..... ixtapaluca will be becomming part of our mission in january.... tell brad he´ll be excited he was there.

BYE loves im dreaming of a white christmas too.....

Elder Blotter

Week 97

Hey!

Thanksgiving: James Bond & football, haha, sounds fun.

This week I got to eat a tamale with bacon in it.  Be jealous, because it was delicious.

So day one here: I got to the changes a little late because the member that was driving is like deaf or has selective hearing.  I think I know what it's like to have a teenage son.   We finally got to changes, got my companion and accidentally left one of my bags in the van.  Ugh... on to the new area.

The house that we live in is large and two companionships live there, but they had the house filthy and the landlady is super annoying and is a great fault finder, haha.  So we, as of yesterday, were on the point of getting kicked out of the house.  We talked and have till the 3 of January to find a new house, or in other words i don't have to worry about moving, haha.

But the house was filthy dirty.  We cleaned it.  It's sick (a good thing) now.  Like we have three or four couches sick, haha.

The ward is cool.  We have lots of less actives to visit and members that like the missionaries, and investigators that are progressing.  We had three baptismal dates for the weekend before I come home but two of them didn't come to church so I wont be here for two of them, lame.  But, there are some pretty cool people here.

Idk, I get along with my comps.  One of them loves cooking, so I'm stoked because he enjoys making us food.

Ummm, idk.  We visited a bunch of less actives and 19 came to church on Sunday so that was sick........... there are two different families here that the sister has like 32 years old and her son is 18......... other words had a kid when she was 14. two different people. wow. or a 23 year old with 4-5 children.


ummm idk I'm doing fine out here in la perla. or the pearl. hahaha have fun before i get home cause I'm going to come home and sleep for like a week. hahaha I'm tired all the time.

apart from sister Stutz having Facebook she has a blog http://stutznegger.blogspot.mx/
her blog is a hilariously different perspective being the mission presidents wife.
you'll probably like that.


hahaha love you tons mom
have a great week.

Elder Blotter

Week 96 - Last week of changes

Last week of the changes. We spent a lot of time in a pueblo called Apipilhuasco.
Super, super cool place with only like three different members of the church. And one investigator
The investigator is super cool but super like flakey...…Idk.... One day he'll get baptized and all his family. His wife is already a member, when she got baptized they had like marital problems now that everything is better cause of the principles of the church she comes less cause she spends more time with her family...…

But, slowly but surely the husband will become a member of the church and their like 5 children.
The other family is a family that got baptized a long time ago, but they never really or don't want to say they felt the spirit. So.... We are teaching them as if they were new inv. its pretty cool.

we also had an activity to go to the visitors center and we invited all the ward all the less actives, we've been planning this activity for like a month or more. we rented full bus to go. 1300 pesos which is like a little under a hundred bucks. at 10 which was the planned leaving time. no one shows up. nobody. at 1115 we had 8 people. in a bus that seats 32. ugh...... so we went anyway with those people...… and one was an investigator i have and she closed her heart and wanted to fight about the money used to build the visitors center and a bunch of stuff instead of learning and feeling the spirit. after the wonderful video of the family that they have she pulls her phone out and takes a pic of the tv. cause its huge. but seriously strong spirit present and hard hearts.

What else. Not a lot ,more, have changes. Lame......................
My last 4 weeks in the mission in a different area. Um not going to get to know anyone. That stinks. And its cause president wants me to end my mission as a ZL.........… for four weeks.
I'm not really into missionary titles and I'm not too excited to be in a new area for the last four weeks in my mission.
Ugh more reporting... more talking to leaders every day.


Nothing more. Really. I had to wash two weeks of dirty clothes cause I don't know how but I accumulated white shirts and garments for like two weeks.

Love you tons,

Elder Blotter

See you soon.

Week 93 - Halloween

I almost forgot to shoot you guys an email.

How are you doing? Didn't snow on halloween?

Speaking of halloween, Mexico's weird cause they've adopted a ton of stuff from the states and so now in addition to day of the dead they celebrate halloween. And I don't know why but we were instructed not to leave on halloween but i'm nearly positive the largest parts of the festivities were today and yesterday. But who knows.

so last week, Monday was mission conference. with elder Nelson, Tuesday was p day and then they cut Saturday in half making it useless to me so i had Wednesday Thursday and Friday to work this week so that was kinda hard. we found some new people to teach and we have a lot of important appointments this week. we had a ward activity on Friday too, it was like a talent show, some people came dressed in costumes but instead of showing talents they did like an evening of improv.  they assigned songs and had costumes.... they assigned us the village people in between macho man and ymca...... haha pretty crazy

This morning we played soccer with the young men in the ward, cause they didn't have school.

umm...… we've decided to use the phone a lot more to schedule and verify a lot more, cause holy cow its horrible to go to a pueblo for an appt. and they're not home...…

Not a whole ton to share, we had an investigator at church yay! Marcus, he's the husband of a recent convert we're going to the visitors center with them on Thursday.

ummm.....

Love you guys tons!

Elder Blotter

Week 92 - Note from Executive Director of the Missionary Department

Dear Brother and Sister Blotter,

My wife and I just concluded a tour of the Mexico City Southeast Mission.  During our time there we had the opportunity to meet your wonderful son, Joshua.  He has been an outstanding missionary.  His President and wife speak very highly of him.  I was able to interview him during our zone conference and found a very mature young man with a strong testimony of the gospel.

Thank your for sending your son and thank you for raising such and outstanding young man.

May the Lord bless you and your family as he continues to serve.

Sincerely yours,

Elder Brent H. Nielson
Executive Director of the Missionary Department

Week 92

Hello.

how are you guys im doing great.

I´ve been punching it out here in texcoco without like any visible success. we arent getting discouraged though. we had zero investigators in church again. that is just sooo painfull to have.

but sunday was ward conference. which is nice cause lots of people come to that, and the stake pres talked and the bishop. the stake pres gave a good talk he just didnt take his talk to application it was just a feel good talk.

And monday we had a zone conference with elder nielson and his wife. it was a really cool experience and i like the sister nielsons talk she talked about how what is being a nielson, then she talked about how in laws change and she said ruin but as a joke, the dynamic in the family and how to accept and more than just tolerate people but really to learn from them. i really liked that cause i feel like in the mission i had thought that it taught me that but i realized i have just tolerated some of my companions, tolerated very well, but never really got to the center and loved them adn made them my best friends.-on some of my comps yes- she went on to talk about her sons and their character adn some comps they had in the misino and how they learned grew and applied it to us.

elder nielson talked to us about the atonement and the enabling power and the doctrine of christ and he helped us apply it to missionary worka dn hwo to teach better contqct better certain principles that he thought we could do a better job teaching and stuff like that. it was a truly choice experience.

the meeting was in the stake center, whichis like 90 mins from my area, so we got permissino to stay over at the zone leaders house, actually they told us to do it so we didnt have to wake up at 5 am to be there. but at the zone leaders house they had like 2 extra blankets and no extra mattresses and there were four of us that slept in their house. i had brought a blanket, but it got chilly, and the cement floor was cold. so i slept all night on a a cardboard box that i laid out on the ground like a homeless person, it was terrrible. hahahhhahaha

idk we went to siome lame ruins today in my area, i bought a chess board to teach my comp how to play chess. hahaha to keep the brain active in between study sessinos.


not much more. i sent an email to a dude about my job, he still hasnt replied if chels could contact him, i sent an email to kyle.
when is registration for classes? and i dont want an earlier class than 9 am please and thank you. also about the apartment, if you could find one where i only have to sign a semester contract? cause after a semester i probably will have friends i wan tto live with again.



UMMMMM did i forget anything? chang my major no?

love you

Elder Blotter



The first two pictures some super lame ruins in the middle of the city of texcoco, my area

this was at a fair, we paid like 10 pesos to take a pic with this cool snake

Week 91 - First Week of Last Full Transfer

Hey,

This week we did a ton of service. We found a couple of lost less actives and we found a bunch of new investigators, but the all put the return appt. for this week.

ummm... I'm honestly pulling a blank for what happened this week. hahaha

I love you guys tons. It's freaking me out having to sign up for classes at byu. I don't want to think about that at all, hahahaha but I know that I have to... and it stresses me out a lot.

I still haven't had a ton of success in this ward where I'm serving, but we're still trying hard. We're still working, working, working.  It's such a super large area that makes it's so hard to effectively work. There aren't a ton of members in a centralized place, so we have to go and visit the one or two members that do live in an area, and contact and look for maybe a less active if we are lucky and then that's like the afternoon. It makes it really hard. hahahaha

We had a super cool less active come back to activity and then like a week ago he had a stroke, I think, and now from what I know he can't speak. It's super, super sad, because he was wanting so much to be an active member of the church after like 54 years of getting baptized.

Ummm I re-did a chicken coop at a members home. As we dug up the ground three rats ran out and got on me... it was super super cool. Hahahahahaha we also went to a birthday party of a two year old. It made me remember how old-ish Tanner was when I left.  Hahaha. He was half talking and stuff.

Hahaha I love you tons seriously. I'll write a better letter next week, and I'll have more success this week.

LOVES,

Elder Blotter

Week 90 - Look who's coming home!!!

Look who's coming home!!!! 😇

Sent from my iPhone

Begin forwarded message:

From: Joshua Blotter <jblotter@myldsmail.net>
Date: October 12, 2015 at 2:58:19 PM MDT
To: Shauna Blotter <shauna.blotter@gmail.com>, michael blotter <blottervet@hotmail.com>
Subject: Fwd: Flightz


Que onda homies. Here´s your flight!!! Let your parents, bishop, and stake pres know. If there are any questions, concerns, or complaints they can be directed to my companion, Elder Orchard. Thank you.



Elder Olson I Secretario Ejecutivo I Misión México Ciudad de México Sureste
Avenida del Taller 540, Col. Jardín Balbuena, Venustiano Carranza I México DF, 15900
Celular 5554315074 I Oficina 26120223

Week 89

hey family

hahaha mom you ask me every conference if i watch it live. yes. haha where we are in mexico is like a massive city, currently on the outskirts of that city but everything is moderna dn i think we´re like an hour behind salt lake in the time, and that hour just cause daylight savings is different here.
i really really like the conference and felt like i received a lot of answers, about how to have more success be happier and lots of things. through the spirit.

hahah so ya i fell into a river. the water was only like a foot deep but it was sand and very loose sooo like the watery sand stuff was like 3-4 feet deep. haha my notebook it was where i had taken my notes when D. Todd Christofferson came and last general conference adn had the lists of members i had made, so ya it was important. hahaha it totally got ruined but the writing and stiuff was fine.

yup it was like pottery on point references to the gospel.  did i throw a pot, the answer is not yet.
can you send me the recipies mom.

this week was good. idk normal missionary work we found family of three on like tuesday and then we dropped them on thursday. that was cool, not. we did find a really cool inv. on friday, a reference from a sister we hadnt ever gone to visit nor had she come to church the entire time ive been here. the inv. is a single mother of 25. we decided here in mexico that is honestly the best group of inv. they want and need help in their lives, theyre normally willing to read the scriptures and the couple well with wards normally. she was going to come to conf but for an unknown reason didnt-couldnt


honestly this last week was super fast cause of conference that gets rid of normal saturday and sunday working.

something really cool about this area and ward is that for some reason there are a lot of foreigners, and by that i mean from out of mexico and out fo teh state.
there is a venezuelan, from sinaloa, from veracruz, from guerrero, michaocan, form jalisco, we met some member in the street yesterday from el salvador he was on his way to illegaly enter the united states. ahha
so the other day we got to eat some fish prepared like sinaloan style. twas pretty yummy. last week we ate like venezuelan food, they were like corn pancakes that you ate with cheese instead of sweet.

well idk. ill try and kick butt this week. we all need to be better at listening to the spirit.
love elder blotter.

Week 88

you know the song when semptember ends..... ya well semptember is ending. thats weird. i only have three months left......................


so this week was pretty crzy. hahah we had like two days that we walked atound all day long and teh only house we got into wsa the food. i also fell into a river this week. hahahahaha hahhaha there is the river that just like crosses the road like no big deal, and we had to cross it and so as i jog across the river thats like ancle deep, my notebook falls in and upon crossing the river my comp tells me about my fallen notebook, i drop my jbackpack adn go to the notebooks rescue and step in the river and instead of a bottom firm my leg dropped till like till my thigh. hhahahaha ya. that was pretty nuts. had to take my shoes off and wash tehm out and i walked around for the next two hours with dirty wet sheos and socks and pants. hahahahahahaha

success´ well... we found a couple new less active families thats always exciting for well at least me. haha one is a mother daughter and then they stood us up when we traveled 30 + mins out to visit them, the crappy thing is that even though they stood us up, we couldnt keep workin out there cause the last bus back to texcoco passes at like 730. the other family is an entire family i think that got baptised and as we talked they mentioned idk what adn she took us out to the work shop they have in the back yard that was like a pottery- wood working- paper mache  workshop they even have some sort of pottery wheel............................................ i was pretty stoked. i hope to help them come back. the mom was pretty tough and the father lives in like another state now for his work...... but they have an 18 year old son. who was like ya i want to come back to church. but he´s in some intensive high school agricultural program that takes the classes to travel like every week end.................. so he cant come to church for like 2 solid weeks. but he was cool.


idk. what else really happened this week. im always tired.. ahhahaha my companions name is elder choc he´s from yucatan hes cool.

lots of the poeople in the pueblos mom go to the city to work, or there are a lot of farms, tons of people here are teachers cause theres a bunch of high schools and like two or three universities.

i asked dad but if mom can do it that´d be nice too, can you send me the lemon bar recipe adn the quiche recipe, i was talkign with a sister with holiday traditions adn she wants to try adnd make it. and i think it´ll be fun. hahaha.


idk

love you guys tons!

Elder Blotter

Week 87

awww we lost to ucla? they used to be horrible when i was home are they better now or is byu playing lousy?

we only have two inv. i think. one is cool and everything but she runs like a lumber store- carpintry place- and by like runs i mean she owns the business..... and she`s getting divorced, but she`s cool and her secretary is a member of the church a 19 year old girl thats putting her papers in for the mission. but the member hasnt reallized yet, i think she will when she getson her mission that we would like to visit morethan once a week and weneed her to come to church. the memebrs like she`s super busy and cant see you tpdya but you guys can come by on.... well next wednesday......... guh........ she`,ll learn pretty fast once she`s on her mission.


and the other one is some dude thats costarican, he was a contact and its a slow process with him we`ve not been in his house yet and he also only has us come by every thursday afternoon. ugh. we teach him outside standing up in the sun.... i was sweating hard last time. hahaha but i felt the spirit testify sooo thats all good.

we had found/visited two less actives- or recent converts whose husbands aren`t members both said they`d bring their husbands and we`d see them at church on sunday.... that was saturday..... on sunday they both cancelled on church. ugh.......


but some lady had invited 4 of her friends to church and they live in my area and we put an appt. to visit them and we chatted with them for a minute inbetween classes, gave them books of mormons and restauration pamphlets. so we`ve got hope in those guys.

the one hard thing about openin an area, and not having a washing machine..... is that you dont know the members well enough to ask to borrow theirs,.... so i havent washed my clothes in like two weeks. my garment bottoms i wash by hadn in the wash basin sink thing thatevery mexican home has, i dont know how in the world i ended up with 20 garment shirts, and only 7 bottoms........ and i have quite a few shirts so i havent been missing clean clothes its just piling up in my dirty clothes bag..... hahahaha

i know my area pretty miuch now, i can get around adn im never lost, and i can find people from the ward list. so thats improvement. it helps here that in pueblos everyone knows everyone and you ask for the person and tehy tell you were they live........... hahahaha but im excited to hopefully help some less actigves get active.

idk what else do you want to hear about?

sorry about not sending photos, haveent taken a ton and teh internets not that trustworthy to plug in my memory card............ ill see about in future weeks.


Elder Blotter

Week 86

So.. this week was well, numbers wise it sucked hahaha we had like 15 lessons and there were all practically with active members of the church or like an activity at the church, But i really enjoyed myself. hahaha

first we got to know like all of the pueblos, and by all i mean like 4 of them hahaha there are like 10. but still huge progress. but we´d go to a pueblo in the morning and then contact for like 3 hours and walk around then go to the food, then well...... if we ate in the center we´d go to a different pueblo and contact for like the afternoon. hahahaha feel like i got a mission change to like the united states of america, all we´ve been doing is contacting.

hahaha but my area is straight gorgeous. literally it´s what like you´d think of when you pciutre mexico cobble stone streets like old colonial style houses big town squares trees lots of dogs and horses nad donkeys

not a lot happened in the are with inv. which isnt so fun, we taught our chosen inv. and met her husband taught him and then on saturday stood us up and pretty much dropped us. telling us she´d call us when we could visit her................ dang. but we found another woman who is the boss of some member of the church in a branch in this stake she´s already reading the book of mormon and has had answers to prayers she´s been fasting i think for the last three months too..... hahaha but she´s going through a divorce process and is super stressed and busy, AND no one could-inv- go to church cause th etemple rededication.


Well we went to the cultural thingy, well at least to the broadcast fo it. it was really good just sometimes it made me uncomfortable. like culty. but it was good non the less. pretty dancing a good message, smiling people. overall very good.


Then on sunday we decided why not go and listen to all the sessions i dont want to miss out on the prophets words, president eyring and elder holland kent f richards the presidency or the area. all gave wonderful wonderful talks. hollands talks killed it, he talked about the temple buildign commandment, that it litterally came sooo soon after thechurch was established, and then they lost that temple adn started building the navuoo temple announced other temples over there and lost those too..... then after crossign the plains 4 days after arriving announced the construction of the new temple. holland supposes there were people who said ya enough we tried and now we´re tired. and brigham young says something awesome. he says ive been asked already if i think we´ll finish this temple, the answer is i do not know, nor do i care. the only thing that matters is how is our standing with god, today.
he also talked about elijah and jews and the promises really really really great.

And we kind of got shafted here, with a stake thingy, gave us little less than a great oppurtunities to get to know members and ask for help and make appointments with them......


but the work will continue.

love you tons! sounds like you guys had a blast in north carolina and stuff like that. hahaha idk.

Elder Blotter

Week 85

so last week..... hahahahaha i totally have it written in my journal but i dont have the luxury anymore to just pause and go check my journal and i forgot my journal............

what i do remember is that we went ot the temple open house twice once the guide didnt share anything and i didnt like her tour at allllll then when we came back to the temple our guide was a champ. literally i walked up to her afterwards and thanked her for her tour cause she did such a good job at focusing on teaching and sharing to the inv simple truths that the temple teaches. loved it.

then at church i said bye to everyone. i got to that ward and it was the worst ward in all of oriental. like everyone in the mission is like eww leandro valle. but by the time i left i think its likke really the best ward ive been in. not like any problems with gossip members that were actually visiting and helping and people who were coming back to activity and i dont know i really grew to love the ward, BUT now im here.

now im in texcoco 2 sooooo super different.
first off i dont have the pics. but pres´family had come to visit him like the week or so before teh changes, and brought a bunch of ties. pres got the ugliest tie he could find and wore it to the changes meeting. hahah so i mentioned it to him and he made me take a pic with him, but the sister has it.
changes were weird cause from like the position of behind the desk to normal missionary. i found my new comp then got the little van loaded. for the two wards chapingo and texcoco had changes they brought one member with a mini van. so copming was two people who had changes and their comps, so four elders....... on the way back we were 4 elders with bags to bring and to other elders........... it was a little crazy to pack everything up....


we gety to our area and one of the elders, well the only one who was in the ward from before is like....... ummm the house is a little dirty and we got kicked out this morning...........

ya. again show up to a house and have to deep clean it........ oh so i  hate  cleaning the messes of other humans..... 13 large bags of trash.

anyways that was tuesday cleaning and then had to go try and find a hosue..... didnt really have any luck.

then wednesday we went to go find a house. we found it and moved half of our things in, and continued to clean the old house.

thursday continuing to clean and we dont get help from anyone to move the house till litterally 830 a member shows up to the hosue wiht their truck to help us move the beds and the fridges to the new house..... it was kind of a nightmare........



but now thats over. friday we start to go find people to visit. evveryone we called pretty much was like ya we´ll see each other on sunday we can put an appt. then..... ya that was kind of annoying. we called pretty much all the phone numbers that were in the ward list. most names or families dont have numbers but still something ive never done before...hahaha

idk spent a lot of time like ummmmm what are we supposed to do now?

we got a fone call from some member in a different state who wanted us to go teach his cousin. which we did. she´s super cool her name is diana she has three kids. and she really wants to change and be a better example to her family.
saturday the ward had an activity to go to the temple open house the last day it was open, diana came with her her two sons, ones like 13 and the others like 2 it was super cool love the temple.

but she didnt come to church on sunday........ :c thats always sad. we´ll see what we can do about that this week.

i have hope this week is going to be good, we have someone who is scheduled to help us like everyday pretty much to help take us around to pueblos in places in our area. im really kinda stoked to work here in this area, its just semi overwhelming sometimes.

love you guys tons. have a great week.

some member gave me some rain boots, cause of how much it rains here.... haha
i have pics but im not so sure about the computers so.... ill send them to you next week or something.


Elder Blotter

Week 84

Hey family.

soooo sorry about the email sooo late, today is just crazy for us like way busy... all the news are here and i have like zero time to write you...... and right now theyre playing the guitar super loud behind me...........


i wrote everything in my journal. so ill write you next week about what happened this week? we had a meeting on tuesday that took all day but the night appt. wednesday we had d todd christofferson come thursday we had to go to polanco came back for the night appt. then saturday we went to the temple and baptised and went to the temple again.

crazy busy week all hard work. a little sad to leave here, and a little stoked.

love you guys tons

Elder Blotter



pics with dtodd christofferson:

This is elder brown. jewel married bj so jewel and bj are in both of our family fotos. hahahahah bj is his cousin.

thats pretty funny no? ive met a different elder that also had the knights family in their family fotos.

Week 83

HEY.

i had a great week, probably baptised my best convert so far this week.
what else happened........ one sec let me check.........

okay. to start we had this meeting to fix some probs we had in the offices between the assistents and the secs...... i thought i did a very good job of civilly handling a complicated situation, we got all of our points cover but they just got angry........ so the situation right now is semi uncomfortable.
but.......... we did what we could to fix the problems kindly

and in the night we went to visit our inv. we inherited when the area was opened to the whole ward. she had a baptismal date that is quickly approaching and hardly any teaching.......  i dont understand she had like 4 sundays and didnt know who joseph smith wsa....... so we the other day went and gave an overview of the commandments and said we´re going to teach these things semi explained and she was like so you guys dont drink coffee?? dnag i love coffee.... i guess ill stop drinking that tomorrow mornign................. hahaha before being taught already accepting the commitments.


Anyways that was tuesday. then on wedensday we went and met a couple people that live on the other half of the ward. helped some lady put up her little store front that sells corn.
then to the fmily alba thats a 55 year old couple with the 36 year old daughter and 17 and 10 year old grandchildren. they are always super fun to go teach i love them a bunch. they used to be so frustratin gand now they read and are doing things cause they want to like pray and read and its been awesome to see their progress.
anyways we were goint to start with the prayer and we were like fernanda its your turn and shes like no i did it last time and the grandpa was like No, i want to say the prayer. salvador for the win. and he gave a very well done prayer, and he was very not good at praying and isnt good at expressing himself. idk i really iked that.

thursdayi bought another pair of shoes.... in the tianguis-like a street famers market that sells everything-  cause i wear one pair of my shoes on sunday the other ones everyday and theyre super comfy but i am afraid that in my next area if i wear them everysingle day theyll get wrecked so i bought a cheaper pair of shoes, theyre pretty nice looking too. also saw a sister from my last ward named juanita, we used to eat with her every single thursday when i was in guelatao. i asked about the ward how it ws doing how were my converts and stuff and she said that they have like 25 in attendence and the stake pres told them if they dont start working theyre going to be a branch...... but idk it was really nice seeing that sister she´s sooo nice and has a very sweet testimony.
then lauras baptismal interview, then after she taught us how to make salsa in a molchajete, we´re pretty much champion salsa makers now, watch out utah.

then friday was cool we split up with the ward mission leader and taught the law of chastity to our inv. and orchard and the ward mission leader had a family home evening in the members house with a different inv. family. twas a good evening. the family home evening wasnt even our idea nor did we even prepare the lesson we just accompanied it.

then saturday. probably one of my favorite days in teh mission. so we get up go to the gym come back eat brecky get ready and the ward or the YM-YW- missionaries are having a go to the temple open house activity. our ward went from like zero ymyyw to like 15 in about 2-3 weeks visits and activities acutally help. and we brought laura. rented a little bus and went to the temple suepr cool experience being in the temple for the first time in 19 months. then comiing back from the temple we had the baptism. all the people that came to the temple were asked to stay for the baptism and quite a few more people came plus the primary sand a special musical number int eh middle. in total it was just a perfect baptism. THEN we went ot eat the food with a sister kinda late, but she was super cool cause we tried to cancel like the week before and she was like, How are we going to leave you without eating we´ll wait till you can come. so we ate at like 4 pm then picked up a different inv. family and took them to the temple open house. super cool. idk love the temple love the family, they felt the spirit and the peace there.

and on sunday we went to church had some miracle people show up. and lots of less actives. laura got confirmed and then after worked hard and all in all a great week.

Now, only one more sunday in this ward till i have changes. pretty crazy. i used to not like the ward cause it didnt function now im like actually sad to leave here. its pretty fun.


hope you had a great week and that you are ready for school. and i saw the wake board looked sick.

Love you guys.

Elder Blotter

Week 82

So before it gets any later......... ill shoot you guys a quick email.

This week, actually first. Dad, my friend is serving in montreal and she told me today that she met someone who said that an elder blotter was their missionary a michael blotter.......... so we´ll see about that next week. i told ehr you served your mission in 81-82 right? Thats pretty Crazy amiright?

Anyways about whats going on here. felt better this week, even though it didnt go as spectacular as last week.

the great part of this week was that members want to help us. i mentioned that a couple people asked us when they could go out to work with us in church. they all came through so tuesday we visited people and did stuff wiht the youngmens pres, who is really doing work as the youngmens pres, we went from like 1 or2 youngmen to like 8 or 9 at church this week. okay then the next day we went to do visits with the guy who is going to be the ward mission leader visited all the inv. so he could know them teach a little bit. thursday we picked up houses with president and taught a couple lessons again with the ward mission leader. and friday we went out with the whole youngmens presidency to do visits with young men to go find less active young men.
 saturday all our plans exploded.......... we think cause god made them, in that there were other things he needed us to do.


Okay. funny story so we went to go to the youngmens pres house to do visits at 5 he doesnt show up till 545 but we went in cause its like a family home, and the 4 year old named pamela hosted us for like 45 mins with games coloring books puzzles hahaha jokes. literally the cutest little girl. probably my favorite member of the ward right now. hahahaha

idk i just really loved seeing the ward begin to do their own work see fruits and be like oh wow all i need to do is go visit the YM or YW and theyll come to church.
we actually just got back to the hosue cause we were at the church playing soccer and basketball with youngmen youngwomen and the presidents. it was very cool from like flip this ward has no forward progress because theres no jovenes to having an activity with like 10+ people two invited kids non member. super cool.

And Laura is about to get baptised this week.

something cool with the temple open house, they dont give tours on sunday but this sunday they opened up for the women the bridal room or whatever its called and gave like a special tour and stuff. laura went like a champ called us after and was like ya..... i needd to go back there to get married someday...... we were like ya you do.

other frustrating stuff cool stuff idk the family alba didnt go to church this week, cause parties in puebla which is what the next state over is called ruined our saturday and sunday plans/ church attendence of inv.

did i ever mention the awkward moment we´ve been having for a while? there was this lady that stopped us in the street to ask what church her dad and sister should go to... she was on vacation and from what i understood she was a member they werernt. THEN i told them they go to our ward. cause she said rio de churubusco, the name the streets on....... okay so we go to visit them, they live on the other side of two wards away. and they have a reference of a family that lives in my old area, that doesnt have any missionaries. so we asked pres about it and he told us to visit them for right now......... which makes an awkward situation of the family that doesnt live in our ward inviting the new inv. to go with their family to a ward that neither of them go to......... hahahaha so we´ve been having to juggle that for a little bit.


And i think thats all maybe tomorrow ill send you like some pics we took this week.
Mom: i told you i went to an aquarium here like a month ago and it was a total blast and i stiilll love fishes. there are a Ton of people going on missions now and its wierd. hahahah i think ive seen garricks hair, girl long hair im not against if you can pull it off. and garrick i didnt think could................. Also with sam, just print off a copy of the honor code and tell him he agreed to live it the entire time he enrolled and not just when he´s taking classes...... hahaha

Dad:
john 6 scipture is sick. ya im getting to be a good missionary. And........... ya im about to go into a completely new area, and try and apply all the skills ive learned to just kick some butt.



Love you tons!
Elder Blotter

Week 81

Hey.

so i read through my journal to remember what we did this week. (jajaja im actually writing)

it wasnt my favorite week. idk we had a good week im not sure.

sunday was a good day for the work we had 10 inv in church thats pretty darn great adn we came to church with five baptismal goals and left with seven. also probably the most ive ever had in the mish.
they instituted the youngmens presidency and tehy are all super excited to work we´ve already had an activity they´ve already gone on visits to try and reactivate the youngmen. three people asked us when they can come with us and do visits. i watched a couple sisters go up to my inv. and ask when they can pass by to visit teach her. im super stoked with the progress in the ward that super super great.

we´ve had good lessons too, we taught some good lessons as well. ive talked about the familia alba right? they are a part member family. meaning. gabriela is like 36 i think is a member who got baptised 7 years ago and has only ever gone to church twice. we are teaching her parents. and her two children. we´ve been using technology to help us in teaching them, cause they arent the brightest tools in the shed, or they arent nearly as prepared as laura-the golden inv- so we watched a video the hope of gods light, its a mormon message thats super good from like a year ago, then we taught about growing faith and putting a baptismal date. hahahhaa we are all laughing here as i write about this cause my companion, we´re in a trio, decided to jump topics explain and read about fasting and then when the next opportunity arose he jumped into teaching why the church has its name......... hahahaha me and my other comp had to say like bueno....... as we were saying about putting a goal with you guys. hahahaha

we also taught laura about the commandments. bout tithing and chastity. we were thinking cause her boyfriend is a convert to the church of like 2 years we wouldnt need to dwell upon that. welll nope. after teaching her about chastity she got all indignant adn upset that her boyfriend was a member of the church and how come he didnt know about this or why he didnt live it. she set herself to give him the pamphlet and to teach him what it meant. hahaha  she´s so cool too bad her boyfiend is a total total dud. literally such a loser.

bout us. idk we´ve been going to the gym every morning had i told you that? its been going on for like a month. we´re getting strong, then we come home adn i make the protien herbalife shakes and olson my companion makes the eggs and orchard makes the toast. hahah we´re one happy little family.

overall good week.

_Love you guys tons.
sounds like you had fun at girls camp. hope you feel better this week dad. thanks for taking ginger on the hikes wiht you. good luck on your talk dad. -PS i actually got the letter that i think you guys thought didnt send from dad-
happy birthday a couple days late mother love you

till next week
elder blotter

Week 80

This is what my comp wrote up about what we did on tuesday it was kinda crazy:

Today was the best day of my mission. President, Hna Stutz, Elder Blotter and I went to clear out 3 houses. We left at 9 am. We got home at 9. It was so great. We started off by crossing half the mission to get out to Chicoloapan and cleaned up. We got there and they hadn't gotten everything packed up so we did that! Then Pres gave some stuff away to people in the street and they called him Santa Claus hahaha. Then we went to go find the church in Altlipac to help with a special interview, and got lost. Then we got pulled over by the federal police. They told us that we weren't allowed to carry things in our van, just people... Weird. Then Pres pulled the slickest move I've ever seen. The guy tells him he needs to go pay a 1200 peso fine in the offices. Pres goes "Hey man.. we don't have time to go do that so how about.. how about you do it for me?" And then the guy realized what was going on and goes "I think that can work." And Pres goes "And how does it sound for 1000?" And the guy goes "Perfect." So then he bribed the cop and we left. Then we got lost and Hna Stutz wanted to buy ice cream so we got some. Then we got a little more lost and decided to meet them at a different church. We stopped at Burger King and got some lunch. Then we went and Pres fought off Satan and it was sweet. So now, it's 11:30 and we've fought the law and Satan. Then we picked some kids up and dropped them off at their house with the beds we had just picked up so they could have new ones. Then we ran out to Arboleda to clear out the second house. Oh my goodness. We get there and the landlady is just fuming. The house is a complete disaster. A complete disaster. So so so so so gross. So after a long time of cleaning, paying the landlady, getting mad at some missionaries, we finally gave a bunch of stuff to some lady that had came and asked for our garbage to look through to sell cardboard. She got some new beds and accepted to listen to the missionaries! So after that we head over to Ixtla. Blotter got us lost. But we found it. That house was a mess too. We got every thing cleaned up and then ran over to McDonalds and got some dinner. Then we ran to the stake center and Pres did a baptismal interview for a guy who has killed 9 people like 50 years ago. We played soccer with some kids that were there while we waited! Then we came back to the offices after a long hard days work. I love the offices so much hahaha this was the best day of my life. 

Week 79

sorry im just barely writing you now. i promise you´ll get your next email on monday.

this week.... what happened...... ummmmm.....

soooooo. ive told you about Laura the progressing investigator we have. she is so cool and is going to be such a convert. we taught her the gospel the restoration the book of mormon and gave her a church tour, and she is so ready for baptism. today we are going to eat at her house cause she volunteered to feed us, already acting like a member of the church, and we´re going to teach the plan of salvation a little bit, but last week cause she´s so awesome she naturally without us telling her or inviting her to, she went and talked with one of her neighbor friends who was struggling and told her about the church and how it has helped her and that if the friend wanted she could introduce her to us. so then we got to meet Carmen, also a really cool woman who wanted to know more was willing to come to church and to read was really interested And Carmen is a mother of two so the was the potential fo the family too. well after two really cool lessons with her, she told us saturday afternoon that she wanted to go to church and that she wanted us bring her the book of mormon.
we dont really know what happened she must've fought with one of her daughters or something and now she wants space and doesnt want to meet with us which is always LAME she had, and im still going to say has so much potential.

oh ya have i told you about my new comp yet? his name is elder olson, he's from farmington utah. he went to davis high, supposedly his mom's going to like try and ask you out to lunch or something... idk ahahahaha i havent given out your personal info so dont worry.

other than laura and carmen what happened. oh our ward mission leaders dad who we teach adn had a baptismal date for this satruday dropped the goal, partly cause he's an old man and doesnt get it and the other part cause his son has about the same level of understanding and conversion which is like zero so that doesnt help. we kind of dropped him unless he shows some sort of initiative more that just going to church.

oh we also got another little famiyl to church on sunday i almost completely forgot about them there is a woman who got baptised 7 years ago with one sunday at church she got confirmed the next sunday adn then she never came back. so we are trying to help her and then try to help her children get baptised. i hope we can help them cause they are really cool too. they never read so we went like three days in a row and read with them then they read on their own. which was super super nice.

Love you guys i'll write on monday

Elder Blotter

Week 78

So.... cause of the last week of transfers, my life is insane and i still forgot stuff -like emailing yesterday- and its always a good time.

im not really sure what to share from this week, cause it was the last week with elder norr, he went home so lots of teh appts. he was saying goodbye to the ward members and stuff and tons of people invited us to eat with them.

okay, so there was these three inv that we found like three weeks ago like pretty cool, excited the spirit was teaching whenever we went over solid inv. but she´s like an active member in some other church, and passing a sunday we went over and no one answered, over and no one answered. jbut then finally we go knock she comes out says we´re good, kinda dont come back if you want ill give you your blue book back.,........... ugh t hats the worst. something must have been like said or something in her church cause it was a change from night to day.
     but she said before norr went home, we could come over. saweet so i think she thought we were going to like spend a ton of time saying bye we took the opurtunity to teach, we fasted the day before to know what to teach, we didnt feel anything more than like instead of giving us a topic to teach we were waiting for the spitit in the lesson. we decided to teach the Book of Mormon. i thought it was a good lesson, still probably not progressing but they all committed to read the book of mormon, nad we have a return appt.

also we were plannning on what we were going to teach laura our like perfect inv. we decided she like understands and stuff superficial lessons jsut dont cut it, so we decided to dive a little bit more into deeper doctrine. she´s sooo cool.....


then changes happened and its freaking busy im soooory i havent written you. i love you guys sioooo much. ill write you like a little bit more like in a couple days......... to finish this cause i like wrote this part a couple of days ago and i figured id get it to you......

LOVE YOU

Elder Blotter

Week 77

Soooooo... my p day got changed back to monday and its terrible there´s no time to do anything.  but i figured id get you guys an email.

What do i have to talk about this week?
the biggest thing i think was that Laura the perfect inv. we took her to the church to give her a tour and to teach her abolut the sacrament and baptism, sh is literally sooo cool, we get into the church and sit down and she lists off like three or four questions, wer´re like hold up. we´ll get to that but wait a sec. lets start with a prayer, then we talked about the sacrament and the purpose of it and keeping the sabbath day holy. then we went and showed her the pila or the font and she´s like so what do i have to wear to be baptised? hahahaha perfect question........ and then we´re like laura will you get baptised? and she gets like this hard to get look, like she doesnt want to show how much she wants to be baptised, and says when......... ahhaha the 22ish of August. yup.

Anyways other than that its been busy here in the offices, last week of changes always goes a little nuts here AND i forgot to do the release papers for all the elders going home, ya so i had to do 22 of those........ that was fun......... hahahaha

love you guys a ton. dont have alot of time ive been having a blast and we´ve been super busy in the offices and in the area perfect combo.

foto weedwacking the church. haha in the rain.

Elder Blotter

Week 76

hey mom and dad,

so this week was exhausting. hahaha
wednesday - we visited one of elder norrs old areas, then got back to teach like two lessons,
thursday - was a normal day. we went to visit a family that we think had been in teaching before and we knocked and they didnt really want to let us in, but we got in to go teach for like 5-10 my comp started teaching and it was pretty rote, not bagging on him at all we all do it sometimes, but i watched the people tune out so i completely turned the lesson around and the spirit was there, and they were more interested now that they were when we started so thats the hope. progress.

friday- went to polanco adn wasted like an hour and a half in line to have them tell me to redo all the paperwork i had done.......... lame. and annoying cause i had ot have like 15 missionaries companionships come in to sign and i was going to have to call them all in again. then in the afternoon the plans kiinda blew up but we did splits with a recent convert and it was pretty good.
saturday - we found laura. she is like such an amazing inv. she okay im going to tell you guys what she told us. she has a boyfriend thats a member of the church, he´s never been pushy or anything about her being mormon or nothing but she´s been interested in religion and supposedly he´s invited her. so a week before we were on the bus she saw us and called her boyfriend to tell him that we were on the bus with her, he told her to talk to us, she said she was scared but she´d talk to us if we got off at the same time as her. we did. the interesting thing was we got off late. as in we missed our stop for one reason or another. so she contacted us and then told us she´d never been baptised. hahaha yayayay so on saturday we finally got to visit her in her super fresa apartment building it actually has a doorman and an elevator. hahaha like really nice building. she had already read the pamphlet and was super ready to listen to us. so great. oh ya and in honor of the fourth of july we wore blue white and red ties and sang the national anthem.

sunday only one of the three inv. that promised to go to church went, thats always dissapointing.
sunday was uneventful in the area, we always go back home a little early on sundays to do weekly planning adn to study and sutff, and this sunday we had planned a dinner BBQ wiht the assistents, cause they always come stay sunday to take the reports and to report to pres. i made moms bowtie pasta salad, we even bought feta and put it in the thing i forgot were the pine nuts. we grilled hamburgers brawts had jello and watermelon. it was pretty good. hahaha

then monday we were working oon stuff in the offices, when pres called and asked if we had appts. in teh afternoon, the answer was yes, he said cancel them please. cause htere was an elder who had tried to kill himself, or OD on pills the night before and leaving the hospital pres wanted us to be with him to be on suicide watch before he went home the next morning so we went with pres to his super nice house to spend the day and night making sure the elder was okay, pres wanted that one of us was always with him even in the middle of the night like sitting in a recliner while he, the missionary, was asleep. instead of that cause that would have been a little awkward and semi degrading, so we decided to pull an all nighter and hang out with him all night long.
so we ended up playing monopoly 5 times, then we watched disney movies till like 330 ish before some of us crashed. so we all went to bed and my comp stayed up awake the other 2 hours before we had to be up at 545 to go to the airport. then we got back to the offices at 8 am went to bed till like ten cause i had to wake up at ten cause i had  a ton of missionaries here to sign migration papers. annoying for them. then we went to the area and worked all day long. So that was crazy.

Have you guys seen the lego movie? cause i thought it was stellar.

In the afternoon on tuesday when we were all super tired we visited laura again, she had read like up to chaptre 17 in the Book of Mormon and she read the plan of salvation pamphlet. hahaha it was like a weird lesson to explain the book of mormon cause she already understood.hahaha and then she was like so church on sunday how does that go? hahahaha we´d love to take you to the church show you around and explain it. she was like ya that sounds perfect!
can you say golden?

and then ya today tried to catch up a little on sleep.

love you guys!

Elder Blotter

Week 75

sorrrryyy... i ddidnt really have time to send a really good email.

so this week was solid work kinda, wednesday to today. so last sunday like 10 days ago we got home a little early to study cause study time is during church and it was rainging so we used the time to do weekly planning cause being in the offices it doesnt make it easy to plan for the week daily planning yes but weekly we dont have time to dedicate to that, so sunday after noon, so we set a goal kind of a high goal of finding 10 new investigators and putting 7 fechas this past week, we started praying to know where god wanted us to contact in what part of the area, the road we felt and decided after like days of praying about.......... ya no one accepted us, but god gave us like miracle people who stopped us in the street or the less active sister who´s mom isnt a member we found. so we found a total of 8 inv. and put 2 fechas, a little lower but a huge improvement over two full weeks without a new inv. miracle and lots of the other miracle guys we didnt even find yet, now we just hagvfe to help thesee people keep learnign about jesus and work to go to church and read and pray adn receive testimonies.

another kind of cool exp. there is a family in our area the sister is a member of likke 22 years and the husband got baptised like 3 years ago has the melquisidec priesthood, is the ward mission leader and he doesnt read the scrips nor has family prayer goes to church in a t shirt adn jeans and does a bunch of stuff, and in his houe still has virgens and other catholic stuff like giant rosary beads.
 so we out of love have wanted to help him for a while. Sooooo we went the other day adn we are teaching his father, the father didnt show up to the appt. so norr my comp asks me so are we doing this, i say yup. so norr asks a question about like his alter then like really lovingly honestly we very bluntly and straight forwardly and i say we.... mostly me, i teach a little about example and how our example as members means a lot, and that we need to be examples in word and deed and appearance, then talked about false traditions then how using examples of like apostles wont have these things in their homes and taht we need  to model our lives after them....... it was a very blunt lesson, but the spirit was there and im like almost sure they werent offended. but we did it out of love. it was a cool lesson though, he thanked us for reminding him by a little yank of the ears... thats an expression hear.... i dont know how to say it in spanish....

loves you mom, and dad.

Elder Blotter

Week 74

so it looks like neither one of you has written me yet.....


And i dont have much to say so i figured id write you guys anyways.}

so since last wednesday in the evening we went and visited some less actives who at least the daughter used to be super active in the church and now htey are far from activity. we taught a lesson about peter walking on the water and faith and not getting distracted. great lesson spirit was there testified hard.

we did divisions that day cause we´re in a trio so a member came with us to split up so we got like six lessoons in 3 hours saweet.
thursday was  a noirmal day.
friday saturday
stayed in the house cause i had awful diharea sck and threw up. hate throwing up.
sunday was stake conf was a pretty good conference but i have a hard time listening to the patriarch here i dont know why his style of speaking just tunes me out.

monday was a good day busy adn everything go tot the area had plans felll through D meeting that wasnt too bad, then taught priscila our inv thats super cool but hadnt come to church in a while, cause work and this psat sunday she was sick.

yesterday we went to polanco, get there and they were like the computer system is down............ ugh no......... so wait for a while see if it turns back on like idk 45 mins later turns out everyting works out fine. then we had to stay for the afternoon, the hours are 9-1 in the morning to bring in papers and get finger prints and stuff like that, adn in the afternoon 3-5 or 6 so theres a lot of down time, we ate lunch at wendy´s one of like the two wendy´s there are. then went to an aquarium then back to migration everything went smoothly got back to the area around 7 pm and then found 3 new inv, taught a super powerful first lesson. adn then found a former inv. who seems pretty golden just that she wouldnt accept an appt. cause her dads geting surgery in like a month in a different state so she keeps going over there to visit him or something........ annoying sang a song prayed in the street while talking to her she cried and still wouldnt accept an appt.said she´d call............

lvoe yuo guys hope you had a great week.

Elder Blotter

Week 73

l love you mom, ill probably send you a better letter, in the afternoon, but last week there wasnt a whole ton of missionary work that i did to talk about,

we went to the pyramids wednesday thursday we went to the migration with pres to renew his green card then friday i went with pres to close areas had a great day talking to pres about boating and snowskiing, he said after the mission that me and another elder are invited to his house in august of 2017 to go boating everyday and the other elder knows how to fix cars and stuff and pres has cars he wants him to fix hahahahaha

love pres. hahaha

then saturday got back to the grind, doign a lot more contacting cause we need new inv. but still havent found those new chosen peeps yet.

love you ill complete the email adn send more fotos after

Elder Blotter

Week 72

weird movie ive never heard about that...........

ya they got married and the family got baptised. soo great. soo so great. honestly not much to talk about this week just that i was insanely busy.

thats cool that you saw grant he´s a cool kid.

arent you done with your job for the summer?

And crazy couple of days.
sunday: didnt start my fast till sunday morning after breakfast go to church and elections were in sunday ehre and so we weren´t allowed ot go teach, then at night im super tired and i try to go to bed lay in bed for an hour  but cant fall asleep cause im like thinking and hungry so i go play some uke, talk to the assisnents and finally am able to fall asleep at like 12-1ish
monday: drop off an elder going home that had back problemsnewbies get here, training, i have to do a lot of paperwork so the newbies can sign, then we kind of chill with them for a long time and then pres calls after ive changed into pjs and says hey blotter can you come to the airport right now, my fones about to run out of battery. so i change into missionary close in like 30 seconds and run out and get a taxi to the airport, get there and everythings fine i just get there in time for pres to drive me back to the offices, then i get back and have to finish doing some work and stuff and preppign tuesday get to bed like 2ish
tuesday wake up at 530 to get to the airport before 7 to drop off a kid who got sent home, and to pick up another elder and then take him to the changes meeting get our new comp, i have to take care of the bags for the elders who are going home adn took them back to the offices and then i had to do some visa stuff for teh peoples who´s green cards expiring, then we go to the area. come back and alll the missionaries going home are there, they stay the last night in hte offices. the also dont hardly ever sleep so talking playing stuff didnt end till like 1 ish
wednesday p day we went ot Teotihuacan hte super cool pyramids, the hitch is that they are like 2 and a half hours in bus and metro and stuff, so we did that today and we´re back home.
tomorrow we´re going to go to migration and its also goign to take all day. so thats going to be tiring adn the cherry on top to a very busy day.


the baptismal service on saturday was super cool, lots of members came the water was hot everything went rather smoothly in like a mexican sense of that word, started an hour late. and after the ordinances they asked the mom and the dad to bear their testimonies, the mom was super excited from the start and has been wanting this for a while, but the dad was like super quiet and like thinking solemn before the baptism and in his testimony he was like breaking up  about how th e 7 minutes that she got in a church tour has changed their lives forever. super super super cool

thats all love you have a great week

Elder Blotter

Week 70 - Pictures Only

Week 69

Soooo..... i decided i had better buy a new pair of shoes cause i needed them, but i didnt want like crappy mexican shoes, and if you bought me a nice pair of shoes they´d probably cost like 120, or more like the ones we bought nad then to ship them to me would cost another 40 and then id have to wait for forever to get them, so i went to like a super nice mall and found a johnson and murphy shoes store, they sell like hardy shoes for missionaries, like a lot of missionaries use that brand and i bought me a pair, they cost 2000 pesos, like 130 and they are nice shoes that´ll definitely last till the end of my mission, and beyond.  did i mention they were brown.....


What else....... well last Sunday, we had the potential of like 11 inv to go to church, so we were all excited, ya one came to church........... ugh why????? out family of five had to go work saturday night and the boss didnt let them leave till 6 am. ya so they couldnt wake up. and one i still dont know why he didnt come, 2 cause the uncle had to work, cause he´s unemployed so his brother lets him use his taxi on sunday cause the police like traffic police dont work..... so even though its illegal for his to drive his brothers taxi, its not illegal on sunday....... ya........ so he didnt come nor did his nephew.

anyways we had another great lesson with the family of 5, the dad the last time we taught told us that he works so much and stuff cause he has terrible nightmares and he can hardly sleep, so its not until like exhaustion when he can sleep, so we gave him a blessing and he said he didnt have a single nightmare all week long but then the didnt come to churhc.


then this week, well we worked on monday afternoon, like a normal day, but we had a family we contacted cancel on us and a lady that we found contacting wasnt home, she had left her 2 year old home alone.......
tuesday we went to migration and had to stay all day long, and so we ate panda express, pretty yummy bejing beef. then came back and we were planning on having two lessons in the afternoon and we got ot the area late with a bunch of problemias and today is p day and in the morning we had to help an hermano fix his roof, so i took a hammer to like the cement that had cemented the ceiling onto the back wall.... ya my hands are like pretty destroyed. i just put lotion on and holy cow did they sting i think my comp got a pic of us working so ill see if i can get those from him.

so the lady we contacted that i mentioned in the paragraph above, me and norr we like done the appt. had fallen through and it was late and about to rain and it takes like 30 ish minutes to get back to our area, but we decided to knock a few doors, and we were walking and i felt like we should go up one street, adn then i contacted the first guy- house we saw he was like ya but later and then we keep walking and get shut down a couple times and tehn someone else tells us im busy right now but later, ya ya ya  so we were about to leave we kept walking and i felt like we should go back and knock the hosue that we had just passed, we go and then i woman sees us in the window opens the door and then goes back in, we wait she comes out with the keys unlocks the gate nad says come on in, we shrug and go in. then she goes on to tell us she had talked with missionaries in the street like a year before and they never came, but that she wanted us to teach her and her family. saweet.  but then when we went back to find her the 2 year old was home alone so im kinda upset with her.

Elder Blotter

ps. thats a super cool story from dads mission that ive never heard.......

pps. also did i mention we went ot a super nice mall....?

Week 68 - Loooooooong letter this week

Sister Stutz bought us a new vacuum..

Week 66

Soooo.....

honestly cant really remember what happened last week.... hahaha
i think last week was when we had an elder that had an appendix surgery staying in the offices and cause we were in trio one of us stayed with him, im pretty sure my turn was Thursday, and pretty much i worked all day on the computer fixing up the last minute stuff before changes and some random emails i got in reference to being secretary.

then Friday me and E Vallejo, went migration in the afternoon to pick up the elders green cards, it went really smoothly but the transport from migration to the offices and our area takes forever. and a full Mexican metro is a sight to see.  we left the offices at like three and got back to go to the area for an 8 o'clock appt. with some recent converts. Claudia and Gustavo are some of the strongest recent converts i´ve seen. they might not have  a super deep conversion story or like knowledge of lots of stuff about the gospel, but they understand like the basics, of going to church really reading the scriptures at home and applying them. he has like three months in the church and he gave a talk actually like a month ago, super short talk probably like a 4 minute talk about tithing but super powerful in testimony. he also just comes to church in a colored polo, but with time. hahaha


then Saturday we got to teach our golden inv. but this time she brought her whole family to the appt. SO great. we have to teach them in the stake center cause they live in a familial housing and the family has a ton of problems, like not catholic we don't want to change problems but worshiping idols and doing weird stuff.  but super great family, a family of husband wife and three children of like 21 18 11 years old. the dad works on Sunday so we need to be able to teach with the spirit on this Saturday so that he can trust god and go to church. i sooo want to baptize this whole family.

on Sunday we had 4 people in church a guy named Aaron, and three members of the family of 5, they left the 11 year old daughter at home......... ahhaha who knows.

but Aaron we went taught him and his family like Saturday i think. we went to teach faith and that faith without actions really is dead. that you can claim to believe in god and then do nothing about it. we tried to commit them to reading the book of Mormon and praying and going to church his wife and daughter were being stubborn and hard-hearted and said no to everything, meanwhile Aaron said yes. and came to church. Good for him, sad for them.

Then Monday and yesterday and today were really busy with changes, the new missionaries get here on Monday Tuesday is changes and then the relieved missionaries go home today.

what else yesterday after changes we went to the area and got to work and a return missionary that is a counselor to the bishop called and offered to go with us to do visits. YES. we tried to visit a couple potential inv. but we didn´t find them home, but we went and visited Aaron and contacted his friend that he was talking too. then we visited Sharon who was a contact but had been taught by the missionaries before, she hasnt been progressing we´ll see if we can get her to church on Sunday to help her  out.


oh ya im not in trio anymore, Vallejo had changes so my comps named elder norr. he´s got 21 months in the mish. he´s the financial secretary


Idk Thats about it.
i had my english Quad rebound and split into triple bible.
finishing a service project to paint.

Elder Blotter

the office staff, Vallejo at the computer- the ex executive secretary: 

Elder Schaap eating- assistant that went home today

me

E Rico Materials secretary

E Norr with the resistance bands financial sec.

E perea With the folder Assistant

E Jimenez sec of registries.

me and the uke i might have bought...... and E Vallejo, theres a vid, but its way too large of a file to send. hahaha