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.