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

Week 65

So sounds like my week was less eventful than yours. i just have been working.
honestly dont got a lot to say. just that on fridayi stayed with elder goodman who got to the mission with me and went to lunch with the president, we were in trios at the time so we split up to do some last minute sutff. then saturday morning at like 630 ish we went to drop him off at the airport that was sad. saying goodbye.

sunday our like golden investigator didnt come to church and im still not one hundred percent sure why, just i minor hiccup but it bumps her baptism back which never is good.

we´ve been having a lot of days full of appts. and then we find no one home which is never fun.

on sunday evenings the assistents come to the offices to take the weekly reports from all of the zones and type it into our computers, and they stay the night from sunday to monday their p day. so sunday evening is always fun we normally eat food chat and hang out after everyones done wiht their work.

then this week there was an elder that had appendix surgery like on sunday or saturday or something and he has been staying with us in the offices all week and seeing how that we are a trio one of us has been staying with him all day. today was my turn for the couple hours that they went to work after p day.

i dont know ive been having a good time, being better every day i hope and trying to help my ward and do work in the area.

but pretty much always we are working in our area after 2 pm. whats annoying is that bus ride from the offices to our area. it sometimes takes for every for the bus to pass, then we get on lots of times theres room to sit, its worse when there isnt, and the bus is super hot and idk being in a bus makes me tired so if we can sit i normally knock out for the 15-20 minute ride. which is anything but a refreshing nap, i wake up sweaty hoping off the bus. hahaha

probably the coolest thing that happened this week was that my comp was like what are we doing, and he made me choose for reasons i wont cover, but i decided to go look for this member we found in the lists. she´s not home. then i thnk we should go visit the drunk dude that talked to us in the street and we put an appt. and he didnt show up so, we go to his house again not home and at that moment we turn around adn pause to think who we were going to visit next, and a nice mazda cx5 pulls up and a 30ish looking dude asks if we want a soda. we kind of pause like confused and say ´´what?´´ and he is like pop do you want some pop. and we were like ya sure, under our breaths we understood your spanish just not what you meant... so he parks his car in front of his house and grabs his keys to go in, and he cant find them so he grabs some money and then walks with us to the store, here in mexico at least one house in about every neighborhood turns the front part into a convinience store and sell soda chips cheese sliced meat, and random little things so we chat with him and put an appt. and he says he´s like very interested in learning cause he knows some about us he said but he´d never had the missionaries over. im excited to visit him.

thats about it.
love you guys

Elder Blotter

Week 64

So.  i dont have much to say this week.

we were busy we went to migracion twice, probably one of the last times i do it with the guy who is training me probably the next times i go ill go alone. which is a little freaky.
so one of the times we went with two sister missionaries so we could get one their green card we went in taxi, cause president spoils the sister missionaries. and the other time we went ot turn in some migracion papers for one person and bring another elder to renew his green card.

we also had a lot of days this past week that are full of appts. and then we end up walking around our area alll day long cause the appts. fall through and no one is home. that happened like a good............ 3 days this week where full in the agenda and we only got into like two houses all day long.

its been pretty tranquilo here. other than a friend in the mission is going home on saturday cause of  medical reasons, he is from my generation in the mtc and he´s also a secretary so we had to go do his last minute shopping today on p day thats why im writing so late. sorry i had writen half of this in the morning and thought i had sent it.

so we have one progressing investigator she is so cool, she was going to bring her husband and daughter to church bet her husband had to work this sunday but said next sunday.  im looking forward to meetin her whole family and teaching them she looks like huge potential and what she says about her family looks like they could really progress, its something i would really like to do, ive never really baptised a whole family. ive baptised a husband and wife but they were old people and one of their daughters was already a member, ive baptised a 20 year old and then later taught his dad and mom and sister but i was transfered before they got baptised. idk just rattling on.

Soooooo. today like i said we went on the last p day of elder goodman and had a pretty good time. we went to city center and went to a belt store and bought like a really cool cowboy belt, and then went to the actual giant plaza- like town square but huge, took some pics in front of hte cathedral massive flag CDMX thingy then went to this super super super awesome like suvenier mall thingy. reminded me a lot of the place we went to go buy stuff in kenya but like less poor. tons of hand made cool things from mexico leather work like i took some pics ill send, i want feed back i saw these sandalls thingys i think chels would love but shoe size or how long her foot is in centimeters there were also like mexican tranditional dresses thought you might like mom, idk super cool. saw a nativity mexican style a little pricey but cool, i only bought like 100 pesos of stuff, like 8 dollars or less. but it was a fun day today, tooka bunch of pictures in a bunch of cool places.

I really love Elder Vallejo, he is a great ejemplo para me. I love him. He is my companion. I love my companion Elder Vallejo.- elder vallejo

pics: me and elder vallejo hding from our companion elder norr
and me and vallejo eating some strawberries and whipped cream and cool whip adn sweetened and condensed milk with chocolate sprinkles.


thats about it.
love you guys

Elder Blotter

A bunch of little nick-nacks like skulls painted and the skeleton people and other things like that. stuff at the cool mall.

then like acouple pictures of mexican dresses..... i thought Elder norr took a wider scope of things so as to send home but then i realized he has purely sisters, so thats probably all that he thought they´d like to see.

stuff at the cool mall  

first the little nativity sets.

us walking in the street.

then us in front of some statue in nice mexico city

me and Elder Norr in front of a thing that means Ciudad de Mexico

me and Elder Norr in front of a Giant Cathedral

me and Elder Norr in front of a Giant flag.

Week 63

buenos dias.

so this weekkkk. was interesting. for easter week and this being mexico everyone gets off from school for 2 weeks and the adults from work like friday and saturday and sunday. so for us thats like kind of a good thing as that there are some people who have more time and other people who go out of town. But we dont work on friday cause it could be dangerous so we hung out in the offices all day long which was actually pretty fun.
so last wednesday we went to polanco the super nice part of the city because of a problem that we had with an elders green card. wednesday was normally p day but we had to go there so that kind of put a damper on the day. haha but kinda not cause its super nice over there and their is this fresa like mall or something it slike an outdoor food court and has restaurants like panda express wendy´s carls jr. starbucks like its a super nice little food court so i had a teryaki burger from carls jr. hahaha
then we came back and got to work.

Thursday was super busy cause of stuff we had to do in the offices adn i think one of the secretaries got sick so we as we were leaving had to go buy him some anti flu meds and then come back to the offices to give it to him which started our day out pretty late. and we ate with this sister thats pretty cool, we eat pretty well with her too. i found out her husband isnt a member which i found strange cause she like is someone who has it all together with like callings reading scrips and stuff and then her husbands not a member of hte church was surprising. but she talks a bunch so then we like had passed right through an appt we had with some less actives. then we had an appt with a contact that told us she had talked to the missionaries before, she was pretty cool the only downside is that she like told us essentially she listens only cause she´s like a  nice person and she is catholic. we´ll see what we can do.
then we went and painted a house with a member.
then i think we visited our ward mission leader who i cant tell whats up with him.      that was thursday.
Friday we hung out in the offices wiht the assistents and the other secretaries. in the offices we´ve got nice stuff like a grill. so we bought hamburgers and we ate some pretty nice burgers. and we had permission to watch church movies so we watched charlie -i cried like a baby- and hahaha we found saturdays warrior, such a weird movie. no one had like even heard of it before.

then saturday and sunday we watched conference. and right now im rewatching conference to learn more and study it better. and on sunday night we had three diffferent appts. with inv. one of them live on the other side of the road from our area we went talk but passed them onto the other elders.

Monday was probably the most successful day we´ve had in our area. we got to work and like met with three of the inv. that look like they´re going to progress we went to the junta-district movie- idk why but it was a good day, we stumbled upon various people that we wanted to find to teach so it was nice.
tuesday was kinda stinky we only had one appt planned, so we contacted and made a ton of appts. for the whole week.

so two funny homes that are in our area.
both we found because of less actives that we have in our lists that we went to find. one of the houses we went and didnt find the less active member but we contacted teh lady and put appt. she told us her name was maria, when we went back we knocked and then we found her sister and we went in to teach them and found out her name really isnt maria, we had a good lesson with them both people we commited to reading the pamphlet and a return appt. when we came back they werent home and out came another woman, we contacted her too and now we are teaching her. hahaha we still havent really met the less active nor have we seen the soo called maria and her sister again.

the other house similar story.
we go looking for a less active and my comp messes up and we ask for the wrong name, which obviously wouldnt be home. then we contact the lady but she is a member of some christian churhc and wont accept an appt. we came back like a week or two later to ask for the person who actually lives there. and some other lady comes out the member isnt home we contact the lady she says sure come visit and tells us her name is lucero, so we come back to find lucero, supposedly she´s not home we come back in like two hours and some different lady comes out and she´s like ya im lucero.......... but it wasnt the same person that we had talked to............ so we contacted her, out of eveyone we contacted there she looks the most like interested though so maybe it was what god was planning. hahaha

AND......... what else...... idk here´s some fotos.


love you guys. if you want to email me today ill try and check my computer in the afternooon.......

Bye.
Elder Blotter

Week 62 - Busted!

hey,
so the worst thing about this week is that i forgot to pull any pranks on my comps today.

but this week was kinda weird. there was a sick elder in the hospital so my companion (im in a trio) went to go hang out with him so i was with the guy whose going to be my companion without the guy who is teaching me to be the secretary. so i did a ton of stuff as a secretary alone, which was interesting i had to send everyone who is going home in june their itinerary and i noticed an elder who had a ticket to arrive in SLC instead of st. george which is kind of a problem.
haha doing stuff without being trained just requires a lot of double checking and logical thinking.

Im good. the area has been progressing as far as i can tell. we keep finding new people to teach and contacting people who accept us but the people we´ve taught like once we´re having a hard time continuing wiht the teaching.
i think last week i told you guys about some lady named guadalupe, mabye not. she was someone who went to an open house at the stake center then someone put an appt, with her and didnt tell us and the sisters were at the church so they taught her and she got passed over to us cause she lives in our area. super cool lady the only part that kind of stinks is that this week is like mexican spring break so everyone gets off work adn they left town for the week. so she couldnt come to church we´ll see if she´s back on sunday.

idk. i think on thursday we went with president all morning to clear up the closed areas. during the wave of missionary work the number of missionaries climbed quite a bit. and now its coming down to normal so in the next couple of months we´re losing 30 more missionaries. which is like 15 more areas that are getting closed. and its not really a number thats going to climb a lot more.
and when they close a missionary apartment someone has to go and get the mattresses bedframes the tables the stuff and store it somewhere. that somewhere is a room here in the offices but it wont be sufficient for everyting.


Ummmm.... what else......  not really sure.

´´I can’t remember what I’ve told you lately…  I was admonished to not write to you about some of the things I’ve been writing to you about…  sorry, if I’ve made serving harder—never my intention.´´
- mom whats that about? who told you not to write me? And stop worrying that i get trunky when i talk to you. i dont. like on christmas when you like stopped talking to me cause you were worried about that..... please stop worrying about that.

And.... what else. dad my dog looks too fat. haha yes i am looking forward to general conf. always a great time as a missionary.

so little miracles we were contacting in the street and we knocked a door and it was a less active member.
we knocked on a less actives door and before he came out some women did in the door next to the one we knocked and was really nice so we talked to the member and after knocked her door again and she was like ya come visit me the elders visited me a while ago.
a less active family we found has like a ton of problems like drug problems, and its always a little frustrating visiting them because of that. well we get there the other day adn the 16 year old that always was inturrupting and being noisy and stuff was way more mellow and came and listened and opened up and said he wanted to stop drugs and be baptised and go on a mission. pretty cool.
What else.... theres a door that we´ve knocked on and pretty much everytime we knock someone else comes out of the door and we teach them the gospel. and they accept. the problem is helping them continue cause we have like three seperate potential inv. that have had the first lesson or part of it and then when we go back we find someone else. ugh.
thats all i remember at the moment love you guys.



Later. love you guys!

Elder Blotter

pres and me and my sleeping companion like 15 minutes ago.

Week 61 - In to the Office

Hey!

sorry its been so long since writing. but p day is now wednesday and so i will now be writing you on wednesday.

first up thanks dad for your answers to my questions helped a lot, sorry i didnt really have time to reply and then like two weeks passed.

So whats happened?
im now the executive secretary, as a secretary we study in the morning from like 8-10 depending, and then we start doing our jobs as secretaries until like 130-2 ish when we go to the food and stay the rest of the afternoon in our area. before the secretaries had a house in their area, but now we sleep in the offices which are out of the area and the mission. vease -look at- the attached image
so the offices are like a house of three floors downstairs there are like pure closets and bunk beds, there are like 15 beds downstairs and two half baths. the middle floor is the office floor with pres´ office my and the financial secs office and an open room that the materials sec and the registros sec use as their office and a half bath. upstairs is the kitchen two master bedrooms a seperate bathroom with two showers and a room with 3 bunk beds. hahahaha there is the layout of the office if you were interested.

i´m being trained as the executive visas and green cards secretary. so i deal with going to migracion and making sure all the elders are legal in mexico. so we have to go to the migracion building which is like an hour away in metro like a bunch ive been secretary for like what a full week and we´ve gone twice. migracion is in like this super nice part of mexico like super nice. hahaha its super weird to go there after being in my past areas, there is such inequality.

idk the ward im in right now is called leandro valle there are us and another set of missionaries in the ward so we are leandro valle 2. this area again is a semi tough ward, not a lot going on in the progress of the members and bishopric but ay vamos. for the first part of the week we´re just getting to know the members and stuff like that i still don´t feel like i know anyone here. after like 14 months in the same stake and over 6 months in each of my first areas you get to know like everyone at church and a lot of people in the stake, here a different stake and a new area is like super weird cause like i dont know who the people in sacrament meeting are where they live if they´re members active or less active..... all stuff that ive got to learn over again.

about my old area. no the other elders dont just absorb it, no one works the area at all. like there are literally 0 elders there. so ya its kinda sad the converts and inv. get left hanging until the area gets opened again later, the area would have just been absorbed had there been two sets of elders in the ward, but... we were the only ones.

supposedly when the wave of missionaries came like a year and a half ago, the mission age change, it robbed all the missionaries that would be coming right now so in the next three months ish we are sending 40 elders and sisters home and only like 15 missionaries are coming, something like that at least. so the the next little while we´re going to be closing at lot of areas in the mission for lack of missionaries to work them.

secretary life is fun, work on stuff, help president out, being around like 4 other missionaries, getting to go to rich part of the city like once a week, there´s a sick tianguis, or like farmers market right out front of the offices. there being a Walmart so real food shopping is an option. so its a good time here.
the area was pretty dead we´re starting her up we found two new investigators last night, they look pretty promising. their mom is a member, these are women of like 35 years old and the mom i think is around like 60 ish or more. the mom we havent met nor seen, we were looking in the lists of members we dont know and we went to the house talked to the daughter who i think gave us a fake name the first time we went by and we made an appt. for last night we went were received by two people and they said that like 5 or more years ago the elders used to come to visit and teach but suddenly stopped coming. pretty exciting finding new inv. hahaha

and like this cousin to a member i was thinking like some teenage cousin before i met her, she´s like a señora with three kids whose husband doesnt really like the idea of the church but she´s all in. we went talked about the book of Mormon the importance it can be in here life and stuff and how she´ll get a testimony that what we teach is true if she reads and prays, she accepted and we kind of put a baptismal date with her.... kind of as in she chose a day to be baptized but it was too soon she wont have the required sundays so we either have to explain that and postpone the date or get permission and baptize her with only 3 sundays instead of 5 hahaha....... who knows what´ll happen.

there is also a family in my area where the dad is a nonmember not cause he doesnt want to but that his ´´wife´´ is his half-sister, they have like at least 3 kids. they/the elders before us, wrote to salt lake asking permission for the marriage salt lake gave permission, but the government here wont legally marry them. So that's a dilemma. something about how we´re going to try and get a different kind of permission from salt lake so they can get baptized but we´ll see.
anyways we went to their hosue to teach the other day and i really liked the lesson it was nothing special it was the lesson we had planned and were sharing with the majority of the people and at the end of the lesson the Hna kind of was crying and she thanked us for sharing the message and said the elders always come here to share a message according to what they needed in that moment that we are the angels that god sends,  i really liked that experience cause sometimes we do go and share messages and never really know if thats what they needed to hear or like if it impacted the people at all and so it was nice to here hear that we helped in that moment.



SO thats about it.

Elder Blotter

P.S: here are  some pics i took:

Week 60

SOOO

yesterday they closed my area and now im in the offices learning how to be the executive secretary.

i told you we got robbed but like during the day at like 5 oclockish that happened on friday. so we get back to the apartment and walk in and i looked and was like thats kinda weird why are those books not neat... haha and then i notice like a bunch of trash on my desk and i was like i didnt put that theree.... and then my comp was like hey did you go through my stuffffff and then we were like we got robbed..... so we go upstairs to tell the hno so he could like see the apartment. we then walked into teh bedroom and all the dresser drawers were like thrown on the ground and the suit cases were like empited on the ground. so you thats a pretty terrible feeling.

but the thief only robbed my nikes and a crappy watch from me, but he robbed my comps stereo alarm clock and his dads watch which was like the most valuable thing that was stolen. he also stole the portable dvd player thing from the mission. YA. lame huh. my camera was like visible on my desk and like i had like a buynch of money and my credit card in like a little container that he didnt open. so that was a blessing.

BUT, because of the insecurity in that area they closed it. so thats super sad. i knew i had changes  coming but my comp was going to stay and teach and baptise the people we had, but he had changes too and we like packed all the house up. sad feeling to have inv and tehn they cant progress anymore cause there arent missionaries.

 AND so ya. im a secretary. what else. it was super sad saying by to my conversos, and the people. and now im here in a different zone and its like super nice. i went from the most dangerous area to living outside the area in like a house with like 5 bathrooms. also we dropped off the missionaries at the airport today and there were a bunch of problems and it was super hectic hahaha and i got to hang out with pres that was cool.

idk..........

love you guys have a great week.

Pictures:

These pics were like taken about a year ago.. haha like a minute after the picture was taken the carrito flipped and the people on it got hurt i luckily hopped off before they went down the hill.