Catch up Entry - ONE YEAR MARK

 August 20, 2017 - August 26, 2017
    Church was good today.  We had some investigators there.  One guy who really wants to progress and be baptized. But he has never gone to school and doesn’t know how to read or write.  He obviously has a hard time with learning and remembering so progress is slow with him. 

    This whole week was super challenging for me because I did not have the desire to do anything.  I got up late almost every day, didn’t exercise, didn’t make much progress in my studies,  and when we left the house, I just didn’t have the drive to work.  FRITO.  My companion can’t really help in that he is so disabled.  I am pretty worried about him.  I think that I might have pushed him too hard because he has a bunch of pain and a weird inflammation at his surgical site.  I guess that we will find out when we got to the doctor’s next week. In spite of my personal difficulties with the work this week, we still had some new investigators who are very interested.  We also set baptismal dates with 4 different people this week.  September will be the best month on my mission!
August 27-September 2, 2017
    All 4 of our investigators who are set for baptism this month actually came to church.  I don’t know why the Lord is blessing us so much when we have struggled to barely function as missionaries.  It doesn’t make any sense - and kind of makes me feel worse about the work and myself.  This week was the last week of the transfer.  One of the zone leaders finished his mission this week.  He ordered pizza for the District class and the other missionaries brought doughnuts and milk.  It was more of a party than a district class.  We got back tour area later than I had hoped.  This whole week it has been raining like crazy.  There has been a tropical storm that caused it to rain for 3 days straight.  I still don’t have an umbrella, but Elder O. gave me his umbrella when he left. 

      We were in Guzman from Thursday until Saturday.  We were with Elder Morroy who is cool.  He goes home next transfer.  He is super fun to work with. We did a service project that involved breaking up and investigators floor and digging a trench. Elder O left so much stuff when he left for the offices.  In fact, we had to back to Tamazula to get his suit and give it to a member who is a taxi driver so that he could get it to Elder O before he left. 
    This week  marks one year in the mission field. Man has the time gone by fast. too fast. I honestly don’t know what to say about this year that has passed. I have learned a lot and gained a lot of experience with lots of different things. But the most precious of all that I have learned is my knowledge of the gospel. Now it may not be very extensive (its rather small really) but I have learned that learning about the gospel is the most important thing we can do in life. I say learn about it but if we really want to learn the gospel we have to practice it. The understanding comes from faithfully living, and patiently waiting for the understanding. It comes. Sometimes a little slower than we might hope but thats just part of our individual trial. I really don’t know what to say though. More than anything there’s so much more to do. I feel like I need another 2 years to really start to figure things out. I know that for the next year the Lord expects much, but he understands my weakness. Sometimes when we feel that the expectations are too high or that we aren’t good enough, we have to remember that God recognizes our efforts and he will strengthen us in our weaknesses. Well that’s probably enough rambling. This church is true and this work will go forward, even though it’s done by imperfect people. It is Gods work and he is working with His laborers in the vineyard.
    Tamazula is doing better, now that we can get out of the house and do a reasonable amount of work. We have 2 baptisms for the 9th of September, 1 for the 16th and 1 for the 23rd. they are reasonable firm so I really think that we will see some progress here in this area. Elder Flores is doing a lot better, we actually walked up the hill over centro, and its not exactly small. I don’t feel like we teach very well together, but that just takes time, study, humility, and lots of practice. We´ll get there. This is the last week of the change (holy cow!!) Other news is that when I went to Guadalajara I brought  keyboard back with me! so now I can practice! well its a keyboard but its better than nothing! 
    I'm stuck here in Tamazula hahaha but la Zona Guzman creció!!!! We now have 14 missionaries!!!! Wooooooooooooooooooooo and 8 in my district. It's the biggest district I've been in and kind of strange because the number of missionaries in this mission keeps dropping and Guzman has always been the smallest zone, but they just put more in here! It's inspired so we can't complain, and I don't have to pack my bags!