Pictures of Auditorio in April

April 9, 2018

        Well its been another week here in Guadalajara! Not much to say, it’s kind of overwhelming right now, and it’s very strange to be back in a ward. But things are going well. Elder Powley, my new companion, is awesome and there’s a good number of investigators. El chiste is finding them in their houses. No one is every home here its ridiculous. 

       A cool experience: we had walked literally off of our map to teach a lesson that we had yesterday, but they flaked on us and weren’t home. So we made the decision to walk another half hour to another family of investigators. As we walked, we contacted a young man who had definitely been drinking but he told us he wanted us to visit his mom. So we we were walking to where his mom was, when the family we were going to visit before we contacted drove by in their car. They stopped and accompanied us to visit and even testified to her about the church even though they aren’t even members! Then after that they took us to their house and we taught them and their kids. 

       Les amo, I hope everyones going well. I don’t know what the Lord has in store for us here in Auditorio, or how long He wants us to cover the whole ward, but I know that something big is about to happen for the whole church. This Friday we should be having a baptism, a 10 year old boy from a less active family. After that, who knows, but we will find someone. 

April 24, 2018

       We went to the temple as a zone. Going to the temple again was a really special experience. I learned a lot, to say the least, and it was really refreshing.  

April 30, 2018

       Well this week has been long, with some ups and downs. Well really just one down and then the rest ups. For the first part of the week I really felt like we were just wasting time, but we weren’t really wasting time because we had to do lots of stuff to prepare for the upcoming concilio. We finished making a map for our whole zone with all the divisions for areas and wards, went to the temple, and did other little things that we had to do. We are also in the process of getting every companionship big cardboard cutouts of The Book of Mormon to use in activities or in their districts. They are big, as in 1.5 meters by 1 meter and one thats 2 meters tall for the whole zone! 

       As far as updates on the work here, as I said the first part of this week was pretty much lost... and we got home late 3 nights in a row. Actually, one night we got in the wrong bus to go home and had to walk an extra 15-20 minutes to get back to the house... but then later in the week we worked really hard to not waste time (or get home late) and saw some really cool miracles honestly. This Saturday we are having a baptism of a convert’s younger brother, and another of his brothers is really progressing a lot. I think in the next few weeks he too will want to be baptized. There’s another part member family who we set a date with who has progressed a bit, but we need to work on finding more people. I feel like I really need to work on following the Spirit more throughout the day to contact the right people, the people that can progress. Sadly, one of our families is really struggling. The parents were working on getting married, but the man has started cheating on the woman... again, o sea, it’s not the first time. It’s really sad. He doesn’t have any kids with her, but two of her kids are baptized and her oldest was just barely starting to show more and more interest. If they separate, it’s going to cause huge financial problems, but she doesn’t want to be with him anymore.  Moral of the story: Keep the law of chastity, and you will avoid a plethora of problems and trials. 

       This Sunday in church, a sick sister came to church, even though she probably ought not to have. She has lupus, like really bad lupus. and in the third hour she had a really bad "crisis" dicen aqui but I think they want to say flare, and started seizing. We gave her a blessing and they took her to a air conditioned room. We couldn’t do anything else really. The people who were taking care of her called her son, who is very less active. He came to the church to take care of her. After the third hour Hno Nefi told us she wanted to talk to us, and when we walked in she had stop seizing but you could tell she wasn’t well. She told us she wanted us to visit her son (he was right there) and told us how important it was to her, that he has an important future in the church. The love this women felt for her son was palpable and the spirit filled the room. Then moments later, she started convulsing again and became so disoriented she didn’t know where she was. We are going to visit her son today at 6 

       Every day something different happens here in Guadalajara, its a true blessing to be able to serve these people in whatever way possible.  I’m finally going to send pictures of the city! 

It’s really hot and dry right now... and there’s trash everywhere. The rivers are almost literally black.... super gross, but hopefully the rainy season will wash some of that out.

Basically everything you can see is our area. I don’t know if you can see in the panorama a big circular structure, that’s the Estadio Jalisco, a little the right of that building and a little further behind it is where our area ends. 

I thought it was a giant pinecone, but I it was actually just a tree trunk... I think...