June 2018 in a nutshell

June 4, 2018

Well familia, I don’t know what to really say. This week was rather long. I think it went well, but right now we’ve been battling with a lot of lost time.  We had zone conference, in which everyone left for an hour and a half to contact. Our whole goal was to give out as many copies of the Book of Mormon that we could and try and help the people receive missionary visits. It was really cool because we got to work with two zones to talk with everyone we could. 

We then had mission council which was really special. President and Sister Clayton basically exhorted  us to remember all that we had been taught and to work hard, to "bind ourselves to act" as is said in Doctrine and Covenants. It was really a special experience honestly. At the end President read in the end of Moroni, "Ahora me despido de todos".... really sad. But they’ve taught me so much in these last two years. They’ve really been a great example for me and for the whole mission.

  The progress of the investigators chugs along. We’ve been focusing on getting to know the youth a lot more, contacting them in the street and trying to teach them. We’ve had a lot of success in doing so. I think the youth are really searching for answers in this life, and want to know if God actually loves them. 

Im sorry mom I dont have time to write a real letter, I promise next week will be better, I spent all day getting lost in a giant canyon in Mexico Today we almost died in the famous Barranca de Huentitan. Not really, but we were exhausted afterwards. heres some pictures:

June 11, 2018

Well what should I tell you guys about this week... it’s been a long week, but a good one. Most of our citas fell through, debido a que fueron contactos. Lots of people are very nice here, but then just give you a false direction, or its just impossible to find haha. But we don’t let that get us down. We have still had some really cool lessons. Two people accepted fecha metas, Xalisco (a joven we contacted) and Pedro, who just showed up to church a few weeks ago. They’ve both got their own challenges, but they’re both really cool. I think that when people can see sincere love in others, they are willing to open their hearts. Unfortunately, today people are far more prone to close themselves off. We really have to reach out to those people and serve them in whatever way we can. 

Church was really good this week. We could tell that the speakers and the teachers really prepared and attendance was really good as well. All the investigators we passed for couldn’t or didn’t want to go. We showed up to church a little discouraged, but then we found an investigator waiting for us! Later 4 others showed up! It’s days like those that really help me keep pressing forward.

What else happened.... we had divisions which went alright! All of our citas fell but thats okay! Yesterday it rained super hard. Really Really HARD. Many parts of Guadalajara flooded pretty badly. Luckily our area was fine. Read President Oaks talk on the small and simple things this week! Think about what small and simple things we can change in our lives and imagine the personal progress one might see by making such changes for a year. two years. 

June 25, 2018

Last week I couldn’t write because we had interviews with presidente on lunes, our last interviews with presidente Clayton.

  Well what’s there to say about this week. Ya se fue Elder Powley, He finished his mission. It was great to work with him honestly, a little hard sometimes to focus because the both of us were so close to finishing, but we worked hard. 

        Ahora my new companion is Elder Bender! He’s from Elder Anderson´s, Custodio´s, and Mickleson´s generation. So that’s four missionaries from the same generation that have been my companion. He’s from Oregon, is 22, and is pretty cool. I think we´re going to have a lot of success together. And by success I mean we will work hard and be obedient.

This last week was kind of sad. Lots of goodbye´s. For the last couple days I’ve been in trio with some other elders whose companions also went home. Needless to say I don’t really miss being in trio. However we could still see lots of miracles. Specifically a younger man that we contacted asked what was the difference was between our church and the Catholic church. The miracle was that he asked us if we wanted to sit down to talk a little longer. He accepted a Book of Mormon con mucho animo-apparently he really likes to read- and we are going to go teach him again this coming Saturday. 

Another miracle. This Sunday all of our investigators one by one let us know that they weren’t going to be able to go to church. We literally had no one who we were teaching that was going to go. I sort of had the feeling that we were going to see a miracle... Even when everything goes bad, I’ve come to realize that there is always some sort of tender mercy. So we said a prayer asking for anything and as we were waiting in the church, a young man we barely know showed up out of the blue. We met him 3 weeks ago but hadn’t been able to teach him at all. We hadn’t even been able to communicate with him in these weeks, but he showed up and started telling us that he really wanted to learn more. He got to know some members and I think he had a good experience. 

Anyway in other news I’m sick with the common Mexican cold. chido jaja. Les amo mucho! Nos veremos pronto.... 6 semanas, man the time is flying by.