¡Feliz Cumpleaños Timo! Ya puedes fumar, casarte, divorciarte, e ir a la misión. Sugiero que escojas la última. Pero en serio, ojalá que fuera un día excelente para tí. Disfruta tu tiempo en la prepa y preparate bien para la misión. Tendrás éxito, estoy seguro. ¡Te amo!
Zane, you get a happy birthday in English! Yes! Have a super awesome birthday on Saturday! 9 years of being a pompeeface, how does it feel? Chile con carne, me gusta. Love you!
That's super awesome that you met Elder Heath. He's super great! I really wish he was here right now. That really made me so happy that you got to talk to him.
I got the first Christmas package with the stockings this week. Thank you very much! I loved the cookies especially. Also, thanks to the Cleveland family for the Christmas package! I'm assuming I'm not supposed to open it until Christmas, so I won't unless I receive further instruction.
It was a hard week again. We have a lot of appointments, but I don't feel like we are really teaching a whole lot of people who actually care. We only had one investigator in church yesterday. His name is J. He is living with a less active member (they aren't married) and he's a member of some other church, but as the missionaries have been working with his not-wife, he has gotten a little more interested. We explained the restoration to him and it seemed to make sense. He accepted a baptismal challenge but we can't really put a date because him and V will have to get married first, and that could take months to sort out here in Mexico. But he's cool.
T didn't get baptized. I'm kind of at a loss of what to do about her right now other than just wait, because she can't read and still doesn't remember who Joseph Smith is, even though we've taught the restoration twice. Patience, patience. She does have a really strong desire to follow Christ and has received multiple answers from the Holy Ghost that the church is true, and she has come to church a bunch of times. Not really sure why she didn't come yesterday, but I´m guessing she probably just forgot since we couldn't visit her Friday or Saturday.
C should get baptized this Saturday. We've taught her everything and she is still reading the Book of Mormon and praying every day. She couldn't come to church yesterday because her family went somewhere, but if all goes well, she should still get baptized. So that's good. I do really enjoy teaching her.
Elder A is nice and he loves me, but he really wants to make sure I do things right and doesn't let me make mistakes. That's been a little bit discouraging sometimes, realizing how many weaknesses I still have and how far I still have to come. I'm learning a lot of humility here, and patience. I want to run before I can walk, I guess you could say. And all this has made me a little too worried about what I´m doing and less focused on the people and what they need to hear. I´ve kind of back fired on myself a little bit. I don't know. I've been praying a lot for help, but it's going to take some time. I know I'm supposed to be here and that I need to go through this to become a better person and to be able to help more people.
In other news, I tried tongue tacos this week. Yep, cow tongue tacos. They were fantastic! I really did like them a lot. Elder Heath really missed out by never trying them because he was too scared. Next on my list are eyeball tacos and lip tacos. I can´t decide which I should be more scared of...
So there is this little town about an hour from here up higher in the mountains that is also in our area. It's called Tapalpa. It kind of reminds me of Park City, just more Mexican. There are a few inactive members up there, and one family that comes to church whenever they have the money to pay for the bus ride down here. We went and hung out with them today with two other missionaries in our zone. They have a little ranch resort thing, so we went and walked around. How did we get there? Hitchhiking. Not even joking. As if it wasn't dangerous enough in the United States... But it was fun. Very cold, but fun. Things like that just make me love Mexico. That we can ride in the back of three different random trucks to get where we want to go and it's not even a big deal.
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| Picture from Zone Conference, Taran's companion is on the right. |
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| Lunchtime |
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| Love this one! |
I'm sorry if this letter seems a little discouraging. I'd like to say that things are getting better, I really hope they are, but it's a process. I know my Heavenly Father put me here for a reason, he knows me perfectly and he knows what I need. Jesus Christ is my Savior and His Atonement can work miracles in my life. It already has, and it will again. This is His church and His work that I am doing, and if we are on His side we cannot fail. I love you all! Have a great week!
