This was such a tiring week. And just an FYI I've been battling
with this keyboard all day because the "a" key gets stuck, so if there
happens to be some random "a´s" in this email, just ignore them.
Monday I had an awful allergy attack. I used up an
entire roll of toilet paper in about 3 hours. We did end up having a
lesson with some new investigators. A member, M, took us
to meet her friend P after we invited her to write her testimony in a
Book of Mormon and give it to someone. I was too sick to breathe, so
Elder C ran almost the whole lesson and did a pretty good job.
P and her husband, L, are an older couple (about 70) but they've
been reading the Book of Mormon and have enjoyed our visits so far.
L works on Sundays and they're not married so those will be the
biggest challenges there.
I feel like I need to share the story of that member,
M. When I got to this area, she was inactive. She's in
her late 50's and has really bad arthritis, so it makes it really hard
for her to get to church. For about a month we visited her almost every
day to read the Book of Mormon with her because she wasn't in the
habit, and finally she started to read it on her own. She started
feeling good enough to come to church, and for about 3 months now she's
come every Sunday. In February she went to the temple to get endowed
and has given us more referrals than any other member. Cool story.
Tuesday we had district class in M, ate lunch
there, then worked with the Elders there for a few hours before going to
the bus station to go to Guadalajara. We got there at 5, which gave us
just enough time to get on the next bus at 5:15 which would get us there at about 9:00.
Or so we thought. But it turns out they didn't tell us that the bus we
got on stopped in every little town on the way and we ended up
getting there at 11:30
at night. On the plus side, we got to see just about every town in the
mission in one day, and it was cool to stop by Ciudad Guzman again. We
slept in the offices and all the other Elders there were already asleep
when we got there.
The new missionaries went to the centro in the morning
to get their visas all worked out and afterward we met in the chapel by
the temple for the training meeting. President Wagner said something I
had never heard him say before: "Very few times have I been with a
group of such good missionaries." It was a great meeting, as always,
and we got out by about 3. We made it to the bus station at 3:30
and took a bus to M at 5. We got there at about 9 and stayed
with our district leader that night. We finally made it to our area again Thursday morning and we
were just exhausted. Plus we haven't been sleeping well the rest of the
week. We remodeled everything in our house today, so we'll see if that
helps.
Lots of our investigators are still doing great. J went to church for the 5th time this week, so technically he
could be baptized this Saturday but we're going to wait a little longer
to make sure he's ready. I think we're going to have to teach him the
first three lessons again before we can go on with the rest of the
commandments and laws and ordinances. J and R went to church
again but we found our yesterday that they're not actually married, and
the problem there is that the government pays R a certain wage
every month since she's a widow but they'll stop doing it if she gets
married and J doesn't have a job. So it might take a while for them
to get all that sorted out, but we'll see what happens. We couldn't
find G and M all week, and it turns out their baby's been
sick so they had to go to the hospital in M and all that, but
we have an appointment Tuesday with them.
Sunday afternoon we finally found N again!
Remember how she had gone to Guadalajara to see her daughter? Well, she
got back this week. And while we were over there, her daughter
M, the one that was listening to us and went to church and
everything before she had to move, called and I got to talk to her on
the phone. That was a great experience--she's one of the investigators
that I've bonded most with in my mission. It sounds like she's doing
better and she said she's reading the Book of Mormon and praying and has
had some spiritual experiences. Once her situation calms down a little
more she's going to give us her address so we can send the missionaries
to visit her there. I gave her the addresses of about 4 different
chapels in Guadalajara so that she can figure out which of them is
closest and go on Sunday. N's going to be back and forth between
here and Guadalajara for a while, but we'll see if we can put a
baptismal date for her in our next visit.
I hope you all had a great Easter. I know the Atonement is real! Have a fantastic week!
Elder Pew
April 28th, 2014
We left a cake in the branch president's oven since we don't have an oven in our house and Elder C was DYING to make cakes again. Did I tell you he was studying to be a cake-baker? He is. Also, he just cracks me up. He is literally always laughing. And he still has a little-boy-before-puberty voice, which makes it even more funny. Anyways, the point is, we're going to have to go take that cake out and eat it soon, so I'll be brief.
Basically, this week we had to drop almost all our
investigators. Can't waste time with people who don't progress when
there are lots of others ready to receive us. And we found a few of
them.
One of our new investigators is J, who is
N's son. He lived in Salt Lake from 2001 to 2005 and loves
Mormons because they treated him really well. Also, he and his family
went to General Conference while they were there, but since they hardly
spoke English they didn't really understand it that well. His wife's
name is A and he has one kid, a 13 year old boy named A.
They're really nice people. J fell off the roof of his house a few
years ago and has a nerve problem--he lost control of the whole right
side of his body and his right arm shakes uncontrollably all the time.
He is a car mechanic and has his own repair shop, but since the
accident he's had to teach his wife and kid how to do everything so they
can help him since he can't do much anymore. We taught them the
Restoration on Friday and went back Saturday and they had read the
introduction to the Book of Mormon the night before and liked it a lot.
But who knows why they didn't come to church. Oh well, we'll keep
trying there.
J was in Manzanillo all week at work, and he didn't get back until Sunday
afternoon. We saw him yesterday and he had some doubts about
tithing-whether he'd be able to pay it or not. But we explained it to
him the best we could and he accepted to pay it. He's got a lot of
faith. Once we can get him to keep all the commandments and feel a
little more confident, he'll get baptized.
R and J are doing well, they went to find
out what requirements are needed to get married and they were way too
many--the one that really would be hard is birth certificates of at
least two kids of each of them, because Js kids live in Veracruz,
Tijuana, Michoacan, and other far away lands like that. But some
members from La Huerta, another town about an hour from here that's part
of our branch, came down from there to come with us to the lesson with
them on Wednesday and told them that they were going to find out the
requirements for marriage in their town. They're pretty sure it's a lot
easier, so once they find out they'll let us know and maybe they'll
just get married there. They came to church again but are going through
a lot of opposition from family members and friends. They need extra
prayers.
We taught A for the first time, (the kid who
went to the YSA conference) and before the lesson even started he told
us he wanted to go on a mission, and that he had already told his mom he
was going to serve a mission and she told him he could do whatever he
wants. He accepted a baptismal date for June 7th,
we would have put it earlier but he lives in M and it's hard to
go out there more than once or twice a week. Unfortunately, he didn't
make it to church this week, again, who knows why, but his best friend
is a returned missionary so I'm not too worried.
Awesome memories from this week:
Monday
after writing home we found C in the street. We asked her where
she was going and she said she was going to meet her visiting teaching
companion to go do their visits. Yes!
Wednesday we had a lesson with R and E, and when we
got there only R was there. We asked him where his daughter was
and he said she had gone to give a friend a Book of Mormon that she had
written her testimony in. We saw her again on Saturday and she said that she had invited her
friend to church and told her she was going to go back to see how she
was doing with the Book of Mormon. BEST CONVERT EVER!
Saturday we had an activity, inspired by Elder C. We had studied
part of preach my gospel where there's a story of a taxi driver that
tells about his conversion, and my companion felt like it would be a
good idea to get all the members to write their conversion stories and
make a book with all of them in it. We presented the idea to the branch
president who talked it over with his counselors and planned the
activity. He started out telling the story of Enos, how he had been a
member his whole life but still had a conversion story. Then he invited
a few members who were born in the covenant to come up and share their
conversion stories. Then he talked about Paul, who was a convert and
persecuted the church before his conversion, and invited a few converts
to share their experiences, one of which was C. Then he invited
them all to write their stories and give them to us the next day. It
was an awesome activity, the Spirit was way strong. Instead of making a
book, he decided to put all the stories in a time capsule that they
already had in his office. They're going to open it in 2020.
Well, that'll be it for this week. We have some
high elevated goals for this transfer and we're excited to give all
we've got until the end. Thanks for all your support! I love you all a
lot!
Elder Pew
