MY FIRST CHURRO!

My first Churro

Mexico is so bright....gotta wear shades.

My Spanish is around 40-45% now.  I can understand a lot better then before but I cannot speak rapidly still.  I am still struggling to conjugate my words and use correct grammar, but it is coming slowly now.  Our investigators are OK, only 3 are progressing right now so we will begin searching for more sometime Wednesday or Thursday.  But we did have success bringing some of our inactive families to church this week so that is a plus.  We just got the church directory, looked for everyone in our area, and tried to visit 2 everyday last week.  We found 3 of those families at home and invited them to church and all of them came!  So while we only had 3 of our investigators in church, we had around 14-15 more people in church with all of our inactive families.  It was great. 

We are teaching  V***a and G***a , and N***a.  It is hard to change your way of thinking to something new sometimes later in life.  But these wonderful people go on Faith and Feelings and it is great to see their happiness when everything clicks.  B****a will be baptized March 1st.  A former investigator S***a, who went missing around the time that I came to the mission.  We found her mom with her in an Oxxo when we went to pay a bill and now we are teaching them again. 

FHE with Domiguez and Ramirez families.

Comp avoiding the rain.

Road we walk through

Fire ants...not fun when bitten by them.

I'm being fed well.

I love fish!

Another nice meal.

NEW COMPANION aka ROOMIE!

My fill of sugar.  I am getting fed very well out here.

My new comp Elder Morales.

My new companion is fine, his name is Elder Morales.  He is from Mexico City, Mexico and has 6 people in his family.   He is quieter than my last companion but is also a good person.  We get along great, I just need to work a little harder to fill in the silence.  V*** is still hard to teach.  She is coming to more of the activities and we are spending more time with her, but I do not know how long before she will be ready to accept baptism.  I am enjoying my time here.  It is one of the hardest things I have ever done, if not the hardest thing I have ever done, but I am thankful also for the changes I have noticed in myself since I started.  I do wish I had gone before college, I think it would have been easier physically and financially, but I am glad that I decided to go.   I try to write in my journal every 2-3 days.  My first 3 months I wrote everyday but now it’s a little harder just because we do close to the same thing every day, different people but same lessons.  I hope it’s useful when I am done, or rather that I can read it after the mission and not groan at what I chose to focus my writing on.  I enjoyed the temple, I still couldn't understand what was being said for the most part but I got the gist of everything.   My Spanish is maybe at 35-40% right now.  I only have maybe 900 words memorized but I still can't conjugate quickly or correctly half the time so it's a work in progress.  

As for this week, we met a nice little old woman named B***.  She has 3 kids that live in the US and one here in Monterrey.  She is 69 and her mom lives about 4 blocks from her and is 93...  But she is chosen, I think.  She pretty much accepts everything we teach her.  She has a few questions but she likes everything about the gospel and has a baptismal date for the 22 of February.   We had our baptisms, one on Thursday last week and another on Saturday this week.  We had another baptism this week with  A**** R****.  We talked with him and he was able accept everything, so we set up the interview and baptized him this Saturday!  We had a good service for him with a full room and the spirit was present throughout the service.  His wife felt it quite strongly as we bore our testimony of the importance of the ordinances.  She started crying at one point during the service so we are hoping that with the help of the spirit we can use this experience to invite her to hear the lessons again and be baptized.  Let's see, M*** and A*** were baptized too.   I did not baptize either one, rule in the mission, only baptize the first convert, and the members do the rest.

We are otherwise still searching for people to teach.  I am learning how to contact still, I feel like that is going to be the hardest part of the mission is learning how to strike up conversations with everyone.  But I like my area and the people are the best.

We otherwise had a "talent"show for the ward on Thursday.  It was a silly dance to a song by Inside Out called Snowman.

Lots of plates

Beautiful view!

At the temple.

Look at those manners!

All of our tags!

Finally got my Christmas Package from Memaw and Papa!

The mail system here is not that great.  This was mailed at the beginning of November.

THE BIG TOMATO

My companion and I won the big tomato for most baptisms.

My week. hmm..

Funny story time.  So, after we finished cleaning I was going to take a shower.  So I told my companion"I am going to go take a shower and then you can take one." Which in Spanish is "Voy a banarme y despues usted puede banarse." But what I said was "Voy a banarse y despues usted." I literally said,"I am going to wash you and then you can wash yourself."  soooo.... my companion was a little confused and scared...

But otherwise, I had a good week. 

For when my comp comes out of the bathroom.

Tamale laying on top of banana leaf.

Tamale cooked in banana leaf.

Made 300 cookies for everyone.

Architecture

Architecture

Building in market place

Dog that went tracting with us.

Gift from President

Security gate not secure so my comp is taking over.

The Zone.

But today was fun, we visited the Markets in Central.  Its pretty much like the walking mall in Bolingbrook, just in the center of the City.  It was fun and I found a sweet tie!

Building on the way to market.

More architecture.  Can you tell what my degree is in?

To market, to market....

Well, we didn't have our baptism as was planned.  Our lady needed more help understanding the gospel so we spent the week teaching her more and encouraging her to put her faith in the Lord.  We also spent a lot of time walking, trying to find new investigators.  The day after New Years everything looked like a war zone, with confetti and fireworks everywhere in the street.  It was also really cold, so almost no one was out and about until after 6PM. 

We did find 4 new investigators this week.  San Juana and Cecilia live with their family and both want to learn more about eternal families.  Cynthia and Blanca are references from another member of the ward.  Blanca wants to just be closer to Jesus and learn more about our church while Cynthia doesn't have any real belief in God but wants to try to gain one.  The final one is Francisco, who lives with his wife Juani and his 3 kids.  We met him on the second of January while he was out grilling some food.  We started talking to him and found out that they, as a family, had made a resolution to start attending Church more often this year.  so it was awesome to meet them so soon after they had made that decision.  So we have a bunch of people to teach, but we could always use more.  I have a baptism on Tuesday this week and another on Sunday.

Me and the other Elders

COLD WATER IN MONTERREY!

Me, Angie, Alejandro, Elder Hernandez

The Ramirez Family

We had two baptisms this week. We had Alejandro Ramirez, who is part of a family we have been teaching for 3 months now. The rest of his family is at the end of the month or in January. The other is Angie Guttirerez. We have been working to reactivate the family and they are now coming to church every week. For their baptisms, I had two surprises. The first was during the ordinance, when the doors were closed, I was in the FREEZING cold water with Alejandro. Then, when the doors were opened, President Swapp was standing there, instead of the Bishop. I was just like, oh, ok, the Missions President is here for the baptism, that's cool, don't mess up the ordinance in spanish now... But it went fine. The other fun part was when Angie was baptized. Immediately after she was baptized, she said,"This is Cold!" and rushed out of the font. It was hilarious but I couldn't do more than smile and chuckle. We otherwise had a good week, we found a few new investigators and had some success getting the members more involved in the mission work. We are still working on that part but it is slowly improving.

Dad is probably cringing at this picture.

We had a service project. I like to help whenever we can or whenever we are asked. That is one of the reasons that I am out here is to help others. We did some home improving, clearing, and some painting. 

Area in divisions.

Activity today.  

Elder Rincon

Chinese food for only $6.

Domiguez Family

Elder Montoya,Klemetson, me, Sister Hapuc, Fernandez, Hokansen, Leskas

Working in my notebook.

 We also had a Christmas activity at the temple that was wonderful. It was the youth playing in an orchestra and singing and it was obvious that they spent a lot of time practicing. I am otherwise looking forward to Chrstmas and love you all.