Elder Spencer's Mexico Mexico City North Mission: Busy Week with Lots of Traveling and Walking

Buenas días mi familia. This last week was really good. On Tuesday, we weren’t in our area a lot because I had to go to the offices, which is like 2-3 hours from here. Once we got to the office, I went with the other two American Elders I arrived with and the office secretaries to the district of Mexico City to renew our visas and that took a while. After we were done with that, they took us out to eat at Carl’s Jr and it was so good! My stomach really didn’t handle that very good the next day though…

Wednesday we had to go have some sort of contact, whether through phone or talking in person, with our investigators that have a baptismal date. We don’t have the phone numbers of all of them so we had to go walk and find them. They live in all different parts of the area so we had to walk a lot, find and talk with them and verify their baptismal days. That took most of the day on Wednesday.

Thursday morning was awful. About 4:45 in the morning our neighbors started blasting music, Bob Marley and some other rock songs. It was like the speaker was right next to our door. They played music until about 5:30 / 6:00 a.m. it was awful. But the good part of the day was when we went to celebrate the fact that we met our baptismal standard or goal the previous transfer. We got to go to the President’s house and eat carne asada. So we traveled to the offices and met the missionaries there from the past zone. We then went to the President’s house and played games, ate a lot of really good stuff, and had cake to celebrate. I got to see Elder Zapata again!! It was really awesome to see all the missionaries from the past zone. We didn’t get back until around 9 so it was another day of not meeting with anyone.

On Friday we were finally able to go visit a girl named Himena who is an investigator. Her mom is a member and so is her grandpa. We reviewed the first three lessons with her. Initially her baptism was set for sometime in later October but we moved it ahead to the 29^thof September. She only needs a few more days in church and we’ll be able to baptize her. Her mom and her grandpa are going to help us teach her the lessons so we can baptize her hopefully at the end of this month. We also went to go find another investigator named Elia (sp?). The first time we taught her was in the house of the Patriarch. The directions she gave us to her house were crazy though, but after two hours of searching we finally found her house and she wasn’t home. It was late by then so we had to come back to our casa.

Saturday we did a service project in the morning. We went to help some inactive members break up the rocks in their driveway with a sledge hammer and bar. We had to walk about an hour to get to their house cause the only transportation that would take us there is a taxi and they would have charged us a lot. After we were done, we had scheduled to go eat lunch but they wanted us to eat lunch with them so we did. We were late but then we went to our other lunch appointment. The family we went and ate with are an older couple, but the sister kept telling us to eat and eat and eat and eat. Eat more tacos, soup, cookies and fruit. Oh my gosh I was gonna die, but it was really good. Then went to find the house of an investigator, she was supposed to be baptized the first week we were here, but she was sad the other elders left so she doesn’t really want to talk to us right now.

Anyway, we passed by the house to see if Jessica was home, she’s the investigator but we talked to Sochilt her sister and she is going to help us get in contact with her sister. She is also going to give us some references later in the week. She is a really cool girl and she is going to help us a lot this week. We keep inviting Jessica to come to church but she has to work, we are just having a hard time finding and getting in contact with her. Their mom is an investigator as well and we haven’t been able to visit with her at all since we’ve been here but Sochilt told us she is going to be in the house a lot this week so we are going to pass by and talk to her so we can hopefully baptize her if not this transfer then next transfer.

Sunday was a good day. We had ward council in the morning. The members are really supportive here and nice. After church we went and ate with some members then we went and contacted and were able to find one new investigator who we invited to baptism and a few more contacts so that was really good.

My spiritual thought this week is from my missionary calendar. It says this week is missionary work by example. “Preach the gospel at all times and if necessary use words.” It's so important to be a positive example. We never know the impact our actions will have. We can always be an example to people and show them love as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and be their friends. We should always strive to do our best to be kinder people, not judge them and show people how we act in our religion and help them understand. I hope that makes sense. Speaking English is hard :).

I hope you have a great week. I love you so much!!