Awesome Week of Finding Investigators and Speaking in Church

Hola mamá! This last week was an awesome week with finding new investigators (more on that later). Monday we went to stop by the house of Jorge Cruz and his family for a quick visit and they invited us in, gave us fruit water, fruit and popcorn. His little granddaughter Maria is so stinking cute! We also re-taught Jorge the Plan of Salvation.

Tuesday in district meeting we talked about verifying with investigators if they are reading the Book of Mormon, praying and are going to come to church. If they are not doing any of these, especially with reading the Book of Mormon, we need and should act devastated and not be too casual about it because like Elder Holland says in Predicad Mi Evangelio, “This is Eternal life. This is the Salvation of the Children of God. Eternity hangs in the balance… It is the most important path this investigator will ever walk.” So we need to help them realize this. Later we visited with a woman named Edith Carrillo and taught her about the Restoration, then invited her to be baptized and she accepted! She and her family are really nice.

Wednesday we had interviews with President and Sister Urrea and teaching evaluations. It went good. President talked about the importance of following the rules of the mission and staying firm. I’m trying to teach my companion all of that right now because he is still trying to learn and understand the mission, and I don’t want him to turn into a rebel Elder :).

Thursday we had a bunch of appointments that kept falling through, so we used the time to passby people we had appointments with In the past to reschedule but even they weren’t home. Then we got lost trying to find a reference from other missionaries – the number system of the houses here in Mexico is not good. It was a rough day… until our last appointment. It was with our neighbors Jackeline and Jose Luis and their youngest daughter Guadalupe. They are a super awesome family. We were able to talk with them to get to know them, have a lesson about the Restoration and then invite them to be baptized to which they excitedly accepted! It was a great way to end a rough day.

Friday we decided to look for some less-active families and were able to find one family and talk with them a little bit, then we organized a day to go back with other members to minister to them. We were also able to contact 7 new people throughout the day, then after we got home we started preparing our talks for Sunday, since me and my companion had to speak in church.

Saturday we were able to find one new investigator, a young guy named Eduardo Godinez. He is Christian but he has had lots of problems and trials in his life so he is very interested in talking with us and learning about the Plan of Salvation. We are excited and looking forward to the next appointment with him. Thankfully to Heavenly Father we were able to find all the people that we did. Now we just need to keep working hard and God will help us find more.

Sunday we gave our talks. My companion spoke on the atonement and I spoke on the resurrection and it went well, at least I hope it did anyway :). After church Concepcíon canceled so we went to visit a couple other people before lunch. Lunch was amazing! The family made us ribs with spaghetti, bread, corn bread, and flan and holy smokes it was so good! After that we were able to find a few contacts.

I loved the thoughts you guys sent!! My thought is from Tad R. Callister from this last conference. At one point he said something along the lines of, "if any of us are imperfect we need to pray for the gift that will make us perfect." BOOM!! 

I love you guys too and I hope you have an awesome week!!! DO WORK!

Thought from last week (that I forgot to include):

I have a bunch of talks on a flash drive and have been reading a bunch of Liahona’s that we have in the house. One quote I really like is from Elder Robert D. Hales "If I make this choice, what is the worst thing that could happen?" meaning we always need to be thinking about the consequences of our actions and choices and how they are going to affect us and the people around us!

Easter Contacting Challenge

Hola Mamá! I’m doing great! It was a good busy week. We had an Easter challenge for the week to find a lot more contacts each day. I was a bit nervous because people were out of town because of vacations in schools and because the week was “Semana Santa” for the Catholics. I don’t really understand what happens in Semana Santa but I’ve heard that Catholics are just super crazy and even more hard to talk to during this time. I didn’t know how it was all going to work, but I just decided to have faith, and work hard each day finding/contacting one by one and trust that God will help guide us to those people.

Tuesday we had district meeting and it went well. We spoke little more about the Easter initiative to contact 10 people daily from Monday to Thursday and 20 people on Friday and Saturday. And also we needed to talk to the bishop to participate in the sacrament service like singing a hymn and speaking. It was a good meeting and thanks to that and the help of God we were able to achieve the 10 contacts! We actually got 11 so that was better! After we got the 11 contacts we went to visit Jorge Cruz to see how he and his family are. They are still super good and Jorge is very excited to be a member. He has the Aaronic priesthood and is preparing to receive the Melchizedek Priesthood! It's a short time but he's starting now, and we're going to keep helping him! Maybe not until next week because the daily challenge we have but we’ll see.

Wednesday was a super awesome day because we were able to achieve the 10 contacts for the day and we were also able to make one of our previous contacts from last week. I was hoping we could have found more than the challenge of 10 contacts because 10 is the minimum that we should have but it didn’t happen that way. I’m glad we were able to achieve it though and even more so that we made a new investigator! His name is Elias Perez – I think I wrote about him last week but he is a cool guy! He is super friendly and actually went to church on Sunday. We were at least able to talk with him more and convince him to accept a baptismal date for June 15 so we are excited! 

Thursday we used the list of potential investigators to call people and set appointments to get a jumpstart on finding the 10 contacts. We were able to call and set appointments with 7 people and were so excited because if we could find 7 people that easy in a short amount of time, then we should be able to contact more in the streets and achieve more than just 10. For some reason, that didn’t happen. We went contacting after lunch, talked to a bunch of people in the street and knocked on a ton of doors but we only found 3 more contacts. Everyone kept rejecting us no matter what we said or did. One guy we talked to told us he was Buddhist and that Jesus was one too because he used mudras and other things about energy and psychology. He was very interested in history so we talked with him about the Book of Mormon and offered him one but he didn’t accept it because he didn’t want to make a promise/commit to read it and then not read it and break his promise. At least we were able to end with 10 contacts.

Friday was fantastic! The streets we had been knocking in lately are super long and we hadn’t had much success, but Friday we started knocking in one street and it was literally the jackpot! We found 16 people in this one street, which is a lot compared to what we have been finding lately. We are excitedly waiting to go back. As for the other 4, we were able to call people from the potential investigators list from the area book to find and set 4 more appointments to make the 20! It was dad’s birthday and I was planning on calling him to surprise him but we were busy contacting all day and as a result I forgot until we went back to the house for the night.

Saturday we tried out hardest but weren’t able to achieve the 20 contacts. We talked to a ton of people in the streets and knocked a ton of doors and called as well but we just couldn’t get past 16. One door we knocked a girl came out and told us no, so we went on to the next house when her dad opened the door and came running up to us because he wanted to talk to us. We were surprised but happy so we started talking to him about the Restoration. I was feeling great and planned to invite him to be baptized and invite him to church but that didn’t happen. At the end, he said he just wanted to talk to us one time and didn’t want to accept the Book of Mormon or a pamphlet. He basically told us he wanted to talk to us because I’m from the U.S. and he’s always wanted to talk to someone like me. What the fetch Bro!? We did our best and even though we only ended with 16, we still felt good about that.

Sunday none of our investigators came to church. Elias said he would be there; but when we called to find out what happened, he told us he was getting ready to leave to go to church when he unexpectedly had visitors show up at his house and he didn’t want to leave them. For sacrament, the missionaries were supposed to do the program for Easter but because the youth had EFY, the bishop wanted them to share their testimonies, so we are going to do our program this coming Sunday. After church we went to visit a reference we got from the Bishop and then set an appointment to have a lesson with her. Her name is Conception and she is a bit older and has some issues/problems in her life and is hoping to find more peace and help through us. We had a great lesson and invited her to be baptized and she accepted. We had lots of other appointments but the people either canceled on us or rescheduled. Unfortunately, that’s how it is with people and we have to keep working until we find the people who are ready.

I gotta go. Love you lots! Have a great week!

Jorge's Baptism Plus an Exciting Visitor Coming in May!!

Hola Mamá! Muy bien, y tu? So after p-day time ended last week we went to have a lesson with Jorge Cruz to finish teaching him lesson 5, review the baptismal questions, check how he is doing filling out the pamphlet “mi familia”, and get him ready for his interview. We didn’t have time for anything else because of all the things we had to do, but he’s our priority right now so it’s okay. Plus the family invited us to eat dinner with them. This family is awesome so it was even more worth it.

Tuesday was Jorge’s interview and it went great. He passed with flying colors! We still need to get things ready for his baptism but he is ready and it is really awesome to see! We were able to contact a little bit and found 2 contacts. We also visited a contact named Juan Garcia who we found last week. We found out that he had talked with missionaries in the past, so he has a little background and understanding about the church, but he told us that the missionaries just one day stopped teaching him and going by. Who knows why but we were thankfully able to find him and lave a lesson about the Restoration and then invite him to be baptized, to which he accepted! 

Wednesday was a super awesome day for the zone conference we had! We had a training first from the zone leaders, then Hermana Urrea talked with us about how to really study, examine and read the scriptures and helped us come up with a big list of some things we can do to improve our studies. I’m excited to start trying some of these ideas for myself and with our investigators. After that President talked with us about repentance, just like in General Conference, quoting a lot of what President Nelson talked about while adding his own thoughts and examples using Preach my Gospel. It was really amazing and way awesome! But the best part was at the very end. Presidente and Hermana Urrea notified us that “God has blessed us for our efforts and is sending one of his servants to be with us on Saturday, May 25th from 10 am to 12 p.m. Elder Holland!” What the what, seriously!? Elder Holland is going to come visit the mission and congratulate us for having 113 baptisms last month and talk to us too! I’m so excited!

Thursday we had a few lessons during the day that we were actually able to have! One of them was with Cesar who we found the week before and mainly only believes in science, but he was recently diagnosed with some illnesses so he is looking for answers as to why and help to overcome them. We were able to talk with him about Alma 22 when Aaron was teaching King Lamoni’s father who didn’t believe in God. We were able to talk about it in such a way that is starting to help him learn and understand. I don’t know how to explain it but it was really good. He is showing interest and willingness to read the Book of Mormon and pamphlet about the Plan of Salvation, and accepted a baptismal invitation. I am excited we found him through the Spirit guiding us and that he is accepting to listen to us. I hope and pray that he will continue to let God into his life.

Friday we had intercambios and I was with Elder Nava, who is from Clinton, Utah. He is a really cool guy and our intercambio was really good. We were able to contact some people, look for families where not everyone in the family is members and set appointments so Nava and his companion Elder Ibarra can go back another day. With one guy who is the only non-member of his family, we were able to have a short, but very powerful lesson and invite him to be baptized to which he accepted! We had a great time together contacting, teaching and talking about things from Utah.

Saturday morning we went to the church so we could clean the baptismal font and start filling it so it would be ready in time for Jorge’s baptism! Everything went great. Jorge has 2 daughters, Nizaye and Daritza and they both spoke and gave wonderful thoughts for their dad. Nizaye has an 18-month-old little girl who is the cutest little girl ever and she kept pulling our fingers so we would follow her around the church. She’s so stinking cute! There were lots of family and friends there to support Jorge and his family. After he was baptized and confirmed, they invited us to eat lunch with them. Jorge and his family are amazing and I love them. Later we had a first lesson with a man named Saul Olascoaga and his wife Ortencia who are catholic but open to hear from other people. They were both very interested when we started talking about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon. Saul accepted an invitation to be baptized but his wife didn’t. We are going to keep passing by to see what we can do to help her accept to be baptized. They are very nice people!

Sunday we didn’t have any investigators at church but it was still an awesome day because Jorge and his family invited us to attend when he received the Priesthood! One part I love is even after someone gets baptized, we need to teach them the lesson again to make sure they still know everything and continue helping them learn and grow with knowledge and faith. After church we went contacting and found a few contacts that we think, hope and are praying will be able and willing to hear us and accept to be baptized. 

Did you receive my photos? I didn’t take a picture of it but I got the package you sent! Thank you so much for everything! I gotta go now. Love you guys so much! Have a fantastic week!

Jorge's Baptism Day

Jorge's Family and Friends

From Zone Conference

With Elder Loomis

My New Suit

Couldn't resist buying these legos at the mall.

General Conference!!! And an Upcoming Baptism

Hola Mamá! I’m doing great. It was an awesome week! To start with, Monday was a good and calm day. One of the things I love about our casa is that we have a washing machine to wash clothes in! No more washing clothes in a bucket! The washing machine is a little old, like from the 90’s, but it still works good so I’m not going to complain! After p-day ended we went to look for and get to know some investigators, sadly we weren’t able to find anyone home, but we’re going to keep trying.

Tuesday we had a district meeting where we talked about what it means to be a successful missionary. In Preach My Gospel, Chapter 1, there are many characteristics or attributes such as dedication to find, teach, baptize and confirm people, they don’t compare themselves to others, don’t get discouraged and many more. We talked about what we can do to be successful and how to apply all of the characteristics. One of the hardest for me is to not compare myself to other missionaries, but I’ve learned that it's not important who gets to baptize and who it counts for, but rather it’s the teaching that’s important and being able to help people find their conversion and change to be able to be baptized. Seeing that change and being a part of it is incredible. So I’m going to try harder to develop these characteristics so I can be an even more successful missionary with the 5 months I still have left!

Wednesday we spent a good portion of the day looking for investigators and former investigators. We had a couple of appointments that fell through so we were able to spend a lot of time looking for people and contacting new ones. Contacting went pretty good. We knocked on one door and a woman came out and started telling us about quite a few people in her family, including her son, who just the day before was diagnosed with some sicknesses like cancer, diabetes, etc. So we presented ourselves and she invited us in to talk with her and her son. The woman, Ines, is catholic and her son, Cesar, is basically atheist. He believes in science and things he can see and touch. But he does want to be healed from the things he was recently diagnosed of so he accepted to hear from us and said we could come back another day to talk more with him and his mother. I know we can help him if he will open his heart and mind that God will help him.

Thursday was a really awesome day. We had a lesson with the husband of the Relief Society President, who isn’t a member but wants to start taking lessons. When we first got to this area, the Bishop told us about him, Jorge Cruz, and that he wants to be baptized. So we have been trying to schedule an appointment and were finally able to have a lesson and start teaching him! His story is quite interesting. His wife, his kids and basically all the family on his wife’s side are members. But he and his side of the family are not. He has been going to church and has had missionaries come to teach him for around 25 years, but he’s never felt ready to be baptized until now. He’s read the Book of Mormon lots of times and has a really strong testimony about it and about prayer. He finally feels ready because he wants to enter the temple to be sealed with his family and to be a good example to his little granddaughter. He wants to have his baptismal service on the 13th of April!

Friday we had our second lesson with Jorge Cruz and had a pretty great lesson about the Plan of Salvation. He understood it all pretty well and is very excited that after his baptism he can continue progressing to the Celestial Kingdom. It’s so cool to see how happy and excited he is and also how much love and support he is getting from his family and other members. We also ended the day with four new contacts. I think we could have done something different or still tried harder to get more, but Saturday was a new day and the start of General Conference!!

Saturday we didn’t have time for anything else because of conference, but that’s okay because conference was awesome! We got to watch it in the church building. There weren’t many members there, so I just hope they were able to watch it in their houses. There were so many good talks but I really loved the ones from Priesthood. While we were in the church after the second session and waiting for Priesthood, a homeless drunk man came into the church asking for food and money. We gave him some of the snacks we had and then he went on is way. It was an interesting experience. After Priesthood Session, we had a bit of time before we had to be in the casa so to keep the tradition of going out to eat after, we went out for tacos! I just love General Conference! 

Sunday sessions and talks were amazing too. Quite a few speakers talked about repentance and faith, and there were a lot more members that came to the sessions at church so that was really cool to see. After the sessions we had a lesson with Jorge Cruz where we taught him about the commandments and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We need to finish teaching everything today because he has his interview on Tuesday so our lessons have been a bit long but it’s necessary if he wants to be baptized on Saturday.

Thank you for that quote and for your email in general!

Love you guys so much! Have a great week!

Surprise.... I'm in a New Area After Only 3 Days...

Hola Mamá, well it’s been a long week but it’s finally Monday! My comp and I got transferred mid-week to another area but more on that later. After p-day ended last Monday we were able to contact around our area and were fortunate enough to contact someone who told us where a member family lived. We went to say hi and introduce ourselves to the familia Aguiñga. They were awesome enough to give us tips, talk about the area and give us phone numbers for the Bishop and other Auxiliary leaders. I know it was Heavenly Father guiding us to them and am so grateful for Him and the Holy Ghost.

Tuesday we had a district meeting where we talked about teaching families so we can baptize families together. We were also visited by the new APs Elder Davis and Elder Mencia. Things are still supposedly changing a bit so we just have to wait and see and try to enjoy the ride at the same time. After district meeting we were able to contact the whole day and were able to find 12 contacts and meet a couple families as well!

Wednesday we contacted more and found some really solid contacts. One was a woman who told us she was studying with the Jehovah’s witnesses but when we started talking about the Book of Mormon, that really sparked her attention. I showed her the Book as we were talking about it and she asked if she could look at it. I told her she could and she could keep it so she could read and study it. At the end of talking to her she very happily accepted another appointment on Friday so we could go back and talk with her! That was really awesome! (unfortunately we got transferred before we could do that)…

Around 10:30 Wednesday night, we got a call from the zone leaders telling us we needed to pack up our things because we were going to change to a different area. I thought they were joking at first but yeah, no. We had to pack up. I didn’t get to bed until 1 in the morning. Thursday morning we had to finish packing and leave by 8 a.m. After a meeting at the offices, the APs gave us the keys to our new house, a telephone and then sent us off. Our new area is Chilpan (B) in Tultitlán, that’s also known as Ciudad Labor. After we arrived, we explored our area a bit. Thankfully we have a map to help us. We were also able to meet with the Bishop. Our new house is pretty sweet and our area is pretty big, there are only a few parts we should avoid, but it seems like a great area. We are praying that after 3 more days and after buying food and what not, we don’t get transferred again. I’m scared to unpack! 😁

Friday we met up with the bishop so we could get a copy of the member list and a list of people who aren’t baptized. We tried to contact a few investigators but they didn’t answer so we mainly contacted. We were able to find quite a few contacts so that was pretty awesome. For lunch we went to a Comida economica where I’m pretty sure we met the nicest lady in the world. Her husband, daughter and her run the Cocina. It’s a really good place with home cooked food and because they are just super nice, loving, caring people to everyone. My companion and I agreed that if we ever receive money for lunch, we are going to go there to eat. Also, I want to come back with my family and eat at this place!

Saturday we had quite a few appointments from the Elders who were here previously but they all fell through, so we decided to explore our area and got pretty lost. After a bit of time we found out where we were and how to make our way back and we were still able to find quite a few more contacts. We did get a hold of one investigator on the phone who told us he would be at church. We don’t know what he looks like because he wasn’t home when we passed by but we’ll figure it out. All will be well.

Sunday church was really good and all the members were super nice in greeting us, but sadly we didn’t have any investigators at church. When we called the guy who told us he was going to be there to see where he was, he said he wasn’t going to be able to go because he had to leave but he wants to talk to us sometime this week. We’re not sure what he means by that but I guess we will see. While we were out contacting later, we knocked on this man’s door and when he came out he told us that he is a Christian and doesn’t want to learn more about the “Mormons” because it’s a false church, Joseph Smith had lots of wives, and the Book of Mormon isn’t true. We tried to share our testimonies and explain other things to him but he kept interrupting us so we really couldn’t. It really made me mad. All that aside though things are going good. I’m going to try and call later if we can figure it out. I love you so much!