Elder Spencer's Mexico Mexico City North Mission: A Great Lesson with Claudia and My 4th of July Celebration in Mexico :)

Hola Hola! I am doing very good! And you? After p-day ended last week we were able to find 2 new investigators. They are an older couple, Pedro and Isabel, who were former investigators. They live clear on the other side of our area but they are super nice and we hope to be able to help them progress more in this life to help them be baptized.

Tuesday we had intercambios and I was with Elder Hidalgo. We had a pretty good day together because he helped me improve my contacting. He’s a really good missionary and a cool guy in general. Everyone keeps asking me how much time I have left which is starting to get annoying because then they say I’m “dying” and that I’m trunky. It’s not true! I’m doing my best to stay focused but it’s other people and missionaries distracting me…. 😧

Wednesday after we finished with intercambios we went back to our casa and had a practice teaching lesson that went really well. It helped us prepare better to go out and contact and teach with more unity and especially the Spirit. Thanks to the practice we were better prepared and God helped us a lot. We were able to contact 11 people during the day! Later we had a lesson with Claudia that went really well! We left her with homework to read the introduction of the Book of Mormon. When we got there, she had read the intro, testimonies of the witnesses and Joseph Smith, and the first 5 chapters! That blew our minds because that hardly ever happens! She is so awesome, she actually read the pamphlet we gave her beforehand too so she had some background and participated in our lesson with a lot of questions and reading scriptures. She also really loved the FHE we had the Sunday before and wants to see what church is like and meet more members!

Thursday was the 4th of July! I celebrated by making pancakes and eggs for breakfast, although it just wasn’t the same as there. The 4th is my favorite holiday. I didn’t get to celebrate it like at home and have to wait another year to do so, but I love the mission and the people here so it’s okay and actually worth it! At the end of the day we were able to go visit Joselin but it started raining super crazy hard and because we normally have lessons with her in the street, we had to take cover and wait for the storm to lighten up so we could run home and make it there on time.

Recently when we finish lessons, my companion quickly tells people “okay yeah we gotta go, bye!” It’s like he just wants to teach lessons and nothing more. He doesn’t think it’s necessary to talk with people, get to know them, and build a relationship with them, especially with members be it those who are active, less-active or in-active. I had to rebuke him with Preach My Gospel about visiting members. Hopefully it worked. The majority of our appointments for Friday fell through so we had extra time to contact and were able to reach our goal of 8 contacts.

Saturday we had interviews with Presidente y la Hermana Severson. They are super awesome and the interviews went really well. They were trying to get to know us better and figure out things they need to change with the mission – and get adapted themselves. Sister Severson is doing her best to learn Spanish and is doing pretty good for only being here for 2 weeks. Later, we were supposed to have a cita with Jorge Hernandez but he never showed up and never answered our phone calls or messages.

I was a really frustrated on Sunday because only Joselin went to church even through Briseida and Claudia told us they would be there as well. Joselin got there right as sacrament meeting ended so unfortunately her attendance didn’t count that day. I don’t know why we are having a hard time again to get people to come to church or what we need to do differently. I don’t know if it’s us or the people, I just hope we don’t lose all of our investigators again like the last transfer. I’m just praying it won’t be like that and have faith that if we do our part, God will help us. After church was good though because we were able to visit several people and families of members in the ward.

Well I gotta go. I love you guys and hope you have a great week!