February 3, 2014

Familia

Wow and I thought I had a bad week sorry to hear that Mara is going to return home and that Jen’s granpa died and I hope Dave didn’t make any bets on the game.

Well this week, I guess, has been a little hard for everybody, but I know that everything happens for a reason even if we can’t see the plan right away you just got to wait for the whole picture to play out then you will see the love of God and his hand in your life.

Well This last week we worked really, really hard and we finally got our first fecha(baptismal date) here in Xalapa Mexico!!!! but it came with a lot of trials.

The first part of the week we had absolutely nothing and it was killing me, then we had a conference with Elder Valenzuela and he helped us get really motivated. We learned what we needed to change and how we needed to change it and we worked really hard to get it all done.  We also got in a lot of trouble for not doing a good job in our language study in the mornings I know that I have not been the best with that because well, usually we have an appointment or something else comes up, but he told us that right now is the time that we need to learn the language and that the Mexicans too need to learn English while they have this chance to do so. They are pretty lucky President always puts one Mexican with an American -it is how the system works in this mission.

Well we had been working all week we had been doing things that I have never done before to try and find people to teach and nothing was happening so we decided it would be better if we left our house to work cause we didn’t have a whole lot of success waiting inside. I am just kidding, but the truth is we even started to knock on some doors which is something that we don’t do in this mission. We are told to work by references, but we were contacting everyone in the street, the stores, the neighbors, the dogs, everybody and nothing was happening. I was starting to get a little stressed.

Then one day we were walking in the street and my comp looked really worried and I asked him why he looked so worried and he said “I feel like we need to contact this guy I saw in the street back there” then he said “nah lets keep going” Well I couldn’t let that happen, so we went back and contacted him and the lady he was talking to and we placed appointments to teach them more; so that was pretty awesome.

Then one day we were teaching an old man in his house and the lady that cleans his house, she started to listen. We got a little excited but then it turns out she is a Jehovah’s witness and she wanted to bible bash with us and preach to us and give us folletos (literature). We did not contend, even though my comp wanted to, but we smiled, answered her questions with what we know and she left, but it was pretty interesting.

Now the good story. Well we taught a gay one day but then didn’t plan on returning cause well, he is gay and it didn’t really look like he wanted to change, but then he talked to a member in the ward and she told us that he was waiting for us to return so we went back. Turns out, him and his boyfriend just wanted to hit on me. My companion started to get a little angry and  I felt very, very uncomfortable and they were making some weird faces at me. Man, it was the worst feeling I have ever had in my life. Needless to say we are never going back there again.

Then Sunday morning came and we had no one. We had no dates for baptisms. We had only 3 new people to teach all week and one of them was gay. Well, 1 hour and 30 minutes before church, I called one of our investigators who works on the corner as a security guard of a construction site. He told me he wanted to talk and I was the one that called him. Well, an hour later, he had a baptismal date and was sitting in church while my comp and another elder watched the construction site. I don’t know if that is allowed, all I know is that finally we had a progressing investigator after days of fasting and praying. We finally got our first investigator with a date.

Also we made a sweet chocolate cake because there is an hermana (sister)here and man she cooks so good, so we made some cake with her. Well I guess that is all for this week I am praying for you all and appreciate your prayers and hope that everything picks up this week and we don’t have any other unwanted surprises love you all
Elder Monsivais