January 27, 2014

Familia,

Holy cow it has been a super crazy week here in Xalapa let me tell ya. I got here last Tuesday in the afternoon and it is freezing cold here all day long. I was cold and was wearing a long sleeved shirt and my jacket- it was ridiculous.

I met my companion his name is Elder Galaviz and he is so cool.  He only has a year as a member and I asked him about his conversion story, so he told me.....

He was converted by South Park, yep the tv show. He was watching it a lot one week and a whole season was about the Mormons and the first vision and a real goody goody kid who was a Mormon. So he asked one of his inactive friends at a party once to know more about what we believe and from him he met a less active return missionary and was taking the lessons and was baptized in two weeks. He has a real big testimony of Jesus Christ and his atonement and he is a pretty funny guy.

Well I don’t know if I told you this, but we are white washing, but not only are we white washing we are also opening up an area! It has been really hard and we have not had a whole lot of success. This last week we contacted over 30 families and we are only teaching three people and well, one of them is gay. It has been a very interesting week.

Well Xalapa is the celestial kingdom that’s what everybody says and now I know why. The members are amazing! We have everything. Well, now we have everything! We arrived to our new house and did not even have beds, so I ended up sleeping in a hammock that I bought in Tuxpan and my comp on a nasty looking mattress that we had; but our stuff arrived really fast and it has been a great week.

The members here always give a lot of food and they are always trying to help us with investigators and with the less active and with, well, everything! Even one member

washes all of our clothes it is crazy.

I remember in my last area the members did not help a lot and they wouldn’t even help us contact their neighbors, friends or FAMILY! But here, holy cow, it is totally different. The members make the appointments and we are just going to show up this week. haha. The ward is not really big yet and we are in a house of prayer but they are some of the greatest people I have ever met in my life.

Well it has been pretty tough here and I started to get a little tired and discouraged but then I was reading one day in the Liahona from conference- yep we only get Liahonas-  the talk from president Uchtdorf and it says in there it doesn’t matter how many times you fall or how many times you fail, but how many times you are willing to get back up on your feet. I put that into practice this week. We contacted 15 people one day and everyone sent us away and some faster than others, but then the next day we got up, went to the church to drop some stuff off before we went back pass all those people who all rejected us in the end. But at the church there was a visitor and he talked to us and told us his brother just died and that is why he was visiting. Then he asked if we had a Book of Mormon he could have to give to his sister in law and then told us we could go contact her after the services. Well, like it says in preach my gospel, sometimes the Lord directs you by the spirit to the people and sometimes he directs the people to you. Personally, I like it when he leads them to us! haha.

Well it has been a pretty tough week but we are stoked and I am loving Xalapa and my area. Everything is awesome. Hope you all have a great week.

Elder Monsivais

P.S. Peter my district leader looks like you and does that some frown thing I am going to send a picture.