Wolf

Well, we had transfers. We do it here in weeks 4 and 6 and today is week 6. Very surprisingly, they called us last night and told us my comp would be moving on today.  My new comp is named Elder Lobo (wolf).

I don’t know if I told you about a man we have been teaching. He contacted us on the street two weeks ago and wanted to change his life around. He works in a car repair shop and it is a tough environment, and he said he was the black sheep of the group. His family has torn itself apart.  Everything we give to him to read he tears through. He is reading through the Book of Mormon on his own initiative. We had just left a chapter. We talked about repentance and he told us that he went and asked his wife for forgiveness. In his work, all the other men now respect the standards he is trying to live. We haven’t really done much. We just show up and mostly listen to him. We throw in several comments and at the end teach a very short principle. He really just needed direction and support. His heart was soft and God had already prepared him and he has accepted it readily. It is the quickest and largest change in a person that I have seen on the mish.

I don’t know if I told you but Robb and Sara both sent me mail over the last few weeks. It would be great if you thank them for me.

Other things from the week:

A special needs man in the ward got uncomfortably close and then touched my thigh.  Yikes!  A member saved me and my comp rushed over and explained that the guy is notorious for touching the private sector. Scary music!

One day I was walking and the whomping willow de torreon came from out of nowhere and thumped me on the head. Really, that tree came out of nowhere. I didn’t see it coming . . . . and I went down.  I was on exchanges and my comp in that area saw me go down and had to sit down he was crying laughing.

Love you all,

Speen

The Pursuit of Happyness is Alive in Mexico

The Pursuit of Happyness

This past week I was reading about Noah and found out several great things about that story.

I had always thought that they had brought 2 of every animal. Genesis says he took 7 of the clean ones and 2 of the unclean.

Adam lived on the new American continent. 

Noah took the animals from here to the "old world," which, in that time, was the "new world." Yep, it’s blowing my mind too. The flood was a baptism, which unless done by certain religions, would be more than just a sprinkling rain and would have to be a complete cleansing. Genesis says it killed all the animals, reptiles, and birds. Wait for it - then in Ether it says that the family of Jared took the animals from the "new world to the old world" to repopulate it.  Crazy right?  So, does that mean that all the species here and in South America are just an evolved type of what they took over? Or was it really not a complete flood? Why did they not bring all the animals back?  Crazy stuff right?

Also, the Book of Mormon says that King Lamoni was silent for an hour in their time. So, this is not necessarily 60 minutes. When did we start using 60 minutes as an hour and why?  The year wouldn’t change because it is one turn around the sun which always takes 365 days (plus leep day). And a day always takes 24 hours to turn. But months have changed. Before the Roman Empire there were 10 months and then July (Julius) and August (Augustus) came into the picture. ???

Where did Alma (the father) receive his priesthood??

One man that recently was converted in the ward was a professional marksman back in the day but he didn’t wear ear protection, so now he can’t hear. So when we teach him we write on a notebook. I love the guy. He read the Book of Mormon in a month and is now eating through the Doctrine & Covenants.  

I am learning to navigate the new companionship.

I ate a Fig this week; first in my life - not even close to those Fig Neutons.

They have something that is called mineral water here but really is just carbonized water.  Yuck! It has surprise attacked me several times after buying what I thought was normal water. The worst!

haha I’m dying seeing the picture of Meg’s feet.

Hey - sorry I got’s to head and I didn’t really tell you much about my week.

Love you!

Speen

los mios

My fam

It kind of freaks me out that Ben is already home.  

Gosh, it was good to see los mios yesterday.  Very weird that a year ago I was in my first area. After I spoke to y´all my comp spoke to his fam. They are Columbians and they seem like fantastic people. While he was chatting with them I watched 17 miracles, Soy Mormon videos and other Mormon messages. This was fantastic cause it definitely helped this guy not miss his fam. 

Transfers were today and now I am one zone over but still in Gomez. My comp is elder Rubiera. He is from the Republica Dominicana and served in Megs mish for 5 months before coming here. He showed me pics of the island. Looks pretty dry there.....not. =)  I’m sure the megster is really suffering.    

Pres Flores has instructed us with good wisdom that if there are investigators that aren’t going to church, even if they are reading, we should give them space after several weeks.  This week we had to do that. We had contacted a house a while back looking for a family. A grandmother answered the door and we said we were missionaries and talked briefly about eternal families. We asked if we could come in and share a message. They accepted. We taught them several times every week and they absorbed everything we said. We gave them a Book of Mormon with a small explanation in of our first lessons and some homework to read Mosiah 4. We had to go but we told them we would explain more about the book in a later time. Well, they were very curious about the book and started talking after reading the chapter and started talking about the Mayans and the White spirit they had seen and wondered if the book talked about that. They started looking through in and found the introduction and the picture of Christ with the Nephites and they later told us that they were stunned.  When we got back they had already read a chunk of the book.  I have to say they were very fun to teach. They had great questions always ready for us and every lesson sort of ended with a cliffhanger =). The problem was that they work on Sundays and couldn’t commit to attending church, so we had to leave them but hopefully other missionaries will go back and find them ready. 

I told you that one of the members taught a lesson on the Word of Wisdom and included the idea that Mormon’s don’t drink water. Ha - after church we had to console our investigators that it was a misunderstanding. Another fun member moment was that an hermano had to prepare a lesson on the apostasy and restoration and asked us for help. We asked him what we he knew. He responded, "well it lasted about ten years right?" That would have been the 1960`s J.

Mary our grandmother investigator invited her daughter to talk with us. She had lost her son exactly two years ago to cancer and she needed comfort.  We taught a quick lesson on the Plan of Salvation. She started to cry in the lesson and told us that when her son had died several priests told her it was for her sins and her other children would meet the same fate. Since that time she has been constantly worried for her children’s wellbeing; thinking that every time she heard them cry she was about to find them mortally wounded.  We got to look her in the eyes and tell her that such things were not true. She visibly calmed down and we got to talk through it.

My new comp seems like a stud. He has 18 months and is clean and seems to be a hard worker. Apart from that he seems like a genuinely good guy so I am very excited about this time.

My last comp and I were great buds.  We spoke English way too much but I will miss the guy and the other two elders that were in our ward. We got super tight. 

Hey, I gots to head 

Happiest birtday (without an “h” because with my Utah accent I never say it with an h) to my mother.

Love from this guy

She's My Pal

I don’t know if I have told you this, but we were visiting a family and asked them if one of their neighbors would have any interest in listening to us. They talked about several then said, "but don´t visit the lady on the corner!"  Apparently, this older lady that wanted a few extra bucks and is now the source of the drug trade here!  ha  the police never suspect her. They just think all the hoodlums that pass by her house are the grandchildren going for a visit. 

We contacted an man on the street and with great enthusiasm he invited us to his house which was down the street. We entered and he told us to wait a second as he went and fetched cigarettes and his large beer bottle. He didn’t think twice about this. It was part of a daily routine to de-stress after a day of work. We asked him to wait and he surprised us and gladly did.  He wasn’t quite listening to our message, and then started to go off about his life and said " I know your doctrine; I spent a lot of time listening to you and been to your church and my neice is one of you. But the thing is, I believe that your church, mine (Catholic), and them Mormons all believe the exact same thing!" Haha, we said: "wait, we are Mormons." He was shocked and said "you are?" Ha, then he started asking weird questions about polygamy. So we told him we had to go and helped him say a prayer and we took off.    

This week also, we were teaching a lesson to the daughter in law of a member. In the middle of the lesson she pulled out a piece of cloth and started working on an embroidery of the virgin Mary (Guatalupe here). Ha, I think that was a less than subtle message.

The woman we have been teaching needs to go to church one more time and then can be baptized. She asked us if she should bring a towel for it or she would just air dry walking home wet. Ha, that was a funny image. She’s my pal. She told us her neighbors have been ignoring her since she started talking to us. 

I was talking to an elder and he told me that his grandparents had served in Serbia. One time they visited a ward and found the young women to be participated in the passing and blessing of the sacrament. They talked to the bishop after about the problem: "that the young women didn’t have the priesthood." The bishop was embarrassed and said they he would fix the problem right away.  They went back a month later and found the young women still passing and blessing.  They asked the bishop about it after and he smiled content and replied, "Don’t worry, after you left we gave all of the women the priesthood."