16 Febrero 2015

 Well this week was insane. It was super productive, super busy and the time is FLYING. It´s hard to believe I´ve already completed 1/3 of the mission.

I´m not going to say much this time to have time to send photos because this computer does have the necessary port. Basically, all the investigators are still progressing (as Irma says "We still don't know anything but as you guys call us, we're investigators"). Irma and Hector came again, late again, but this time Hector went and sat in the Guadalupe ward because he was confused. So then the missionaries from that ward took him to priesthood where we were. So it's all fine. 

And possibly Carlos Gutierrez went to Frontera ward but he didn{t answer our phone call when we called him, so we still don't know. He's living downtown but wants to keep listening to us and going to church, but he's having problems with his future father-in-law, o sea el hermano Mera. So he wants to prove that he's coming to church for himself, not for his girlfriend.

Supposedly with this transfer i'm staying, supposedly as district leader. But supposedly as well, there's another guy coming to the other area that is as well district leader. Obviously something's messed up, so it's very possible that i'm leaving. Someone also said that i might be training someone else this next transfer, and in that case, i need to leave in a couple hours. I sure hope they sort it all out soon.

Last night the roof fell in on us. We came back early to study because we have to study the 12 weeks program on sundays, but we don't have time in the morning. there we were, and suddenly the roof cracked and fell down. just a little section, but it did give us a fright. Luckily nobody was beneath it.

We finally had the ward activity. there were about 20 people, but that's fine. we had the TV, so we did it, we watched the video of the Restauracion, and yeah. Hector (the young one, not the husband of Irma) came and so did Rodrigo and Erica (the son and wife of Carlos Moreno). The bad thing is that this Hector didn't come to church. BUt he's still super excited. And his mom says she's giving up coffee.

We caught the relief society president headbanging to really loud light spanish rock in her house. That was fun.

Well, I think that's it this time. Bye! Que les vaya muy muy bien!

Elder Taylor

9 febrero 2015

News from this week:

This week was super hard. We had the zone conference on tuesday from 3 to 9 and so we didn’t have hardly any time to work. Then it suddenly warmed up to about 90 degrees the next day (they say the cold is over and it’s just hot and super hot from here on out) and so EVERYBODY was busy taking advantage of the warm weather to wash clothes and do warm weather things. Basically NOBODY was at home or was busy and numerically talking, this week was half as productive as the average week we’ve had.

But Sunday was very nice. I looked around after the sacrament and realized just how many people were there because m companion and I had invited them. Maru (a less-active member who hasn't gone in years), Flor and her family (the same story), Ericka and Carlos and Rodrigo (part-member family, she hasn’t gone in so long that her records have disappeared from off the face of the earth and we might have to baptize her again), and two boys from a less-active family Israel and Jesus (jesus is not baptized, but is 10). I realized, I’ve made a difference in this ward. It was just another moment of realization, por lo más que me sienta inadecuado o lo que sea, yo sí estoy haciendo bueno aquí. Y para lo mismo me vine, verdad?

Irma came again! she wasn’t in the sacrament meeting, so we were thinking she hadn’t come. But then someone called to us after priesthood and told us there was someone for us in the relief society. Apparently she and Hector missed the chance to come for sacrament and sunday school, but she was determined not to miss out on relief society. So she is still on track to be baptized the 7 of march. Lo malo que creo que me voy antes. But we went today to go visit her and Hector in the flower shop and there we found them and then they invited us to come back in an hour to eat, so that´s where we´re going in a little bit.

other investigators: Carlos Gutierrez is still determined that he’s going to meet with us, we just haven’t seen him for three weeks. But the family Mera told us where he’s working and so we went to go see him and he wasn’t there (he was with Hna Mera, his girlfriend, at the theater on a sunday...) but his buddy from work told us that he had seen us walking and had told him (the friend) that he still wanting to talk to us. So we're hoping for results this week.

Miguel Angel: No, el trabajo! He’s always SO busy but he still chases us down on the street to try to set appointments with us so i think he’s still interested. And this crazy season of his work can’t last forever, so we’ve just gotta last longer that it.

Claudia, Alma and Emily: a divorced woman with her two daughters. They’re CRAZY! And awesome. They have more questions than I’ve ever had from an investigator. We met them because Alma is a friend of a less-active member. They didn’t come to church yesterday and so we have to find out why...but they are all interested. Very interested. Well...we’ll see. They all complete with all the compromisos, so we’ll see.

Karen Sanchez, the wife of a less-active member who happens to be the nephew of the Hna Mera (the matriarch of the Mera clan). She says she’s catholic, but she doesn’t believe the saints, she doesn’t go to mass, she likes our church, she’s just never read the book of mormon before but has her own triple and LDS edition Reyna-Valera bible.

And Hector...we couldn’t see him and his mom last week because we couldn’t until thursday and they left town on thursday...but we set an appointment with them for tomorrow. We were talking with his mom at the door for a little bit yesterday and he came charging down the stairs to see us when he heard our voices. He’s super excited still and determined to go to church this week. We just need his mom to go to...she supports him and his decisions but says that she’s catholic and it would be really hard for her to change religion (But also doesn’t believe in the saints, goes to christian churches every once in a while.) But she completes every compromiso every time, so it’s fine.

Hey, I sent ustedes a packet for christmas, so I think it should be arriving any day now.

I also just got Matthew’s letter this week from November.

My spiritual thought this week is D y C 33. The whole seccion. It’s pretty awesome.

And I’m probably going to go buy a cowboy hat because it’s super hot...90 degrees. I don’t know what I’m going to do in the Canicula (july to august more or less). I’ve heard from some missionaries that they shower in cold water with their garments on before going to bed to lower the temperature and go to bed like that. But the wetness doesn’t keep them awake because the garments are dry in three minutes. yeah...

Well, that’s all I have for you all this week. Cuidaos!

Oh, cultural note: They do not say "Salud, dinero, amor" here for sneezing. just "salud." I asked a companion about it, he said he’d never heard of that before.

Elder Taylor

2 Febrero 2015

I have a TON to tell you all, so i'll get started.

First, I am very grateful for Stash brand tea. Elder Muñoz bought a mexican brand peppermint tea last transfer that is just plain awful. I drank it a couple times but then i decided i just couldn't continue drinking something that tastes more like morning breath than peppermint. So then I bought Stash and every time I open it and smell it, oh it's glorious. I still haven't thrown away the rest of the mexican brand tea yet, partly because every time i see it and DON'T pick it up, it's just a nice reminder. it's like, Gee, i'm glad i'm not putting THAT in my mouth anymore.

We have a contact that we just keep running into. Her name is Alice. We met the poor lady in the street the first time and talked to her and she said, no, I'm already christian, thank you. That was about a month ago. Then we got a reference from a member and went to the house and when Alice opened the door, I smiled really big and said "remember me?" and she laughed and said that she was busy, come back if you want but no promises that you'll ever find me again here unoccupied. Well then we went to a less-active member's house and found her. Oh, you should have seen the look on her face. But she seems to think it's a sign from God so she said we could come by her house this week. We'll see what happens.

We had a couple of miracles and disappointments this week. Disappointment number one: Petrita's husband told her to stop visiting with us and to give us back the book of mormon. Of course we didn't accept it. She was super interested too. Disappointment number two: nobody came to the ward activity. Hermana Chayo showed up at 6, and then a few more people trickled in, all members of the Ward Council and their spouses. The bad part, nobody had a key to the clerk's office, and as the key feature of the program was going to be watching the Restoration video and we didn't have access to the TV...yeah. There were some definite lack of communication problems after all we had done to make it happen, but the good thing is that I think a few certain someones got embarrassed for not having communicated with us, such as the person with the keys didn't bother telling us that he was out of town. Well, that's not necessarily the good thing. But the good thing is that we're going to do it in two weeks and i think they're not going to want to get embarrassed again and so it'll actually happen. If that makes any sense....

And the miracles: we have a new investigator, i think I talked about him last week. His name is Miguel Angel and he is obviously prepared and ready to receive this message. Here's why: we started with lesson 1 this week and we got 2 sentences into the lesson (literally speaking, only two sentences) before he stopped us with a doubt. the sentence was "Jesus Christ is the son of God" or something like that. Then he started talking about some strange ideas he had about the trinity, about how the Holy Ghost is the embryo, jesus the man and then the Father is God or something like that. I understood his words, just not his meaning. Anyway, we started with him piling on us some pretty heavy doubts that he's had all his life and ended the lesson with setting him a baptismal date and him being super excited to get baptised. We haven't even gotten to Joseph Smith yet. He was going to come to church yesterday, but he says that the day he met us, suddenly his workweek (which was about 20 a week) turned into about 70 hours a week and his mom was put in the hospital and he has to be with her to help sign papers, watch her, and everything that they do there. This all happened the day he met us. He couldn't come to church yesterday because he worked 16 hours and then had to go back to work. He found us in the street as we were passing through his neighborhood and stopped us and asked if we could come by at 3 today. We asked if 7 was alright and he said sure. So yeah. But he's super excited, and it's so much fun to see the holy ghost working with him.

And the lady that's basically Jacky from Trophy Wife! Her name is Irma and her husband is Hector Javier. We visited her 3 times last week because we decided to hit her hard because as soon as they're done remodeling the house, she's going to go back to work and it's going to be super hard to find her. The last time we passed by to find her, her husband had just arrived, which was super odd because he never comes home early but had gotten a little sick that day, Saturday. He told us she had been telling him about us (she says that he laughed the first time she told him) and that it was interesting basically. So then we taught them a little about something and invited them to church. He said that it would be hard with work (they own a flower shop downtown), and so I invited them to sacrifice the time to be able to come. AND THEY CAME! They got there late, but they came!

And so did Hector! He's twelve and awesome and we just need his mom to come with him.

And so did Karen! She's the wife of a less active member that lives in our ward that we never even knew existed until we got the reference of her name and address from her father in law. But yep, she came!

And Carlos and Rodrigo and Carlos Gutierrez didn't...but we'll have to see what's going on.

And sacrament meeting...wow that was intense. We had a baby blessing of the newest member of the Mera clan (i have a great picture of Hermano Mera dressed up as an angel and me next to him, but this computer doesn't have the right type of port to be able to send it to you guys) and obviously everyone in the family stood up to talk about how beautiful she was and how glad they were to be sealed as a family and just how great it was to be a new parent and all that. And then Hermana Macias stood up. Her baby was born the same week as the Mera baby but only lived 12 hours. She bore her testimony about the importance of keeping covenants and of how grateful she was to have an eternal family. She didn't shed a tear. She didn't even specifically mention her loss, though she did thank everyone who had supported her in this past week. It was powerful.

But then in priesthood...we have a certain someone who is determined to convince the ward that the church leaders have it in for him that it's everyone else's fault that his sons didn't go on a mission, that the ward is falling apart, that nobody loves anyone in the ward anymore...blah. Well, thankfully the teacher did a good job of calming him down because there was Hector Javier, his first time in the church, really his first encounter with members and the hermano starts ranting about that...yeah. But oh well. I hope he gets to see better priesthood meetings in the future.

My companion made me a Maria cookie and Cajeta (caramel but a little different) smoothie. It was a little weird and then I had a hard time sleeping afterward.

I know very well how to cook probably the most common food they eat here now. It's called Huevo con Chorizo. It's scrambled eggs with chorizo. And tortillas. There are people here who will sit and stare at food if there's not a tortilla to accompany it. It's actually usually really awkward, the whole "should I wait for the tortillas and risk being thought rude if they aren't any, or do I start right away with the food and risk being thought rude because I didn't wait?" luckily, i don't think anyone actually cares. But often it does kind of turn into a race between us and the hermana who makes the food to see if we finish the plate before the tortillas show up on the table.

But oh well.

Well, that's all this week!

Elder Taylor