7 Diciembre 2015

7 Diciembre 2015

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO EVERYBODY WHO HAS A BIRTHDAY IN THESE WEEKS!

There, I'm covered.

Well, it was a fun week. We finished Elder Goeckeritz's training and spent the whole week thinking about the transfers. This transfer brought some pretty big surprises among the zone leaders. Such as certain zone leaders that are about ready to go home were NOT sent to be trainers, which is something that would be normal. A different zone leader, Elder Morales, that still has about 10 months left, is no longer zone leader and is coming up to Piedras to be with Elder Goeckeritz. Also, Elder Vielma (who is going home in just two more transfers and so would have been logical for him to go train) is going to go replace Elder Morales in Monclova Este to be with Elder Flores as Zone Leaders there. Two Chihuahua goofball punks together as zone leaders. That's going to be a blast.

AND I'M GOING TO BE STAYING IN PIEDRAS FOR CHRISTMAS! WOO!

Mayte told us this morning when she called to check up on the changes (we hadn't said anything to her, I think she just calculated from 6 weeks back and put in her calendar or something) that she knew I wasn't going to leave. On Saturday, she prayed and promised God that she was going to go to church but that He had to leave "both Hernandez and Taylor" here to keep teaching her. And so she went to church for the first time! Well, her ultimatum to God worked apparently. Pues, héme aqui. ("Behold, here am I.")

Gilberto is SO stoked to do family history work. He's just itching to get to the temple to do the work for the dead. He is also determined to put a goal with his daughter (who is more or less active) to go to the temple together in one year to be endowed and sealed. (By the way, Mayte has been forgetting to send you, mom, the photo of us in the font. I'll keep reminding her.)

We found Karen Rocio this week. I think I might have mentioned her dad last week, how he shouted out to us in the street: "Hey! I want you to go and my my daughter Mormon!" So we went to their house this week to meet her. She's 16, her father, Daniel, is LDS and has been forever even though he's really less active. But he's one of the rare less active members here who says he knows that the church is true and that he has to get his life in order if he's going to get to the celestial kingdom. She says that she's always wanted to go and get to know the church and maybe join it. So we told her that she could if she REALLY wanted to and then gave her the pamphlet of Lesson 1 to read and pray about it. She's SUPER intelligent and they are REALLY funny together, her and her dad. We just have to be careful to not be in the house at the same time as the mom, because she'll get mad.

Yarik is still progressing. We've got a schedule established: every tuesday and friday we go and teach him and then we eat dinner with them. His tiabuelo (brother of the grandpa) is the stake president, and he's pretty excited that his great nephew wants to be baptized.

Brandon is a kid that we'd been teaching as well but we were just about ready to drop him because he wasn't coming to church and wasn't progressing towards baptism. But then out of the blue showed up to stake conference! So YAY!

This next week is going to be really nice: the temple dedication of the temple of Tijuana! If you haven't already, look up pictures. It's BEAUTIFUL!

We've had an interesting problem recently: Maria Esther has been meeting several missionaries over the past couple weeks. That's not a problem. The problem is that she's been invited them ALL to eat in her house. It's not a territorial pride thing, but it's been creating a problem of logistics and time management for the missionaries and for us. It's an issue when we get on time to the appointment with her and we find a district leader and his companion already in the house because apparently she invited them to pizza with us, us not knowing that we were going to eat and having already made other plans. Good grief.

Mission slang: "galleta", a person that gives a lot of food to the missionaries or in general spoils them. "Matar," literally, to kill. In mission terms, purposefully or accidentally cause the missionaries to spend a lot of time in your house without letting them leave. Example: "Thanks for letting us visit you for a few minutes, is there anything we can do for you?" "Elders, I already made dinner for you. Don't tell me no." Maria Esther is quickly becoming the Mama Galleta for the whole dang zone and seems to be making an unashamed effort to murder us. I am reminded of the story of Lydia in the Bible in Acts 16:13-15.

Mayra Rocha and Leo accepted a baptismal date for the 9 of January. Leopoldo might be baptized this week if he passes his baptismal interview and doesn't come out with the question "But what's the difference between God and Joseph Smith? Which one is Jehovah?" and decides to stop smoking "to make his food go down easier." Good grief. Mayte has a date for the 26 of December, and even though we'll have to ask for permission, I'm convinced there won't be any problem. Yarik as well has his date for the 26 of December. We're looking at mid-january for Karen Rocio. I'm very content to be here in this area.

By the way, all the people we're baptizing here are natives of Piedras Negras. Of all the other people I've had the opportunity to teach and baptized, only one other was a native of Coahuila.

Well, everybody have a great week!

When do you want to talk to me? The Castro family has offered their house and internet for us and as well we're going to pass Christmas Eve with them. If it's possible, for me it would work out better to talk by google hangout the 24 around 7 or 8. But we could also do it Christmas Day if that's better for you all.

Les amo!

Elder Taylor