9 Marzo 2016

9 Marzo 2016

Well, this letter is going to be a little shorter than normal because this last week was a little shorter, just Friday to Wednesday. But it's been a good one.

Basilio's getting baptized next Saturday! Yay! We'll see if Hagapita as well, but it's going to be a little harder. Here's the thing: she definitely comprehends well enough to know the difference between good and bad and therefore needs baptism. But I'm not convinced she comprehends much more than that, and probably not enough to have a comprehensible baptismal interview. Maybe we could just have a missionary that doesn't speak Spanish very well do the interview so he'll just assume that it's all good without having actually understood much. Come to think of it, maybe that's how Leopoldo passed his interview. The kid who interviewed him was Elder Miller who was kinda struggling with the language. Good news for us is he's now here in Valle de las Flores. Bad news is he speaks and understands a whole lot better now. Oh well. We'll figure out some way to do it.

We found this AWESOME lady whose name is Sofia Vasquez. We were looking for a reference of a less-active member and got the wrong house. She's just AMAZING! She's a single mom with adolescent and young adult children. We taught her an awesome super-charged lesson about faith and repentance and baptism and she accepted baptism so well! And now she's thinking about a baptismal date and we're going back on Saturday to see what she says! YAY!

We did splits yesterday with the elders from La Cañada: Elder Marín and Elder Hernandez. Elder Hernandez came with Elder Flores to Oceanía and I went over there with the other guy. It was fun to be with Elder Marín again. When I first met him, he was in Bellavista and I was in Frontera, him as a new missionary and me as a new zone leader. That was about a year ago. It was cool to see how much he progressed. And it was fun because he's a super goofy guy. Then Elder Flores and Hernandez had fun here in Oceanía. They got a lot of work done, and between lessons spent the time talking about Piedras Negras and the people from there. It was kinda weird getting back to my house this morning and seeing my two favorite companions and companions. They both said that they LOVED working together and Elder Flores said he would love to have Elder Hernandez as his next companion. We'll see what happens.

Ate brunch with Sister Elisabeth this morning. I ate seven gorditas. It was glorious. I'll have to figure out how to make those for you guys.

We're super excited for how this transfer is going. We've got the Leadership Counsel tomorrow. I'm going to be in Monclova Friday and Saturday. We've got Zone Conferences this transfer. The secretaries actually know what they're doing in spite of being new. The assistents not so much but we're working on it.

This morning Elder Marín and I practiced lesson 3 this morning. It was interesting reading and studying about Justice and Mercy and how they apply to our life. Justice: for every action, there is an equal and complementary reaction. For every bad thing you do, there is a bad consequence. For every good thing, a recompense. At least that's what a strictly just universe would be like. But also according to that, after sinning or having weakness just once in our life, we would never be able to get back with God. Nothing impure can be with Him and so just after one tiny little impurity we can't get back. We would receive maybe a lot of recompenses for good things that we do but we could never make it back. That's why Jesus came.

Mosiah 15:8-9: And thus God breaketh the bands of death, having gained the victory over death; giving the Son power to make intercession for the children of men, having ascended into heaven, having the bowels of mercy; being filled with compassion towards the children of men; standing betwixt them and justice; having broken the bands of death, taken upon himself their iniquity and their transgressions, having redeemed them, and satisfied the demands of justice.

I'm glad to be here in the mission. It's great and even fun to be working here and helping others get these same blessings that I hope to have in my life.

Love you all!

Elder Taylor