I am always reminded that God’s hand is in this work.

Well hey there family, 

This week was really another struggle, not going to lie. It just seemed like no one wanted to listen to us. Every contact I would do, they would keep walking away or say “another day.” I was going crazy. Wednesday past, Thursday past, and almost all Friday past. We had not entered into one house. We had been walking trying to find people to teach. All of our appointments were falling through. We were exhausted and just needed a miracle. Our district decided after the food on Friday we would do a fast to find people. We are really trying to find people who have interest in the Gospel and want to progress on the path of God. Finally Friday, we find this guy named Salvador in the street. We set up an appointment for him in the night. It started pouring rain and we couldn’t find his house. I think he gave us a false address because no one lives in the house he told us. We were frustrated and then had to go to another appointment on the other side of the town with this lady named Leticia. It was pouring and we didn’t have our umbrellas or coats so naturally we were soaked. We couldn’t find this lady’s house. She said she had a panederia [bakery] so we literally asked every panaderia. We eventually found it. We had a great lesson. We read 3rd Nephi 11. She has loved everything we taught her and we committed her to going to church. It was a great way to end our day. Saturday came and we seemed to have tons of success. We entered about 4 or 5 houses. We were finding all these people that said they could go to church with us. It’s really hard to find people who don’t have work here because it’s so touristy to people work on the weekends. We found about 3 or 4 more people who said they would come with us on Sunday. We were so excited! We planned to go pick up everyone in taxi in the morning.

Then Sunday came. We went to Leticia’s first. We met with some members who were going to take her to church while we went to the other people. We found Leticia who said a restaurant called her late last night because they needed her to make desserts for them so she couldn’t go. We were frustrated and just kept praying for a miracle. Then we went to the other people. One left a note saying he will see us at the church (but that never happened), the others we couldn’t find or said they had to leave for work. So we went to church without anyone. As we pulled up, a guy who works in our area (Juan, who lives forever far away) showed up. We haven’t been focusing on him a ton because he lives so far away and sometimes has to work on Sundays. Then the hermanas showed up and their investigators never showed up either. We were super bummed. However, after the services, we were talking about what we are learning in this area.

Some things I’ve learned along with my district:

1. Maybe we are living in a desert of affliction like Nephi. Although we have these trials, we need to continue in this work. Like when Nephi broke his bow, everyone murmured. Nephi however did something about it and fixed it. He continued through his trials and eventually they inherited the Promised Land. Maybe what we are working for is something even greater. God just wants us to work through our trials and then we will receive.

2. Later that night, Elder Whatcott and I were talking. We literally felt like we gave our all this past week. We prayed, we fasted, we were obedient, we are trying our hardest. And what were we doing all that for? To find someone who is really interested in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the joy that it brings. Of all this, who came to church? Juan! He has so much interest. His nephew is living in Salt Lake and is a member. He introduced Juan to the church and he Juan wants the same changes in his life that his nephew had.

So from all this, although it may not be how we were hoping, God answers our prayers. In his own time, he will help us grow. He may need to humble us first, but he will answer our prayers. I am always reminded that God’s hand is in this work.

So with that, we are going to make the sacrifice and go to Juan. It might be expensive, but God will help us find a way to get to meet with him and teach him about this great Gospel.

In terms of other people, the family with the clown will probably have to wait. We were super direct with them (something I am trying to learn to be--direct). We talked to them about keeping commitments because they keep saying they will read something or go to church but they don’t do it. They understood how we felt, and said they will try to be better. But they can’t really progress because they are out of town for a while preparing for their daughter’s quincenera... Maybe next change they’ll progress. 

We are teaching this one really good mom and kids named Jeniffer and Nestor, but she has to work on Sundays. We are hoping she can change her work or something to go to church. She loves this stuff. She even told us she has had a dream about the Angel Moroni! Some angel with a trumpet on top of a building is what she told us. Crazy!

So yeah, I learn so much here, even though it’s hard. 

As it’s Thanksgiving, I just want to say thanks to all of you! Thanks for being such a good family! Thanks to all my friends! I am grateful for this Gospel and the joy it brings to me and my family. I am grateful for this opportunity to serve the Lord. I love you all!

-Elder Thomas

P.S. – Attached is up top of Valle. I saw a bunch of Mastercraft boats a few days ago. BEAUTIFUL. They are pretty popular here. 

Also attached is a picture of this huge spider we had in our apartment yesterday. BLEH. 

Joke: we contacted this guy who said “I am atheist. Gracias a Dios” haha

Flyin' by!

Well hello there my dear family,

Guess what? This past Friday I completed 6 months out in the mission! What?! It actually went by pretty fast, but then I think about the past 6 months and it feels like a ton of stuff has happened. I can’t believe Elder Whatcott and I are halfway through the change already here in Valle de Bravo. Flyin’ by. 

This week has been so crazy.  Tuesday we had the junta with the zone leaders. Luckily it wasn’t too bad. We mainly just practiced committing people to come to church and that took most the time. Then the zone leaders came with Elder Whatcott and me up on top of Valle.  Super pretty up there (see picture). They left and went to find some people in our area to talk to.  Elder Whatcott and I talked to all these people up on top. The people up on the hill listen to us more and are more humble because they are poorer.  After food the zone leaders worked with the hermanas in their area. Nothing super exciting this day. 

Thursday we had a crazy day.  This guy who is super golden came to church last week by himself.  He works in our area at this restaurant, but this past Sunday didn’t have to work. He told us his entire life story about alcohol and all his problems he has had. His wife just had a baby girl and is super happy about it.  We set up a cita with him on Thursday night. He lives SO far away.  Right before we left, for some odd reason our phone battery died and we couldn’t get it working. We first took a 45 minute taxi to Colorinas. Then we took a truck for another 45 minutes to his little pueblo. While in the truck I was just wondering ¨where the heck are we?¨ We just kept going down the switch backs. This guy without teeth gets in the truck with a machete (a lot of people have them for farming) and sits in front. We pass houses in the middle of no where. Then we have to stop and honk at a bunch of cows crossing the road. Finally we get to this little town. We go up and ask this random guy to use his cell phone so we switch the sim card and call this Juan guy who we are meeting. We meet him and his mom who is also really interested in the Church. We had a good lesson about the Restoration with them. The thing is, is they can’t go to church because it is so expensive to travel all the way there and they don’t have a lot of money.  At about 8 we said we needed to head back to be back in the house by 9:30. Juan then told us that there are no taxis at this hour.  I about had a panic attack and didn’t believe him.  He was like "Oh, I thought you were just going to sleep here?"  Nope can’t do that. We go back into the centro of this little town.  There was nothing. About 5 minutes later a bus drives by. It was Juan’s uncle! He gave us a ride back to Colorinas. We were heading back on these winding roads and it was super dark. Then all of a suden the driver slams on the breaks and the bus stops. I looked forward and there was a horse literally like an inch away. There was a whole family of horses that we almost hit.  Super scary haha.  We made it back to Colorinas and took a taxi back to our house. And we got back at 9:40! Not to bad! haha. Don’t know if we will go out there again...

Friday morning we had to go another 1.5 hours away to Tejupilco. I did my first baptismal interview for the missionaries there!  It went pretty well.

Saturday we had interviews with President. He came out to Valle (luckily) with his wife and the assistants to interview my district.  My interview was super short. Only like 5 minutes. I wanted to talk to him more, but they were late for other interviews in other areas. The assistants talked with us about getting people to church. Elder Puerto who is one of the assistants now (remember him, my first zone leader :P ) lived in the states for a few years. He says in the states when the people say yes it means yes and no it means no. Well here when they say yes it means no and when they mean no it means no. People here lie so much! They taught us some ways we can get people to church. The people always make up the lamest excuses why they can’t go like they are going to a surgery right then. Anyway, what we learned from the assistants was super helpful. 

And then there is yesterday. Yesterday was crazy. In the morning we went to people’s houses to bring them to church. Of course they had dumb excuses like some guy is coming to do legal papers. It’s not true because the government stuff isn’t open on Sundays. People just can’t tell us they don’t have interest so we ended up leaving his house. We went to other people’s house and they all had their own excuses. So we went to church and we didn’t have anyone. It was the worst. I felt awful. The hermanas investigators all fell through as well. The assistance for church yesterday was 24... Such a bummer. I felt like all of our work this week didn’t pay off after yesterday.

Anyway, there is this boy named Set who’s paper work of baptism and confirmation was lost so he had to get baptized again. He is 12 but acts like he’s 7 (as you can see in the picture haha). 

The hermanas have been working with him and he got baptized yesterday. The hermanas were filling the font which is this PVC pipe tub thing outside. During the services this little boy filled the font with trash and dirt so after we had to dump the water and refill it. It takes forever to fill, so we all had to take buckets and carry them through the church to fill the font along with the hose. An hour later, and it was only 1/4 full. I was the one to baptize him. Set started screaming when he got in because the water was so cold. I had to pull him in because he was being a turkey and goofing around.  I wondered if he was ready for baptism. We did the baptism on our knees to be able to immerse him. But he wouldn’t go under so his feet came up. We had to do it over again, but he didn’t want to so his mom had to talk to him. The next time was much more graceful. haha it was quite the ordeal. Oh the life here in Mexico.

In terms of people we are teaching, it isn’t many. We have taught a ton of people, but many people don’t seem to be progressing. We taught that one family, but they were out of town again this week. They have a bunch of marriage problems. Hopefully they can overcome this problem. Keeping commitments is one way we can tell how ready these people are. Unfortunately since no one was in church this week, we don’t have people who are really interested. That’s our goal this week, to find people who are really interested.

I miss you all! Hope all is well!

-Elder Thomas

junta [zone or mission conference?] in Metapec

Okay so this week doesn’t have a ton of detail to it this week.

Tuesday we had a junta in Metapec. It’s 2.5 hours away from here so we had to wake up early – at 4:00 a.m. haha. I saw Elder Huber from the MTC because he is in my zone! He is training someone right now. In the junta, we talked about how we want to think about why our ward or branch is the best and use that information to commit people to going to church. We also talked about safety and what to do if we are ever robbed or kidnapped. Haha it’s kinda funny that we have to talk about that. Luckily Valle is pretty safe.

Thursday we had Elder Ortiz of the seventy come for a mission tour. We had to go to Toluca so we woke up super early again. He talked with all of the mission. 1/2 one day and the other 1/2 the next day. At lunch, almost all my companions sat next to me. I had Elder Whatcott on the left, Wanner on the right, Dahlin diagonal, and McCrory in front of me (it was my first time seeing McCrory since I got here). It was really weird. Haha

So in the junta we learned a lot! President talked about the work of salvation. He said it isn’t just baptism. He said it is finding, teaching, baptism, reactivating, and keeping them firm in the church. It felt so good to hear that. I think President sees the way the mission needs to go. So many people here would baptize to baptize and because of that, many people aren’t active in the church. We want real converts. I want the people I teach to have testimonies of their own, not just because they have been to church a few times. We also learned about the importance of working with the ward. One thing I loved that Elder Ortiz said was that the missionaries and the ward are on the same team. We are all trying to build up the church and kingdom of God. The hardest thing in my area is there really isn’t a lot to work with. There are only about 4 or 5 priesthood holders. Almost all the members are recent converts. We are trying to work with what we’ve got though. 

Here in our area, we have been working hard, but haven’t seen much happening. We had the family of 4 we are working with committed to going to church. We taught them the Plan of Salvation and it was such a good lesson. We asked the dad if he wanted to have a family forever and follow the example of his wife and daughters (they already accepted to be baptized) and Jesus Christ and be baptized. He said yes!  But of course Saturday came and we found him working his clown job and he said they were leaving for Toluca to prepare for their daughter’s 15th birthday (quincinera). We had some other people lined up to come to church with us, but they all fell. We had no one. Luckily, a guy named Juan came! He works at this restaurant in our area. His brother lives in Salt Lake and converted a year ago. He talked to Juan and Juan is so interested. He has been reading the Book of Mormon for months and has the church library on his phone! He even paid fast offerings yesterday! He loves the church. We are going to visit him this next week.

So I guess the funniest story of the week would have to be when this guy contacted us. He spoke English and was talking to us when this really drunk guy came up to us. He said "mi bolsita se rompio" (my little bag broke) and then he started pushing it. Then the corn that was in the bag started spilling out. It was so funny. The guy we were contacting was like "come move over here". So funny. Oh drunk people.

This other girl talked to us in the street for 2 seconds. She was full out American! She was from Colorado! It was down near the lake. She only asked us where we are from and then ran ahead to catch up to her friends. We forgot how to talk to other people in English and we had to think about saying "I’m from Maine". Spanish messes up your mind. I’m still far from being fluent, but I can talk. Elder Whatcott has better Spanish than I do, but we get by.

We also found a guy who lived in Atlanta for a long time. We teach him half in Spanish and half in English. He couldn’t go to church this week, but next week he should. He said he was going to be baptized in Georgia, but the person that would baptize him was black and he didn’t want that. People are pretty racist here. 

The hermanas in my district are really good too. They work so hard, but they are having trouble getting people to church as well. The zone leaders are coming tomorrow to our district meeting because we haven’t had people in church... great. I am so worried. I still don’t really know what I am doing. Everyday, I see how God has been helping me because I couldn’t do it without him.

Yeah that’s the highlights of this week. Miss and love you all!

-Elder Thomas

Arrived in Valle de Bravo -- the weeks seem to go by fast!

Here again? The weeks sure seem to go by fast. They feel long during it, but all of a sudden it’s another Monday.  So I just finished my first week here in Valle de Bravo.  Let me just say, the temptation is real. haha. I feel like we are on an island.  There are big mountains and at the base is a huge lake. And occasionally you see wakeboard boats. Haha. Don’t worry though I will resist.  The streets kind of remind me of the town from “Tangled” but Mexican style. And instead of murals of the lost princess everywhere, it’s the Virgin Mary.  It is seriously crazy how much Mexicans worship her. You see more of her than Christ.  They are just a little confused.  It’s really funny contacting some people because we will ask why they believe in her and they say because their parents taught them that and she is their mother.  Then we will say something about the Book of Mormon.  And guess what some say?  “A Bible? a Bible? We don’t need another bible.” What?!  Prophesies fulfilled.  I realize they just are hidden from the truth, but it is interesting to see.  And that’s why we are here, to plant the seeds and if they are ready, to return to the fold.  One day they will “see the light” haha.  Punny

So honestly this week has been super hard and exhausting.  When I came, we didn’t really have anyone to teach.  We contacted 94 people this past week.  That is a ton!  The biggest challenge this week was a festival going on and also the Day of the Dead, so a lot of people were not from here.  In terms of Day of the Dead celebrations, not that much happened.  People sold a bunch of orange flowers on the street and people talked about going to the cemetery but we didn’t see.  On Halloween, kids dressed up to go trick or treating. And then the next night (Saturday), they decided to go for round two.  Come on kids, you can’t do that...at least have a different costume. haha.  Kinda funny.

Anyway, back to the work. So yeah there weren’t a lot of people, so we have walked EVERYWHERE.  My feet are falling off. haha We are always so tired. We maybe got into 3 houses of investigators last week, nonetheless, we shall continue.

My companion, Elder Whatcott, is awesome. He is hilarous. He is from Saint George. He knows where Grandma and Grandpa Hymas live and Sue and Mike. We are pretty sure our grandparents know each other because his work in the temple as well, as sealers.   I don’t really have any pictures of us yet though.  Maybe next week...We are getting ready for Christmas. I know it’s a little early, but it’s something to look forward to here.  Elder Whatcott is drawing a Christmas tree and we listen to MoTab Christmas music.  A real party here.

Oh also, we went to this guy’s house whose dog just had puppies that day. There is a picture. The guy was really drunk though and it smelled like dog poop so we didn’t stay that long.  Drunk people are kinda funny. I try to avoid them, but sometimes they just are funny to talk to.

Sorry this letter is so random. 

Some cool stories that have happened were the first two days. The Monday night I got here we went to our cita with this family Concepcion, Bruno, and their two daughters. We taught Concepcion and one of the daughters. They both accepted to be baptized in 4 weeks! It was such a good way to start off the change. The rest of the week though we kept trying to find them to teach them but couldn’t find them. Bruno’s job is a clown, so we always are going “to teach this clown a lesson” haha.  Anyway, Saturday we had to meet with them to make sure everything was set to go to church on Sunday, but they weren’t home. We figured they were in centro at the last day of the festival, so we went to search down the clown. Of course everyone was still dressed up for Halloween, so we never found him. We decided to leave a note in their door saying we will come by in the morning to go to church with them. We went the next morning and they came with us! It was so nice to bring a family to church.

Another cool thing was on Tuesday we went to work with the hermanas in my district. Our district is SO young. I only have 5 months and the other missionaries only have 4 months, so we are all learning together. haha. Anyway, we went to one of their citas and taught this one guy about the Restoration of the Church. Then at the end, really randomly we brought up baptism and the importance of it. We asked him if he would like to be baptized and he agreed!  So now the hermanas are working with him to help him be prepared in a few weeks! 

This branch is really small... There are a few good members, but it really struggles. Yesterday we had 38 people in church which is good, but still... I have thought a lot about when the Church first began with Joseph Smith. There was nothing to be based on, no members to befriend, or a foundation to build off of. It was all through the power of God. That is what I am trying to learn while here, to lean on God to help this area. We want to reactivate people here and bring more people into the church with strong testimonies so they can stand on their own. At the same time, we want them to have friends to feel comfortable. The branch needs leadership, which it really doesn’t have enough of.  I really hope to have an impact on this branch. If any of you have good ideas, feel free to share.

So that is my first week. Kinda random, like usual. Anyway, we are living the mission life here. I might go paragliding if I come back here. There are always a ton in the sky. This week will be a good week. I feel it. ¡Adios mi familia! ¡les amo!

-Elder Thomas