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
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