Well howdy family,
There is not a lot to share from this week unfortunately. This week
was pretty rough in terms of work. So the thing with Valle is that people are
VERY Catholic (more so than other areas) and they are Catholic more because of
tradition than actual beliefs, which I find frustrating. People have a hard time changing. I am sure
you’ve realized that from the past letters. haha. I try to not let it get in my
head, but sometimes it does.
But anyway, we have had a lot of people go to church for the first
time here. Almost every week I have had about 3-4 people go for the first time,
but then for the second time, no one wants to go back, or something comes
up. It is super frustrating. So this
week we really tried to focus on the people returning for a second time. By
Sunday, we had 4 people ready to go to church for the second time, but they all
flaked out. We were super bummed. So this week, we are trying to rethink our
strategy to find really good people who may be interested.
The same thing also happened in the hermanas’ area that are in my district.
However, they have been working with this one girl who might get baptized this
next week. She is the sister of the crazy boy from 2 transfers ago who had to
get rebaptized. The church also lost her
paper work. A that time she didn’t want to get baptized and is a bit goth. But,
the hermana’s have been working hard with her and now she wants to be baptized!
She even came to church yesterday on her own even though her mom was out of
town (her mom is relief society president). She is only 15. The branch is slowly coming
together. We don’t have a youth group, but it is coming. We have a few young
women who are starting to come back, but they all come back at different weeks
so it is hard to have consistency. The thing with a lot of the members here is
they don’t realize the church is EVERY week. haha. It’s hard to see the growth
because they are different members every week. It’s something I think we are going to focus
on with the members.
One thing that is exciting is that Elder Johnson and the hermanas in
my district and I are planning a mission activity for this Saturday. We are
doing Viaje Hawaii. We’ll pretend to board
a "plane" and then get out in "Hawaii" and have games and stations
of things. There are “good” stations and stations “of the world.” So we will have a disco, clowns (Bruno), board
games and a fortune teller. And then we will have stations such as a mini-MTC,
a family home evening booth, scripture study area and stuff like that. Everyone
will get tickets and they can spend their tickets at the worldly stuff and gain
tickets at the spiritual stuff. We then reboard the plane and come back, but in
the plane we get in a crash and everyone dies. Then everyone gets placed in one
of the 3 kingdoms of glory, depending on how many tickets they have. So that is
our activity we have been planning. The biggest thing right now is we need electricity
for the house of prayer. We haven’t had power for the past month. Hopefully we
get it back this week. Please pray for lights!
We have been getting the members pretty excited for the activity and
telling them to invite friends. I made the tickets. Hopefully it makes you
proud, Mom. Some people have never seen plane tickets here before and so they
actually think we are going to Hawaii. Whatever gets them to the church I
guess! haha no we tell them we aren’t actually going.
Oh and Valentine’s day here is wack. If you think it’s cheesy in the
states, you should come to Mexico. Everyone buys their girlfriends the HUGE
teddy bears, flowers and chocolate. I probably only thought that because I can’t
have a girlfriend, but I just saw too many couples making out. haha.
So that has been our week. On Wednesday we had a meeting in Metepec
for the trainers and new missionaries. It was pretty good and I learned how I
can be a better trainer for Elder Johnson. He is doing pretty well. He learns quickly
and has good Spanish, especially for how much time he has.
The mission is great. I don’t think it will ever be easy, but no one
said it would be. I can always pray for the strength and help to carry on. I
just need to be patient and wait upon the Lord’s answers from the challenges I
have.
Thank you all for your love and support and prayers. I miss and love
you all!
-Elder Thomas
PS - Enjoy my 9 month mark selfie. I think I look really tired.
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