Investigate the Investigators

April 15, 2013

Popo

Holaaa! So this week has been pretty average i guess....well as average as you can get on a misison in Mexico but ill try to do my best to spice things up.

        Speaking of spice, the food here is pretty spicy. We can pretty much buy anything we want off the street but the motto is dont be stupid haha if it looks like its gonna make you sick dont eat it, unless a member is serving it to you in which case you choke it down and ask for more. But things are pretty good here. We get to shop at Walmart on pdays but they don't really have the things that they do in the US. Dont get me wrong its much better than most places around here but it definitely is different. You can find some of the same things in the Walmart here that you do in the US but they are all either different brands or maddd expensive. I usually get some bread and peanutbutter and some cheap oatmeal. We found milk that we can drink and although it tastes kinda wierd it is moneyyyy after not having any for a while, and the only problem is that its expensive just like everything else here that tastes good haha but hey what can ya do.

           We have been lucky so far. We have a member in our ward who lets us use her washing machine most every monday and that means that we havent had to wash much of our clothes by hand!! So as of yet im lucky but the norm is that you use your own brute strength, the likes of which i am unfortunately lacking. On pdays we pretty much do laundry, email people, eat somewhere, and then try to do something fun. So far we have been really lucky, my comp says he has never had such awesome pdays as he has these past 3 weeks so we are off to a great start...and unfortunately the rumor is its going down from here haha but im definietly enjoying it while it lasts.

Popo was freaking out on Saturday.  Dont know why but the next day we got a little bit of the smog

            Best thing about pday is that we dont have to be anywhere at a certain time. We have been sooooo busy this week...like literally more busy than i ever have been in my life thus far. We have appointments with the investigators and members ever 90 minutes and we are often running to get to an appointment on time. This week we kept recieving contacts and references just like last week and so over the past 2 weeks we have 18 new investigators!!! For those of you playing along at home, thats a TONN haha the missionaries have been saying i will be lucky to get that many again in a month...but well see haha

The burning of Elder Gs shirt for his one year mark. I wont send you the picture of
 it actually burning but it was awesome. I was on interchanges that day with Elder A.

            Sooo we did get a little excitement this week. We were out on splits with our ward mission leader and we saw some people dressed up with instruments clearly in a mariachi band. So he was like hey you want a picture with these guys and im like nah itd be wierd to ask and he was like sweet ill go ask....either my spanish is REALLY bad or he wasnt waiting for an answer haha so he went and told them that they are real Mexican heritage, and representatives of the spirit of Mexico...blah blah blah, and along story short we got to take a picture with them and it was really cool! They are pretty popular around here and had just finished playing in a huge catholic church!

Some really coool grafiti by some guy named Cirbek.....oh yah btw we contacted him haha.
He's an investigator...im gonna get him to do something sick for me

           I went on divisions this week and taught with a different Elder from our districts. Divisions lasts a full 24 hours. You wake up and do studies with your normal companion, then you switch companions and work all day in another area of the mission. Then you stay the night in the new area and wake up and do studies, then switch back. My new companion was an Elder from Ucatan and was a native who didnt speak english. they arent kidding when they say the best way to learn is by immersion. It was a good time.

            So spiritual thought this week comes from Matthew 8 in the Bible. In verses 23 to 27 we read the story of the disciples on the boat with Jesus when the storm comes up. Right now we are working with a woman who has a fear of water and thus says that she doesnt want to get baptized. In the story, a great storm comes upon the ship and immediately the disciples begin to panic. The sciptures say that they woke Jesus saying"Lord save us, we perish." How interesting that even when the disciples were on a boat with Jesus they were able to feel like they were going to die. Then Jesus says "Oh ye of little faith. Why are ye fearful?" and calms the storm. The lesson that we were trying to teach this woman was that the disciples werent in the wrong to have fear or to call upon Jesus for help. Many times in our lives we are going to have trials and we are expected to feel fear and there is nothing better to do than call upon Jesus saying "Lord save me." But the reason Jesus says oh ye of little faith is because they dont just say lord save us....they say lord save us, because we are going to die. If we go to our knees we need to go with an attitude of faith and a knowledge that our Lord can save us, but without the spirit of doubt and worry. This woman has a legitimate fear and we are encouraging her to place her trust in the savior and call on him to save her, but with the belief that he can to all things and that she will not perish. We have to call on the Lord in all of our sorrows knowing with surity that we will one day rest from all our afflictions. Have faith, apply that faith, and fear not.