Helping, Helping Hands!

A little bit more of my area.  Haha It's awesome

HEYYYY!!!

       So this week was actually pretty freeking awesome. Sooo hopefully i can fit in all the details without getting terribly bored of writing all of it out haha ill do my best to sum up.

       Firstttt off, this week was especially interesting because i got email questions from BOTH my father and my mother!!! But, my Mom only really had one question, with many sub-questions. So ill just start with that one haha My mom asked about my responsibilities as a district leader. First off, let me say that they are not terribly difficult haha but here they are - Basically, once a week i have to give a "District Meeting" to my district. We talk about challenges we are having in the district, what we are putting as goals, and then we have a specific topic that I give a little lesson on, and then we practice teaching about that principle! I DO have to call all the people in my district, but only because they are all sisters pretty much haha here in Atlixco there have been a few sketchy things going down so they asked me to call them every night to check that they made it safely to their houses. I council the ELDERS of my distirct if they are having problems, but im NOT allowed to council the sister missionaries. They are supposed to go to the sister leaders for that. However, they ask for blessings every once in a while. I also have to help if they have issues like getting lost and transportation and stuff like that, but its usually pretty easy. Worse comes to worse, i just tell them to take a taxi, tell the driver where to take them and then reemburse the taxi ride. Thats what President has advised us to do if theres no other solution. NOW as for my Dads questions - 1) There is only ONE rule about setting off fireworks in Mexico....and that is that there are NO RULES. You dont need any type of event or occasion to be able to set off fireworks here haha its just a thing they do no matter what the day is. 2) They DO eat potatoes here haha 3) They make Jello here too, actually a lot. And they sell it and people buy it. Its super popular. 4) NOOOO. Its superrr sad, but no, they dont have kool aid. If an elder has a few packs of kool aid singles, you can bet he got them from his girlfriend back home haha and 5) They mostly follow soccer, world and in Mexico, but if you look a little bit harder you can find people who like the NFL, and if you look REALLY HARD you can find people who like the NBA (shoutout to my boy Kevin Durant), and almost NEVER do you find people who like the NCAA which is sad, cause we all know thats my favorite haha

And these adorable little brothers of a sister

 missionary who had her farewell this week! 

They sang "I Hope They Call Me On a Mission"!

       Sooo like i said, this week was pretty exciting. I only have times for the highlights so here we go. We had a GREAT district meeting. I really prayed that the sisters and elders would get something out of it and i for sure felt the spirit and it was awesome! Then we had 2 days this week of helping "Helping Hands" that program from the church (ironic i know). They were offering free dental work on thursday and friday this week and we went and helped patients get to their offices and take down their names and what their problems were. It was awesome! All the dentists were from the US and in their last year of studying to be practicians, so we also got to help with some translating. That was my favorite part haha they were all soo cool and it was awesome to see how greatful the people were for such a simple thing like a teeth cleaning. They were able to help the people sooo much with problems that are much too expensive for them to fix themselves. So it was a really enriching experience. Pictures to that will come later cause the director still hasnt sent them to me haha And finally on Sunday we were able to have a BAPTISM!! YAYY! I also got to play a few songs there too and it went really well. So it was good.

Picture of our Baptism!  This guy is awesome!

       Im pretty much out of time for this week, so Im gonna have to give just a really shortttt spiritual thought. I just want you guys to be on the lookout this week for someone who could really use this gospel. We are the chosen children of God. We were chosen before this life, to be the blessed saints who have the message of the restored gospel, and Im sure that when we were called, and accepted that calling, we agreed to share it. There is no greater joy you can have than to know that someone was brought to a knowledge of the Plan of Salvation through your invitation. Your friends and neighbors are anxiously waiting this message, and you are the light that is set on a hill, ready to bring it to them.

Love,

Elder Josh Hamm