Moville - Week 6
What's uuup?
Last Monday we ate with the Marenco Family, they are awesome. Their son Chris got his mission call this week to Oakland California speaking Spanish, he's pretty pumped because almost everyone in his family has gone to Utah haha. Then we had a recent Convert lesson with Juan Carlos and that was pretty cool because he's super solid and basically taught us the gospel of Jesus Christ instead of us teaching him. No black ice this week.
Tuesday we watched the President Nelson thing, I expected something more based off of the "Cancel your plans for the morning to watch it" Email we got. But it was good, President Nelson is awesome. I don't understand everyone being so concerned about the presidency getting switched up. Anyways then we had District meeting, that was good, the doctrine was on the Book of Mormon. It's pretty cool that the validity of the whole church rests on the Book of Mormon. Later we had a lesson with Samantha, I don't remember if I talked about her last week but we met her tracting, shes like 20, in the military, about to be a single mom and her in laws from Puerto Rico are staying with her cause their house in Puerto Rico got... removed, by the hurricane. She's white and super interested in finding a church. Her in laws that do speak Spanish are suuuper 7th day Adventist, for now 😉.
Not much happened Wednesday, we had dinner with a less active family, the mom says that she works on Sunday and that's why (which working on Sunday is also a problem, not an excuse) They got food from some chicken place that everyone is obsessed with here, I'm not a fan, chicken on the bone is just grodey. But overall it was pretty good. They didn't tell us they were going to feed us so we had dinner scheduled with the bishop right after. Eating at the bishops house was awesome. They are like 2nd generation Hispanic so they don't even like "Authentic" Hispanic food so they got takeout from some Cafe Rio esq place and it was super good. Their son Christian is a putz though. He's 16 and starting to have doubts about the church which is fine because he needs to find out for himself but he won't do anything to find out for himself. We talked with him about that but we've followed up with him on stuff since but he just won't do anything. He's a great kid but he needs to give some effort. After that we exchanged with some elders in the district that have been struggling, I chose to stay and work here and Elder west went to their area.
It was a good day and we had a lesson with Katterin that was awesome. We taught about the atonement and how it applies to her, we watched the videos of Christ in Gethsemane and on the Cross on their TV and she seemed to understand better. The Elder I was with is from mesa Arizona and Hispanic. Katterin has to move baptismal date to March though because she wants her wedding in March so all her family can come. That's what her and the bishop decided on so we'll have some more time to work with her. Then we switched back at the end of the day.
Friday we had Elder Bennett from the 70 come to zone conference. He came a little over a year ago and made everyone feel bad about themselves for sucking (that's what I heard at least) But whatever he said worked because this last year there were 102 more baptisms. The first thing he said was "Its been a while since I've been here so a lot of you are new, I don't know what you heard about the last time, but this will be different" 😂 And that was true, there was no chastising. He warned everyone of getting full of themselves for improving so much and that we don't want to collapse like the people in the scriptures. The majority of his 4 hour visit was focused on Love, the love of God and the love for the people. He basically said when you really love God you love His children and will do whatever it takes to change their life with the church. I just wish more of His children would give us the time of day to do that. He was a mission president in Russia and had stories of missionaries begging him to let them skip breakfast and lunch to go out tracting because they couldn't bear the thought of someone missing out on the Gospel. I don't want to call him a liar, but I've never heard of that in any mission let alone Russia. But his stories definitely motivated everyone to work harder so that's good, I think that's what he was going for. Overall it was awesome. Later we had Patricio and we were getting him ready to go to the temple and explaining it. He had just woken up (5:30 pm) and was pretty dazed the whole time but he seemed to understand. He's excited for the temple.
Saturday was kind of slow, lots of finding. We had an appointment with a recent Convert for 4:30 so we decided to knock around her neighborhood before her lesson. We knocked on a door and this lady answers and is like "Not interested." We asked why not and talked for a minute then she's like, "Actually, where's you're church, I'm not an idiot, I should get these kids into church" So we gave her the address and got her info and should be following up soon. The lesson with Ana was good, we taught about keeping the Sabbath day holy, she agreed with everything except that she didn't know about not buying stuff on Sunday she had a hard time with that. She said she'd come to church for sure, but she didn't :(
Sunday was a pretty good day. We had correlation which was good, we went over Hermano Colindres' "Packets of Salvation" That are part of his new ward mission plan. He went all out, and he explained how we should distribute them. In Ward Council right after he went more in depth on what it was and how the ward leaders should use them. Basically it's a packet with a book of Mormon (That they are instructed to write their testimony in and give to someone) a paper with promised blessings of missionary work from the scriptures, a paper with 101 ways to be a member missionary, and then a paper that has the responsibilities of all the auxiliary leaders in missionary work. And in order to get a packet the family has to dedicate their home, to missionary work. So he's really been hyping up the packets on Facebook so that people want them and they will also dedicate their home so it's kinda like a win win. However hes been telling everyone a Melchizedek priesthood holder needs to do it so he's been having people sign up to have us come around and do it, but in the manual it says anyone can dedicate a home. I don't have a problem with it but there was a loooot of people who signed up 😂 Church was good, they had the missionaries sing armies of helaman in sacrament. It's crazy that here there's 4 companionships in our ward and at home we saw the missionaries like, almost never. They also had Hermano Colindres speak and he introduced the packet and then invited everyone who has served a mission to come on the stand and thanked them all and had them say one by one where they served. It was weird. Juan Carlos had a huge lipstick mark on his cheek from his wife and didn't even care 😂 After church we ate with the Monroys like usual which was good, Hermana Monroy is the man with food, every time we've gone over its been something awesome. Except today with dessert, Stevie was right about Flan, it's kinda like thick eggy snot. After that we went to "Why I Believe" with José and Alondra, they are married and Jose come home from his mission like a year ago and she was converted a little after that. They are pretty funny. Alondra reminds me of Kloe (for only good reasons 😉) The Why I Believe was good, a lot better than the first one we went to with Alex. It was some lady that does firesides and is a comedian and then her husband was just a successful dude. My expectations were pretty low but it was great. I saw Alex and Yenework there! Which was awesome, they are both doing great.
Today we got our apartment checked by some senior missionaries and they were impressed by our apartment but there were some tennis rackets in the closet and they took them so that's a bummer, we have some courts right around the corner. Other than that we just went shopping. Transfer calls are tonight, there's like a 99% chance I'll stay but we'll see. This 6 weeks flew by. Sorry this was long and not super eventful...
But I look forward to hearing from everyone!
Pictures
A late birthday shout out to myself.
Brother Monroy showing us Mexican fireworks, people put on a bull costume strapped with fireworks and chase kids around 😂
And then the packets
