Huh, i'm not in Miahuatlan anymore.

Hello!  So I don't have a lot of time to write and I have so much to talk about, but oh well...  I'll write what I can!  This week was so very different!  My area is totally different than Miahuatlan, It's like a different country!  I came from a tiny town in the middle of nowhere and nowI'm in the middle of a big city, which happens to be the richest area here.  I love the area so far, the ward is great and it is so beautiful here!  It is definitely difficult, it is really hard to have lessons here.  People aren't that interested.  But it's fine, such is the mission life! So on Tuesday it rained SUPER hard!!  It was crazy, the streets were basically rivers!  There were literally logs floating down the street.  It was cool, but we got completely soaked.  The water was almost up to our knees as we trudged down the street! On Friday we helped a member in the ward next to our ward move her store.  We gathered together as the Elders of the district and carried big fridges and racks.  It was great, I really like to give service as a missionary. We live in an apartment above the house of some members, and they are really nice!  They are always inviting us to dinner and to drink hot chocolate in the nights.  It is really fun to have members so close.  They are super fun. I wish I could write more, but I'm out of time!  I love you all!  Have a great week!

Elder Lindsay

New Area!

So yeah, I'm sorry, I don't have a lot of time to write today, and I have a ton to say, but oh well, such is the mission life. 

So yeah, transfers were today and I left Miahuatlan for the city of Oaxaca!  It is so different here!  In miahuatlan it was so old school.  Here it is really modernized.  My área is one of the richest parts of Oaxaca.  Its really pretty here, I'm right by the mountains and there are a lot of trees here.  I missed trees so much!  Miahuatlan doesn't really have many trees.  But yeah, I just got here today, so I don't know a lot.  We'll see how it goes!

We live in an appartment that is part of the house of some members, named the family perez, they are really awesome!  They already invited us to eat there haha.  It will be fun to be so close to members!  They seem like great people.

 

My new companion seems really cool!  He is a newer missionary, he only has 3 months here, but he seems to know his stuff.  He is really motivated to work hard here, I'm really glad to have someone who will push me to do my best.  I think we are going to make a great team!

 

It was sad to leave Miahuatlan, but I'm glad for this opportunity to start fresh with a new área.  I have high hopes for my time here.  I love the mission and I know that the church is true! 

 

Love you all!

 

Elder Lindsay

Its starting to get hot!!

So I don't know if you guys knew, but it gets hot here in mexico.  We walked a ton this week and now that summer is approaching, the weather is brutal.  But oh well!  I'll survive.  

This week was a pretty difficult week.  Once again a ton of our appointments are falling through.  We went to a ton of houses and we didn't find hardly anyone!  It was sometimes very frustrating.  To make things worse, we found out that our investigator Genaro who recieved an answer to the book of mormon went back to the university, so he moved away to Oaxaca.  He was progressing more than any of our investigators!  And finally, even though we are working our very hardest, our investigators who were progressing very well just a week ago are starting to lose interest.  It's kind of a disaster at the moment.

                              
But not everything is so bad!  Yesterday we found 2 new investigators (a middle aged couple) who are really interested!  It turns out that they have 3 sons who are members of the church!  When they told us, we were super pleased!  We've only had 1 lesson with them, so we'll see how it goes.  But I have high hopes.

Also, we dug a grave this week.  For a dog.  It was fun.  We were knocking doors and the Father of a part member family told us to come over.  He seemed pretty sad, because his favorite dog had died.  He had started digging a hole, and we offered to help him dig the grave.  Its harder work than I thought.  But I was glad to offer service and help someone out in a hard time.

Speaking of giving service, on Friday when we were eating at a member's home, sister norma told me that the young woman were expecting me to play piano for them that night for new beginnings.  Oh.  Thanks for the heads up.  Turns out they had chosen 2 fairly difficult piano pieces for the program.  When I arrived to practice a bit, they only had one of the piano scores.  They gave me the other 5 minutes before the program started.  So yeah, I struggled a bit.  But hey, I did what I could.  It turned out better than I thought it would.  Yeah, I don't think they understand the concept of practice here in Oaxaca.  But oh well, I was glad to use my talent in music to serve others, even though I'm not the very best.

This week we found a young mother who seemed fairly interested in our message.  We walked it and started talking with her and everything was going well.  But everything changed when we mentioned the Doctrine of Jesus Christ.  Turns out she is very anti church.  She believes all the churches on the earth today are evil.  She has a very... interesting concept of the bible.  She says we should all be perfect.  She believes that the only purpose Jesus Christ had is to show us that in reality it is possible to be perfect.  But she believes that we have to do it ourselves.  Basically we weren't able to get a word in.  She bashed on our church and us personally, relentlessly.  It was a pretty rough lesson.  In the end Elder Velazquez was so worked up that he couldn't talk.  So I interrupted her and told her that when she wanted to actually listen to our message, we would be happy to return.  And then we said a prayer and left.  Even though it was a rough lesson, I felt a peace afterwards.  I knew that I did all that I could to bring her the truth.  She had excersized her agency to reject us.  I felt sad for her.  But such is the mission I suppose.

Well, this week was a little rocky.  But I'm trying.  I know that the Lord supports us and gives us peace even when life is hard.  I learned that sometimes we just need to be grateful, and everything feels a little better.  I know that this church is true.  I am thankful to have this testimony, and that even when attacked, it stands firm.

I love you all!  Have a great week!

Elder Lindsay

A week in the life of Miahutilan

Hello!  So this week we had a pretty good week.  We didn't have a ton of lessons, but we found a good amount of people and the investigators we have are really starting to progress.  It's exciting.  Even though it is going slow, we are having more and more success every day and have a good amount of people who have a lot of potential for baptism.  Its sad to think that I won't be able to attend any of their baptisms, because I'm almost positive that this is my last transfer here in Miahuatlan.  But the important thing is that they are progressing and they're recieving the blessings of the gospel.

We found an investigator last week who is really awesome.  His name is Genardo and he's a young man of about 22 years.  He had an accident about a month ago and broke his knee.  When we found him, he still couldn't walk, and we taught him beside his bed.  He is very humble and really willing to learn about the church.  We gave him a book of mormon, and he's been reading it.  The last lesson we had with him we asked him if he had prayed it the book is true, and he said yes.  He said that he recieved an answer that it is true!!  We are very excited for him, and he is excited about the church as well.

This week I had an awesome experience while contacting.  We were knocking on doors all the morning without much success.  It was really hot, so we decided to go to one of the little shops to buy a drink.  I don't usually contact the store owners, but this time I felt prompted to contact them.  We started talking to them about the gospel, and we found that they were very interested.  They happily let us in to share our message.  Their names are Juan, Rosita, and Bartolo., and we visited them 3 times in this week alone, and they are hungry to find more.  They read the entire pamphlet of the restauration, and asked for the next pamphlet on our second visit.  They truely were prepared to recieve the gospel.  I am so thankful to have been made into an instrument in the lord's hands to help find and teach these people.  It makes me think, what would have happened if I didn't contact them, if i couldn't recognize the spiritual prompting?  The experience really humbled me.  As a missionary, I should talk to everybody, because who knows who is being prepared to recieve the gospel?  I want to do my best to give as many people as possible the opportunity to recieve this message.

We found another family that is very interested in the last couple of weeks.  We are teaching the married couple right now, and their names are Marta and Severiano.  (something like that.  I don't know how to spell it.)  They let us in without having to explain anything more than "we are missionaries."  There aren't very many people like that, haha...  They are fairly interested and are progressing well at the moment.  We had an awesome moment with them in our last lesson.  Marta has a little restaurant in her home.  As we were teaching them, a soda vender came to the door.  Marta placed her orders for the soda for the restaruant, and afterwards asked "When are you going to take Bible lessons from these missionaries?"  He said "I'm catholic."  "It doesn't matter!  Do you know what days we are in?"  She asked.  He said no.  "We are in the days of the beast!  We need to prepare for the end of the world!  Did you know that?"  Once again he said no.  "Well, sir, you need to study the bible more."  Then she invited him to church, our church!  She hadn't even been to church yet, and she was willing to invite someone to church!  It was hilarious!  The poor man looked really scared.  But yeah, our investagators are awesome.  :)

Well, thats just a couple of the stories that happened this week.  It was a very successful week overall.  I am so glad to be here in the mission, and for the opportunity to have a bunch of cool experiences like these. 

I love you all!  Until next week!

6 months!!! :D

I've been here in the mission for 6 months now!!  Its crazy how fast the time goes, I'm already 1/4 done with my mission!  As I reflected over the time I've had, I realized how much I have learned in such a short time period.  The mission is really hard and I've had plenty of trials, but the experiences and the lessons I've had were so amazing.  I'm excited to keep moving forward, and I'm so thankful for the opportunity to serve for another 18 months!

So yeah, the beginning of this week was fairly normal, we're working really hard to help our investigators improve and progress, but it's kind of a struggle.  We haven't had any investigators in church for 2 weeks in a row now...  It's frustrating, because we are working really hard and doing our best, but they just don't seem to have a desire to really do their part.  Although its really sad for me and frustrating, I know that we have done everything we could to help them, and that they have their own agency.

This weekend was kind of a disaster...  On Saturday we only had 1 lesson all day.  It was terrible.  We probably went to the houses of 15 investigators, and all of them were "busy."  Sometimes I just want to shake them and say "this message is more important that whatever else you are doing now.  You're going to sit down and we are going to teach and you're going to be happy."  But ya know, I can't do that.

We had a nasty experience with our former investigator Nataly.  We returned to teach her another time this transfer with Elder Velazquez and it appeared that she was really ready to recieve the message this time and progress to baptism.  But it came to our attention that she has been lying to us.  When we went to her house on Saturday, we were about to teach her a lesson when someone knocked on the door.  She came back and said that we needed to leave.  When we were leaving, we saw that there was a scruffy looking teenager at the door.  He looked mean.  I offered him my hand for a handshake, and he slapped my hand away.  When Elder Velazquez told him have a nice day, he told us to get out of the house and other nasty things.  Turns out that he is her boyfriend.  I don't think we'll be going back with Nataly for a while.  

And then on Sunday... I was sick.  It stuck, I wanted to work really hard to make up for only having 1 lesson on Saturday, but I couldn't.  I had to rest for a bit at the house.  And then we went out again, even though I still felt sick.  Luckily we were able to have some good lessons, but it was a rough weekend overall.  Thankfully I woke up this morning better from my sickness.

Sometimes it is so hard to keep going forward.  Some days are just plain crazy.  But the good thing is that these times will never last.  I was so tired and frustrated, but I wasn't discouraged.  I was able to remember that these trials would only last for a small moment.  I remembered Jesus Christ and the many things he suffered.  He suffered infinitely more than I have suffered.  And because he loves me, he provided a way for these trials to just be for a small moment.  I was able to wake up today feeling good and hopeful, and I am so very thankful for the opportunity to start this week fresh.

Thats all I've got for this week, I love you all!

Elder Lindsay

Habanero peppers, General Conference, and a new companion!

Hello!  So this week was really crazy actually.  We didn't have a lot of time to go out and teach because of general conference and other crazy stuff.  But still, it was a good week!  

So this week I had a really cool spiritual experience with personal revelation in one of my personal studies.  I was feeling a little down on myself for various reasons the days before, and I prayed to heavenly father to know what I should study and what I needed to know in that moment.  I felt prompted to study preach my gospel, and I opened up to the Christlike attribute page where it talked about hope.  I read the passage, and it really stood out to me.  I realized that Satan was trying his best to distiguish my hope.  He wanted me to think that I could never improve as a missionary, and that I would always be stuck how I am.  I realized that my progress was slow because I didn't have the hope in Jesus Christ and his atonement like I need to have.  I was so thankful to heavenly father for guiding me exactly where I needed to go.  I was also inspired in general conference as I heard many speakers talk about hope and related subjects.  (Like Elder Holland!  That talk was just what I needed.)

Speaking of General conference, we went to Ocotlan to watch conference, because they were watching it in english there, and I wanted to get as much out of conference as possible.  (I knew I would miss a lot if I watched it in spanish.)  We went to Ocotlan on Friday and stayed there until Sunday afternoon.  It was really great to be able to watch it in English, and it was also fun to see it with my friends Elder Weaver and Elder Merrill.  Elder Silvestre had the idea to eat habanero peppers together, and I reluctantly participated.  It was really really hot!!  We all suffered.  I got a bit in my eye, and that hurt, but it distracted me from the spiciness, so it was all good.  Thats why my eye looks the way it does in the picture below.  But it was also fun, in a painful kind of way, ha...

General conference was really, really good!  I really liked how so many people talked about how this gospel changes people, and that we are all children of heavenly father.  I think that often times we get so caught up in what we have to do and other parts of church life that we forget this wonderful idea.  We are literally children of a God, and he loves us so very much.  We will all someday live in a kingdom of glory, and If we live well, we will be able to live with our heavenly father and our families for forever.  If we fall, we can always get back up.  He wants to save us and restore us.  I'm going to try to slow down a little more and try to keep this eternal perspective.

So today was the start of a new transfer and I got a new companion!  His name is Elder Valazquez, and he's from northern mexico.  I've only been with him for a bit, but I'll let you know more about him later!  I'm still here in Miahuatlan (by the end of this transfer I'll have 6 months here...) but it's fine!  There is still a lot to do here!  I'm excited to learn how to work with a new companion and I hope that we will be able to do our very best together.

Thats all I've got for this week!  Adios!

Easter and Cleaning Checks