mawwiage

This past week started off great with a trip to Hermosillo for a conference with all the missionaries and their trainers so it was really fun to see the Elders from the MTC. Also we took care of visa stuff so I should be good to stay here for a little longer. haha.

This week we ran into a few problems with our 2 investigators with baptismal dates. One who has been coming to church and reading his scriptures told us that he still feels like he might not be ready by the 8th, and he isnt sure why. The other we have been visiting 2 or 3 times a week, and just found out that him and his´"wife" arent actually married. (very common here) We went and visited them with their bishop and talked about the importance of marriage and everything and asked them to talk about it and set a goal or date for marriage. Then the next visit she told us that they talked about it and want to get married "mas adelante"... or maybe later. So we´ll keep praying/fasting for and teaching them this week but I have a lot of faith that they´ll keep progressing!

Also last week we had really great lessons with four of our other investigators.

La familia Acosta finally came to church for the first time after like 6 months of meeting with missionaries, and are working on getting some divorce papers with ex spouses handled so they can get married and then baptized.

My spanish keeps getting better, learning a new language is way harder than I expected so everynow and then I have to remind myself that I´ve only been in Mexico 6 weeks (because it feels like 6 months).

Whenever I am struggling with the language or anything I try not to think negatively and instead think about what the Lord is trying to teach me. It´s a humbling experience and I am learning and growing lots!

I am also getting good at eating/drinking whatever people put in front me. The misión isnt for the weak of stomach haha but the Lord is blessing mine.

Vayan bien,

Elder Mitchell

PEANUT BUTTER HOT DOGS

Don´t have much time to write this week!

Quick story though...

Me and my comp were getting some hot dogs from a street vendor and he asked what I wanted on mine and I said tomato, cebolla and crema de caucahuate. She looked at me funny and said we dont hvae that... and I said oh ok that´s fine. Well crema de caucauhuate actually means peanut butter what I meant was, crema de aguacaucate which is avocado sauce. (which they did have) So later my companion asked me why I wanted caucauhuate on my hot dog and I reliazed my mistake...told him about it and he thought it was super super funny. And I was like okay yeah I guesss thats kinda funny. Well he told this exact story to almost everybody we visited and our investigators and people we visited were literally ROLLING on the ground laughing uncontrollably. And then my face turns a little red and then they point that out (because they don´t really turn red) and laugh even more and yeah. I was just like what even is going on? México has a slightly different sense of humor.

Conrado moved to another city :( 

We set a baptismal date for Adelberto Feb. 8th!

Everything is going great!

Love ya

Elder Mitchell

Gecko friendz

So I am struggling to remember everything that has happened this past week, probably because time is flying by now! It is pretty crazy, I´ve been in México for a whole month now. But let´s see...

We walked up and down this mountain forever trying to find an old investigator from our Area Book. Eventually my companion gave up and we started walking away, but I felt like we could find this family if we just kept looking, so I asked if we could try one more time. We walked back up the mountain, through a car detailing shop and across four backyards and went through an abandoned old house and ended up and their back door.... which they thought was a little strange but the ppoint is we found em! And their whole family was there Aunts and Uncles in town, Grandma and they are all super nice and receptive to the Gospel. We are going over there tonight to have a noche de hogar (family home evening) with them. Also this week we had 7 investigatrs attend a session of stake conference which is awesome! We are starting to set dates for baptisms wit a lot of our investigators and I am starting to love the mission more and more! 

On the downside me and my companion were both sick almost all of last week but that´s starting to look up also. 

I´ve been reading a ton of the Bible the past few days, studying how it came to be put together and the process of it being translated and a ton of historical stuff as well as just reading it, I am almost finished with Exodus. It is very interesting and I am learning TONS.

I caught a gecko today and really wanted to keep it but couldn´t.

Ate some Little Ceaser´s Pizza.

Life is great. 

The Lord Lives and Loves us

Hope you are all remembering me in your prayers :)

Hugs and Besitos

Elder Mitchell

Ps. The last 6 verses of Luke or so are pretty cool. All about missionary work!

Happy New Year!

So this week was a little difficult because what Mexico lacks in their Christmas celebrations they make up for on New Years Eve. A good majority of Guaymas (not excluding all of our investigators) was already slammed by noon on the 31st. We had a couple drunks come up to us and start confessing all sorts of things (I guess because were recognized as religious figures?) So that was interesting. That night we spent with a family though and they made us some great food and we made some smallish bombs and lit of fireworks and went to bed early but it was hard to sleep with all they party noise (music, amblences, police sirens, machine guns, bombs,fireworks) that lasted all night. Then the next day everybody was recovering from the night before so we cuoldnt do much. 

Other than that this week was good! We went to visit an older Hermana who hadnt been to church in a few years and ended up teaching her 25 year old son, Salvador, who is great. We met with him 3 times this week and the 3rd time his sister (inactive) and her husband (not a member) joined us. In our lessons with Salvador I felt the spirit very strongly tell me what I needed to say, and Salvador accepted baptism in our second visit! It was a good reminder to me that there is strength in my personal testimony and that I need to contribute as much as I can in our lessons even though Elder Cornejo has a ton more experience in the mission and with the language. As I´ve started doing this my Spanish has gotten tons better... God helps me learn a lot more Spanish when I am using it to teach people about Jesus and the Gospel.

Also this week we were fed Menudo (cow stomach soup) at one of our lunch visits. The flavor wasn´t that bad but the texture was pretty disgusting and it just felt pretty wrong in my mouth. But I ate it all, and didnt get sick afterwards so it´s all good!

Some pictures from Christmas, New Years

Les extraño y amo mucho

Elder Mitchell

Pictures from last week's stories: