Alejandrina's baptism! (3/31)

I will admit that I am not very excited to be turning 20 *Next Monday* *cough cough* I am feeling super old right now. Being honest though, I am planning to live to be about 130 years old, which would make 20 the new...16? If that doesn´t make sense to you, don´t worry about it. 

This week was pretty great though. Alejandrina was baptized and confirmed last Friday *woop woop* and tons of her friends came and it was awesome. Some American Elders and I, by her request, sang a hymn in English, and we bought her a huge cake and a brand new set of scriptures. This week we plan on teaching and going to contact a lot of her friends and family who were there. We already have put a baptismal date with three of them for the end of April. This might have been the most excited I have seen anybody for their baptism, she really is an amazing woman. Saturday we had a lot of our appointments fall through so we went to visit her and she chewed us out and told us we should be teaching her family and not spend so much time with her at her house. Wow haha. Another thing she told me, that I don´t know if I will ever forget, was that ever since the other missionary left and I came (transfers 2 weeks ago) she has been able to understand everything in our lessons much better. Which makes almost no sense because the other missionary was from Mexico and I am still learning Spanish, so that´s basically proof that we learn and understand eternal truths only by the spirit. She calls me her guerito angelito. 

Also this week we found some other cool people to teach and everything keeps going great! Learning tons, and more thankful everyday for this chance I have to be a missionary.

Oh also this week I had to explain to somebody I met that his grandma´s soul was not living inside his dog, or that his dog was not a reincarnation of his Grandma. 

Mucho amor,

Elder Mitchell

Hermosillo Homies (3/24)

As sad as it was to leave Guaymas, after just one week, I already love Hermosillo! We met almost everyday this past week with a single mother of four, that has already had some time with the missionaries named Alejandrina. She comes from pretty humble circumstances and quit her job a while back so she could start going to church on Sundays. She has overcome every kind of obstacle to prepare herself for baptism and says that she knows the church is true and will bring her many blessings and she wants to be an example for all of her kids, none of which have wanted to listen to the missionaries. On Thursday she asked me if I would I would baptize her this week. I said yes.

This same week we started meeting with two of her kids, Dania who is 18 and she accepted a baptismal date after we taught her about the Plan of Salvation. Alexis is 16 and dropped out of school and lives on and off with his mom, but we helped him build a hen house. Also Soche, a friend of Dania, started coming to our lessons and Alejandrina Dania and Soche all came to church this Sunday. This family has tons of adversity facing them but they are all ready starting to see a bit of the blessings that God has prepared for us when we keep His commandments. 

Also another investigator, Maria Isabelle, came to church this Sunday and agreed to quit coffee after we taught her about the word of wisdom and wants to be baptized! 

Besides this family we didn´t have many pèople to visit so we started visiting ward members to share lessons with them and see if they know anybody that we could visit, which lead to quite some interesting... treasure hunts? Wild goose chase? Not sure what to call it but we had some interesting and awesome experiences with this haha. Some of the interesting would include going to visit this one house which had about 9 people in the front yard (using the term front yard pretty loosely). We shared a little message about the restoration. However, we realized about half of them were stoned out of their mind when two started fighting eachother because one of them interrupted me and the other got mad, another pulled out a plastic bag and started taking hits, and the other started talking about his rap career. (he did do some rapping and was actually pretty good) The four women who were there did listen to us though! 

Some of the awesome would include Guadalupe, who we found after we had an awesome lesson with some less active members who referred us to ther inactive neighbor. Guadalupe starting battling breast cancer years back and hasn´t been to church since, so we taught her about God, how much He loves us and the importance of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. At the end of the lesson we invited her to pray and she told us she couldn´t and it has been too long. But we pressured her a little and she agreed. During her prayer the Spirit was suuuper strong and afterwards she was crying and kept thanking us and thanking us over and over for visiting her as we were leaving, and it felt wrong that SHE was thanking US. But it just made me so much more thankful to be a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ and do His work. 

Love you all,

Elder Mitchell

3/17/14 Bienvenidos a Hermosillo!

So this was the last week of transfers so all week we were saying goodbyes to our investigators beause Elder Cornejo knew it was his last week in the mission, and eveybody was a little sad but somewhat reassured because Elder Mitchell would still be here... ya nope. Sunday I found out I was getting changed to the capital Hermosillo (good thing I didnt buy that crocodile) so I didn´t even get to saygoodbye to everyone. I just left some notes and pictures that the new Elders that come can take to them. 

It was still a great week though! Area President of Mexico, President Johnson, visited each zone in the mission and did some training which was awsome! Also this Saturday we baptized Adalberto after visiting him for 3 months, and it was easily the best day of the mission so far! 

It was sad to leave Guaymas and especially the two familias we had been visiting with for so long, but I am confident that they will continue progressing in the Gospel. We had already put goals with them to legalize their marriages and be baptized and so I´m sure things will go great! I got here to Hermosillo today and met my new companion, Elder Pineada, who his from somewhere near Mexico City and also doesn´t speak any English.  He told me that we don´t have a single appointment set for this week but I am super excited to start working here!