11/24/14 HOOOOLAAAA

So today my comp Elder Maldonado finished his mission and I received my new comp... Elder Madariaga! He is actually one of the first missionaries that I met when I got to my first area in Guaymas and was my LZ in Agua Prieta so I already know him and we are pretty good friends. He is my second Mexican companion and is from El estado de Mexico. Pretty excited to work with him!

But this last week was pretty sweet. First because they way mexicans say goodbye is by showering you with carne asada... so we ate TONS of food all week and carne asada for lunch and dinner on saturday and sunday. 

Secondly because Los Serrano are plugging along like champs. On Sunday Eduardo (10) and Carolina (12) participated in the primary program and Eduardo was the only niño who memorized their part. He also gave the closing prayer and their was an audible wow that whispered througout the chapel after because it was so awesome. Then José (el Pápa) recieved the Aaronic priesthood and was ordained to the office of Priest. After church they invited us to a family carne asada and we met abunch of cousins and what not and Marta (La Máma) told everybody that when he is 18 Eduardo is also going to serve a mission... So it is pretty sweet to see all this progress that they have made just a week after their baptism. Not the end by any means but an awesome start!

Thirdly we had an awesome lesson with the sisters that we visit (the grandma sisters whose mom was really sick) on Tuesday. We were trying to decided what to teach them because they weren´t really progressing for not being able to come to church (because of their mom). So we watched ¨How to Find Faith in Christ¨. Ramona after the movie told us that one thing she noticed is how Jesus could help everybody who was willing to seek Him... (the apostles when they woke him up on the boat, the lady who touched is robes, the dad he brought him his sick son ect.) So we invited them to do their own search for Jesus, trusting that if they did it with faith (reading or praying) but really did it with sincerity, that He would be able to help them also. We specifically invited them to kneel and say a prayer that night asking for what they most needed.

The next day we got a call saying that their sick mother had died and changed our appointment to Friday from Thursday. Friday we weren´t really sure what to expect when we got there but all of them were pretty calm. We said a prayer and then they each one of the 5 of them told us a special experience that they had with the invitation they left them. Basically that night they all individually prayed that their mom could stop suffering and that God would call her up to heaven. That same night their prayers were answered and she died and each one was able to feel extra peace and love. Pretty awesome experience. Then on Sunday they all came to church.

That´s really everything that happened this week, except that it has finally cooled down here. In the morning it is like 70 degrees and then midday up to like 80´s but it is pretty crazy that now like 68 degrees to me now feels FREEZING and I have to put on a sweater... I remember mocking the mexicans who had to layer up in this weather a year ago and now... I am one of them. 

ENJOY YOUR THANKSGIVING. Pretty jealous pero ni modo.

Paz y Pavo,

Elder Mitchell

11/17/14 Be Part of The Night Dress In White

There are billboards all round Hermosillo advertising for some party or something that is happening soon but they are everywhere and has the caption about dressing in white... who knows why it is in English. The highlight of the week was the baptism of the Familia Serrano so we ended up adopting the theme. It was super sweet to see how much this family has progressed and watch them finally be baptized. Tons of members came and supported which was also great. The family couldnt´t decide on who to baptize them so they flipped a coin and it turned out that my comp (super super skinny little guy) got to baptize the parents (who are not small people) and I baptized los niños... it took him about 9 trys between the two so that was kinda hard but the kids were super easy and in the end everything turned out great. They actually invited the dad (jose) to bear his testimony at the end (without asking us) and that scared me a little bit because sometimes he says crazy things but even that went pretty well. 

Also today we got our Zone Futbol jerseys made and delivered so we played a sweet game of soccer in these *insert foto* bad boys. 

Other than that I am hoping they don´t change me in transfers this week so I can keep with la familia Serrano and our family of grandma´s who are suuuuuper cool but super tired and busy taking care of their mom and havent been able to come to church for a while. 

Sorry for being so short!

Love you all!

Elder Mitchell

And right now I am having problems with the camera so until next week :((((

11/10/14 HOLIS

Sooo this week was a little bit crazy and pretty awesome, but long story short, on Saturday La Familia Serrano is going to be baptized!!! We had 3 lessons with them this week and we saw soo many changes in their family. It´s hard to explain how all the things that have happened with this family. We have spent so much time with them and tons more time, praying, studying and asking to know what the Lord wants us to share with them. But it is even harder to explain how great is the joy that comes from being able to participate in His work and seeing the Gospel of Jesus Christ work miracles and changes in the lives of my Mexican brothers and sisters. Sometimes people talk about how hard of a worker Satan is, or how bad he is, or how he is good he is at what he does, but with this family I have seen so clearly that our Heavenly Father is infinitley more diligent and hard working that the enemy, that He knows His children, He answers prayers, fullfills His promises, is ever present in our lives and loves us more than we can hope to understand. As Paul promises us in the Bible if we seek and feel after Him, we will find and come to know that HE BE NOT FAR FROM EACH OF US, THAT HE TRULY IS OUR FATHER- a loving, worrying, and hard working father. Being a missionary has really helped me understand better everything God does for us in our lives and feel for others, a little bit of the love that He has for us. It is pretty cool. 

Have an awesome week,

Elder Mitchell

Elder Bernal (Mercer Island) Elder Evans (Chicago)

Contaco Escogidísimo 

Zaragoza Plaza 

11/3/14 Que Onda Fam

So sorry about not writing last week, we had a super busy P-Day and on our way to write in the cyber a family from Agua Prieta who was in town called us and invited us to eat pizza at Costco so we tried to squeeze that in and just ran out of time because we had an FHE with Hermano Alex and his family pretty early. The friends they invited ended up bailing but I helped my comp carve his first pumpkin ever so that was fun. It only lasted about 3 days in the heat before it was complete mush but oh well. But here we go with a quick 2 week update!

Familia Serrano- Two weeks ago they couldn´t go to church because they went out of town so we went extra hard with them and had some super sweet lessons with them (in one of which the hermana had a vision while her husband prayed that we are God´s messengers and has legions of angels protecting us), and had a special lesson with just the dad in the chapel where he told us was ready to get baptized, and gave an awesome lesson about the sacrament saturday night so they would go to church on Sunday... and they told us they would go... Sunday morning rolls around and right as the meeting starts we got a message saying that they couldn´t come and "see ya tuesday night for a lesson" so that threw us off quite a bit. Tuesday night we went and turns out that the dad went off to some mountain with his buddy to visit some shrine to a saint or something... ... but we went on with the lesson we had planned anyways and told them that we can´t visit them anymore because they have to learn how to exercise their own faith, and can´t rely on us for all their spiritual help. We told them they already know everything they need to be baptized but just haven´t shown enough faith to recieve a better answer and feel more ready. It was pretty hard to drop such this family but me and my comp both new that we had done our part and were starting to try and do their part too... and what they really need is to just really think about this, realize that God has blessed and answered them in 100 ways and accept His will. SO then Saturday we fasted for them, and Sunday they all came to church! So this week we are going to see how things went and talk about when are they finally going to get baptized.

 It was pretty tough dropping this family because our area is known to be really tough and we don´t have lots of people to teach. We spent almost the whole time we would have been teaching them looking for new people, contacting references and talking to people and EVERYONE was just shutting us down left and right. I was like freak now who are we going to teach! But we had received a confiration by the spirit that we had to drop them so we just kept at it. It was a good trial and in the end the Lord put in His part. Thursday we found one new person, Dora, and Saturday we found another family, la familia Gutierrez. We have only taught both of them one time, so we´ll see if they end up progressing. 

Ramona, Consuelo, Margarita, Genoveva y Martha...

Two weeks ago Ramona and Martha came to church and really liked it and then that following week we taught them the restoration and they gave us the second most delicious Horchata I have had in my whole mission. But before we went back tho visit them again they had a health emergency with their mom and we couldn´t visit them again until this week when we taught them about the Book of Mormon, or really Ramona taught us about the Book of Mormon. She had basically memorized the whole introdction and story of how we got to have this set of scriptures. I was actually really impressed, and at the end of the lesson they accepted a baptismal date for the end of November... but Sunday they didn´t go to church... probably for Dia de Los Muertos... but we´ll find out tomorrow.

Halloween- This day the assistants made us do splits, which made me upset because we had a super sweet halloween lunch planned with an hermana and I had to go up into the mountains where halloween doesnt really exist. (Here a lot of people snag a lot of US traditions because we are close to the border but usually its the people with $$$ who do) So it was basically a normal day except I got to kick it with Elder Montenegro, my first ZL when I got to Mexico a year ago. At night though we did see a small little band of niño hoodrats egg a small little band of tricker treaters so that was a good laugh. 

Dia De Los Muertos- This day is actually two days. Nov 1 is where they honor children who have died and then Nov 2 where they honor everyone else who has died. What they typically do is visit their grave sites or make alters at home and put pictures of them, the things they liked... toys, cigars, soccer, a certain food, or whatever and leave it their for the day. And then blast music out front and drink a ton... but they do that every weekend so maybe that was just a normal thing idk. But really the only thing that I participated in was eating a special bread they make on this day which is just a sweet type of mexican bread that kind of looks like a dead spider. I wanted to go to a cemetary but they arent any in our area. We did talk about Family History/Temple work at church though so that was cool, to talk about what we can actually do to help our dead loved ones, and la famila Serrano really liked that too.

But yeah that is about all the time I have!!!

I will send some pics next week!

TE QUIERO MACHIN,

Elder Mitchell

10/20/14 Buenas

Soo there isn´t that much to report from this week. We only got to visit with la familia Serrano once before they left on vacation and they admitted that they hadn´t been keeìng the word of wisdom (coffee) so we have postponed their baptismal date. Everytime we meet with them they throw new doubts at us so we realized that they need a more firm testimony of the Book of Mormon and Jospeh Smith, so this week we are going to work on that and try and re set baptismal dates with all of them. 

Also this week we were able to find a another family to teach! A mother, 4 daughters and one grand daughter... but I almost feel like we found them 40 years too late! The mom actually is sick and really old (85) and her daughters are between 55 and 70 and the grand daughter is like 50 but there never really is too late to accept the gospel so it´s okay! They don´t live together but they are almost always at their moms house to take care of her. We taught them the plan of salvation and they didn´t really understand that we were teaching them new doctrine. That actually happens quite a bit, we teach about the pre earth life, the spirit world, three kingdoms of glory and people just accept it all as the truth like they have known it their whole life... even though they are Catholic or Christian and don´t understand that this is actually something different from what they "believe", that this is all restored doctrine that isn´t complete with just the Bible. But we also taught them a little about the restoration and that woke em up a little. We found them through their cousin who is a less active member in our ward and told us of some of the trials they have been having, especially Ramona, one of the sisters. Her and the grand daughter, Martha even came to church on Sunday! So this week we hope to put a baptismal date with them!

Other than that... this week we got flu vaccines which was a new experience. I have been to the hospital a few times in the mission, but it is a private hospital for people with tons of dinero and missionaries, so when we went to a real public mexican hopsital it was a little different. SUPER PACKED. Super long lines and tons of people who sneak in front of ya. But at the end of the day we found a nurse who asked our names, injected us, and sent us on our way in about 3 minutes... without having to pay, so it was pretty successful. 

The same member who made fun of my english last sunday invited us over for dinner (he is a US Diplomat and works at the consolate here, Hermano Alex) and it was super weird/nice. Their house is like a tiny piece of the good ole USA here in Hermosillo. We ate lasagna with American sweet corn and salad, and sat down at a big nice table and ate all together. (that same day we actually ate mexican none sweet corn covered with butter lemon and chile...interesting contrast.) It was pretty sweet. And I felt super thankful that that is the kind of life I grew up with, eating nice family dinners all together. Here dinner is kind of like a free for all snack type meal, and lunch is the main meal, but usually people are working or at school and dont eat together so that kinda sucks. 

Other than that... everything is going along pretty normal. 

CUIDENSE MUCHO,

ELDER MITCHELL

La familia Serrano in front of the temple

10/6/14 LOS CIELOS NOS HABLAN

SOoo conference was sick. I watched the first 4 sessions in English on the secretary´s computer with Elder Ensey (cool kid from Oregon). We threw on red white and blue ties, popped popcorn and tried our best to reduplicate watching conference at home... but it was pretty rough due to a terrible feed and it took us 3 hours to watch 2 hours of conference so I might have set a record for most hours of conf watched in a weekend... 14. I was soooo excited for conference that the whole lagging in and out didnt even phase me the first 3 sessions but after the 4th I was like yeah I´ll just listen in Spanish. But something interesting I realized is that the thing I like isnt listening in English but listening to the voice of the speaker. So that was pretty cool to be able to understand those two talks given in Spanish.

It is pretty tough to pick a favorite talk but I reallllly really liked the ones by Elder Jorg Gleginbat and Elder Lynn G Robbins. PLANCH. Also I really liked the story Elder Eyring shared about his mom and trying to sneak in the door late at night hehehe Mom. And my favorite phrase was probably "The hit bird flutters." PLANCH. They were all so good though I could seriously talk about all of them! I feel like listening to conference willl never be better than when you´re in the misison. 

Also the whole time we were expecting investigators to show up and then a sweet talk about Joseph Smith or revelation would pass and I was like NOOO their missing the talk!!! And then la familia Serrano showed up toward the end of the last session and they were talking about temples and family history and I was like cmon change the topic guys! And then got up Elder Bednar and said "I would like to direct myself at those who are not members of the church" and I started singing alabanzas in my mind. Afterwards the family was pretty impressed and even commented that they would like to be able to see it in person one day. We didn´t talk much with them after conference right now only the dad and oldest daughter are on for their baptismal date of October 18th. BUT we´ll see how things improve this week with them! They are having some pretty intense maritial problems that we didn´t know about before. I know they´ll make it but it might just not be as fast as an impatient missionary would like. 

Also this past week I started working on being more DILIGENT... something I struggle with but a Christlike attribute that is super important in our progression. But so far I´ve got two weeks of diligent flossing and journal writing along with better companionship communication and following up on goals. 

And then today we had a sweet zone activity where we played soccer and some other games and also had a carne asada which is the equivolent of a mexican bbq. 

That´s just about all the time I have! But the most important thing about Conference isnt what we like or what we learned BUT what we actually do to put these things in practice in our lives! 

PAZ AMOR CARNE ASADA,

Elder Mitchell

Elder Ensey and I teaching the American tradition of going to DQ after priesthood to our latino comps (they were mind boggled)

Got to see my good ole comp. Elder Ranger!

9/29/14 TE DAMOS SEÑOR NUESTRAS GRACIAS

So this week was quite a bit more chill than last week. We are strugglin to find more people who progress, because so far everybody we´ve found but la familia Serrano is flaking out hard on us. However there were some highlights...

A few weeks ago we went to teach some members to try and help them, help us, help their non member friends come unto Christ. (Because that´s what the mission is like now a days) And the Holy Ghost indicated to them 4 people who should listen to the missionaries... but the tricky part is WE can´t contact them, so we have been working pretty dang hard trying to get the members to get off their... ... couches, and talk to their friends about the Gospel. But yeah so after weeks of playing little game finally we just told them to invite them over for FHE whatever day of the week and we´ll talk to them. And they did it. And it worked. And the Gospel is true. And they were super suprised to see how their friends responded to our message and we are going to teach them again this week!

Also we some huge progress with la familia Serrano! The oldest daughter Alondra (14), youngest son Eduardo (10) and the dad Jose all say they want to be baptized. The mom and middle child Carolina (12) still aren´t exactly sure but think they will be for 18th of Octubre. We really got down to roots of their problems and realized we needed to teach a more in depth lesson about repentance, forgiveness and the atonement and it really helped them tons. Sometimes I think we get a little caught up in Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and forget that really the most important thing is Christ and the atonement, and the restoration of the gospel is really just the means by which we understand what we have to do to fully come unto Christ. I mean it is all neccesary and super important but when we took the time to really explain and teach about repentance and forgiveness it kinda made everything click and the spirit was super strong. BUUUUUUUUT for some strange reason the mom didnt go to church with everyone else, so we´ll have to see what´s up with that. Also the dad does have lots of doubts but we are going to prepare em good for general conference to clear all that up. And they invite us to eat dinner with them like 2 nights a week now and it is waaay good food. Like super simple but so good it is almost confusing. 

Other than that there is an Iguana that lives across the street from us and leaves his hole everyday right at 11 in the morning, very very strangly punctual. So I made a trap out of a box and some string and am going to catch him. 

Also... we ate lunch with some members and treked over to this golf course gated community and totally forgot I was in Mexico. It was suuuuper nice. And with us was an elder from Honduras that has like 3 weeks in the mission and he was like crying and singing and laughing in an attempt to comprehend how some people can have so much money. 

And an hermana made us some kick butt mexican pizza. And we fixed another hermanas roof!

Anyways, everything here is all good. Septemeber flewwww by and this next month, one year later.... Ya tu sabes ;)

PAZ,

Elder Mitchell

9/22/14 ): ): QUESO DE CABRA :( :(

Sooooo the highlight of this week was probably taking a mini vacation (LOL) to a pueblo in the zone called Pesquera, a little tiny grape town about an hour outside of Hermosillo. Now "pueblo" means "village"... so just imagine a little mexican village with the most limited technology, no paved roads, super humble, super dirty and super nice people.(( The missionaries actually find tons of people who want to be baptized but they cant because they... aren`t registered people (like no birth certificate or anything, wasnt born in a hospital, never went to school... nothing) or because they are married to somebody who lives in Oaxaca or Veracruz or with some sort of legal paper issue.)) But anyways we went there do do a baptismal interview and everything went super well.

 A family of members invited us to eat and the grandpa of the family is basically the man who built the church in Pesquera and told me the whole history of the church there. Super interesting. BUT they made us quesadillas... but with some fresh village made goat cheese... which might sound super hipster and cool and tasty... but in reality it just is gross and super contaminated... and that night I thought it was going to kill me. Super super hot fever, terrible headache, stomach ache, chills, trips to the bathroom every 15 minutes... so i slept almost none. But luckily after expelling most of that cheese I have slowly been recovering, but still everything I eat just makes my stomach hurt so I am probably going to get this checked out soon. But Im pretty sure it´s just another stomach infection. OH well. 

ANd other than that...we put 5 baptisimal dates down with la familia serrano but they couldnt come to church for some reason. Easily the coolest family I have taught in the mission. They all read the Book of Mormon and want to be baptized but they aren´t sure in which church. We talked with them and are trying to help them recognize the holy ghost because they TOTALLY already received answers to their prayers but we just got to be a little more patient. The mom even told us, in my heart I know what I have to do but in my head I like my old church more. So we´ll see what´s up with them tomorrow night. 

Oh and Friday night we got back to our house and there was this faaaat party going on right out in street in front of our house...not super irregular here on a weekend in Hmo but because our are has a little bit more dinero $$$ they bought a live band with drums and tuba and everything and the biggest speakers I have ever seen so... idk if the hard part was not being able to sleep or not being to join them but it was kind of fun to watch for a few minutes from our balcony.

That´s about all my time!! Ive heard a little bit about some hurrincane or something but this week we got tons of rain but nothing crazy so dont worry about me! 

Les quiero y les extraño mucho!!!

Elder Mitchell

9/15/14 FELIZ CUMPLEAÑOS PÁPA, CHLOE Y MEXICOOOOO

So because none of you probably know, today is Mexico´s independence day!!! Which is not celebrated anything like the 4th of July. Basically everybody just goes to the plaza in front of town hall at like 10 or 11 and there is music and food and stuff and then late at night the governor or president or whoever come out and leads everybody in EL GRITO or The Shout and they just shout like VIVA MEXICO and stuff like that. But yeah here in Sonora everybody here hates the governor because he basically robbed everybody of their money and then stole all the water from the little towns and bought his homies cars and stuff and is just terribly corrupt. But they havent taken him out of office yet because they need more evidence against him or he will just escape from jail with all his corrupt money and connections. And he is the one leading El Grito so who knows what will happen. Last year they plucked all the oranges from the orange trees and chucked em at him. This year they have removed all the orange trees and are supposedly paying tons of people to positively participate but really who knows what is gonna go down. Also there is supposed to be a huge storm tonight so we being double banned from going :/. 

But anyways this last week was pretty good. We invited La Familia Serrano to be baptized on October 11th and the dad wasn´t sure, the mom said ´in this moment I now understand why God brought you to our home¨ but still not sure?? (yeah idk) Alondra (14) said yes I know the book of mormon is true and want to be baptized and Carolina (12) and Eduardo (8) still aren´t sure either. After this lesson it seemed like the dad had the most doubts but then on Sunday he came to church with ALondra and Eduardo super excited with tons of questions about baptism and the mom and other daughter didn´t come. The dad (Jose) didn´t really explain why just said that they had a little argument and she´ll come next week. They are the sweetest family ever. All the kids are smart and obedient and they all listen and paricipate in all our lessons.... something that has never happened to me once in my mission. I am about 99 percent sure they will all get baptized in October but we´ll see!

Other than that we are struggling to find more people to teach who progress. There was a storm the other night and we lost power so it was super dark and dangerous and tree´s and poles and stuff were falling down everywhere but luckily nothing happened to us! Pray that this week we are all safe as well!

This morning we had a sweet Zone celebration for the 15th of Septiembre and ate Sopes (it is kind of like a taco with meat, cheese and lettuce onion tomato and a special salsa but on top of a special kind of mexican tortilla/bread... kind of like a gordita if you know what that is) and played soccer. 

¡¡¡¡¡¡¡VIVA MEXICO!!!!!!!

Elder Mitchell

9/8/2014 PIC

From last week.
Sigo vivo.
Todo fine.

9/1/14 Ice Bucket Challenge

So after a pretty exciting and hot week here in Hermosillo where we found 9 really cool new people to baptize... there were transfers and after only being here for not much more a month they moved me to another part of Hermosillo as Zone Leader. I was pretty upset at first because I had just finished really getting to know my area and workng with the ward but what Ive learned from all my super short transfers is that the Lord guides and directs this work so we should all just be happy for that and be dumb enough to think about what we think we want.

But yeah so this week aside from getting the members to host FHE´s and invite their friends (which was pretty cool) and finding some awesome new people we had a sweet lesson with Ruth (22). She was an investigator that my comp stopped visiting about 2 monthes ago but abunch of failed plans one day led us to her door, and we started bringing a member of her age to the lessons and she really started to progress. After teaching her the plan of Salvation I asked her what she thought her purpose in life was and she said... BAUTIZARME or BAPTIZE ME. So that was pretty cool and then she proceeded to tell about how she was doodling in her journal the day before the missionaries got to her door and out of nowhere she wrote ELDER without ever having heard pf the word or knowing what it means until the missionaries showed up to her house the next day. Pretty neat. 

And then so today I was carrying my super heavy suitcase down the worlds skinniest and steepest set of stairs outside our house and I banged my elbow on the cement wall that was right there. But the thing is that this wall has tons of broken glass bottles sticking out of the cement on top, kind of like teeth, probably to keep out cholos. So it cut me open pretty dang good. So I said goodbye to my comp, and me and an Elder from Chicago took a taxi to the hospital and they stitched me up. BUT Mom and amigos there is nothing to worry about, I am in my new area all safe and sound and everything at the hospital was good.

My new comp is Elder Maldonado from Guatamala, Guatamala and is finishing his mission here in 3 months so I will probably be the one to send him home :/ He was my district leader in Agua Prieta so I already know him and he is pretty cool. Our area is supposedly the nicest in Hermosillo so that is kind of cool but also pretty tough...but our house is sweeeeet. So all in all I am pretty excited to start working here!  

I cant really say I know what the Ice Bucket Challenge acually is but it definetly doesnt exist here probably because 1 it is so hot that ice cold water just doesn´t happen and 2 there was a huge spill in a mine in Cananea so the little bit of water that there was here, is now poisenous. So I guess the next time you dump a bucket of perfectly good ice cold delicious water on your head remember all the peeps here in Sonora grindin it out here and toss a prayer our way. 

Besitos,

Elder Mitchell

8/25/14 No he hecho un pupu en cuatro días

So apart for being a little sick of the stomach this week everything has been pretty good. We have really started working a lot more with the members but still waiting on the fruits of our labor. On Sunday I went to the ward cancel and about halfway through Stake Prez showed up (who is my good buddy who brings packages to us from AZ) and chewed out our bishop and the ward for not helping with the missionary work. So I thought this was the perfect moment to tell the bishop that we need a new ward mission plan and that we would make it and present to to him to help unify the ward and the missioaries in this effort and get everybody on the same page. And he went for it! So I am pretty excited about that and really plan on changing things around here. 

Also this week we started preparing Imelda to go to the temple and do baptisms by teaching her about family history and she was pretty excited for that. 

We found some cool new investigators but nobody came church :( 

We found a contact in the goverment of Hermosillo who is going to help us get Guadalupe and her husband married free ;) so her and her kids can get baptized hopefully soon in September. (Yay for corrupt government)

Tonight we are having FHE with Stake President and his super sweet wife and their neighbors and then Im taking Elder Diaz to get his Patriarchial Blessing... long story short, he is from Guatemala.

So overall everything is pretty great!

AND finally after a bet we made 3 months ago in Agua Prieta, Elder Gullien paid up. (Whether Japan was closer to Wasington State or Peru... Point US education system, Peru 0)

Les quiero machin,

Elder Mitchell

8/18/14 SPIDERS AND SCORPIONS

So things here in Hermosillo have been pretty normal, except it has been raining a ton which never happens so everyone likes that. Don´t have much time so I am going to try to make this one fast...

Imelda and Glenda were baptized on Saturday!!!! That was pretty sweet. 

Took a little 1 hour vacation to visit Alejandrina, convert from other area in Hermosillo, on her birthday which was awesome! She is staying strong in the gospel even though all her family members, that had baptismal dates when I left, have flaked out. 

After avoiding us pretty intensely for a week and a half, we finally decided to hunt down Francia and Margaret´s dad. So we called his taxi number and asked him for a ride and when we got in he was pretty suprised to see us, but even more suprised when I told him that we wanted to plan his daughters´ baptism... after that he just went on and on saying things that didn´t make much sense, zipped us to our destination and kicked us out and over charged us. BUT later when we went to talk to his wife she was pretty impressed that we stuck up to her husband and says she is going to work harder and be a better example for him by going to church EVERY sunday... but we´ve yet to see much results.

I woke up at 12 one night to go to the bathroom and found this huge creepy spider... so naturally I captured it and put it in the same box as the scorpion we found in the house a while back. We always feed little spiders to the scorpion but this spider was pretty big so i thought it might put up a decent fight but after watching for like 20 min and no action I went to bed. But when I woke up in the morning the scorpion was dead... and the spider was alive... so we assumed the spider killed him. But we left the spider in the box thinking maybe he would keep eating all the little spiders but the next morning the big creepy scorpion killing spider had escaped from our thought to be unescapeable box and probably is wandering waiting for me in my shoes or bed or backpack or something.

Other than that we have been focusing super super hard on working with the members to find new investigators. Although the members here are super super nice they don´t really understand how to work with the missionaries... we are supposed to be getting 24 new names from members each week but right now it is taking us about 3 visits per member to get one name...which is super slow and frustrating and it is pretty tempting to just go back to contacting people in the street but The Lord is pretty clear in how he wants us to do His work so in the meantime we´ll just be tryng to beat that into these peoples heads. Matthew 7.21

Love,

Elder Mitchell

8/11/14 Holis

Sooo this week was pretty normal as far as missionary life goes. Lots of work.

But this Saturday Imelda and her daughter Glenda are going to get baptized so that is super sweet. Just about 3 or 4 weeks ago Imelda told us she would be ready in about 4 or 5 months for baptism but we really challenged her to pray about it and since then has been progressing tons! We taught her te Word of Wisdom and she had just finished the last of her coffee and said she would never buy any more. 

Also this week we found 2 new families to teach. One was a lady we talked to who had been carrying around a book of mormon for like 16 years but never read it and her 4 kids and the grandma. The other is a 16 year old girl, Paty, and her mom. We talked to her on Saturday for like 5 minutes. We showed up to our planned lesson and it fell through but as we left I felt like I should talkd to the girl sitting on the curb. So we talked and invited her to church and told her to bring her mom. And in the middle of second hour on Sunday a hermana from the ward grabbed us and said there was a mom and daughter looking for us and sure enough it was Paty and her mom. They went to their young womens and relief society classes and afterwards were super excited for the activites that are coming up this week. Also they asked if we could say a prayer together because Paty is going to start la Prepa this week which is like between HS and college and so we kneeled in a classroom and said a prayer, basically like how we did as a family all my life growing up before a new school year except with just a simple prayer rather than individual blessings but this basically blew my mind. We teach so many people fpor so long trying to get them to come to church and so many never do, and then Paty just shows up and brings her mom after a 5 minutes contact in the srteet. Really shows how missionary work really is only effective when we act by the spirit. 

snip from district meeting this morning... What kept the original twelve apostoles so motivated in their missions and willing to dedicate all their life and even be jailed, stoned, bound, rejected and killed (most of them) EVEN when they all knew and prophesied by revelation that despite their efforts the church would be corrupted persecuted and fall into apostasy? The only battery that will never die or waiver, absolute love for our Lord, Jesus Christ... which is developed through te atonement and repentance.

Acts 21.13

PMG p.2

Les quiero machin

Elder Mitchell

7/28/14 AMPLIFY YOUR VISION

Highlights from this week include hitting 55 C or aprox 1,000 F getting to know my crazy little Guatemalteco companion and starting my first transfer as district leader.

Mi comp Elder Diaz just barely finished his training so he has about 4 months in the mission but he is a great missionary. He has this crazy little laugh and kind of reminds me of guatemalen Mr.Bean sometimes but we get along well which is really all that matters. 

I also did my first baptisimal interview which was super sweet.

We found this awesome family that wants to be baptized but the dad wont let his daughters or wife so we are have been trying to hunt him down to talk to him but havent had much luck in finding him. The family is super cool though. Francia, Margaret and I are actually already MAPS (mejores amigos para siempre) and we did some practices on how they can invite their dad to church and talk to him about the gospel. 

Sorry that's about all the time I have!!!!!!!

A quick thought from this morning's district meeting 

The dif between LamanLemual and Nefi is the vision that Nefi always kept of why they were working adn wandering in the desert (kind of like us in Hermosillo) which allowed him to be happy and productive versus whiny and a burden for everyone else. To Laman and Lemuel they were suffuring in the desert, to Nefi they were traveling to the promised land. 1 Nefi 4:22 (note the last line) our vision is to be able to be baptizing every week. What is your vision? WHy do you work?

AMPLIFY YOUR VISION. KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE PRIZE. DON"T BE A WHINER

paz, amor, Jesucristo,

Elder Mitchell

(pic of the zone) (in my hand tailored shirt)

7/21/14 The heat never bothered me anyway!

¡CAMBIOS!

Just when I thought for sure I was safe from having tranfers (and had just bought 3 kilos of yogurt, ice cream and other easily perishible groceries) and ALL (almost all) of our investigators FINALLY come to church... they send me back to Hermosillo. And just in time for the hottest part of the summer. It´s supposed to be like 90 degrees at night and 115 in the day and could get up to 130 in August. So we´ll see how that goes.

But the highlights from this past week include getting our power shut off for 3 days for an outstanding debt of 2 pesos or about 15 cents, making friends with the neighborhood coke dealer, arriving juntos with the AG firefighters to the scene, and then bringing 11 investigators to church. And then if you remember from the MTC days when I made my own dress shirt out of bed sheets, I really stepped my game up and tryed to tailor one of my shirts and it somehow turned out pretty good.

It is pretty hard to leave an area and all the people you come to love so quickly, and a whole 10 baptisimal dates for August but I have learned to just trust in the Lord and just be happy out here.

So yeah this week is pretty short but here are at least some pics!

Besos,

Elder Mitchell

1. Elder Mitchell con los bomberos de APSON

2. Yessenia, Alejandro and the fam

3. Brinda,Gaby and their niñas

4. Piling into a taxi to go to church in true Mexican fashion

7/14/14 Cucaracha

So the crazy and most exciting part about this week (aside from waking up almost everynight swatting cockroaches off of me and then not being able to go back to sleep) was that we baptized AGAIN! When this week started we had no dates set but we witnessed a pretty sweet miracle. 

So on Tuesday we set out to find Lupita and figure what happened (the other girl who was supposed to be baptized with Magaly but disappeared) we went and talked to all her neighbors and the only thing we could figure out was that there was a family problem and her mom went one place, her dad another and all the kids to another, probably to their grandma´s house... but nobody knew what that was. So we sort of gave up and went to contact a reference that lived nearby but the parents weren´t home, just the kids and their cousins. We decided to ask the kids of this family if they had heard anything about Lupita and they said no BUT their teeny little 6 year old cousin piped up and said that they were with their grandma. I asked her how she knew and she was like ´oh she lives pretty close to my house´  then pretty much shouting I asked where the little girl lived, and she gave us absolutley terrible directions to her house which was way out in the middle of nowhere, where we had never been and where there are no missionaries. I tried drawing a map and asking her to show me where her hosue would be or how to get there but it was no use. All we ended up with was ´by a sign that says Yaqui there´s a white house on a corner in one of the 5 government housing projects built out past the rail road tracks´ (the invonabit government housing projects are these teeeeny little identical houses all pegged together in lines. Each project probably has about 300-500 houses and about everyother house is white)

So my comp was like yeaaah we´re never going to find her, which is really what it seemed like but I just had this really hopeful feeling that we could find her. SO I was just like Vamanos Elder, have some faith. And we headed off to the other side of the railroad tracks out into the desert and biked around not really knowing where to go for like an hour until we found this guy on the side of the road selling grapes and we asked him for directions and he was like ´Im not from here I just sell grapes but down this road you might find what your looking for´ a little confused we realized we had no better idea than him so we went down this road until we ended up at this old semi abandoned water park. We stopped there and talked for a little and my comp asked so how much longer do you want look for her, or where do we go now? And I didn´t really know how to answer him or where to go next but something kept telling me to keep looking. So we went back down the same road and as we were passing a little housing project all the stupid little directions the girl gave me started to make a lot of sense in my mind. Like what she said to us realy made no sense but all of the sudden I was like ´oh this is what she meant, turn here´so we turned and went down this road and then my companion was like ´NOO WAY, this sign (this tiny little street sign) says Yaqui´!!!! So we stopped amazed that we found this sign and looked around at proabably 100 identical white houses on this on street. We also didn´t even know her grandma´s name so we could ask around for her and were thinking about what to do when about 100 yards down the street a little kid ran out into the road and starting whistling at as. My companion was like ´Is that little Chito dude? NO way!¨ And then as we got closer the kid started yelling  HERMANOS HERMANOS and then out of the same house came Lupita and her mom. And me and Elder Ranger just looked at eachother and started laughing. 

Long story short after talking to Lupita and her mom and finally figuring out all of what went down, and then explaining to them how we found them, Lupita asked us when she could get baptized.

Saturday she was baptized and Sunday her and Magaly were confirmed members of the church. There´s actually a lot more cool parts to this story but I don´t have a lot more time to write. 

I know that this is the Lord´s work. He Himself directs it. If we are worty and willing we can participate and He will guide us, in the bringing of souls unto Him. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Elder Mitchell 

(Chito and Lupita)

7/7/14 USA!

Ya so right about 10 minutes after writing that email last week I was puking in the street in front of an Oxxo. Probably one of the lowest points of the mission so far. And then I spent the rest of monday tuesday sick in bed. Wednesday we left for like an hour and then returned home because we both felt sick,Elder Ranger and I and Thursday also we could only work for about half the day. So that was all pretty rough, one of the toughest and most boring parts of my mission. Also Thursday we went with the Zone Leaders to do the baptismal interviews with Magaly y Lupita who were to be baptized on Friday and we found out that the night before her dad got in a big fight with her mom, he got thrown in jail, the mom is 5 hours away in Hermosillo and Lupita and all her siblings are with their aunt, somwhere in Agua Prieta... but Magaly passed her interview and was baptized!!!! Yay! But none of her family came which was pretty sad because we planned the whole thing with them so they could go...

But we did do a little 4th of July celebrating here by going to the border to pay some respects to the motherland, watching the Douglas Arizona fireworks from our roof and lighting off some home made mexican bottle rockets. The Douglas fireworks were actually pretty sweet and right on the border but we were at our house like 5 miles away so it wasn´t as cool. 

But then on Sunday we had district (stake) conference and it was waaay cool. All the talks were about the temple and we given by district prez, husband and wife that were just converted and sealed, a kid leaving on the mission, Colonia Juarez Temple prez and his wife and Mission Prez and his wife (they actually talked about missionary work) but it was super sweet. Two things I liked the most was when temple prezident said that ¨the dead dont really exist¨ because a lot of times they are more alive than us if we arent fulfilling our duties here on earth AND his wife that said our futures are as bright as our faith. And that really struck me and made me think a lot about our investigadores Gaby and Brenda that promised theyd come to church but made some excuses and didn´t come. So I felt really inspired to go share this message with them after church and we went and I gave em a little bit of a wake up call and pep talk about what faith really is (getting your butt in gear and not making excuses) and we put tons and tons of goals and intermediate goals with them. One of them being a baptismal date for august 16th (Yay Carter!). And afterwards they we super grateful and expressed how they felt that is what they lacked and exactly what God wanted them to hear and I was like ya I know because He sent us here to chew you bums out. (in my head of course)

Also this past 2 weeks we found and have been visiting the coolest family ever that reads the book of mormon like everyday and also has baptismal dates...the only thing is that they don´t come to church either... YET. Jesse Alejandro and their 3 kids are way cool though. They actually live right by us and brought us tons of rice and food when we were sick and ask tons of questions about Lehi and his family and Moroni and all that. 

Also this week it cooled off a ton and rained a lot so that was sweeeet.

Anyways thats about all the time I have for this week!

Love and miss you all tons,

Elder Mitchell

 

4th of July at the US Mexican border with Elder Ranger and our sweet USA ties.

And Magaly and her friends from the branch at her baptism.

A tough week is nothing Agua Prieta´s biggest and best burrito can´t solve

Also AMERICA!!!

6/30/14 barf

So about a few hours ago I puked more than I ever have in my entire life and then conked oout on the couch of some other elders. I think it has something to do with heat exhaustion. But other than that this week was good. 

Sorry I have to go. Still feel really sick.

Love Elder MItchell

Enjoy the now! 6-23-14

So this might have been the hardest week I have worked in the mission but it was great! We found tons of new people to teach and things are really starting to look up here in Agua Prieta! Right now we are in the process of planning Laura and Lupita's baptism for the 4th of July! And in the process of putting lots more baptismal dates. 

Some of the highlights from this week include an Investigator who brought us chocolate milk from Douglas Arizona (I could barely keep myself from crying). 

An Hermana chewing me out for saying that there are 7 continents. Here they count America, North and South as 1 and don[t count Antartica. I explained to her that we divide the American continent into 2, North America and South America and she exploded saying that we think we are so much better than everybody else and always have to separate ourselves from everyone else and that it's all one America and we're all Americans and that The United States of North America can't make itself one continent. And I explained to here that the name of our country is The United States of America and that Canada, the US, Mexico and all those little central american countries are part of North America but she was still pretty upset. 

I have been getting real good at riding my bike with no hands.

I gave a talk in Church.

We had a branch talent show.

Mexico tying Brasil.

We actually had a FHE with a less active family and talked about this this past week. The dad cheated on the mom and there is just a huge gloom in their house, And i was like jeez how am I supposed to be able to help them? so I shared Elder Uchtdorf's talk from this past conference about being greatful in our circumstances. And then this same talk was used on Sunday as the basis for our lesson in Preisthood. But it really got me thinking. A lot of times, people are working and working super hard looking ahead to something and forget to enjoy each day. Each day is a blessing and we should never lose time we could have spent being happy because we are waiting for what lies ahead. So many people don't realize we are living RIGHT NOW dreams we once had. Like me for example, almost all my life I dreamed of being a missionary and here I am, living that dream. But it is SO easy to complain about the heat, or the companion, or the lazy people who won't come to church, or all the things we aren't allowed to do, and waste this once in a lifetime opportunity looking foreward to the day I go home. And tons of missionaries do it :/ Just living in general, is a dream we once had as spirits in the pre-earth life. We rejoiced when God presented us his plan and told us of the all the things we could do here on earth, and we waited and waited and prepared TONS to come to earth. And, here we are, living this life. So yeah, don't ever waste any time not being happy. Give thanks everyday. Take a moment to realize that you are living your dreams (being in college, being married, being a mom or a dad, being able to have a job, being able to drive, being able to date, ect. ect. all these things we looked foreward to for so long) but then keep working hard to accomplish the dreams you still have. 

We taught so many lessons this week, I wish I could write more but I am almost out of time!

I hope you keep me and the people here in Agua Prieta in your prayers!

Love and miss you all!

Elder Mitchell 

(Us hiding from the rain last week and me riding a crazy tall bike with some neighborhood ninos)