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