Saturday April 25, 2009

Bridge into Tampico - coming from the southern part of the mission

I drove the 4 hours back from Gutierrez Zamora to Tampico and got stopped twice at the Army checkpoints. It was pretty funny. I wasn't supposed to, but I snapped a pic of the inspection of the van. Sister Moss asked to, but the soldier said she wasn't allowed. It's hilarious, president would always just speak to the soldiers in english to see if he could get out of getting stopped, but it didn't really work. I can't blame him, he's made that journey down those roads over 60 times. It was during this ride that I first heard from Sis Moss that the swine flu was in Mexico City and had killed a few people. After we got home, someone from my companions old area was getting baptized and wanted Elder Ramos to do it. So we went to the baptism and it was great. Afterwards I sent you a little note telling you I wouldn't be able to write much, then we went to celebrate my companions birthday that was coming up the next day.

Undercover picture at Army Checkpoint of Pres. Moss

(This is such a long post that you will have to go to older posts to finish his ginormous letter!)

Sunday April 26, 2009

It was a good day. We had a good time in church, ate lunch and then headed off to Victoria with president and sister moss. It was then that we had more news about the swine flu. It had been spreading and had reached some of the outlying areas of the mission. In Cd. Valles, they could not have church meetings and were wondering how everything was going to sort out. We got to victoria, checked president into his hotel and then he took us to applebees to eat/celebrate Elder Ramos's birthday. It was good food and what made it better was I got to see bits and pieces of the Yankees Redsox game. I saw the redsox player steal home, it was pretty cool.

Elders Cortez, Ramos, Peterson, and Evans

Monday April 27, 2009

Today was kind of calm, we were just at the stake center pretty much all day during interviews. It was interesting to see all the people walking around with their face masks on, not wanting to contract the swine flu. Two zones were interviewed, so it took quite a while to finish up. I was in charge of passing out the materials that each area had asked for and answering any other questions the elders had. Also during the interviews me and my companion went with Hna. Moss to shop for mattress pads to accomodate elders sleeping over in other areas and also she wanted to look for hand sanitizer to battle against the flu. After everything was taken care of we ate at Subway (I miss Ned's) and then met up with the Zone Leaders. Seeing how it was their pday, we got a little bit of time to write, but I didn't have the tools necessary to write you a legitimate letter. I did send letters to other people to be able to dedicate all my time on this letter though.

Tuesday April 28, 2009

Today was the Zone Conference for Victoria/Valles. It kind of got old hearing the same things for the fourth time, but the ZLs there did a good job too. Afterwards we ate some good food- Discada. We got all the info sorted out on how the swine flu affects us, and later were able to get some face masks and take some good photo ops. We drove home and me and my companion started to put the numbers that we recieved Sunday night onto the computers of the mission. Ps. The swine flu isn't really affecting me all that much. Everyone is talking about it though, some think its just a lie that the government is putting on to fufull its own purpose. Right now the only restriction is that we can't have church meetings. We can still go out and proselyte, but we need to be careful and use good judgement. The hardest part is not being able to shake people's hands.

Elders with Face Masks and Hand Sanitizer

Elder Evans in his face mask.

Wednesday April 29, 2009

It was a good day. We were pretty busy in the offices considering it was the first morning that we had been there for a whole week. What we had found out is that there were some viruses in our computers so our tech guy came and wiped out everything on our computer. Before he did that though, we saved all our necessary files and folders on an external memory. We were able to go out into our area and work for the first day in a whole two and a half weeks. We contacted a referral that we had recieved from another area and she looks pretty good. She has already gone to institute and likes it a lot, she just needs to understand what the message of the restoration and having the true church on the earth means for her. We couldn't get another appointment with her for another week, but we are anxious. The rest of the day was pretty hard, there hasn't been a lot of work for us in our area, and we haven't been able to set a foot there, so we did a lot of walking and looking for old investigators and less actives. We met with an awesome inactive whose wife is not a member and he also has 5 of the most awesome little sons. I really want to see them in church. It had actually been really nice here in Tampico weather wise, but this week it started getting hot again. and when i say hot, i mean HOT.

Thursday April 30, 2009

Today in the offices I spent most of the time re-doing a couple of the documents that we lost from the computer- a list of missing baptismal records and also a list of all the Data from the mission ending 2008 and later starting off the year from Jan. 2009. We visited with a less active sister who made it to church for the first time in a while. Later we were going to visit the family that we found the day before, but they weren't there- i was kind of bummed. We visited later a family that my companion had known when he was in the neigbhoring area at the beginning of his mission. They live in our area, but always went to a different ward. They stopped going to church and we are hoping we can help them return. Later we visited the family of the 8 year old we just baptized. The two little boys are members, but the parents can't get baptized because they haven't been able to get divorced. They have been going to church for about 3 years! They are so faithful and awesome, I want to see them get baptized soo bad. They are closer to getting divorced, but are still running into problems here and there.

Friday May 1, 2009

Today in the offices I spent most of the time re-doing a couple of the documents that we lost from the computer- a list of missing baptismal records and also a list of all the Data from the mission ending 2008 and later starting off the year from Jan. 2009. We visited with a less active sister who made it to church for the first time in a while. Later we were going to visit the family that we found the day before, but they weren't there- i was kind of bummed. We visited later a family that my companion had known when he was in the neigbhoring area at the beginning of his mission. They live in our area, but always went to a different ward. They stopped going to church and we are hoping we can help them return. Later we visited the family of the 8 year old we just baptized. The two little boys are members, but the parents can't get baptized because they haven't been able to get divorced. They have been going to church for about 3 years! They are so faithful and awesome, I want to see them get baptized soo bad. They are closer to getting divorced, but are still running into problems here and there.

Two Weeks in a Nut Shell

Well, that's my two weeks in a nutshell. I probably missed a lot of things, but I guess its not that important. I'm doing well, I don't have swine flu, that's awesome that Mateo is free from his feeding tube and I'm so glad that Dad is doing awesome and that he is healing ok and is coming out of this. I have been touched while reading letters from the other siblings about the whole situation. I'm glad that our family is so close and willing to help eachother out. I love you all and am so thankful for every one of you.

The Spirit Was There

Thank you so much for your letter. It is good to hear that Dad is doing so much better. Thursday night was pretty stressful, but Friday was very calm and good. I did not feel prepared going into the Counsel we had with all the Zone Leaders, seeing that I only had about an hour and a half of sleep in between preparing the subjects. I definitely felt the spirit helping me to address and present different points on what the mission needed. The Zone Leaders we have right now are great, each knows the challenges of their zones and were so helpful with comments and input.

Great Day

Sunday was really great- we had the baptisms of Maria Magdalena and Miguel Angel. The whole time little 8 year old miguel was smiling- he was so happy to be able to get baptized. President and Sister Moss came to the baptism, so that was very nice. It took Maria a couple times to submerge herself completely, she couldn´t go straight backwards without freaking out, but afterwards elder Avlia stepped in and together with her son she was baptized by immersion. Afterwards we ate and later I think we helped the sister missionaries with something. Later we had to go to another missionaries house Elder Morris and Peterson to pick up some items from one of the missionaries that is in problems. Afterwards we went and celebrated Elder Avila´s birthday with a sister in the ward. Later we had to make it to the offices to recieve all the Zones´ numbers and let them all know about which elders had changes. We didn´t get to bed too early that night.

Crazy Week!

The reason that we had to do an all-nighter preparing on Thursday is that this past week has been just as crazy. First of all, there are some elders who are in problems and we didn´t know what was going to be of them, so they were just floating around. Then the new Mexican elders and sisters got here way late so we took longer training and eating with them, so by the time we got to the bus station all the elders were wondering who was their travel leader and a whole bunch of other problems. I of course was the one to answer all those. Later the elders that were floating around had luggage in our house so we had to go drive there. Meanwhile the new sister missionaries are waiting with their companions at the mission house to go wait in the houses of the other sisters (on account of waiting a day for us to take them to victoria). But before we could take all the sisters to their houses we had to go pick up the new american elders at the airport. Eight new missionaries came: 3 from utah, 2 from Idaho, 1 from nevada, 1 from scottsdale, and one from philadelphia. They are all really great elders and are really excited to work. After getting them to the mission home, president gave us money and permission to get a bite to eat at TGI fridays. It was nice.

Another Busy Day

Tuesday was just as busy. The New americans and their trainers all came to the offices to be trained and get their visas all sorted out. The problem was that due to Semana Santa (or holy week) last week, they didn´t have a form that they needed so there was no way to get their immigration stuff in order and get them to their areas. So they had to stay an extra day. We did the english training for the new elders and later all of them got to go through the temple with their companions.