Sunday, September 23, 2012

Wesley's Letter 9-22-12

Sup Famers,

How are we all doing on this fine méridence ev'n?

I just barely got back from doing laundry and grocery shopping for the week. Looks like were on a heavy generic brand "Asucaradas" cereal diet, whoop whoop, nah. You’d be surprised, besides all the cereal, I have become quite the master chief here. The way I make my habanero omelets, lips be moistening and fingers be get'n bit'n.

Any who, so on my way here today from washing clothes and buying groceries, my comps and I (I’m in a trio right now) were getting on the bus heading back towards the offices. I had just barely gotten on and suddenly I noticed the bus starting up and the door closing while my comps were still outside. I was like " Hey why didn’t you let them on?" he said that “they had taken too long getting on." So, I was all like "let me off! I can’t leave without my comps, and he just kept speeding up and said "pay me first... ¡Ya que subiste paga me primero y te dejo bajar!” For those of you that don’t speak Spanish that means "you already got on the bus, you need to pay me before I let you off” needless to say we had only gone like 10 feet when he told me that, so I got a little mad and told him to stop the bus, but he was refusing to until we had gone like 5 blocks! I had to get off so I gave him 2 pesos instead of the 6 he was trying to get out of me and he finally let me off. I had the last laugh though because I had dropped one of the pesos on the ground so I knew he’d have to go fishing for it. That guy was a perfect example of the extortion that sometimes exists around here.

This week’s been pretty chill-i-pepper! We’ve been teaching a lot more lessons and over all a lot more people have been progressing. In fact we should have quite a few baptisms this next week. Best-case scenario 6, maybe worst like 3. The reason why is because the person we were teaching is super ready with her 2 daughters, but she’s not sure if her husband will let her. Her husband does NOT like us haha, so everyone keep your fingers crossed and pray.

Our investigators have been having a lot more real intent on knowing if all of this is true or not, and because of that the spirit has been a lot more strong during the lessons. Everyone recently has been telling us that everything we tell them has been like we’re mind readers. The stuff we tell them is like a premonition to what their following question would have been. Until people have basically told us straight up, "I NEED TO BE BAPTISED"

Anyways I love you all and I love the letters and packages I get.

Much love,
Smitty

Ps Mom please send me a skinny blue tie for one of my good Mexican friends.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Wesley's Letter 9-15-12

Hey Famers,

I’m sorry I’ve been writing soo little recently, but don’t worry this will longer.

Things are going well here. We’re improving the work right now. Everything is actually looking up for us to have a lot of baptisms for the next few weeks.

It’s been pretty crazy this last week because Elder Alonzo, a Seventy, has been going all around the mission telling us how we can improve and stuff. A new Elder showed up in the middle of it all of it so while President didn’t have time to find him his trainer, he hung out with us in the offices. And because my old companion was training my new one and on top of that another missionary got sick and is having to stay in the offices for a while, we became officially the largest companionship in the entire mission. There were 5 of us, but two of them left for their new areas today so now it looks like we are a trio, Elder Barrow and Elder King and I. They're both from Texas.

One kind of funny story is that while were in the middle of eating on Thursday I got a call giving me the heads up that the Seventy and President Salinas were heading to the offices that afternoon, after finishing taking pictures at a zone conference, so I realized that the offices were a huge disgusting pig site, so after eating I went screeching back to the offices making everything beautiful by cleaning up trash and picking up thrown clothes. After all of that got done, I was rushing with all my might because I knew if they saw me there cleaning I would of gotten worked, being the one now in charge of the offices. After about 10 minutes of speed cleaning I ran back to the area. I just thought it was kind of funny because afterward President complimented us on how the Seventy thought everything was really clean. (Just the offices themselves were pretty ugly haha.)

It’s been cool seeing all of the progression in my area. Yesterday we had a huge ward activity for Mexican Independence day and it was pretty cool. We brought about 15 investigators and they all liked it a ton. It was all super Yucatecan themed with all the little kids running around in their upiles and Guayaveras. They cooked about 15 kilos of meat, making some pretty good tacskis. Just over all a cool experience.

A cool spiritual experience is that we as missionaries really do have the authority to promise blessings. Yesterday we promised this one lady she would get a specific response to her question. Her question was if she should keep her baptism a secret from her family or not; including a secret from her children. We told what she should do, (to tell them) but also told her that if she read from the Book of Mormon and then prayed about it she would get her question answered. She prayed and then that same night had a dream of her being with her recently deceased sister who tells her to go and help her two children because they were falling away. Then the next day she said that while she was making breakfast for her kids and thinking of her dream both of them randomly came running up and hugged her and said they loved her. Cool eh? We have her baptism planned for this next week.

Mom, I loved my package. Those cookies were soo good and the new shoes are the best! Yesterday was the first rainstorm of my entire mission where my feet didn’t get wet.

Love you all tons,
Smith out











Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Wesley's Letter 9-8-12

Sup Famers,

Sorry this letter still won’t be as long as I would like it to be because I don’t have much time. But here’s some super sweet news, my new companion is named Elder Barrow. He is from Texas and he’s a pretty funny guy.

Other cool news is that I am now the office leader or the district leader in the offices and is pretty chill sauce. Any way so this last week a lot of crazy things happened. The distribution center in Mexico ran out of pamphlets and agendas so they never sent it to us on time, so a lot of the mission is running around without pamphlets and it was probably my biggest blunder.

Don’t worry the work is going golden!

Because I’m out of time I’ll end with this wisdom.

An ounce of help is better than a pound of preaching.

Later,
Elder Smith

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Wesley's Letter 9-1-12

Sorry Mommy the juicy letter I promised you last week won’t be quite as juicy as I might have promised.

So here’s this week: it’s been pretty hectic as usual, working hard in the offices and improving office space moral and productivity haha.

But in my area we’ve been finding a whole lot more people willing to get baptized, so after a no-baptism fast of 6 weeks, we should be getting back at it and baptizing more consistently. We’ve been finding all kinds of new investigators, all with cool backgrounds. There is this one cool cat that were teaching that a few years back was in the process of becoming a Catholic priest. Now he is living with a less active member and for that he lets us come over to teach him. Our lessons with him are always pretty cool because he knows a ton. So, I’ll tell you how everything goes with him.

Yeah, so this transfer has gone by fast, can you believe it’s been 6 full weeks since I left Champoton? Also, since then almost all of the other important people I was teaching there have gotten baptized, including Yadira’s daughter! Now a lot of my converts there have gotten callings and have stayed true!

I’m sorry this is going to be another short letter it’s just for lack of time. As I get more used to the offices, the letters should get longer.

The Church is true and I love and miss you all,
Peace,
Smitty OUT!