P-Day update week 11, 05/02/2022

 ¡Hola!

This week has flown by, party due to the fact that we actually did some work, and it felt great! 

So after being on my death bed last week we had a lot of work to do, most of that work was stopping people on the street and sharing our message. Elder Nielson says its not the most effective way to meet people that are ready for the gospel, but sometimes you just gotta put your boots on the ground! So because of this we have met some really interesting people this week. Most people just have half hearted conversations and give us fake numbers, but this one time we had a conversation with a man that lived on Maui for 10 years. His English was super good, and the funny thing is that when he spoke in English he had a Hawaiian accent; it was interesting haha! But we also met some people that have been waiting for the message of Christ for a long time, we set a few new appointments for this coming week so we will see how it goes!

Elder Nielsen and I staring into the sun.

Unfortunately, this past week one of the missionaries in our zone had to go home. We were all pretty sad, but he said it felt like a weight lifted off his shoulders. So we hope he'll be alright. But that also means that his companion doesn't have a companion so we adopted him into our companionship and we are going to be in a trio for the rest of the transfer (only one week). It has been Interesting for sure. We moved his mattress into our room and lost about half our space haha.  We also had to add a third person into our teaching model that is designed for two people. It's been a little bit of a struggle to make it work, but it has turned out to be a lot of fun with three of us running around!

The new Trio with Elder Cottrell

This week has been a little stressful, a lot of our appointments fell through and the people we've been teaching have been ignoring us. It's been a little sad to see and I've been feeling a little self critical, but this week I have learned to have patience. Not just with the people we're teaching, but with myself as well. I'm trying to trust the Lord and trust that in his time my prayers will be answered. The fiery darts of the adversary don't have anything on me!

We had our zone conference this week. It's basically exactly what is sounds like; all our zone and the zone next to us got together on Friday and heard messages from the mission leaders and had our interviews with them as well. I'm really enjoying having President Perkins and his wife as my mission leaders. They are so nice and so spiritually powerful. They also gave me some great advice! In our zone conference we also got to spend some time socializing with the other zone and it was so nice to meet some new people and get to hear some other missionaries teach! I also reunited with Hermana McOmber who is serving in Martinez right now, super cool!

The Cristo Statue

I'm writing this email after going on an activity with my zone. We went out to see this Cristo statue in a place called Chignautla which is about 2 hours from our house in Zacapoaxtla. We don't always do big zone activities but because this is near the end of the transfer we decided to have a last hurrah! We left at 6:45 am and got there around 10:00 am after waiting for our bus and everything. It was really nice to just walk without really worrying about being late for a teaching appointment haha! We got up to the top after about an hour and a half and enjoyed the view and the huge statue of Christ! From that spot we could see every city in our zone which was crazy, pretty sure I could see my house from there! After that we headed to a nearby city called Teziutlan and ate some classic Mexican food...Dominos pizza!! Overall it was great to spend time with the zone before people get transferred.

Zone Teziutlan at Domino's Pizza!

Spiritual thought for the week is simple. Pray. Pray to Heavenly Father like he is your best friend. Pray whenever you want and whenever you can, I promise it helps.

-Elder Garnica