P-Day update week 30, 09/12/2022

 ¡Hola familia y amigos!

This week has been pretty great! Nothing too amazing happened but we've been able to get a lot done and help ourselves get set up for a really good couple of weeks!!

Elders in the rain

This week has been a little weird to be honest. We had to do a lot of computer stuff, and a little less traditional missionary stuff. But with the things that I learned last week about remembering the importance of this work, I haven't taken it too hard! And it's also been a little fun doing "business" stuff, in fact on Tuesday we had a meeting with Elder Day, one half of the senior couple we have in our mission! After our weekly meeting on Monday Elder Day asked us if we would be able to meet with him the next day at 10:00, after a quick schedule check we told him we'd be there! We thought that the reason we were meeting with him was to talk about our English Connect plan, so he could look it over and give us any advice to make it ready to send out! But when we got there it took a little bit of a different turn, he started out by telling us that we basically have been messing up in our weekly meetings, and that we need to be better! He said he was going to give us some advice to make our part of the weekly meetings more efficient! It was honestly really great advice, he told us about being concise and being results based rather than just talking his (president) ear off and telling him things that he didn't really need to hear. It was a wake up call for sure, but a very necessary one. He talked about how often we would find ourselves in a council type setting as members of the church, and how important it is to know how to contribute! And it'll help us in our regular missionary work as well, I think I can definitely work a little harder on being concise and getting to the point to make sure my friends don't get distracted or confused! 

IHOP infinite waffles for 69 pesos!! ($3.50)

Besides the basic, how to be in council training, Elder Day also looked over our plan for EC, gave us some things to change and then gave us his approval! After also getting the approval of President the next day, and looking over our new business cards, we sent out our plan. I feel like we've been working on this for so long and now it's finally time to see if our labor can yield some fruits! In fact our district decided to have our first English class this week! After much deliberation we decided we would have them every Friday at 6:30, and each companionship would take turns teaching the class! Because this was our idea we were chosen to give the first class! The day of we made sure to buy ice cream as a special treat, got some books, and headed to the church! We arrived about 15 min early and just waited, at 6:30 our first friend showed up, and then we waited again, and waited, and waited, and waited. At 7:45 we decided we would just start the class even for just this one person, and anyone who decides to come in late will be accepted with open arms! Right as we were about to say the opening prayer another person walked in, and then two more, and then two MORE! After that quick worry of being unsure who was going to show up, we ended up having a turn out of 6 people! The class itself from there was wonderful! It was my first time teaching a real English class but it turned out to be a lot of fun and our students said they learned something! In fact when we ran into one of our students the next day at stake conference she was telling all her member friends about the classes and how much fun they were! Of Course there were some in the class who were learning faster than others, but at least everyone learned a little bit! Now just to continue with the classes and see what can come of it!

As we came to a close with this transfer and opened up to a new couple weeks of work, we new that we needed to start finding new people to teach. And so we focused a lot on the members and just tried to do the best we could to be their friends and show them that we care! The truth is that we weren't able to see a whole lot of results come in from our efforts, but I think the Lord has been helping us with our finding efforts in other ways! This week we have met so many people without us really doing anything, what I mean is that, lets say we go out and ask for a reference from a member, we go with that member and nothing comes of it, but as we're walking home someone stops us on the street and tells us they want to learn! That is what's been going on, we've been able to find people, but not directly from our work. Though I have a sneaking suspicion that it IS in fact a result from our work, I know Heavenly Father is looking out for us as we try and find new people to teach, and putting the people in our paths that are going to help us, even if it's not how we thought!

Xalapa sunrise

Xalapa Sunrise 2 (Return to the Sea)

Even though we weren't able to find a lot of new people from our member efforts, we have been able to continue with the people we have already found! This week we had another family home evening with the family that went to Sheryl's baptism! We got there and saw that they had a new friend over, of course we were thrilled to see a new face and started to take out our deck of cards to play a game! As we did so, the new friend started to ask us a few questions, of course we love questions and tried to answer them quickly and simply so we could get started with our family home evening, but he wasn't having it. He started to ask us some very attacking questions, and we unfortunately began to get a little frustrated with him! For the next couple minutes we got into a pretty heated debate and ended up putting away our deck of cards and replacing it with our scriptures! As we talked I knew that right now was not the place or the time for this, and I knew Elder Parker felt the same, so we took a second to swallow our pride and let our friend know that we should start with the evening and at another time we could continue our conversation. He reluctantly said yes, and the rest of the evening was great! We had a lot of fun and ate some good food! At the end we shared a quick video and bore our testimonies of Jesus Christ, and gave our recent convert a chance to share too, it was very powerful! From there we set up a time to go back and we will finally teach them a traditional lesson! Overall it was a little hard to get started, but as we did we had a great time, and hopefully we'll have the chance to talk with our new friends again soon!!

By the light of the silvery moon. Not the sun, but the moon

Alright, as I mentioned earlier, this week was Stake Conference weekend! For those of you who don't know, twice every year each "stake" or group of separate congregations in a geographical area, hold a conference and talk to the entire membership there! The conference lasts two days and is a chance for the members to be edified and uplifted by the wonderful speakers that are chosen to share their knowledge and testimonies! And this weekend we had ours! On Saturday we got to the church at 6:00 for our 6:30 session, but Elder Parker had to give a baptismal interview before the session for the sister missionaries in our district!! The Interview went well and after we all headed to the main room to hear the speakers! The first speaker was Hermana Perkins! She got up and started to read her talk, but a few words in, she called up one of the assistants to translate for her. She said she had prepared a whole talk in Spanish but she felt like she needed to speak from the heart today! So she began to speak and the spirit flooded into the room, she talked about how difficult the language has been and how much she's tried to learn. She talked about the trials she's faced on the mission, but mainly she testified of the truthfulness of this work! She gave such a strong testimony, it was incredible, the spirit was tangible in that room. I remember after she finished talking, all I could feel was a strong desire to be able to speak like that someday, to speak with such power and authority to show the power of God with my words, and help those around me feel his love and come unto him! I know that the path to achieving that is becoming 100% consecrated and being truly converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ! After her, President Perkins got up. President talked a lot about the importance of the temple, and shared an experience he had almost 20 years ago. He said that one day he was golfing with his buddies, and an impression came to his mind saying "David, if you can go to the golf range every week, you can go to the temple every week". He said that when he felt that, he made the commitment to go to the temple every week! And from then until now he has kept his commitment, and gone to the house of the Lord every week, and he has also golfed every week haha!! From there the rest of the speakers both on Saturday and on Sunday gave wonderful messages, too many to list off right now, but it was definitely a great conference weekend! Oh, and the choir finished off our conference on Saturday with the battle hymn of the republic, and it was amazing! I remember just being in awe of the way they performed that, their other songs were good too, but they really left us all off with a bang!

Pug watches over his city from rooftop

As this transfer came to a close, we got news of the new transfers coming in. My companion and I have known our transfers for the past 6 weeks hahaha!! Our first P-day here President Perkins just told us straight up "so you will both be here next transfer too", just like that with no problem haha! So we weren't too crazy excited to see the transfers for ourselves, but we were excited to see what would happen with the mission! I'll hit on the highlights really quickly! Our district in Alborada will be growing by one companionship, because our senior couple will be going home in november they need to train two new secretaries to fill their roles, So that means two more missionaries in our district! Now our district has 5 companionships, which is very big!! In fact there is a zone in the mission that only has five districts! And our other district in the zone will be growing by one companionship as well, so we are really going to be stacked this transfer, let's goo Zona XALAPAAA!! But aside from that, everything is calm, One of the secretaries will be going to my beloved Zacapoaxtla, So I told him all the things he needs to do, and wished him the best of luck! I'm pretty excited to see what kinda stuff we can pull out of our bag this transfer and make it, THE BEST TRANSFER EVER!!! I'll make sure to let y'all know how that goes haha!!

Cool gray cat

That's it for this week my beloved family and friends, another great week in the promised land! I wanted to leave you all with a reading assignment, and no I will not be checking if you did it, but you should definitely do it! I invite you all to read 3 Nephi chapter 11 this week. I know that Christ visited the Americas, and I know that his visit is found in The Book of Mormon, if you don't believe me you'll have to check for yourself in 3 Nephi:11!! This chapter has always been a favorite and I know it can be for you too!! I love you all and I hope you have a spectacular week!!

-Elder Garnica