P-Day update week 40, 11/14/2022

 ¡Hola!

Well the truth is, nothing too exciting happened this week! We've just been working hard and trying our best to keep this area going strong! But I'm sure I can find some experiences from this week to fill out the email!

Starbucks will be very much missed when I leave this place!

This week was my first chance to run a division here in Alborada! Usually during divisions I'm sent off to some other area and I can just focus on learning and contributing to the work! But this week it was my turn to receive a missionary from the district and have a day to work together! So I brought over Elder Moreno who is the Financial Secretary here to my area on Wednesday morning and we started our divisions! They went really well, It was a little weird at first walking around my area with a different companion but we saw some really great miracles happen together! After we ate with a sister in the ward, we went to a lesson that we had set up with the sons of one of our old friends, Joseph. We set up the lesson when one of the members in our ward who works with Joseph told us that one of the boys was getting bullied at school, and that they really needed to pick me up! So we of course quickly set a date and time that we could come by and hopefully help him out. And on our way to the lesson I quickly realised that I didn't remember how to get to his house, I had been three times before but that was when I was with Elder Parker and he led us there. So after walking around for a little bit we decided to do the smart thing and say a prayer. As we prayed we asked to be guided to Joseph's house so we could give the lesson. As soon as we sayed, amen, a thought came to us. We remembered that before, we used to talk with Joseph's wife, not Joseph himself so we checked the message history of his wife and found the address! It was really a miracle, I had completely forgotten about that and as soon as we finished the prayer, the spirit made it known unto us the things which we needed to know! So with the address we were able to make it to the house and we taught a great lesson to the boys and their grandmother! We taught them about the plan of salvation, and how we would face trials in this life but that they would be for our betterment and that Christ is always there to support us in our trials! It was really a powerful lesson, we started it with both boys being a little shy to talk and we finished with them asking really great questions, to see how they could apply this into their lives! Later, our friend told us how much of a difference she has seen in the boys, that it has been almost from night to day. And that was all thanks to the Lord putting us where he needed us that day!

We found some old Christmas lights in the house, time for Christmas!

With that experience that we had with the two boys and their grandmother, we saw how important the family really is to God. In fact these past two weeks we have been able to find a lot of new people to teach, but the best thing is, they are families! We as missionaries always talk about the importance of families in God's plan. We are his children and he is our father, it is this basis of parents and children which we also see here on Earth. We have all been born of parents, and we may one day have children. These things are ordained of God, and I have seen the importance of looking for families to teach, and not just individuals! With these two families that we've been teaching, we have seen why it is so important. We gave them all the homework of reading and praying about The Book of Mormon! And when we came back and checked up on them, we saw that some of them did it, and some of them didn't. But as we began to talk about it, we could see that one of the girls who read and prayed, offered to help her mom with reading the Book of Mormon to her and helping her understand it! I feel like that is the reason the family is so important, they can help each other in ways that we as missionaries just can't! We can see that with these families, they have the chance to read and pray together and grow as a family unit! We are really excited for these two families and we hope to be able to guide them on the path to one day be together for eternity!!

Like I mentioned at the beginning, we have been working really hard this week and just trying to be diligent! We have been seeing that as we just try our hardest to work hard and do what the Lord would have us do, he will put the people in our path that need the Gospel! It's kinda weird to explain, sometimes we contact people in the street and try to visit less active members to get to know more people, and the people come. Usually from a completely different method! I am convinced that God always has people prepared to hear his word, sometimes we are the ones who get in the way! I remember Elder Nielson once told me "Missionary work is easy, we just have to not screw it up" That has really stuck with me, sometimes we are the biggest thing holding the work back, simply due to our personal disobedience or lazyness! So my companion and I have been trying to just put our shoulders to the wheel and push along, even when we get completely soaked because we forgot our umbrellas!

I got my hair cut at "The Last Jedi Barbershop" it was very cool!

Today was also a particularly great p-day! As I'm sure most of you friends who read this that are already members of the church know, every year on thanksgiving the ward or stake gets together in the morning and they play some football, the infamous "Turkey-Bowl"! Here in Mexico Thanksgiving doesn't exist, tragically. But that doesn't mean that us American missionaries can't celebrate it in our own way! So this morning after our regularly scheduled basketball games, we decided we wanted to have a turkey bowl! But we decided to have it with the two zones that normally go to basketball, but to leave and have a multi-zone activity besides basketball, we needed to ask the president! We didn't really have any fear that he would say no, but there is always that feeling of unknown that made us nervous. But we called him and he said we could do it! So we rounded everybody up and headed to a turf field that was nearby so we could play! When we got there we split up the teams and got playing! It has definitely been a while since I've thrown around the old pig skin, but after a few minutes I was able to shake off the rust and then we started to really play! We probably played for about 1.5 hours straight without stopping, it was great!! Nothing more American than a classic turkey-bowl in the middle of Mexico! It was honestly fun to play football again, we don't really play it here, it's mostly basketball and soccer! But maybe in a year we can do it again!

Cat hiding in the woods that kinda looks like a ewok.

Cat pt 2 because I forgot to add one last week!

Like I said, not too exciting this week, but I wanted to leave you all with a half spiritual, half temporal message! So like I mentioned last week, President Perkins is out of the mission right now, so Elder Day, one of his councilors, Has been leading our weekly office meetings! It has definitely been different, but a good kind of different! Elder Day has a lot of experience leading business meetings so he knows how to make them more efficient and get the most out of them! So we have not just been going around the room and sharing a part of our assignments, but rather we have been only sharing the things important for the entire group to know, and then after everyone has had a turn, we have a council about what we can do to improve as a mission in this coming week! This week we focused on casualness. We talked about how casualness has been affecting our mission, and how we need to turn it around and become more attentive and ready at all times! One thing that came to my mind when we were discussing was an experience I had before my mission. I remember when I was learning how to drive, I put a lot of attention into what I was doing, I was really nervous and that caused me to always be on my guard and always try to be safe! But as I began to gain more experience and had been driving for 1-2 years, I began to become more relaxed with driving, and what I was doing. I remember one occasion I was driving from Madison to Decatur. I was driving along the road and not really thinking too much about what I was doing, I was listening to some music and just thinking about something else. But the next thing I know I hear my tires running over the little bumps that they have on the sides of the road when you are getting close to the edge, the *dugudugudugu*! And in that moment I quickly snapped myself back into shape and started paying attention to what I was doing. This is sometimes how we find ourselves, we find ourselves lost in comfort, and in doing so lose our edge, lose the thing driving us, and lose our focus! My invitation to you all is that you can cut out casualness, and go in 100% for the Lord and 100% in all you do! Do not let Satan trick you into thinking that you don't need to focus on God, we all know we do! 

I love you all to infinity and beyond, have a great week! 

-Elder Garnica