P-Day update week 46, 01/02/2023

Buenas tardes, y feliz año nuevo!!!

This week has flown by super fast!! We've seen a lot of ups and a lot of downs this week, but it's been good getting to work!

Los coordinadores *insert cool sound effect here*

To start, this week was the last week of the month, that means that your monthly ad had to be finished so we could get it up and running for January! As we usually do, we have already had a plan written down with a lot of new ideas, but early in the week we had a meeting with our trainer in Salt Lake, and it kinda changed our plans! So our trainer in Salt Lake had a meeting with us to give us some advice when it comes to the ads. By the way, for all you Madison Stake friends out there, our new trainer is Bradly Spindle!! He is at BYU but he's our buddy here in Xalapa to help us with all the stuff! Anyway we had a meeting with him and he gave us some help with our ads, he told us that we should make a video for our ad, he told us that usually brings more success! SO this week we worked really hard on two things: Trying to learn how to film good quality videos with good sound, and how to edit videos so they look good! It's honestly been a rollercoaster trying to figure out how to do all this stuff, at first we had to find out how to sync the video from the camera with the audio from the microphone (Make a big clap so they both grab the sound and then they can syn easily from there) then we had to learn how to get rid of background noise, and then how to make sound fade in and out! It's been hard but fun, the internet has been a big help this week just figuring out how to use adobe premiere pro, but now we have a hang of it, more or less! So once we had a new idea of what we wanted, we got to work filming a new video, it was a lot of fun writing the script and filming the videos, I would highly recommend making videos, it's so much fun!! Our new ad is done so we'll see how it goes!

The new secretary, and new member of the district!!

I'll be honest, it has been a hard couple of weeks, I try to be positive here but man has this area been kicking my butt! A lot of our friends have been travelling, and so we've been trying to find people and juggle our responsibilities as coordinators at the same time! We have had a lot of trouble trying to have lessons this whole transfer, but this week has been so great! We have been working so hard here, and we knew that the Lord would make it all workout, and this week things began to work out! All of a sudden we began to find people, people were stopping us on the street, we have been having success with the less active members, and our friends that we were already teaching have been keeping up aswell! I don't have too much to say. I am just so glad that the Lord is helping us see fruit from all our hard work, I know that his hands are in this work!!

Our New Year's day feast!!

So this week we had our interviews with President and Sister Day! It has been so long since I've had a chance to talk to President and his wife, it was so nice to just receive guidance from them again! I treated my interview with President just as a time to vent, haha! I told him about some trials i've been seeing and just told him my feelings, he listened to me and gave me advice, it was quite nostalgic!! I love President Day! He is changing this mission so much, and i´m so happy to see how far he takes us!!

The Elders quorum at Chilis!

Mango habanero wings!

So this week was great, but we finished off on a little bit of a bitter note. On Sunday morning I woke up to a very upset stomach, and a long conversation with a guy about a horse... After that I just went about my day normally, studying, eating, studying with my companion. But there came a point during our studies where I started feeling really bad, so I told my companion that I needed to lay down for a bit. After about 30 min of rest we had to get out to take our friends to church! The walk to their house was tough, but we got them and headed to church in the taxi where I could rest a bit. Once we arrived at church I started feeling some serious pain in my stomach, but we had to keep a good face for our friends! But after the services finished we got them home, called Hermana Day, picked up some medicine from her house, and went home. Once we got home I had some soup, and then I went to sleep! Friends and family, I went to sleep at 4 o'clock on Sunday, and I didn't wake up until 6:30 the next morning! 16 hour nap!! It helped some, I feel better now but I am still definitely going to enjoy my bed tonight!

Little street cat!

That's all I have for today, I hope you all have a great week! And a great year, I hope all your goals for this year come to fruition!! I love you all!!!

-Elder Garnica