P-Day update week 74, 07/17/2023
Buenos días a todos!!!
Another week down here in the MMX, it's been a great week! I'll talk a little bit about some cool experiences this week and last week aswell!!
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| Las Espadas Brasilenas |
To start off I want to to rall about a few families that we've found! I'm sure tall remember Daniela from my email a few weeks ago, well she is the daughter of an inactive member of the church. We met her for the first time after a member in the ward told us about her! Ever since our first meeting we have been trying to go back but it's been very difficult to get anything rolling, but two weeks ago we went to visit Daniela and her family during the Transfer chaos and had an interesting experience. When we arrived her dad (Arnold) was there and told us we couldn't talk because Daniela was doing her homework, we said okay and asked if we could just talk with him then. He very abruptly said no, he said he is not interested and his beliefs don't mesh with ours. Now remember Arnold has been a member of the church for a long time, he has been to the Temple and made covenants there, so we were a little taken aback by what he told us. But we asked him what were the things that we weren't going to be able to mesh well with? He got up and started to fire off his doubts, first we talked about The Book of Mormon, where it comes from and its relationship to The Bible. Then we talked about the name of God, he in one point of his life was a member of the Jehova's Witnesses, and had the mentality that God the Father is Jehova. We talked about that for a bit using the scriptures to show that Jesus Christ is Jehova. After these questions the missionary I was with asked him how he felt when he read the Bible, and he repondrd that he felt peace and happiness! Then my companion asked him if he had felt that as he read the Book of Mormon. When he asked that the air changed, Arnold did a compete 180 and told us "The question isn't 'is The Book of Mormon true?' I know that it's true, but Satan won't let me get closer to Christ" after her said that we knew that we could help him, the Spirit opened Arnold's heart. He told us that we could pass by the next day at noon to talk. So the next day we passed by and he was completely different with us, his prior attitude of inconvenience and being bothered changed to a welcoming handshake and a smile! We shared with them a quick message focused on Christ and left them with an assignment to read the Book of Mormon. We told them we would be back the following week and we let them be. But a few days later we saw them...AT CHURCH!! Arnold and his daughter got up on Sunday and just decided to go to church, Arnold told us he felt a very strong need to go to church that day, and when he did he she friends that he hadn't seen in years!! He loved the church and so did Daniela, in fact that very same day we stopped by and shared a message with them and Daniela accepted a baptismal date!! She'll be baptized at the end of this month!! We're so excited for her, but also for her family being able to come back to church again! I'll make sure to keep yall updated on anything new with them!!
Speaking of helping people come back to church, this past week we had a very cool afternoon finding activity planned. We planned to go with our ward mission leader and meet inactive families! I've mentioned very often how much I enjoy working with inactive families so I'm sure I don't need to explain myself again here jaja!! But we went with him one night and visited a few different families, we had a big range of different experiences, one man we saw in the stret wearing nothing but his temple garments! (For those of you who don't know what that is here is a link where you can learn more: https://www.
One man we saw who had just got out of rehabilitation, and has been looming for us! And then our last visit was probably the most special! Our wars mission leader told us he had some cousins who got baptized around the same time he did but they haven't been back to church for many years. We stopped by and introduced ourselves to the mom who's name is Rachel, as we were talking with Rachel we saw a lot of people coming on and out of the house and we were a little confused as to why. But as the conversation grew on we found out the Rachel lives in her house with her husband and her 7 kids! That made sense as to why there was so much movement, and it also showed us a need, Eternal families. We spoke briefly with them to mainly win their trust and we set up a time to go back. As we were walking away from the house out ward mission leader told.us that none of her children have been baptized and that 4 are in the baptismal age! But as it turns out our misusing leader was wrong, its not 4 that are in the baptismal age, it's 5! We were really excited to hear that, sad for the fact thar many of them have been living their lives without the gospel for a very long time! But anyway a few days past and we headed to our appointment with them. When we arrived we sat out side as we talked, during that time we memorized the names of all the kids (I would put them in but I can't think of enough new names and them remember them all!!) and had also had the chance to talk with them about all the trials they have been facing. They have really had a hard go of things lately. We shared a few scriptures about how Christ has taken on himself all of our pains and sicknesses and sufferings. We shared that through Chrst we can find peace in this life even when things are hard! We didn't have a lot of time to talk with them but we let them know that Christ loves them and they can find peace in him, and we left them with some copies of the Book of Mormon to read. We set up a day to go back this coming week!! I'm excited to see this family come back to church!!
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| Presidente Villanueva and his dog, Lui! |
This week we also had the opportunity to go to MLC in Xalapa with the new mission President!! It was kind strange to start off because we traveled on Tuesday instead of Monday, it was good because we had the chance to clean the house and do other administrative things that need to he done. But we also lost almost two full days of work due to out traveling to Xalapa! But it was okay, we were able to make up for it in the last couple days of the week!! We arrived on Tuesday like I mentioned and I did some Birthday shopping for myself jaja!! We had an awesome dinner at a place called "Fogon do Brasil" which is a Brazilian swords buffet (Like Texas de Brasil for you Huntsville folk) which was awesome!! It was my first time going to that type of restaurant, and it was soo good! It was a little pricey even for Mexico but it was totally worth it for my birthday dinner!! From there we headed to the Secretaries house to get ready for the next day. When we got there were the only ones there with one more companionship. We were able to get into the house without the keys (we have our ways) and we started to talked amongst oursleves about the assignment President left for us as we got ready for the MLC "What are the 6 biggest problems in your zone/the mission". We talked for a long time and made our list to share the next day, it was cool, we had a mini council before the council!! The day of the MLC itself was awesome! It was at Presidents house, they gave us great food, I got to meet their dog and two cats, and the spirit was very strong!! The things we learned were mainly for us as Leaders but we still had some things to bring back to the Zone!! After the MLC we had a lunch and headed back to the bus station. We had to wait a few hours but eventually our bus came in and we headed out to Martinez!! A few days later we had our Zone council and shared a few thoughts with everyone, it wasn't the best Zone Council I've ever been a part of but it was alright!! I hope we can all grow our commitment to this great work!!
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| District Ice cream stop |
I'm running short on time again today so I'll try and mention the less important stuff quickly!
On my Birthday I bought some cool guayaberas, and a new money pouch. (I lost my frog money pouch :///) and we walked around Xalapa Centro for a bit!
We have been focusing a lot on asking for referrals as often as we can, and we've been seeing some fruits from that! Remember my dear friends, we are all part of this great work, the growth and strength of our ward depends primarily on us the members and our dedication to share what we know!!
One of the focuses we put during the MLC was taking care of the tenporal needs like cleaning, eating well, doing exercise, going to bed on tien etc. So my companion and I did a three day long deep clean of the house to make it shipshape, it feels so much better now!!
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| This cat ran away at 100mph after this picture |
Well that's if for me this week, my invitation to you all is to remember why you are here. President Villanueva shared an analogy of when we go on roadtrips and put our destination in the map it tells us exactly how long its going to take and when we are going to arrive. Its amazing how it can get these numbers, but often times on road trips we pull over to fill up gas, but everyone gets out to go use the bathroom or buy some snacks or just stretch your legs. And when we're all done we get back into the car and suddenly the GPS that first told us we would arrive at 5:05pm now days we'll arrive at 5:35pm. And as much as we try to accelerate and speed down the highway it may only drop to 5:34 or 5:33. It'd hard to make up that time lost. He applied that to our missions, that we need to not get distracted or loose our purpose for even what seems like a "pit stop" because we could lose our momentum to our goal! But I believe that applies to life in general. I believe I have talked about our purpose here on earth before, so remember why we are here. Even though it may seem small "oh I'll not go to church today"
"oh I don't have time to study, I have a lot of important things to do"
"im so tired I just want to sleep I can't sta my prayer"
Whatever it may be, these put stops could be holding us back from reaching our goals! But I want you all to know that we have our own personal Nitros if we for some reason fall off schedule. Christ. Whenever we feel like we've fallen behind we can repent and receive the boost required to get back up to our destination time! I hope my analogy made sense, I can't tell stories very well through text but I hope yall got the point!! Don't spend too much time stretching your legs, you might fall behind!
I love you all so very much! Have a great week!!
-Elder Garnica
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