P-Day update week 80, 08/28/2023

Muy buenos días mis queridos estimados hermanos en Cristo!

This week has been pretty good! Well considering we lost a few days of work. But we still were able to have some really good lessons and see some progress with our friends!!

MLC!

We started off our week heading to the MLC in Xalapa. That's the reason we were out of town for about two days. We left on Tuesday morning and got back Wednesday night! On Tuesday we did our normal traveling to Xalapa adventures, we arrived and headed straight to Costco haha!! I'm sure I mentioned that I got a Costco card when I was in Xalapa, so we have to use it!! But it ended up causing me an existential crisis, when we got there we tried to order our food but my card expired, I assume it's the same system in the states. I just had to renue it, but I realized that this implicates that I was in Xalapa more than a year ago, and I'm only going to be here for another 5 months, so I decided it didn't make any sense haha! It was just weird, I'm old! But anyway, the nice thing is that Costco is right next to Plaza Americas, so we went there and bought ourselves some mall food court food!! But from there everything was calm, we headed to our abode for the night, played some phase 10 with the other Elders and got to sleep yo be ready for the council! The MLC in itself was really good!! There is a lot of big news!! I'll put it into bullet points so this email doesn't become horrendously long:

• New cards for the mission funds, super secure bank that's based here in Mexico. They're credit cards instead of debit cards which brings a few new things we have to look out for, not too big of a change though!

• Each missionary will now have his own cellphone to use instead of sharing one with your companion! This is super huge! We had already seen this coming due to the fact that it's a worldwide change, so I've seen my buddies in other parts getting their own phones. It'll be interesting to see how this changes things around here, its already been weird these passed couple days when my companion and I can be planning the day on his phome and sending messages to confirm the lessons on mine! But it's a double edged sword, I just hope everyone is treating it wisely!

• There is a new special assignment, one Elder in the mission is the trainer of the district leaders. He is responsible for helping the DLs learn how to fulfill their responsibilities!

• From now on there won't be Zone Councils, everything we learn in the MLC will be taught to our missionaries in the Zone Conference by us.

So those are the big changes, we'll see how they affect the mission! But President also talked to us a bit about the importance of using pur name tags in the correct way, and that we only use the name tags that come from the church. He mentioned a little about companionship study and having good communication in a companionship! He also talked to us about a few other things but I can mention that when we teach it in the Zone Conference! Overall it was a great MLC, a lot of new, im excited to see the mission keep growing!!

When we arrived back to the area we found ourselves short on days to work, but we saw some big miracles! I'm short of time again haha (really I have ample time but im just bad at managing it haha (atleast when it comes to my emails)) so ill try to be consice!

First things first, do y'all remember our friend Sam? Well Sam hasn't been here for the past 3 weeks or so, infact we thought that he was never going to come back, and we were super sad because he was so excited to be baptized!! Well one day we were walking in the street and all of a sudden Sam pops put of nowhere and tries to give us a hug haha! He didn't say hi or anything but we handled it haha! We were a little bit in shock, because we hadn't seen him in 5 ever but I told us that he was back now! He's still excited to keep learning, and we're excited to help him!!

Cool foto

New phones

Two of our friends Laney and Elaine have been progressing great aswell!! Laney is the little girl who has a baptismal date for the tenth and Elaine is the wife of an inactive member in the ward! They are both reading The Book of Mormon and want to go to church! Laney is really excited for her Baptism and is even more excited because the primary presidency us going to help.us decorate the room, so that'll be fun! Elaine is reading and has a LOT of questioms, she has been a member of a lot of different churches and wants to be sure that this is the right one before she gets to deep into this. Please pray for her that she might receive her answer about our message and the church!!

This weekend we had stake conference! It was really cool! The theme was the Temple, and everything that abarcs that: Family History, Vicarious work, Eternal Marriage, history etc. Honestly it was a little repetitive by the third session but I think they drove the point across! Oh and I forgot yo mention that before the Priesthood session on Saturday we were able to go to the baptism of the sisters in the Zone, we invited a few of our friends to be there to see and the sisters took advantage of our attendance and we put together a little musical number! We sang Teach Me to Wallk in the Light as I played my Ukulele! We sang two verses in spanish and one in English (the sister who was baptized is from New Jersey!) And I played a little finger picking intro and outro which sounded super cool! Honestly it turned out great, but the best part was that this sister got to make a covenant with God!!

Handsome cat

But hopping back to the conference we got to see Sam and Laney show up to the conference which was impressive since its so far away! It was awesome to see their dedication! They both came out excited to get baptized and go to the Temple!!!

Alright folks that's all I have for you today! I hope you have a great week and you always remember that you are eternally bound to our Heavenly Father by the Covenants you have made with him, so if we persevere to the end we can live with him in perfect joy and bliss in the life to come!! I love you all so much! I hope you have a great week!!

-Elder Garnica