P-Day update week 92 y 93, 11/27/2023

-Gira misional (mejoró cada vez, viajar con Elder Montoya, conocí el norte, aprendí muchas cosas)

Buenas tardes a todos!!

Hello! I hope everyone has had a great week! I wasn't able to send an email out last week, I lost my 91 weeks streak, but here I am again with a summary from the last two (very full) weeks!

Our gifts for Mari

So to start our our week last week we had our weekly office meeting on Monday. We try to make the meeting simple and efficient so we can all talk about our different assignments and how we can coordinate ourselves that week to complete our duties! When I was in the offices last year, the meetings were very simple and they were very reverent, focused on results and helping President. But throughout the course of the last year or so some things have changed and a lot of that office etiquette has been lost, and my companion and I saw a great need to talk with them and have an "office training". We ran our ideas by President and he gave us the green light so we started to get to work! We wanted to make a document that provided guide on how the office missionaries can better understand their role and help President in what he needs to do. We worked for a few hours on it and it turned out really good (humbly). But the next step was to present it to the Secretaries without it coming off like "Hey President doesn't think you're doing a good job, Here's how you can do better" which was the hard part. But we set up a day to meet with them and we had a great meeting! I was unsure how they would take it but they were very humble and willing to do and be better, that is exactly what the Lord wants from us here! I'm glad we can all grow and accept the will of the Lord through President and keep getting better!

Now that we had done some administrative stuff we have had just a few days to work in the area but the Lord is really blessing us with miracles! A few weeks ago we got a reference from some other missionaries in the other Zone who were looking for one of their friends in teaching but ended up meeting someone else, someone who is interested in learning more! His name is Arthur, they told us about him and we decided to go pay him a visit. From the first moment we met him we knew he had a lot of potential, he was already reading the Book of Mormon before we arrived and wanted to go to church! So we invited him formally and went yesterday to church!! Now the real cool thing is the fact that we weren't here basically at all this past week, so to make sure he had someone checking in on him we came up with our master plan! The plan is actually completely normal, we asked the members who live nearby to go and visit him. And oh they did, in fact one invited him to a family home evening and he had blast! Thanks to that he had a friend to sit with and was able to have an edifying time at church, so edifying in fact that when we stopped by after our trip last night he told us about his desires to stop drinking coffee and start paying tithing! We learned form this experience the power of working with the members! Without that Family Home Evening who knows if he would've gone to church or felt good there. We plan on inviting him to be baptized tomorrow for the 10th of December, pray for Arthur so he can be baptized and begin upon this new path!

Talking about the work we have seen a lot of success as we have strive to talk with everybody. Once Elder Ochoa of the presidency of the area came to our mission and promised us that there are thousands of people in every area who are wanting to be baptized. With that in mind we have been looming with our Heavenly eyes and looking for those who need our message. As we've strived to do that we have met so many y new friends. Like Eduard who we met after we finished our companionship study in the park who was sitting alone. Or Chris who was unloading a moving truck as we stopped by and contacted him. There are so many experiences and it's been a whole lot of fun running around and talking with everyone!

Elder Moreno and I with Elder Montoya

I saw the Zacapoaxtla branch at one of the meetings with Elder Montoya!

This last week was also black Friday and Mari's birthday! Mari is President and Hermana Villanuevas now 13yr old daughter! She is so much fun, she's the little sister of the mission! And when she invited us to her birthday party we had to go buy a gift, so that means we ran into the mall during the busiest day of the year! It was nuts! But the deals were more nuts! So nuts that my companion bought a ukulele! He's been playing mine and had been wanting his own for a while now and finally had the chance. After that we went to Mari's party which was a lot of fun!! We ate a lot of food haha!

Another cool experience from two weeks ago was when we were in or sacrament meeting and we get a call from President. He told us that they had to go to a YSA conference and give a class and asked us if we could join them. He told us to head over so we left the sacrament meeting to go to this conference. When we got there I was able to say hi to a lot of friends that I've met during my time as a missionary in Xalapa, even in Americas where I was only there for like 2 weeks, I was able to say hi to some friends! After an introduction they split the YSA into 4 different groups and had 4 different classes. There was one about marriage (obviously), one about self sufficiency, one about "should I go on a mission?" (That was ours), and a last one that I can't remember! It was a pretty cool couple hours as we went through the classes, we switched it up every now and then to try a s make them better, so the last class was the best one with a lot of participation! 

Tajin 1

Tajin 2

Tajin 3

This last week after the mission tour we went to some ancient ruins in Papantla Veracruz called "El Tajin". Super fun and interesting, I'll drop some pics here so you can see!!

Now the last really important thing I need to mention was the mission tour we just finished with Elder Montoya! Elder Montoya is a General Authority and President of the area Mexico, and this past week we had the chance to be in 4 different meetings and 6 hours of in car time! There are so many things I learned from him and it would be hard to put it all into the email, but let me just say that those who have been called by God to be General Authorities are some pretty powerful people! During our visit I was (at first) very nervous about doing the right thing, but I realized that he us here for the same purpose as us, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man! He taught us about having faith, about the power of our calling, about the power of the prayer of faith, about the role of repentance in our missionary work, and so many other things! Being in the car with him and his wife was probably more edifying than the Conferences themselves, he truly is a very wise man!! 

The first cat photo I took in my new area!

I hope you all have a great week and can focus on growing each day and becoming more like Christ, it's honestly the best thing you can do!!

I love you all so much and I hope you have a great week!!

-Elder Garnica