P-Day update week 94 y 95, 12/11/2023

Hola Humanos!

Que gusto poder hablarles un poco de lo que ha sucedido en los últimos días!

Alright, I'm sorry I didn't sent out an email last week, I'm just always busy haha!! But I've got some BIG stuff to talk about! So let's not waste time and we'll jump right in!

The new trio!

First of all I would like to talk about the two Christmas conferences we had the last two weeks. So if yall remember we had our mission tour with Elder Montoya where we learned a lot of new tactics and ideas for the mission! And even though we visited the whole mission President wanted to make sure that we had our Christmas conferences to have some time to hang out together! So we had two more conferences in Poza and in Xalapa for the North and the South where we had a volleyball tournament, nachos, a Christmas devotional, our flu vaccines and a lot of special musical numbers!! It was very spiritual and a lot of fun!!

Also while we were in the North we picked up our new companion Elder Morales! Elder Morales was also with us last year in the offices so I got to know him super well and I'm super excited that he's going to be here with us! We've known for a while that he was going to be coming down here with us so it's been hard to keep the secret but we were so happy for him!! I'm sure he's a little nervous like we were when we got here but it's all part of the process.

When Elder Morales got here that first day we had a lesson with Arthur, Arthur is our friend that works in the little store who has come to church with us the last couple weeks! He's so excited about the Gospel and the changes that Jesus Christ has wrought in his life! So we knew that the next step is baptism. So we passed by and taught baptism. He said he wanted to but he wasn't sure when. So we invited him to pray and ask when he should be baptized. And he got an answer! He was ready and willing to be baptized this last Sunday, but we found out that he is not married to his partner. So the next step is help them get married before Arthur can get baptized, but he is ready to be baptized. The sad part is that we won't be here for the rest of his teaching.

Lagotonix after we sang Mary Did You Know in the Zone Conference!

The Sistrict and us bike Dat

You might be wondering why we won't be here for the teaching of Arthur. Well the thing is that we've been planning some big changes in the mission office over the past couple months, and now we put it all into play. The plan was to change the Secretaries, who have traditionally been Elders, with Sister missionaries! But that brings about other things that need to change, like that fact that the Secretaries live in a big house that can receive a lot of missionaries. So now that they aren't going to be able to have Elders stay at their house we needed to find a big house where they can stay. And the house hunt has been brutal, we looked everywhere in our area and we couldn't find anything. The days and weeks passed by and we still didn't have anything as we were getting closer and closer to the change date. So one day President asked us why we don't just move areas to somewhere closer to his house and try and find a house there! In fact Hermana Villanueva said "you can search Saturday and part of Sunday to find it and if you can't we'll just wait until next transfer. So that's what we did, we looked all Saturday and a part of Sunday and in the last moment we found a house! We were walking in the street and saw a rent sign, we called the number, they came and gave us a tour, we made the contract and signed it, payed the rent and deposit and that's it. All within like three days! So now we are in the area of Alborada, which is an area where I passed 4 transfers last year! So I'm going back to my old area and I'll finish with 6 transfers in one area!! 

Once we had the house and we made the change, President took advantage of the Sister Conference they had planned with all the sisters in the mission to have the new Secretaries bring all their stuff to Xalapa. 

We ran from our new house in Alborada to President's house which is now super close to us!

Tandem bikes are literally the best!

Speaking of the sister conference, it was awesome!! I know what you're thinking "Elder Garnica you're not s Sister, how do you know the sister conference was awesome?" Well President and Hermana Villanueva decided to invite us to help with the logistics that go down (food, transportation, order, etc.)! So we were able to go with them to the Anthropology Museum here in Xalapa which is one of the cities biggest attractions that the missionaries can never go because they close on Mondays. So with the sister conference being on Saturday we all went to the museum and had a little picnic in the gardens! It was sick!!! There are a lot of cool sculptures and funny looking stuff that made the experience not only intellectually stimulating but also a fun time!! And once we finished the museum tour we tried to send all the sisters on busses to their areas but we didn't make it in time for the busses! So we had to have them stay the night and all go with us to church the following day in the earliest meeting at 8:30am! It was cool because more than half the attendance in that ward this last Sunday was all missionaries! After the meeting we sent them off to the bus station and took the new Secretaries to the offices to start their training! It took all day to do the training and we didn't even finish, we have to take all week to get it all done! 

But with the transfers we have a new district. Our district is going to be Elder Morales and I with the 7 Office sisters. The SISTRICT. we had our first P-Day activity, we went biking in Los Lagos! It was a lot of fun, we're going to see how this new dynamic works. Also, our District Leader is a sister named Hermana Larson! She's a beast!! It's going to be a lot of fun, but we'll see how it turns out.

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That's it for this week, remember that Christ was born for you, he is the truth and the light. Through him we may be saved.

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

-Elder Garnica