P-Day update week 104, 105 y 106, 02/26/2024

-Miracles (Doña pili, Francisca, y Elio fam)

Muy buenas tardes a todos ustedes! Espero que hayan tenido unas semanas excelentes!!

I know I haven't written an email in a couple weeks, but really there wasn't too much to talk about the last two weeks! We've been super busy running around doing a lot of administrative stuff, but this last week we had some really cool experiences!!!

MTZ/TEZ Zone Conference!

To start off, there us one thing I should mention that happened a few weeks ago, like you all know every month we have a MLC. We usually do one month in person here in Xalapa and one month on Zoom, this month it was on Zoom! We had been thinking a lot about what we wanted to do in the meeting, and we came up with a few different ideas! We talked a lot about how revelation works, specifically what our stewardship is. This came up due to our recent focus on Standards of Excellence, a certain number of new friends, lessons with members, church attendances, etc. That we should at least have every week. Many missionaries saw it as President taking away their revelation for their area. We explained that President Villanueva is the only person in the mission who can receive revelation for the whole mission. And once he has received that revelation we no longer have a right to receive revelation that goes in contrast to what he has revealed to us. It was a great council we had with the missionaries and we all had a chance to speak and share our thoughts on the matter!

Before we set off this last week we had the opportunity to take part in a special Government event here in Xalapa, the Inter-Religious Exhibition! We've been preparing for this for a while now (designing banners, writing scripts, assigning missionaries etc.) So our stands in the Exhibition would be perfect! And it turned out really cool!! Tuesday morning our district arrived at about 7:45 to Parque Juarez in the center of town and we started getting everything ready. We split up the two day Exhibition in 4 shifts for the 4 districts in the 2 zones of Xalapa. We had the morning shift on Tuesday. It was so awesome, there were many times that people would be walking through and we would call out to them to come visit the table and learn more, and they ended up leaving with a date to meet with the missionaries! It was definitely not like anything I've done before but I've realized on the mission to expect the unexpected!! And from the activity we got a lot of references for the whole city!!!

We also started our Zone Conference tours last week. We started off this time around with Martínez de La Torre and Teziutlán, my rancho! But this time it was completely different, this time instead of being on Divisiones with the Zone Leaders or doing device audits during the interviews President asked us to accompany the materials secretary and housing secretary to inspect EVERY house in the mission! So we started out like normal going to President's house early Wednesday morning, and we started our journey. But before we got to Martinez the let us hop out at Vega de Alatorre! We inspected their house, waited 5 years for the bus and inspected the house in Misantla then waited for the bus and Inspected the houses in Martínez. And that is basically what we did for all the time that we were traveling last week! It was a rollercoaster of emotions, we saw many great and clean homes and then some not so great and not so clean homes! It was kinda difficult to get everything in order but we were able to do it and even visit some of my old friends in teaching and say goodbye in Zacapoaxtla to Dayanna and her family! Dayanna was the second friend I got to see be baptized when I started my mission, and now in about 4 weeks she Will be leaving on her own trip to serve in Mexico Merida as a full time missionary! It was nice to chat and say goodbye to them, they always have treated me so well!!

Riding on the bus!

The Zone Conference itself went really well, it was my last time in Martínez and Teziutlán and we made sure to take advantage of the visit! It was also my last time eating Tacos Matus, a tacos place that is in San Juan one of my old area and who provides food for the Zone Conference basically every time! In fact they gifted me a t-shirt to take home with me! During the instruction my companion and I focused on the teaching model. I've mentioned this teaching model before so I won't go into too much detail, but it has been a tool my companion and I have used during the entirety of our respective missions! It is something so good, and we were excited to remind the mission about it! The only problem was that we hadn't had time to plan our instruction until the night before! So we made sure to hit it hard that night and the next morning to have everything ship-shape! Even though we didn't give it a lot of time our message turned out really cool (at least from my point of view haha) and I hope the missionaries learned a lot!!

Now before I finish off, I would like to talk about a few miracles we saw this week! When we got back from Martínez and Teziutlán we arrived Friday night, we got back to Xalapa with just enough time to get home and get ready for bed, so Saturday and Sunday were our only days to really work, and Saturday we had our Zone Council so it wasn't even like a lot of time! Anyway, once we were free from other obligations we hit the streets, and it instantly started to pour down rain haha!! It was kinda funny not gonna lie! In spite of the rain we knew we had to look for a miracle. We stopped by Brenda's house to see how she's been since her baptism, everything was great! They offered us to go in for a hot chocolate, but we had to reject her offer due to time constraints! Because we wanted to go visit a man that we had contacted a few weeks ago. He had told us where he lived and that he was interested in learning more. So we arrived to his home and were greeted by his wife! She very warmly introduced herself and let us come in. She was nice...too nice. Well it turns out that she is a member of the church! She is the wife of the man we contacted (we'll call him Ely). We chatted for a bit and asked if Ely could take a second to chat, so she called in Ely, and her father (who is also a member) and her too sons (who are not members...yet). They arrived, we presented ourselves and had great lesson about the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ! They were super receptive, and seemed very happy to recieve us. They gladly accepted to return date, and we have planned to see them tomorrow! Now that was just one event, but in that one lesson we found three new people and had a lesson with these inactive members!! Similar events to this happened a few more times during Saturday Night and Sunday Evening until we finished our day Sunday night, updated our area book and saw that we not only met our goal but we passed it! It was a weekend miracle!! 

From the Inter-Religious Exhibition!

My friends the day of miracles has not ended. Time and time again I have seen the Lord keep his end of the deal if we do our best to be faithful. He is a God of order and commitment, if he says he will something, and we do our part, he has to keeps his word. As the scriptures say:

"I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise" (D&C 82:10)

I am a witness of that truth. The Lord desires to bless us with everything he has, he desires our temporal and eternal triumph! But we have to put in the work, we have to do as our prophet has declared to "Do the spiritual work to seek miracles" (Russel M. Nelson "The Power of Spiritual Momentum") I know that if we seek miracles and do the work to attain them, they will come. Do not ever doubt that!!

I love you so much my friends and family! I hope you have a great couple of weeks and I'll see you in my next correspondence...The season finale!!

-Elder Garnica