Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Transfer 15 Week 2 September 28 2015

Well, the week went really well. On Tuesday we had divisions and i was with Elder Domiciano all day. He is from Brazil. It was really cool, but sometimes it was really hard to understand his accent. And this is only his 4th transfer, so when he doesnt know the spanish word he would just say the word in Portuguese. A lot of the time i could undertand what he was saying, but other times no. But it was cool. He taught me a bit of Portuguese, but i have forgotten most of what i learned. I is kind of like speaking spanish, but you just say it weird...That is probably the best way i could explain Portuguese. He also gave me a coin from Brazil, so it ended up being a pretty successful day!

The week was great! we found 7 new investigators this week knocking doors. And i think that about half will probably progress. We have a new investigator named Oscar. He has a bunch of problems with a lot of different things. But luckily he has the desire to change, and i know that the Gospel can help him do it! i have seen it happen before! A lot of people here say "La gente no cambia" or "People dont change". A lot of people believe that that is true, but one of the things that i have learned here is that that is definitely not true! we all have the capacity to change. And our Savior Jesus Christ is willing and able to help us do it! I have seen a lot of people change for the better here, and i have seen myself change a lot as well.

I am doing great, and i am looking forward to this coming week. This week it really hit me how much time i have here, and how much time i have left. I am not ready to go yet! I just hope that i can do a lot of good in these next 4 months.
Elder Earl

Tansfer 15 Week 1 September 21 2015

Well, the new change has started, and so far it has been really great! My new companion Elder Hopper is super cool! We are getting along really well, which is always great. It is super hard to work efficiently if you don't get along with your companion. Have you seen "Meet the Mormons"? Turns out the bishop from Atlanta that is in that movie is my companions Stake President! Which means that my companion knows a famous person! Which means I know someone who knows a famous person! So that is pretty exciting.

We had a really good week together in our area. We found 7 new investigators to teach and we did a lot of contacts.

So i talked a bit about our investigator Luis last week. We had a lesson with him yesterday that went really well. He is super excited to be sealed to his family! so yesterday we made a list of goals and plans for him to prepare to enter the temple. We explained the Gospel of Jesus Chirst and the importance of all of the priciples that it contains, as well as the importance of the ordinaces of the preisthood. He is super excited to learn and to start applying everything that he has been learning. He said the closing prayer in the lesson, and we could all feel the spirit super stong. Especially when he asked God to bless his family so they can accept the Gospel as well. Because so far his family hasn't been quite as excited about all of this as he has. 

We also were able to find a new family to teach this week. It is the grandson of one of the sisters in our ward, his wife, and his two children. We had our fist lesson with them on saturday, and it went really well. We taught about the Restoration of the Gospel. They had a lot of questions, and they accepted all of the invitations that we gave to them. We are hoping that they are going to progress. 

Well, everything is going great! I just realized that i am going to be home in exactly 4 months, so that is super crazy! 

Elder Earl

Transfer 14 Week 6 September 14 2015

So the change is over and we have our new changes, and i have to say the changes really surprised me this time.

The week ended up being super cool! We had a lesson with and investigator that is named Luis. We discussed temples and the ordinances that we do inside them. He really liked it and he told us that he wants to be baptized so he can be sealed to his family. His son Andy (Ya like from Toy Story) is also listening and accepting the message. And today we are going to have another lesson with them and we are going to invite the entire family to be baptized. 

Other than that we also got to watch the rededication of the Mexico City Temple via satelite yesterday! It was an amazingly spiritual experience and i feel super blessed that i was able to see it. And it was super sweet because a less active family that we have been teaching got to go as well!

Anyway so this morning we got our changes. I was almost positive that i was going to stay here with my same companion because we both only have 6 weeks in this area, but my companion is being changed to Piedras Negras! And i am going to stay here. My companion is going to be Elder Hopper. I dont know him very well. I have just seen him like 2 times, but i know that he has been here for about 5 months and that he is from Georgia. I was kind of bummed, because i actually wanted to stay with Elder Miller because we get along great, but i am sure that i will get along really well with Elder Hopper as well.

I am doing great!
Elder Earl

Sunday, September 13, 2015

Transfer 14 Week 5 September 7 2015

Well this last week ended up being pretty good. But i have decided that i have gotten kind of tired of typing, so please excuse me if my emails are shorter from now on.

This week we started teaching a new family! they are really great! They were actually being taught by the missionaries about a year ago, but we dont really know why they stopped visiting them. Some of the members of the family have even been to church before. We taught about the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ through the Prophet Joseph Smith, and the Spirit was really strong. It was a great lesson and we explained a lot about the Preisthood and how there family can be blessed through it. They all accepted the invitation we gave them to be baptized, and they want to go to church with us this next sunday.

We have also had lot of success with the less active members in our area. Yesterday three less active members went to church with us, and all of them said that they had a really spiritual experience. 

This coming sunday is the rededication of the Mexico City temple. We are going to watch it via satelite in my stake center here. So i am really excited about that.

Well that is about it for this week
Elder Earl

Transfer 14 Week 4 August 31 2015

Well i dont have much time to write. But i did have a really good week this last week. I got a little stomach flu, but it didnt really affect me all that much and i feel a lot better now. So we had a buch of lessons this week and we found some more people to teach. Two of our investigators went to church yesterday, and i think that one of them will be baptized soon.

This week we helped a family paint there house. it was pretty fun. Other than that the week was pretty normal, but really good. I am still getting along great with my companion, an i really like my area. Well that is all for this week.

Elder Earl

Transfer 14 Week 3 August 24 2015

Well this last week was pretty good, but it was a little tough too. But something amazing did happen. On Tuesday i finally aquired some chocolate muffins from Costco! A Costco opened up here in Saltillo in June and i have been trying to get some muffins ever since. And it finally happend on Tuesday! And thankfully they tasted exactly the same as they do in the U.S., But unfortunately they are all gone, and it could be a while until we can get some more...

So we started to teach a christian family here in our area. They have some beliefs that are pretty different than what we believe in. Especially when i comes to Sunday Worship. They say that in their chuch they have music and they dance, and people faint when they are overcome by the spirit and the people speak in uncomprehensible languages. So we had a lesson with them, and it was the first time that i was really a part of a real ¨Bible bash¨. It was a lot of fun. Luckily the family is really cool so there wasn´t too much contention. And i think that they actually understood what i was trying to tell them. So I was able to talk them into reading 3 nephi chapter 11. and they also fed us dinner. Afterwards the brother asked my companion if he could pray for him. My companion told him that he could and the brother asked him to stand up. So he did. Then the Brother told my campanion that he was going to faint and you should have seen my companions face! He looked so scared! So luckily i was able to talk him out of it and we went home.

Then on Friday we returned for the next lesson and they weren´t there. I guess they were afraid of losing again, and that this time i would actually talk them into being baptized! But seriously, they actually did know a lot about the Bible, a lot more than i do truthfully. I guess we just interpret it in a different way. But it was a lot of fun truthfully. He would share a scripture, then i would share a scripture, then he would, then i would. Then i would share my testimony and there is no way that he could argue with a testimony. I hope that we can see them again, but for the meantime we are going to keep searching for new people to teach.

We actually found quite a few people this week. 9 people told us that they would go to church with us Yesterday, but unfortunately only one person showed up. But i was still pretty happy that that one did go. We had Stake conference this week. it was good.

Elder Earl