Elder Christofferson visits the Mission!

Ben did not email until Tuesday this week because they met Monday in Guadalajara with Elder Christofferson  (of the Twelve) and Elder De Hoyos (from the Seventy)

Here is the ENTIRE mission in front of the temple. Elder Christofferson and his wife are in the center front row. President and Sister Wagner are to the left of him (while looking at the picture, and  Elder De Hoyos from the First Quorum of Seventy and his wife are on the right side. Ben is directly behind Elder Christofferson on the back row.

(this picture was pirated from the blog that Sister Wagner keeps)

One of the things that Elder Christofferson talked about is the process of assigning missionaries their calls.  I really like one thing he said about, a lot of what determines what mission a missionary will serve in is who is going to be their mission President and his wife. The Wagners have been such a blessing to me. I think that it is safe to say that President Wagner has saved my mission two times.  Once in the four hour interview I had with him when he miraculously pulled out of me the reason why I was not sleeping well,  and the other time when he chewed me out for not exercising. 


That brings up a fun exercise story, one of the days running at the track, I was taking it pretty easy, and some teenage kid was like bating me, he would start a 400 repeat at the same time that I was starting my lap, and just blast me and then wait for me so he could do it again.  I finally said, alright this time I am running with him, but I set the pace and ran on the inside, but we ended up running a nice hard mile together, not racing, just running together and it was pretty fun. I could not talk to him for lack of breath and he would not have understood my Spanish anyways, but I made friends with him pretty quickly and it was a fun experience. And this morning, there were some people just flying around; I was impressed. I ran my fastest 800, a pathetic 2 minutes and 51 seconds, I cannot think of a time in my life in the which I have been slower, but oh well I am enjoying running and that is what matters. 

Elder Christofferson's visit was awesome of course. I was able to see many elders that I had not seen in a long time. I had a funny experience this week when someone asked that I would pray for a family member of theirs so that he would cross the border safely, illegally of course. I was not sure if I could do that or not, and so I just prayed that he would be safe. 

Veronica came to church on Sunday and she is going to be baptized the 1st of June! Elder Hernandez is going to have his first baptism! We found a family of 5 boys this week, they only lack the one girl, haha! It was really awesome, I was looking through the book of old investigators, and when I passed their name, I felt something really strong, and so I called the phone number on the teaching record, but here is the catch, the missionaries taught them 9 years ago! But when I called, one of the sons, who was 10 years old at the time answered, and he still remembered the elders! We went by and got to know them for the first time Saturday, and it was awesome, they are so cool, five athletic boys! We never teach men, when we got there, the mom did not remember us, but she said, well, I do not know you guys, but I feel like I want to, it was a really great experience.

The sacrament meeting attendance went down again this week, and many ACTIVE members from our area did not come this week, the good news is that we have work to do.

Elder Atoche and Elder Pew were over at our house this week on Sunday night before the conference and Elder Atoche was really sick and asked me to give him a blessing so that was pretty cool.  Another big blessing that I received yesterday was that I felt really good even though we had to get up at 4:30 in the morning to go to Guadalajara and I did not have time to exercise.  Lola was not able to come to church, because of Franciscos grandpa's death.    I love you guys and will talk you again next week, thanks for all of the encouraging letters and the prayers, I can feel them and also pray for you guys everyday as well,
Love, Elder Jarvis