The New House

May 6, 2013

This week from Elder Jarvis:

We moved into the new house, it is nice and big, and right next to the Tianguis, and the ciber where I am writing from right now, and next to a big store, a small store, and a big soccer stadium with a track around it. It has been awesome, we go to the track every morning to run, and it is really nice to be able to do that everyday, but I think the track is a little too big, I did everything that I could and finally busted out a 1:15 400 and a 6:13 mile, and I run between 2 and 2.25 miles everyday, rather slowly but surely.



The Washer

The Dryer
(the water for the house is the black tank)

The Couch

What we drink water out of.  They are called garrafons and cost 20 pesos to refill it and 60 to buy one new.

Well this week was very hard, so I could take the very natural and negative look on it, or look for the positive, I will start out looking for the positive. We found many new people to teach this week.  The bad news, we are now teaching none of those people. We found an awesome Christian lady that I was able to relate with really quickly, but she cannot accept that Joseph Smith was a prophet because it does not talk about him in the bible. It was a little bit frustrating in one lesson getting to the point where my lack of Bible knowledge was frustrating to me.  With the New Testament I feel like I can hold my own, but my Old Testament knowledge is not very great. 

We continued teaching Veronica this week.  Without us talking about it, she mentioned that she wants to be baptized, and she reads everything that we leave her to read.  The problem is that she says that she is going to stop working Sundays in 2 months, I am not sure what will change in 2 months, but we will see. That is the small problem, the bigger problem is her crazy mom, Veronica has got to be in her 60s and her mom in her 80s and is like the majority of the people here, super catholic. But she is doing well, and just needs a little bit of time.

A cool guy from Chicago showed up at church today.  He is from Chicago, like an American, it was nice to be able to talk to him in English. He is going to be here for a couple of months and then head back to Chicago, he is Christian as well, but seems like a pretty open guy. His parents are Mexicans, so he grew up speaking Spanish in the house, but English in any other setting or circumstance, so he obviously speaks perfect English, and has an accent in Spanish, not quite as strong as ours, but clearly an accent. 

We had divisions with the zone leaders for one hour Thursday to teach one of our investigators, but it was going to be in the house of a member who lives in their area, and it was an awesome lesson.  Our investigator did not come, so we taught the husband of the member who is a dry member, and one of their daughters friends the plan of salvation, it was a really awesome lesson, we felt the spirit very strongly.  The only down side was the awkwardness of the girl who openly tried to flirt with us.   I quickly shook hands with her and the member wisely avoiding the trap that my companion fell into.  There is a certain handshake here that is a not good way of telling someone that you like them. But she really was interested in the lesson too, and said a great closing prayer.

Several members went with us to teach this week that had not in the past, so that was nice.  The recent converts and 2 active members still do almost all of the work, so we are trying to get more members involved. Only 135 people came to church, and 0 less actives or investigators, but 6 of the 7 recent converts came.  Valeria had to work, and she was the only one who could not come.

Elder Hernandez is really easy to get along with.   I felt bad yesterday and Saturday because I was talking using a little bit of idiot message type language, my excuse was being so tired not having anyone to teach.  I did apologize to him, and he is really good about forgiving me, and really is an awesome guy, probably my favorite companion up until this point.  Just a really level headed, obedient guy, a great example to me, he does not know a ton, but always bears his testimony, and really has been a blessing for me, he is very humble, very teachable, and just a great guy, I think that we are going to be friends for a long time, after the mission as well.