Busy first week in Colima

(from Sister Wagner) "Here we are!! 219 Missionaries with Elder and Sister Craig Christensen, Elder and Sister De Hoyos, and Elder Martinez (area authority). I LOVE this picture!!"



Also from Sister Wagner:  "We are now 54 sister missionaries strong!"

This week was a good week, and absolutely crazy one. I am here in Colima with Elder Calixto. He is from Monterrey and has 14 months in the mission. He has three sisters. He heard that he would be receiving a missionary who had 21 months in the mission and thought I would be dead, he was in for a surprise. He walks really fast, as fast as I do. I have slept on the floor every night since I got here. We stayed the first few days and nights with the other zone leaders, Elder Webb, who you already know, and Elder Armengol, who is in his last transfer, and is totally wild and crazy. There are 12 elders and sisters in our zone. We are going to have our zone conference together with the other Colima zone. It will be next week, the 18th of February. We are 6 elders and 6 sisters in the zone. What happened with our area, is that they divided the area that Elder Calixto was in into 2 areas. We are 4 missionaries in our ward, us two and two sisters, Sister Vargas and Sister Zamora. Sister Vargas if from the state of Mexico and has 6 months in the mission, and Sister Zamora is from Tamaulipas and this is her first area. All three of the other missionaries in our ward are converts. We spent a large part of the week showing the sisters their area and introducing them to their members. They are now living in the house that Elder Calixto was living in. We finally moved into our new house on Saturday, but have very little furniture. I got to know a few members this week, but we had very few lessons because we were extremely occupied all week long. I did a lot of exercise this week. 

One of the blessings I received this week, is that I was blessed with the gift of tongues, my companion said that I had a little bit of an accent like the people from D.F. (Mexico City) I felt really comfortable speaking, and everyone was understanding me, it was totally cool, I just did not worry about it, and just spoke, and everyone understood me. We finally moved into our new house, and it is pretty huge. It is 2 stories, just huge.  A nice older lady, member, fed us pancakes before church yesterday.

Thank you for your nice letters I really enjoyed them. We had a nice up and down week this week. Sounds like Nate had a pretty crazy week as well. One fun experience I had this week was looking for all the new stuff we have to buy for our house. We walked into the store and I asked for everything, did pretty much all of the talking and it was totally awesome, and the kid helping me hardly ever had to ask, "what was that, I did not understand you." It was pretty cool. It was also fun that my companion has expressed to me several times who impressed he is that I am not dead. He said that I am the only missionary that he has known that has had 21 months in the mission and is not dead. It is so nice that other people see that in me, I just wish I could see it in myself.

I guess there is a lot that I should be positive about though, it is hot and dry here and I like that, we walk so fast that I do not have time to think, that is nice, and I will try to be more positive and not so pessimistic. We are teaching Pedro. He has been to church a bunch of times, and the only thing that is impeding him from being baptized is that he smokes. We also taught Christopher this week, he has also been to church and is reading the BOM and praying, he lives with a member and they are not married so that is the challenge with them. Those are the only investigators I know. We did not have a lot of time to work in our area this week. None of our investigators were able to make it to church. I spoke in sacrament meeting.   Our bishop is great, he worked at the Benemerito school for a long time. We walked more this week than I had ever walked in a single week in my mission, so that was awesome. 

When you talked about being tired this week I get where you are coming from. In the mornings we do devotionals. We sing, pray two times and read a scripture, we did several of those devotionals together with the elders we were living with. After having slept on the floor the second night in a row, Elder Armengol asked us to go and get the scriptures, and I frustratedly said in English, "we slept on the floor last night." But, I did exercise every morning. When I am really tired in the mornings and do not want to exercise, I try to think, when I am 24 and married with a kid up all night, going to school, working, I am not going to want to exercise either, but I am going to, just something fun to think about. 

I loved seeing the picture of Elder De La Mora.  He is one of the most loving people I have ever met. 50 percent of the credit for me developing the love I felt for Lola is because of him, in my 2 transfers with him, I do not ever remember him getting mad at me, not once. 

Oh, and I am right across the volcano from Guzman