Two Baptisms and Two Short Paragraphs

(for some reason, we recieved very little info from Ben this week, but what he sent was good :)

My companion is obedient and works hard.  We climbed a mountain today.  Magda and Carmen were baptized and confirmed on Saturday.  56 people came to church.  Hna. Munoz came and her husband did not. We found a cool guy about our age to teach this week named Christian. 

I am on less time today because  my shirts were really dirty and I took a long time washing them.   I never realized how hard it was to keep clothes clean because I never washed them before my mission. 

Staying in Tuxpan, Elder Garcia and a return visit to Guzman

Transfers?   I am still in Tuxpan, now  with Elder Garcia, he is from Guatemala and has about 10 months in the mission.    Elder Garcia seems like a really cool guy, his mom is an English teacher and so he speaks english, he has a really good accent. 

This past week went well with Elder Cassanova.  We did everything at a very slow pace, which was hard for me, but he did continue to work, and he even exercised, I take a lot of the credit for that. He was a really smart guy and taught me a lot in a really nice way.    Elder Casanova talked his last Sunday in church here in the mission. It was a really weird experience his last week, I kinda felt like it was my last week as well, a lot of really weird emotions I am sure. 

 I received the credit card at the exact moment when I needed it, it was wonderful!  I  had to use the card because for transfers we have to travel a lot, and I lended Elder Hernandez 200 pesos. Elder Braxton Duncan is the new companion of E. Hernandez and so now we are in the same district and I am going to see them both every week.    they are in Tamasula, a little pueblo I think a little bit smaller than Tuxpan.    I am so happy for Elder Hernandez to be companions with another obedient, Exercise obsessed elder.  The last companion of e. Hernandez was not super obedient and it sounds like that was really tough for him

The big news of the week is that yesterday, my companion and an elder that was in Sayula ended their missions, and so what we did, was that we got together in Guzman, the 4 of us, and then the missionaries going home left to Guadalajara and me and the other missionary stayed in Guzman, and so basically, I had all of the afternoon in Guzman to do what I wanted to.   And so, I visited Lola and the Diaz Lopez family and the Alcaraz family and Ivan, and Veronica, and it was totally awesome, then I slept at the big house, and ran around the basketball court in the morning just like old times, it was totally awesome! And we got a ton of food to eat.

Lola is struggling, her husband does not want to go to church and her mother in law still lives there and does not want them to go either. The Diaz Lopez family is doing really well and are going to church every week and they all went to EFY as well, all except for Emmanuel because he is not old enough.   We ate with Lola, Hna. Escobar, the Alcaraz family and then again for dessert with Lola. The Alcaraz family is doing well.  I do not remember if I have talked about them before, he was the ward mission leader when I was there and has had many callings in just over a year. They are totally awesome and were just sealed in the temple a little while ago.   I accidentally left my bowl that I used in the Guzman house at their house and a spoon as well, and they said that they always fight over the “Elder Jarvis spoon” and that made me feel good. He is the ward mission leader once again and we had a fun time talking about the good old days. 

And guess who came to church yesterday.....................................Areli AND Arturo Munoz! only for the first hour (we have a big problem with that here)   but it was much better than nothing!

Magda and her mom are the mom and daughter  who we found contacting a while ago.  Carmen is the mom. Magda has been to church 4 times and Carmen 3, they may be baptized this Saturday, but up until now they are not completely sure. We are also teaching Lupita and Monserrat, who are granddaughters of Carmen, as well as Angelica, a friend of Magda´s,  and a friend of Lupita.   We had an activity on Friday and some little kids broke my camera, but I let Elder Gil borrow another one that I had and so I may ask for it back, would that be acceptable?

I am doing the same things for exercise that I was doing before, my 500 pushups and a lot of running in place. I want to try to eat less sugar, I was feeling guilty on Saturday trying to help Magda to stop drinking coffee and at the same time I continue to eat a ton of sugar and it just did not seem right. i feel comfortable right now.

That made me very happy to read about Paul reading the Book of Mormon with Dad. I had the chance this week to talk about the "I´ve been watching you" song this week during a lesson and that was pretty fun.  I thought a lot this week about what Dad said to me last week about how the biggest lesson that a missionary needs to learn is to forget yourself, I noticed a big difference this week when  was able to do that. 

That is awesome that Elder Scott came to talk to Nate and those guys in the MTC about Prayer. I do the same thing in my prayers, I go to another room to pray out loud. 

The language was  easier with E. Hernandez with his limited knowledge of English and has been a little bit more challenging to keep up on with my foreign companions who can speak and understand English.   Today I was able to see many missionaries, every missionary who had transfers went to the mission office to meet their new companion and so I saw, elder De la mora, who showed me the nice note that Dad wrote to him.  He did not totally understand it, he had it in his notebook.   I also saw many other elders that I know. 

We have Zone Conference this Thursday so that should be nice. We ate hamburgers today at the restaurant of the people who live below the other missionaries and have known the missionaries for a long time. They gave us a VERY generous discount. We are trying to help the branch leaders get along a little better.   It was the branch president and his very pregnant wife´s birthday on Friday, they were hoping that their baby would be born that day, which is also their anniversary. She is already overdue.

It sounds like you are all doing very well except for maybe grandpa. Tell him I said hi please and keep being the good parents that you are. I thank Heavenly Father in my prayers daily for sending me to this earth to be raised by you two.  Thanks for being the great parents that you are. Have a great week, thanks for the card and everything else that you do! Oh,  and keep focusing on Nate.  If you have to sacrifice time writing to me to write to him that is fine, I totally understand!

New Comp for a Week

Transfers are not until next week, but I got another companion this week, his name is Elder Casanova.  He has one week left in his mission, he is a really cool guy. I got him on Thursday,and he will be here for a week and then, will be returning home to the heat.  I like him a lot, he speaks good English, is from Merida, and knows the beef and the bad stuff about every missionary in this mission.  He was transferred a week early because he had some problems in his last area.  I do not like to hear about all of these missionaries whom I considered angels, to hear that they really were or are not. But I have asked him several times if he has heard bad things about me and I have repeatedly reassured him that if he has, they are not true, ha, ha.   He is a really awesome guy other than that he is always talking about his house and going home and what it is going to be like.

Elder C  teaches me both Spanish and gospel things, he teaches me in a very kind and easy to take way. It is kinda weird, he does not like to teach with the scriptures because he already knows them, seemed kinda weird to me, but he is not cocky or anything that is just his style. 

This is me and elder Casanova at the carne asada that we had this past Friday.

We had a carne asada friday and it was pretty fun. Several members came as did Carmen and Magda. Carmen, Magda, Lupita all came to church, as did Angelica, a friend of Magdas, so 4 investigators in church was the most that we have had in a while.   43  people came to church in total.  

 This is the family that we are going to help move today, Alicia and 2 of her 4 children, Mosiah and Karen.  They have been less active.  The other 2 are older, Abinadi, a girl, and Giancarlo, and they are not very interested in listening when we come to teach them. She is the one that moved here from Matamoros.

This is a picture of Areli and Sol Munoz, they just walked past the Ciber we are at so I had to take a picture with them. They did not come to church yesterday, but they did come Saturday, including, Arturo, to help us clean the church. 

The good thing is though is that my companion knows a lot and teaches me in a very kind and easy to take way. I am glad that everything went well with nate, and cannot believe that he has that Caplin kid as his companion, kinda like when I had the short stint with Elder Jacobsen in the MTC, the little slice of heaven moments. I am so happy that you and dad were able to go down to the temple this past weekend and be the witness couple, and meet the nice 80 year old lady. 

I have been studying a lot about the temple this past week, and gave an awful talk about temples yesterday. I started to talk about Sealings, and for one, could not remember the words to say in Spanish, and two, nobody in the branch other than the missionaries, the Castolo family, Viridiana, and maybe the branch president understand what the sealing is, but oh well.

I ate well this week and feel fitter and feel like I have less fat. I am glad that Kassidy Perkins is ok, it sounds like that was a very traumatic experience that she had. You all look great in the pictures with Nate up at the temple, every time I look at Sam he is getting taller. We are now allowed to play basketball and soccer, half court, but I don´t even feel like I want to that much. Sounds like both Lindsey and Zane are going to have baptisms soon, so that is cool, Carmen and Magda should be baptized either this weekend or the next.

Tell dad, that I am going to give him a run for his money eating spicy foods when I get back, not because I like to eat them, but because I can eat a lot of spicy food. Love you guys, and I have got to go, I will tell you about transfers next week, mom read D and C 97 verse 8.

Ingrown toenails, and a visit from the Wagners

The pictures were again taken from the mission blog:  guadalajaramexicomission.blogspot.com

President and Sister Wagner visited the Tuxpan branch on Sunday.  They put some fun pictures on there, and wrote some nice things about the branch and the work being done.

Ben, and Elder Gil from Guatamala

The chapel in Tuxpan

The Primary in Tuxpan

These young men pass out and collect the hymn books every Sunday :)

Now for Ben's letter:.......

The big news of the day is that after we write to you guys I am going to have to go to the doctor to get my ingrown toenail taken out.  I have had it for a long time, but have not done anything about it, now it kinda hurts and is bleeding.   We are going to make sure we find a good doctor. With my first Elder Hernandez companion, he had the same operation and everything went well.  However with another elder I knew, they injected him in the wrong place, and blood was squirting everywhere and they had to do it again.  As you can imagine I do not trust the medical services here, but I have got to get this taken care of.

A lot of things happened this week, and I will try to explain them all in as few words as I can to make it quicker. The zone leaders called us on Tuesday to tell us that we were going to have special transfers.  What happened is that an elder who was in Tamazula, a small branch near here, had to go home early because he hurt his knees and so, Elder Hernandez was sent there to fill his place and I am now in a trio with Elder Mills, the one from South Sevier and Elder Gil, who is from Guatemala.   We will likely be in a trio for 2 weeks until the next transfer, when I will hopefully train again, would be my wish.  We are working in both of our areas, but many of the members are going to work with me in my area on Divisions.

Sorry I feel like I am just complaining a lot and talking too much about myself and I will try to stop doing that. It has just been a little bit of a tougher week with E. Hernandez leaving and everything, the thing is, just like I am sure you guys already know, it takes a little while to really develop a really good relationship with your companion, and we finally had so much unity, and then we had to be separated, I know that it was completely necessary, but it is not easy, and I have not been sleeping well either, but o well, I guess "if life were easy, it wouldn´t be hard."

President Wagner came to church with Sister Wagner and their daughter who came home early from her mission that she was serving in Guatemala, she came home early because she could not sleep, sound familiar?

Many priesthood holders from the area of the other elders came to church on Sunday.  The Munoz family, it was frustrating this week, they did not come to church, we called them Saturday, and they said they were going to come and did not. Also, they were not there for our  lesson that we had planned for Friday. We are about ready to leave Jenifer for a little while.   She did not  get baptized and I think that we are going to visit her less frequently for awhile. 

I gained weight this week, (so that you know, I do not handle change well).   I am exercising like crazy, my poor metabolism just does not know what to do, I eat like an obese person during the day, and in the morning exercise like a maniac, haha. I ran in place for 20 minutes this morning. While walking with Breeze, she is an investigator of the other elders, I had a fun time talking to her parents. Her sisters are members of the church and live in Utah, one is married to an ex missionary who served in Bolivia, they have 2 kids, one looks just like a Mexican, and the other looks totally american, pretty funny. Breeze does not want to get baptized here in Tuxpan, because she does not want to marry anyone here, she wants to get married to a missionary, after his mission. She wants to go to Utah and be baptized there. Her parents love basketball, her Dad loves to watch it and her mom loves to play it, they are fanatics. They taught me all of the basketball jargon and all of the baseball jargon that they knew, that was pretty awesome. I forgot to take my camera.

Carmen and her daughter Magda came to church yesterday, they are doing awesome, every lesson we have with them is a good one. They have a baptismal date for the 24th of August.  I taught Sunday School class about the oath and covenant of the priesthood. Yared and Imelda Baltazar came to church again yesterday for the second week in a row, they are less active members who are totally awesome. They fasted yesterday and came to church even though they were out until 3 in the morning at a party they had to go to.

I had a fun experience reading the scriptures this week. I read 2 Ne 7, one of the Isaiah chapters and was just frustrated, did not understand hardly anything and just kinda read it to get through it, then when I read chapter 8, I decided that I was really going to study it and try to understand it, I prayed a lot for that understanding and received it, and it was really fun. Juan Manuel came to church again and bore his testimony and his mom made us tamales this week. Hno. Castolo accompanied me on Saturday to teach a couple of members and we taught 2 of them about the Priesthood and then later in the day he had the opportunity to give a blessing to his granddaughter, he was so happy while accompanying me and it was fun to see, and the best part was that he totally talked me up in his testimony in front of Pres. Wagner, haha.

I will try to bring my camera next week. I felt a little guilty this week because both of the zone leaders came to do divisions with us and it was kinda frustrating.  They got here and did not study language just chatted for a long time in English. Then, I had to do divisions with an Elder that is probably the only one in the mission that I really have a hard time getting along with, and things were great, until, after we taught a lesson, and during the lesson, he kept saying, Josefina, like you would say it in English, and after the lesson I told him how to say her name, and he promptly told me in a very condescending way, "Elder, you worry way too much about your spanish," and sadly I reacted and then, he said, I am just trying to teach you and ya, and I said, I just cannot learn like that, and eventually we got over it, but it was tough for a little bit. We are still excited here, 43 people came to church, and so less than the week before, but much more men came to church and so were were really happy about that.

I guess some of the best things about this week was that fasting was awesome, it isn't even hard to fast anymore and I love doing it.  It is so much easier to do it for a specific purpose, I also shared a brief testimony and felt like my spanish was alright this week. Our mission leader is also coming to church again and went with me to teach a lesson this week and is really excited.

We ate some good food this week as well, on Saturday, I ate 15 tacos, with 30 tortillas, but they are smaller. 

This dog was across the street from the church, keeping an eye on things.

Advice for Nate....

Ben gave Nate some last minute advice before he heads off into the MTC next week.   I thought it was fun and thought I'd share.

"Nate, I think that it is completely normal to be a little bit nervous, just make sure to write back and forth with me and I will try to help you out and make the transition a little bit easier in that way. What will happen the first day is that they give you your name tags, plaques, I do not know what they are called in English, but you know what I am talking about, and then, they will do some other stuff, and then you have a big meeting with all of the new people of that day with the MTC president and you meet your companion and then you eat, and then go to class. Don't be freaked out, but from the first day, your teacher will likely be talking to you in Portuguese and you will not understand a thing, but that is alright. But, just so you know, everything happens really quickly the first day, and then it calms down a tiny bit after that.

Try to have a fun time at the MTC.  I thought that it was really hard, but you will realize once you leave there, that it is a cake walk. Make lots of friends on your hall at night, at least so that they will share their food for you when they get it. I also found that, being bigger than the other elders helped a lot as far as them sharing their food with me. EAT ALL THE FOOD THAT YOU CAN, I DOUBT THAT YOU WILL BE EATING AS MUCH THERE AS I AM EATING HERE!"

Interviews with the Wagners and.....56 at church!

The only picture this week is one that Sister Wagner took when they were touring the mission doing interviews.  Here's what she said:

"These four work together in a little town south of where we were. They are doing a great job and we are so glad to have them there. And by the way, Mom, Elder J got his package!"

Now, from Ben.......

I am doing very well. The pants fit great, and are very comfortable and seem like they are going to hold up much better than the other ones as well.   I think that I have still been losing a little bit of weight, even though my eating habits are still not great, yet they are improving. The socks and the garments are great as well, and put that all together with the new shoes that I have I feel like a new man, haha. Thank you so much for the all of the stuff that you sent and also for the nice letter that you wrote to me, you have a rare gift of being able to write very sincerely and always with love! 

56 people came to church yesterday, 11 less actives and 3 investigators! The Munoz family did not, and Oscar did not either. The whole branch seems to be more excited after seeing how many people came to church today.

The three investigators were Karen, and Mosiah who are the kids of Alicia a less active member here, and Maria de Jesus, who is the friend of a less active member, Felicita Serrano, who also came to church for the first time yesterday. They are both quite old and walked to church, and it is a little ways away, they kinda scared me, haha. A member was going to pass by for them in his truck, but he got there late. They are awesome.

I told you about Hna. Victoria, her husband died a little more than a week ago, and this week, all of their family came to church, and they are many. I blessed the Sacrament yesterday for the first time in Spanish and so that was pretty cool. The Baltazar family came to church, Imelda and her daughter Yared, and Imelda´s sister in law Estela and Estela´s brother Alfonso. Juan Manuel came and gave a good talk about the Priesthood. Viridiana and all of her kids came to church as well, but she lost her job this week, so that stinks, and Eufemia an older Lady came as well. And of course the Castolo family came.  It is about as sure that they will come as it is that we will come to church, haha.

Yesterday was a totally awesome day, so many people at church, even though the branch president was not there.  He has to work about 1 or 2 sundays a month. Then, after church, visiting the members, it just seemed like everyone was kind´ve on a spiritual rush and it was great.  We always seem to have good lessons of Sundays, we were teaching with unity and it was just awesome, the kind of days where you have the experiences when people say things like, “wow, I wasn´t even going to be here today, but I had a feeling that I should be and now I know why” sort of a day.

The only tough thing is that our money for august has not arrived yet, it usually arrives a few days early. I have a little bit of food to eat, and Elder Hernandez is lending me some as well.

Mom, I’m excited for your new calling, it is kind´ve like getting called up to the bigs right! haha, before you were playing for the Bee´s and now the called you up to the Angel´s, haha! I am so excited for you and know that you will do a great job! Here, we have a relief society president and that is it, she does not have counselors.

Thanks for all of your prayers that I am sure you offered for me this past week, I really felt comfortable with my spanish and the middle of the week went much better, it was slow as far as lessons goes, but that is pretty normal, but the difference between this week and last week was that this week, we did not get discouraged and we able to see the blessings of not doing so.

We had good interviews with the Wagners on Tuesday.   Something cool that President Wagner shared with me in my interview with him, I thought I would share with you guys. We are trying to find principles in our Book of Mormon reading, for instance, "If I do this, this will happen, or I will receive this blessing." And in our interview he asked me about a principle that I had found in our reading, and I told him that one that I had found was, “They shall not be ashamed who wait on the Lord.”  And he asked me what I thought the scripture meant, and I told him, that if I wait patiently on the Lord, he will help me get through my trials and afflictions, and he told me, yes, and it also has another meaning.  He asked me where the word wait came from, and I told him that I did not know, and then he asked me, "well, what does a Waiter do, like in a restaurant", and then, I understood, he SERVES and I thought, “oh ok now I get it”, and I thought that was pretty cool, that waiting on the Lord, can also be interpreted as serving Him.

I did get your pictures, thanks.  I do not have my camera, but did not take any pictures this week anyways, I will try to take some this week. Another big event of this week, is that the birds had little babies again, and I love to watch it when their parents feed them, and they all are screaming and trying to get the food, while watching this morning, I realized what I am going to do when I grow up, I am going to be a BIRD WATCHER, yep that´s right a bird watcher, just watch them all day long. The Urdiales family has a ton of animals at their house and I have really come to like animals a lot more since I have been out here in Mexico.

Tacos, Trains and Tostados

Tendremos un bautismo en dos semanas.  Si Jenifer estara bautizada, pues, el examen, estuvo bien, mi hizo saber que necesito estudiar mejor los otros capitulos de pme. Come le fue su semana?

si, las recibi, estoy leyendo el suyo ahorita, 38 en la capilla ayer, incluyendo 3 investigadores y 2 miembros menos activo, y un buen que no vinieron, pero bueno, que puede hacer.

I am sorry, but I am going to speak in English now so that I will be able to write more quickly and because I have been feeling rather frustrated with my Spanish lately. I thought that it would be one long process of just continually getting better at it, but I guess it does not always work that way. 

This week went ok , at least at the end of it, the middle of it was quite tough again, the whole Tuxpan, very few members, none who can accompany us to the lessons sort of mentality got to me a little bit. 
We have not eaten anything yet today, last monday we bought a chicken again, and it was awful.

More people came to church yesterday than did the last week. Much of that was because one of the daughters of an active couple here came from out of town with her many, many crazy kids, haha. And because 2 members of the District Presidency were there, but we will take whoever is there. Lupita and her sister Magda came to church yesterday as did Jenifer, and a less active member, Josefina came for the first time since I have been here. 

Arel Munoz got sick the other day and she was going to talk in church as well, but could not come because she was sick.   I am not sure if I told you, but she is quite pregnant, as is the wife of our branch president, and hno. Munoz, well, about the same. 

I guess this week was a typical mission week, up and down. Friday was absolutely awful, we had nothing to do, nobody was home, all of the appointments were falling through.  Satan was working hard to get us discouraged.  The good thing was, that at the end of the day we did find someone to teach. We taught Viridiana, and her son Cesar, who is 9 years old. We had a good lesson with them, I have always really liked her son, for some reason he reminds me a lot of Zack. And I felt a little bit better after that. Things have been very tough for Viridiana, she was sealed in the temple and her husband was the elders quorum president then all of the sudden he left her and their 3 kids for the second time and now is living with another woman.  Viridiana´s son is already a member. She does not have a problem with a church, but you know that it a small town like Tuxpan things get around quickly and everyone knows what happened, including an investigator we taught this week. 

 We did not find any new investigators, but we did have a good lesson with Carmen, Lupita, and Magda, this was one lesson. We read the introduction of the Book of Mormon with them, and they understood it really well and we felt the spirit strongly. They all 3 accepted a baptismal date for the 17th of August and Magda and Carmen came to church yesterday as did Jenifer who has a baptismal date for the 3rd of August. It is also Jenifer´s birthday today, she turns 11. 

Josefina, a less active member who had not been to church for a long time came this week as did a young girl and her grandmother who are from here, but are living in the state of Mexico. A less active member who just moved here from Guzman came to English Class on Saturday and afterwards bought us Tacos. We teach English classes every Saturday at the church.

I exercised all 6 days and me and Elder Hernandez went running 2 days, during one of the which it was really foggy and cool. Also these big huge trains have been passing by here lately and sometimes we have to wait for them to cross the tracks to walk to our next lesson.I really like the trains, they are pretty cool, we can hear them, but they do not bother me during the night. We ate a ton of really good tostadas with hna. Soledad, she just kept giving us more and more and more. 

The husband of Hna. Victoria died on Saturday, he was 95 years old.  We gave him 2 lessons during the week including one saturday, but when we visited him Saturday, it just felt like he was not going to make it. He was 30 years older than his wife, she was one of the first members here of Tuxpan. 

I am so jealous Mom that you so easily talk to new people at church, maybe you should move down here for a little bit, we could use some help! I taught Sunday School Class yesterday too, and felt like it went well, I always seem to be blessed with the gift of tongues when giving a talk or teaching a class. 

I have about 10 minutes left, I was thinking today about how crazy it is that Nate will be leaving to the MTC in 2 weeks, wow it is coming up fast! I really like the letter that Nate was supposed to read before entering into the MTC.

Tomorrow we have interviews with President Wagner in Guzman. Sorry but I have got to go now, have a great week! I love you and miss and think about you all of the time!