¡Feliz Navidad! - Merry Christmas!

 ¡Feliz Navidad!

What a work-filled week it has been! Elder Valdovinos and I worked hard this past week, doing all we could to find and teach more people before the end of the change. Although we didn´t have too much success with teaching lots of people, we were blessed to find some really fantastic people who want to talk after they get back from vacations. We were also very blessed to baptize one of our investigators on Christmas Day! Whoo! Her name is Itzayana, she is 18, her family is the one that gives us free huaraches, and she is just super. I had the privilege of baptizing her and it was a fantastic baptismal service on a fantastic Christmas afternoon. Today, I got transferred to the other side of the mission to another area and my new companion is Elder Lozano. He is a really cool kid and is from Monterrey. Being that he is from north Mexico, he speaks really fast so it has been a little strange adjusting to his speed and accent today, but all is well. I like how my companions so far have been natives from Mexico, so I can practice my Spanish and get that much better!

Well, everything is going well here. Just gearing up to do work in this new area! Hope you all are doing well and having a good time enjoying the holidays! I love you all!

¡Ten fe y se obediente!

Todo mi amor,

Elder San Diego

Elder Lozano

Compañero y Yo 

Itzayana´s Baptism!

Itzayana´s Family

Trust In The Lord With All Thy Heart

¡Hola!

This was a pretty tough week. Pretty much every appointment for every day fell through, leaving us pretty disappointed. But it´s ok! Everything is always alright because we just keep working away and inviting people to come unto Christ and take part in their salvation. We knocked a bunch more this week and found some more new investigators including this cool family of four. Not too much more to report this week other than that. We worked and had a great time doing it. On Thursday we had our mission Christmas party and had a fun time. Sunday was the birthday of that wonderful woman who gave birth to me, whom I lovingly call my mother! I still keep getting older but she always just stays 34 years old. I don´t know how she does it! 

On a spiritual note, I want to share my favorite scripture. In Proverbs 3:5-6 we read,"Trust in the Lord with all thy heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding; in all thy ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy paths." It is such an easy thing to follow the counsel this scripture gives us, but sometimes we just make it so hard. That is one of the challenges of ourselves that we all have to conquer in order to truly find peace and that pure happiness that comes from following the counsel of the Lord. We are like rebellious teenagers. We think we know it all, that we have all the power and capabilities to do what we want and that our way is the best way. What we must learn from this scripture, however, is that we must first trust with all of our heart and lean not unto our own understanding. As we truly trust in the Lord with all the faculties of our heart, and not worry about what we know or what we think is best, we come to find that the Lord´s way truly is the best way we can possibly take in our lives. From my own personal mortal experience, I know that my parents have always suggested the best possible route for me to take. In the end, however, it was always my decision to make and my consequences to suffer and pain to experience if I decided to try my own way which turned out to not be the best. I also know that when I followed their counsel, it was always much easier to do something and there were no difficulties to face. This is the same with our Heavenly Father. He will always let us know what is the best way because He already knows through experience what really is the best way. But, He will never make us follow with His suggestions. The decision is ours to make. We can choose pain and misery from trying to rely on ourselves and try figure it out on our own, or we can simply humble ourselves and take the advice of a loving Father in Heaven and make it easier for ourselves and cause ourselves less pain. So, once we have trusted in the Lord with all our heart and have put aside our pride and imperfect understanding so we can better follow the perfect love and understanding of God, we must acknowledge Him in all things, giving thanks for our blessings and for our trials, which refine us, and asking humbly for His guidance and direction in our lives. Then, if we do all this, we are promised that He shall direct us in all that we do and that, above all, we will have His help, love, and Spirit to be with us.

Well, as we near this time of Christmas, my wish is that we all can reflect on the love of Christ for each and every one of us. He came to us of humble birth. We can come to Him in humble spirits. He taught. We can listen and believe. He was perfectly obedient. We too can be perfectly obedient. He showed us the way. We can walk in it. He sacrificed all for us. We can gain all through Him. Merry Christmas everybody. May you all love one another and may we all strive to be perfect, even as our Father in Heaven is perfect. Remember all that Christ came for, and all He promises us hereafter. I love you all!

¡Ten fe y se obediente!

Todo mi amor,

Elder San Diego

Torta, yum.  This is a torta cubana which has hot dog, ham, egg, white cheese, yellow cheese, and another type of meat that I can´t remember the name with tomato, avocado, and chipotle sauce.  To say the least, tortas here are pretty good.

Faith Precedes The Miracle

Hey hey hey!

What a great week it has been here in Mexico! Lots of success, lots of failure, but all throughout, lots of happiness.

Last Tuesday Elder Valdovinos and I knocked for the most part of the day and had a good time. We also found out that our investigator Monica and her daughters moved away so we were very disappointed with that.

On Wednesday, we had a very full day of appointments because of the tremendous amount of knocking we did the day before. We met with part of a family who we are really excited for. We talked with the mom, Rosa, and her two daughters, Eli and Anateli. They are super ready to listen to the message that we have to share. The daughter Anateli is a great example of faith to me and so I want to share her story real quick with you. Anateli is 21 years old. In July of the year, she and her family were involved in a car crash. The others came away fine, but she was left paralyzed from below the shoulders. The doctors told her that it would be a long time before she would be able to move her body again. To their surprise, she proved them wrong. She has movement in her arms now and is working day by day to regain all movement. I feel she is such a great example of faith and we can all learn from her. She has never in her head questioned why this happened to her, but has only relied even more on her Father in Heaven and her Savior, Jesus Christ. Sometimes, this happens to us in a different sense. We get paralyzed by the challenges of life and the hardships that we must face. We get paralyzed by the worldliness all around us and lose our sense of who we are. But, no matter the struggles we have, we can always be healed. Both spiritually and physically. We must turn to our Lord with full purpose of heart, which means that we must rely on Him and give Him our total trust and follow what He wants for us instead of what we think we want. By using the principle of faith, which means we have a belief in God and His ability to help and heal us and that we also ACT according to what He wants, we come to find that we are free from what paralyzes us and can move forward with Him. So, what we must do is use our faith by praying for help, reading His council to us in the scriptures, and do His will and act how He would have us act. Then, and only then, can we truly come to know God and Jesus Christ more in our lives and feel of their love for us.

Well, on Thursday we met with one new investigator, Iris, and had a great lesson with her about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. She felt the Spirit as we taught about the cleansing effect of a baptism and she committed to be baptized! Yeah! 

Friday, we talked with a big family about the Restoration and the Plan of Salvation. We have great hopes for some of them to accept a baptismal invitation. Cool story: one of the uncles (his name is Manuel) in the family is great friends with Jonathan. They run a puesto (like a little restaurant) of huaraches (words can´t describe it. it is delicious! look it up) as a family and he told us to stop by and eat one. So, we stopped by in the night and were surprised when he said that it was all free for us! Whoa! So we ate and were happily filled with Mexican goodness. Now here comes the cool part. They also told us that we can stop by once a day and eat another free huarache!! One for each! Can you say benefits?

Saturday was crazy. All our appointments fell through so we turned to plan B. Knocking! We got a few lessons and some return appointments out of it so it was pretty good. Later in the night, our ward had a talent show. So we went and had a good time with the members and some investigators who came also. Funny story: while they were trying to get the sound to work, I was just chillin like a villain with strawberry fillin when all of a sudden everybody got up and started going outside. I was confused for a little bit, as I thought they were doing some sort of game or something. I again relaxed and leaned against the wall only to feel it move like a wave. Not good. So, I thought to myself: Hmm, people are leaving, the wall feels like a wave, so, I must be in an earthquake. So, I followed everyone outside. Come to find out, it was a 6.5 earthquake but the epicenter was somewhere south of the city, so it felt pretty weak over here. Cool stuff. Later, some members challenged us to basketball. So what did we do? Accepted and beat them of course! Good stuff. 

Sunday was really good and there was a great Spirit there. Felipe and Jimena came to church and enjoyed it so we are excited to see them tomorrow. Later Sunday night, we met with a cool investigator, Hector, and had a great talk with him. He even accepted to be baptized! Woohoo!

Today was p-day again and we played soccer in the morning and now here I am writing my e-mail.

Good stuff happening here in good ol Mexico City!  I love you all!  Do great in all you do!

¡Ten fe y se obediente!

Todo mi amor,

Elder San Diego

What Are Your Righteous Desires?

Hey hey everyone!

Sorry about no update last week; we were pretty busy the whole day and I didn´t have time to write. Excuses aside, you just get to read two weeks worth of stuff!

Last week was pretty much a blur of the same thing. We knocked and knocked and taught and taught and contacted and contacted and came away with a few successes. We found this one lady, Rosalinda, through contacting. She was really cool and receptive to the Spirit. We taught her all the lessons and had invited her to be baptized numerous times, but in the end, she told us this week that she doesn´t want to be baptized. But, a cool story from last week is that we ran into one of our former investigators last week, Gilberto, in the street. We talked for about a minute and he told us to come back to his house so we could talk a little more. We were excited about that opportunity and returned and taught his two kids Daniella (19) and Christian (10) because he was a bit preoccupied. We invited them to be baptized and Christian came through and said yes to baptism. He then came to church the next day and loved it! All we are waiting on now is for his mom to agree with Gilberto and let him be baptized. So, that was a pretty cool little miracle from last week. Funny story from last week: On p-day we went to a sort-of mall place and wandered around for a bit. After a good time of wandering, we had hunger, so we went to the food court in search of scrumptious cooked things to satisfy our stomachs. You know what we ate? Chinese food. Yup, even here in Mexico City. No matter where you are in the world, they will hunt you down and try to sell you some of their Chinese goodness. What was even stranger was hearing them speak Spanish. Weird.

Anyway, as far as this week goes, we did a lot of knocking. Lots and lots of knocking. But! Good news! While knocking, we found this one man named Felipe. He invited us in and we taught him about the Restoration of the true church of Jesus Christ. He was very receptive and we had good hopes for him. When we passed by the next day to teach him again, we were very suprised. We gave him 3 Nephi 11 to read and also the pamphlet about the Restoration. He read them both and even read further than what we gave him to read and he even started to read from the beginning of the Book of Mormon! Wow! He said that he feels peaceful when he reads the Book of Mormon and that he likes it because it is direct and simple. We told him that his feelings were the Holy Spirit confirming to him that the Book of Mormon is true. We then taught him the Gospel of Jesus Christ and invited him to be baptized. He had a few questions and we solved those pretty quick and again invited him to be baptized. He said he wants to talk with his wife about it first so they can be a family about it in making this decision. So we are excited and praying for him and his family and preparing to talk with the rest of them soon and inviting them all to be baptized.

Okay, time for some sad news. None of our investigators came to church so that means no baptisms happened that happy 3rd of December. But, we haven´t doubted yet so we are just working harder to get them all to church so we can baptize them! Now it´s time for my funny stories this week. On Wednesday, I ate something called pescueso. Now I know what you are thinking, what is pescueso? Well, pescueso is a good ol thing we know as chicken neck! Yum! It was good and there was just enough meat to satisfy the mid-day munchies. Then, on Friday we got offered marijuana! Crazy kid, offering us marijuana. At least he had a sharing attitude?

Well, time for me to go. But! Some faith inspiring thoughts I need to share first. In Alma 29:4 we read about how God will grant us that which we desire, whether it be unto eternal life or unto death. All that we desire, we will receive. However, if we are not receiving what we desire, it is because we are not working hard enough for it. Thus, if we work hard for what we desire and align our will with God´s so we are both desiring the same thing, then we will receive tremendous miracles in our lives. Now go and ponder that and let God grant you blessings according to righteous desires! 

I love you all!

¡Ten fe y se obediente!

Todo mi amor,

Elder San Diego