Weekly Email

So this week was pretty unique.  On Wednesday, we had a zone conference.  This is when all the missionaries in the area gather together and the mission president, his wife, and the assistants come and share talks and messages with everyone.  It is basically a training conference.  It is all centered around how we can become better missionaries.  That's what a normal zone conference is, however, on Wednesday, we had the opportunity to also hear from one of the leaders of the church, a member of the 70s, Elder Valenzuela.  It was way cool.  The conference was held in Tierra Blanca, in the same church where we have our weekly district meetings.  All the Elders in the Tierra Blanca Zone, my zone and all the Elders in the Tuxapec zone gathered there.  There were about 30 of us.  I think Tuesday was the conference for the rest of the missionaries in Veracruz (but I am not sure about that because that is a lot of missionaries)!  Regardless, it was way fun to meet all the other missionaries and to see two familiar faces, Elder Byrne and Elder Jesus, two missionaries from my generation, that I befriended in the CCM.  It was fun catching up with them.  I also got to meet the trainer of my trainer, Elder Seely.  Elder Mendez has told me a ton about him to it was cool to put a face with the legendary Elder Seely.  He's from Colorado and was a professional snowboarder before the mission.  Right now he is a zone leader over Tuxtapec.  Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to bring our cameras so I don't have any pics of the people I met.  But it was fun!!

Thankfully, the mission has a facebook page and posted this picture!!

The conference itself was also awesome.  The beginning was pretty stressful because I was tasked with sharing a spiritual thought.  I was pretty nervous about sharing a spiritual thought in front of one of the members of the Seventy ... in Spanish!  I think it went well.  I shared Alma 26:12 and talked about how Ammon just converted a whole city, the king, thousands of people and yet he gave all the glory to God.  Then I said something along the lines of how I know God is helping us and if we recognize His hand in our work, we will be blessed.  More or less that was my spiritual thought.  I messed up the conjugation of one word, but I fixed it real quick!  After that, President Palmer and his wife shared talks, then the wife of Elder Valenzuela followed, and for the last two hours Elder Valenzuela talked with us.  He's quite funny and his words were very powerful. He talked about teaching with the Spirit and teaching with unity in our companionships!   But yeah, that was more or less the zone conference.  

Outside of zone conference, it was a fairly normal week ... just slightly discouraging.  This week none of our investigators were able to come to church.  We were planning on at least four but none of them showed up.  So I guess we will find out why when we visit them tomorrow.  But, focusing on the good of the week, we were able to help Hermano Julio by helping him paint the logo of a business he is starting.  He is starting a water purifier business, all the water here is well water so the drinking water is purified and then distributed in these big jugs.  So he set one up near his house, where there isn't a water purifier for quite a distance.  So it should be pretty successful. Besides that it was a normal week, lessons, contacting, my piano class every Thursday, and studies.  That's all I've got this week.  Miss you all!!  Have a great week!!

Elder Gurney