Last week of March

These past few weeks have gone by super quickly, this week especially! On Wednesday night, the Assistants of the President came to our area to work with us on Thursday and Friday, one of the Assistants is my future roommate, Elder Barnum, so it was super fun to talk with him. Friday was our Zone Conference and we learned about the importance of talking always about baptism in the lessons to better prepare the people we are teaching and how to invite them to baptism with more power. It was a good conference, Elder Cervantes and I did the training of always talking about baptisms in the lessons and I think it went well. 

The Orizaba Zone!

Zone unity .. matching ties!

Thursday we had an awesome experience!!! A person that we have been teaching for a long time got married!!!!!!!!! His name is Elias!!! He lived in Minnesota for a while and he is hilarious, he has really become a great friend. He got married on Thursday and Saturday he got baptized!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Elias and his wedding certificate!  We had to have to other Elders in our zone come to be witnesses!

Wedding celebration!!

Saturday another person that we have been teaching was able to get baptized with Elias!!! His name is Roberto, he's 47 and he had an incredible change.  He lived in the Ciudad de Mexico for years, he lived in the street doing jobs to gain enough money to eat and to buy drugs. He was in a gang as well and a drunk. However, he moved to Orizaba with the desire to change, he lives in a little apartment and works fixing and designing shoes. A member invited him to church and he showed up hungover, regardless we talked with him and the past 3 weeks we've been visiting him often and he quickly realized that the church was true and he's super animated.  He doesn't like his picture taken so we didn't get any pics of the baptism.

The funny part about his baptism was that he was baptized by a member and that member didn't know what he was doing hahah, he absolutely dunked Roberto, and he slipped and he almost baptized himself along with Roberto. Roberto came up gasping for air and did a little screech type noise that was hilarious but awkward at the same time.  We are laughing about it but in the moment it was a bit awkward. Elias' baptism went a bit more smoothly.

Sunday was awesome too because the 13 year old named Marcos, that was baptized last week passed the sacrament and he did it with a big smile on his face and it was so cool to see. All the other kids were passing it super seriously like their dog had just died or something and Marcos had a massive smile. He's a great kid.

 

This is Marcos .. he doesn't' like his picture taken either.  So this is the only one we have with him!

The Gomez Ramos family has now come to church 4 times and the pops told us that he now has 4 days without smoking, so we are going to see this Wednesday if they are ready to be baptized in these first couple weeks of April. All is well here in Orizaba!!!! Hope you all have a great week!!!

Breakfast with Hermana Chofis.  She made memelas!  They are so good!

Elder Gurney

Photos

 Pictures from last transfer ...

Baptism of Cristian!

Baptism of Cristian with Elder Banos, Elder Dickson, and Elder Odell

with Ju and Elder Banos.  Ju lives with his grandma and is an only child. 
Everytime we visit .. he wants us to play with him!

Our famous pipe story ...

Macheteing the bushes!

Here comes my comp with the pickaxe!

A few good swings!

Attempting to stop the water from flooding the lawn!

The neighbor comes to the rescue!

The baptism of Mara!

My new companion Elder Cervantes

With the traveling AP, Elder Gonzales!  He spent the day with us!

So everyone here calls El Guero which means "white boy".  The name of the paintbrush is La Guera which means "white girl" ...so I am kissing the white girl paintbrush ... ha!

The work is going well here in Nogales!

These past weeks have been really good! Elder Baños and I finished off the transfer with the baptism of Christian!! He's a great kid, he left behind smoking like it was no problem! He said it was super hard battling the need to smoke but he would just occupy himself with other activities and he could forget about it. Luckily he wasn't a heavy smoker or anything. We passed by several times his house to see how he was doing before his baptism and every time we passed by he was doing something to keep himself occupied. For example, we passed by one day and he was cutting down a big hedge next to the house with a machete so we offered our help! We chopped it all down and then we just had to take out the trunks, so we brought out the pickaxe!  Everything was going fine until it broke... the handle snapped! So we brought out the second pickaxe, and my comp was going at the trunk when all of a sudden the hole we made started filling with water!  My comp broke the water pipe and we absolutely flooded their front lawn until we were able to find a neighbor who is really handy and he fixed everything! We got a good laugh out of it!

Besides breaking water pipes, we've been doing a lot of good! With my new companion, Elder Cevantas, we found the family Gomez Ramos, they listened to missionaries before but never went to the church.  However, this past Sunday they came and they said they're going to come next week too! It's a family of 4 and were super excited about them. We also are teaching a 10 year old girl named Mara who is going to get baptized this Saturday. We also found a 13 year old boy named Marcos whose family are members who are inactive, but he is super excited about the church, he even went to mutual with the young men and had a good time. He is on date for the 16th of March. We were super happy cause they all showed up yesterday for church.  The work is going well here in Nogales! The only sad part was that Enrique (who went to church in California) couldn't come yesterday so he won't be able to be baptized this Saturday... we will see about next week.

Tuesday was a fun day because we had the mission leadership council and talked about the mission and what we need to improve.

It was fun to see a lot of my friends and to eat waffles and pizza. The only problem was they told us Monday afternoon that we would have to go the next day to Veracruz, so we had to wake up at 4:30 to get there on time.  We also had a ton of appointments on tuesday that we had to cancel... but it was a good time so all is well!

We got bored waiting for the bus back to Orizaba and Cordoba .. so we had a little photoshoot!  HA!  with Elder Cervantes, Johnson (from Washington DC), Murillo, Hermana Meza, and Hermana Avila!

Hope you all have a great week!!!!