February 23, 2015 -- Cake!

Well, Evalyn did get baptized, which was really cool. Her good friend who helped us teach her got to baptize her, which doubly cool for her and her friend. The taxi driver, Cesar, brought his entire family to the baptism but did not come to church and we are not sure why. We will be figuring that out this week. But he enjoyed the baptism. Evalyn is super happy, and when she entered the font she had two bracelets that my companion took and forgot to give back, which is pretty funny now.

While Evalyn and her friend were changing, the missionaries had a special number (we sang), which everyone enjoyed. Here in Mexico, people know (generally) how the hymns go but only melody, and they are unable to sing that part. We sang in parts, and it wowed them all. "Mas cerca dios de ti" is a glorious song. We sang all 5 verses, the first in unison (which no one payed attention to), and we sang the rest in parts (which everyone was enveloped for). The bishop was particularly fun to see the change, tablet to staring in an instant.

It is very normal for people here to tell you exactly what they think. People refer to people as they are. Telling you that you are fat is normal, and being socially acceptable is not something that exists. People always tell me I need to eat more, because I am enflacando, or getting less fat. I do not see it personally, and my weight stabilized at 195ish for the moment, so there is that. People refer to their daughters as the fatty, little fat girl, and names similair, and their parents as the ancient, old woman, crone, the works. Also, they love to tell people exactly how attractive they are. If you are ugly, you will hear it many times when you talk to people, you get desensitized; if you are pretty, you will hear it many times, and you will get a really big head. Normal.

Quote of the week (I will try to include one every week): "Soy ateo, Gracias a dios." In English, this means "I am an athieist, thanks to god." Due to the giant catholic influence here, everyone thanks god for everything, regardless of whether or not you believe in him or what to church you attend. It is very funny sometimes.

We are waiting for the news on who is changing (or not) this Saturday.

Apparently it is a pretty normal thing to smash the face of the person who has a birthday into the cake here. I found this very strange! Here is how this happened... I am Elder Scott, innocent as to the things of the world. It is my companions birthday, and the first thing he tells me is not to tell anyone it is his birthday. Well, ok, however you want it man--your day. So we go about the day, trying to be normal. Three member families have, somehow or the other, discovered it is his birthday. The first one happens after the lunch of the day. The sister brings in a cake, and everyone gets out their cameras. We sing happy birthday, and then they tell him he has to take a bite. I am sitting at his left, Elder Uribe at his right, and the other people on the other side of the table. He does not want to do it. He has everyone but me stand up and step back from the table. I just want to eat the cake, so I want him to take the bite so we can eat. He tries and fails 3 times to take the bite. On the 4th try, he goes in, and Elder Uribe jumps a couple of feet in order to slam his face into the cake, which happened in something like 2 seconds. Then he jumps back and everyone starts cheering. I started, confused, and then started laughing because his face was covered in icing. I had never seen anything like that before. Twas a new experience. :) The second family made us eat dinner with them. I said made, and they found us, brought us to the house, and fed us delicious gorditas. The 3rd had us come to their house and sang the Mexican version of happy birthday, which the missionaries did not know, and we ate more cake. I was a happy camper!

In other news, church now start at 10 because all the people who live in presidentes The colony farthest away from the chapel need an extra hour in order to try to arrive at church on time. It helped a lot of people get there. The Zuñiga family are officially reactivated after a lot of time and missionaries trying to get them to come to church. We were the succesful ones! Muahaha! Lots of people come to church now. The Paz Martinez family is waiting for the 28th, the day after the free marriages so that they can all get baptized. Woohoo! Well, that is about all I have right now. Until next week,

Saludos, Amor, y Todo que puedo ofrecer a tí,
Salutations, Love, and All that I have to offer you,
Elder Scott

February 16, 2015

Unfortunately, the free marriage promotion doesn't go into effect until March 27th, which means that those who use the service are not married until this date. That makes many of the baptisms we had planned fall through. But after March they can get baptized (they still want to, they will just have to wait.) So the Paz Martinez family cannot get baptized. :( Also, the investigator that our mission leader forgot to pick up (Diana) has stopped talking to us, and her neighbour tells us she is not home when we can see that she is in the house--wierd, but apparently neighbours sometimes decide to live in each others houses here in order to sell things like churros and tortillas. Fortunately, Evalynn has continued to listen to us and is super excited about her baptism saturday. :)

We had a great wierd experience; we contacted our taxi driver Saturday night, gave him the plan of salvation pamphlet, and invited him to church. The next day he arrived at the chapel at 8:00 sharp, and proceeded to tell how he ended up there to a couple of the members (the members here are really great, they talk to each other and help out people who are new a lot). He told the member he drove angels home last night, they gave him the pamphlet and he felt really blessed, so he came. He arrived at his house at around 1 o clock in the morning, and WOKE UP HIS CHILDREN SO THAT THEY COULD READ THE PAMPHLET TOGETHER. His wife died young, 6 months ago due to disease. Anyway, he was there in the chapel at 8:00. The meeting started between 9:00-9:15. He loved all three hours, that the young men shared messages about obedience in sacrament meeting, that someone explained about adam and eve (gospel doctrines) and in priesthood, he introduced himself, bore testimony of the things that he has heard in the church so far, and asked if he could come back next week and bring his kids. We are going to visit him Tuesday to share a message. Pretty excited.

We keep getting more less actives to come. One family that we have been visiting for a month finally came! That means we can start teaching the 8 year old so that she can start preparing to get baptized.

I am not sending pictures not because I do not have a cord, but because the computers here have viruses that delete content on memories when connected to the computer. If I try to send you something, not only will it not arrive, I will not have it either, and my memory card will be unusable. I am afraid you will have to wait for pictures until I find a safer computer location to send from. Elder Uribe (one of the other elders here) lost 300 photos when he tried to send one to his mom, and had to buy a new memory card. I think it better to wait.

Everyone loves my Balloon Elders. But elephants are a favorite of many also. Princesses they like, but they take a ton of balloons, so better that I do them little.

The singing thing happened in my last area, but right now one of the president´s assistants is going to have us 4 missionaries sing in activities. We do not know details until next Sunday.

I do not have anything else to report unfortunately.
Love you!

Saludos, Amor, y Todo que puedo ofrecer a tí,
Salutations, Love, and All that I have to offer you,
Elder Scott

February 9, 2015

The answer is in 1st Nephi 11: 16-17. I do not know what it says in English, as I only use Spanish scriptures now, but basically an angel asks Nephi if he knows the condescension of God (after he has been showed what will happen) and Nephi responds, Yeah, I know god loves all his children, but I still have no idea. I know not.

I can buy balloons here here super cheap, 70 pesos for 100 (5 and a half dollars). The ones I use are size 260. Ballon figure packets always have a number on them, the first digit represents thickness of balloon fully inflated (2 inches), and the other represents size fully inflated longitudily (60 inches). I figured out how to make missionaries (elders and sisters) with balloons. It takes 4 balloons to make an elder, and 6 to make a sister. They are super duper popular with the members. I have pictures, but I cannot send them because I do not know where the cord I use to transport pictures went, and all of the computers we can use have viruses that delete all content if you connect a memory to them. Going to have to wait for pics, sorry.

We spent more time working with less actives this week, and due to our efforts 3 families returned to church. Woo! Of our investigators, well... We had a ride planned for Diana. Our Mission Leader promised to pick her up and drive her to church, but he forgot. So she cannot be baptized on the 21st, and she could not attend. Sadness. The number of people who came this week was pretty great; we jumped from 140 to 180. The members helped us invite less actives, you see. Pretty awesome. The stake president came and asked the members to help us more. :) Happy!

We do not use English unless my companion doesn´t understand something someone said. It isn´t really all that different to have an gringo for a companion.

I do not really have anything else to send this week. Love you guys. Stay well. Don´t die.


Saludos, Amor, y Todo que puedo ofrecer a tí,
Salutations, Love, and All that I have to offer you,
Elder Scott

February 2, 2015 -- Candelaria

Today is Candelaria. Please permit me to explain. One month ago, we had the day of the Rosca de Reyes. Rosca de Reyes = Baby bread day (a charming tradition where people use a russian roulette type pastry to force their friends to do various things, including but not limited to buying or making tamales, paying the rent, spending one day only saying compliments, etc.). You know you are at your friends´ mercy if you get a little plastic baby wise man in your bread. Supposedly it is a reminder of the wise men who visited baby Jesus, but I do not see a connection. I did not get a ´´mono´´ (little figurine), but one of my investigators gave me hers. It is malformed, with one arm and the legs only, which I think is better anyways. One month after the Rosca de Reyes, we have a day named Candelaria. Candelaria = Tamale Night (an excuse to not work and also an excuse to force your friends to buy you tamales if you got one of the wise men from the giant donut on baby bread day). No matter what day this should be it is celebrated Monday so that the workforce doesn´t take the entire week off. They do no do anything else this day. Mexican traditions are great, don´t you think?

So anyways, we are doing work here.

1. Diana, one of our investigators who we have yet to teach, accepted a baptismal date, came to church, and is super excited to be baptized on the 21st. I find that a little incredible since we have yet to teach her, but she told us she asked god in prayer what she needed to do with her life and we showed up at her door. She is going through a difficult divorce right now because her husband took the kids and ran. She prayed for help and we arrived. :)

2. Evalyn is another investigator. We have been teaching her a little, and she also will be baptized on the 21st. She comes to church every week, asks a lot of questions, and really understands when we explain things, which is really nice. She has a good testimony, and she is already in Jacob! Wooh!

3. The Paz Martinez family (other investigators) bought a van so they can all go to church every week now. We are working to get the parents married on the 14th so that they can get baptized the 21st.

So, the zone is doing an activity, and there are 20+ baptisms scheduled for the 21st. Can you imagine every missionary and their investigators in white on the same day? How great would that be! Half of the people who attend would be dressed in white. We just have to get more clothing for all of these people. We have high hopes for the 21st.

So, I would like to share a question that someone asked me in church this week that is doctrinally profound, and I did not know the answer. I was shown the answer afterward in the Book of Mormon. It is the following:
Gog is a god of order. Our world is established by order, and everything that happens happens for prescribed and logic reasons. Earthquakes because tectonic plates move. Tornadoes because certain weather patterns naturally create them. Sin because with knowledge comes responsibility. Due to the fall of Adam, we have the knowledge to be able to create progeny. There are rules in this world. We cannot defy the law of gravity. All of the natural laws, we must follow, and God also is bound by these laws. So we are told by the scriptures. We know that for God, all laws are spiritual laws. He has not given us any purely physical laws. But in this life, for us, many of the laws are physical: Word of Wisdom, Law of Chastity, Law of Moses, you name it. Like us, God follows these laws. He would not ask us to do anything that he himself does not do. And we still do not live the highest laws. For reference to this, please see your nearest person who knows about the law of consecration and why we observe the law of the tithe instead. So, here is the question... The law of sexual interaction is the only way to have children here on the earth. A father and a mother are unable to have children if they do not have interaction. Their has to be a physical connection and interaction. Two men cannot have a child. Two women cannot have a child. (That is, without some major alteration) So, the question is this: how was Jesus conceived? Please keep in mind that God cannot possibly have broken the law of chastity. So, how? A Book of Mormon prophet answers this question. Lets see if any of you can answer it, you have until I write next week. Good Luck!

Saludos, Amor, y Todo que puedo ofrecer a tí,
Salutations, Love, and All that I have to offer you,
Elder Scott