One Last Ride

So, my first week in yet another transfer (probably last, hence the title) in San Cristobal, I’m on my 4th comp in this area. His name is Elder De La Cruz, he’s from Saltillo, Coahuila (up North) he just finished his training and has like 3 months in the mission. Anyways.

On Tuesday, we went to district council in the Stake Center in Coacalco. Afterwards we went to go eat Enchiladas de Mole with a family. I kid you not Enchiladas de Mole may just be my favorite food man. After we visited one of the family’s very sick family members. He has cancer and he can’t even get out of bed to use the bathroom. He’s not even 60 and he looks like his 70 or older and his eyes are yellow. It was sad to see. We gave him a blessing and we prayed with him before leaving. Later we climbed a bunch of stairs looking for some member. We finally found her house and we taught her. She had a million questions. Later that evening, we went to go visit Elvira and Juan. There story is quite long. They had been in teaching forever. We had stopped teaching them for a while cause we hadn’t seen progress. Last week however, we had a lesson with Elvira and her daughter in the Elders Quorum Presidents house after he had had contact with Elvira. It was actually a pretty good lesson and we extended baptismal invitations to both Elvira and her daughter. The lesson this Tuesday, wasn’t quite as good. They hardly said much during the lesson (Elvira and Juan) and we left after a brief message. We then went to visit our friends in the store, Gabriel and Carlos, Gabriel has been to church 3 times and we still havent had the chance to put a baptism date. We want his dad to be present when we invite him to be baptized and we havent had the chance. My goal this week was to put a baptism date (We were not able to complete said goal) so I suppose this week thats my goal.

On Wednesday we had a few lessons. We taught this really cool guy named Christian and had a good lesson. He’s a police officer and he said he was gonna share the Book of Mormon with his friends. The only sad thing was that we found out he doesn’t actually live in our mission, and the rest of the week he didn’t respond to our messages. We also visited a family with a recent convert and the family Rivero. There one of my favorite family’s in our ward. They were completely inactive but we’ve been able to get the sons to come to our English classes and church and they are extremely nice people.

On Thursday morning, we walked pretty dang far to teach our good friend Jorge. He’s got a baptismal date for 2 weeks from now. We’ve got to work a lot with him this week so that he can arrive. He still seems to hesitate at the idea of baptism. His very nice though and says he always feels very good talking to us and at church, plus he wants to change and abandon his past life. Later that day we visited Jaime.

We found Jaime last week, let me tell the story. One day me and my last companion, were walking in the street, we passed an ice cream shop and my companion, knowing I love ice cream, saw a sign that said 2 for 1 on ice cream and asked if I wanted ice cream. We went in and bought ice cream. The kid working there is named Jaime. We talked to him for a minute or two and left. Last Tuesday, we had exchanges. I was with one of my good buddies Elder Weidner. We walked into the ice cream shop again, and this time we talked to Jaime a lot more. I noticed he had a book shelf and he said he liked to read. That was obviously a great opportunity to pull out the book of mormon and share it with him. We gave him a copy and he put it on his book shelf and said he would read it. This week, we went back. We bought more ice cream and talked a while with Jaime. He said he had read a little bit of the Book of Mormon, he retained a ton of information too. He literally remembered the names of all the plates the Book of Mormon is composed of, like the plates of Nephi and Ether and stuff. It was really cool. After that, we visited Elvira and Juan. Sigh. Elvira had literally put up a Santa Muerte altar on her wall. We didn’t say anything about it, but she explained that she believes in God still, but she cant abandon the Santa Muerte because she’s been given so much by her or something like that. She said that she probably will get baptized one day but she wants to be with Juan still and stuff like that. It was a tough lesson. Afterwards we visited Armando and Paty. They were making bracelets to sell and we made one with them, it was fun.

On Friday, a couple cool things happened. We walked to a far part of our area. While we were walking I was worried that we hadn’t found anyone yet. One of my weaknesses has always been contacting in public, and I knew that was one of the only finding methods I hadn’t really tried during the week. I think God is aware that street contacting is not my favorite, cause as we were walking, I very faintly heard someone say: "good morning" (in english) from behind me. I turned around to see a guy who works in the streets. We started talking to him. His name is Hector. I briefly taught him how to say "Good Morning" "Good Afternoon" and "Good Night" in English and then we asked if he’d ever talked with missionaries before. He said no, but that he’d like to. He said he doesn't work on Saturday, so we could pass by then to talk to him. That evening there was an activity in the church. Jaime (the ice cream shop guy) and Ivan, a really cool guy who comes to our english class were there. There was a sign language class and we all went and learned the alphabet in sign language. After, we played sports with everyone. It was a good activity and awesome to see Jaime and Ivan there.

On Saturday, we went back to find Hector, the guy we contacted the day before. We couldn't find him, and I was a little sad. We kept walking to visit another member close by. She wasn't home so we sat down to fill out a survey the mission wanted us to take. As we were walking out of the members street, we saw and old woman picking up trash in front of her house. We stopped to help her and we talked to her for a while. Her name is Mikayla and she was very nice. She said we could come back this Saturday to share a message with her. She was very kind and I really hope we can teach her this week. After that, we started walking back to the church to prepare the english class. It was a bit of a long walk. On the way back, we passed the street where Celso usually is. Celso is the really cool guy we were teaching before who lately has fallen back in his alcohol addiction. I saw him, and im gonna be honest, I crossed the street and it wasn’t my intention to talk to him, but as we walked passed where he was I decided to cross the street again to speak to him. He was drunk, but not as drunk as we sometimes see him. We were honestly able to have a somewhat stable conversation with him. He started crying and he asked that if he stopped drinking if we could baptize him. We said yes and my companion gave him a large bag of granola bars some members had given us. We then offered to help him walk to another spot. He said he wanted to go to another place but the alcohol has made his legs so weak, he can’t really walk on his own. He also said that he has to wait to use the bathroom all day cause of how weak his legs are. He picked up his blankets and slowly helped him walk over to where he wanted to be. I really hope he can stop drinking. Afterwards we rushed back to the church and prepared our english class. We had a pretty good showing. Plus Jaime came again and Ivan. Ivan also brought family with him. His brother, his sister and his mom. We shared a gospel message after the class and they seemed to really like it.

On Sunday, the family who just showed up two weeks back was there which was awesome to see. They have a kid in the hospital who got shot so after the first hour they left to go see him, but they are a very nice family and we hope to go see them this week. That evening we went to the temple visitors center. We brought along Axel our recent convert, and Armando and Paty.

Anyway thats my week. See you next time!

1. Me and my comp