Monday, January 26, 2015

GO MOM YOU DID YOUR VISITING TEACHING! I'm dying here because Alamo has 1000 members and like 160ish are active and none of them do their visiting teaching/home teaching. There's a reason it exists, and it's because I can't visit all of them!

I know I'm out here for a lot more than baptizing a bunch of people, but it's just rough when you have the promise of the President in your face telling you that it is possible to baptize someone every single week if you do everything that's necessary. I'm just working on the becoming capable of doing all that is necessary still.

We got a family married this last Tuesday and baptized the nonmember husband this Sunday. Everyone in the district baptized someone!!

Anyway we also got a few other people in church, including this awesome 11 year old named Edson who started reading the Book of Mormon, stayed for the baptism service, and thinks the church is awesome. He understands like everything we teach right off the bat its the coolest thing. Anyway in other news? Very sadly a big family we were working with just stopped cold progressing, lost interest and don't want to do any of our commitments, so we have to let them go and hope one day some other elders will be able to teach them again.

Hope everything keeps going well for you guys.

Elder Wadman

Monday, January 19, 2015

[Note: items in blue brackets have been added for clarification] 

Hey guys!

GO CATS!!

The weather is weird. Sometimes it's nice, sometimes it's cold, usually it's wet. I have to de-mud my shoes like every morning. It's weird to hear scriptures in Spanish. I share 3rd Nefi [Nephi] 18:18 a lot, but it sounds a little different en Español. Prayer is a huge thing. The people who do it every day progress, given that they have interest, the people who don't, well they usually don't. We did have some more luck this week! We got 4 people to church! Although one of them was a little bit late..

Anyway, we're having a really good time of things, and learning how to work much more effectively. The problem is there is way to much to do every day and you can only even attempt to do it all if you did things right the day before. We have to contact a lot every day, but we can only do it if we got references the day before, and we have to teach and put a baptismal date with 2 people a day and then continue teaching them on a daily basis, but if we stop contacting we don't get the news we need, and if we don't ask for references or they don't want to give them, or none of the contacts are home or... etc. etc. I'm realizing a missionary who's actually successful actually has to be good at basically everything and I'm not good at most things so that's been rough... I'm just already looking at the deadline of going home wondering if when I get there I'll really feel like I did and became what I could.

In other news, even though they usually just say it, I'm actually in the best mission. We baptized more people last year than any other mission in Mexico. (and you can't compare us with Brazil because they have different rules). I don't want to get on a high horse and say we're the best and all that, just wanted to mention that I'm really blessed with a mission where people are ready to accept this gospel, although right now I feel like I haven't done all that I could have. That baptism every week goal is still pretty out of reach it seems, although we're getting closer.

I don't want to talk a lot about numbers, but since I'm just starting out I figure I'll let you know that my goal is to baptize 104 people here in Mexico, one for every week of my mission (although I'll finish my last change 3 weeks early because of how the transfers fall and I had 6 weeks in the MTC [Missionary Training Center] so technically I only have 95 weeks) and I have currently only baptized 7. I still think it's a goal worth shooting for, although I doubt I'll mention it anywhere other than in my journal if I make it. Let's hope I learn how to be a more effective missionary so I can really help some more people change and prepare themselves to make temple covenants (we baptize with the temple in mind). Time and effort will tell!!

I love you guys and wish you well! Sorry I don't have any photos with me!!

Elder Wadman

Monday, January 12, 2015

Good to hear from you guys!

Elder Pedrero and I are having a better time of it, although we're really getting bummed out by how often people are falling through after we start teaching them. Anyway, I knew Bishop Stewart would probably leave during my mission, but it's so strange that it already happened! He put so much work into that calling though, so I'm glad to know he can have a bit of a break. I have to admit, here in Mexico I haven't really seen that ¨spark.¨ The difference is either the people hate us because we aren't from their religion, are too busy or disinterested to let us talk to them, or are already part of the way down the road. At least in my limited experience, you see changes, but not a lot of massive revelations. The best thing though is when you see that a change has happened in perspective, when they're doing it because they know they have to, not because they trust you and think it's something good. That's been something special.

One other quick story. There is a member who recently got sealed in the temple who had to go against the will of her mother to be baptized at 18. Now, her little sister has an incredible testimony and always goes to church, took a year of seminary already, and is dying for us to baptize her. She can't though, because she's 17. She asked us to go over and talk to her mom because she felt bad about the fact that she had to lie to go to church and go work with the sister missionaries. Basically the mother told us that the church destroyed her family and it was something ugly that she didn't want to talk about. That was kind of saddening. Anyway, the next day she sent a message that she gave her mom the restoration pamphlet we told her to give and the situation is improving. So that was something really cool. We'll see if I get to stay long enough to see what happens!

Don't have any baptism pictures to share with you guys this week, although with luck next week I will!!!

 

But here are some unrelated photos!!!

 

Who owns it? Who knows????

 

Mom won't let her get baptized, but she can still make awesome goody bags!!!

2nd world probs.... Sometimes it's better to wait for the slightly nicer one at home...

Oh and I baptized a girl named Heidi for the sisters in the ward. I was chosen by the little girls in her family because I looked strong. Don't think they knew my name. This was our adventure filling the font the night before. we leave the water for months at a time and so we cleaned it last Saturday.
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Monday, January 5, 2015

[Note: items in blue brackets have been added for clarification] 

Hey guys!!!

Today we made a gigantic lasagna and I am stuffed, but very content!

Basically we worked like crazy this week and then no one showed up to church, and Saturday we dropped like 5 people who weren't progressing. We're having a rough patch right now and although I really like Elder Pedrero, I annoy him a lot. We're trying to work that out. It's weird though, because there's only so much that I can do, the rest isn't really a matter of me. We've talked and I have a few things I can change that I didn't realize bothered him, but unfortunately a solid half of it is in his court, and I can't do anything to affect it. I think we'll get there though, and I'm really hoping we can get some things going. We're marrying a family this Saturday, but we can't get the nonmember husband baptized until he has some more assistances [attendances] at church, so that's likely going to be the 18th. We found some guy we thought was a member but isn't who speaks English and lived in the states for 27 years. We're sooo gonna baptize. He likes me just because I'm white. Haha.. that's a new idea. I get some flak for that sometimes. Not a ton to say though. It was a really hard week, but we didn't really accomplish a lot.. so meh.