June 16, 2016

Well I did it! I can’t believe that I actually completed my 2 year mission in Chiapas Mexico for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day saints! My Testimony in our God and Savior Jesus Christ has richly been fed and has grown immensely as I prayed, served, taught, read, sweated, prayed, traveled, served more, learned Spanish, prayed, walked, ran, sweated some more and especially prayed! haha I love the Gospel very much! It teaches us the ways of Jesus our perfect example. The one who made everything possible! The People in Chiapas have taken a huge part of my heart and I will always call them family!

 My last week in the mission was great! Full of traveling haha(: my last Monday I traveled to Tonala and spent the night there with the missionaries. Then on Tuesday I traveled to Tuxtla and spent all day with my converts and members. On Wednesday I spent the day with the missionaries of the office and with President George. We attended the temple together and had a testimony meeting and ate dinner there, after which I enjoyed a last interview with my President. On Thursday morning we woke up early and drove over to the airport where we said our last goodbyes and took our plane to Mexico City where my MTC companion Elder Rowland and I traveled together and spent about 5 hours in the Mexico airport. At about 3:45 p.m. we took our flight towards Salt Lake City where we ended our time together and met with our dear family in Utah. I was super nervous to see them! I actually did it! The day where I had always thought about as a little kid in primary, and it actually came! We then traveled together as a family to the stake center where I was relieved as a Full Time Missionary. I defiantly had a culture shock for the next few days trying to get back into everything. I am very grateful to God for this wonderful opportunity. Here's to the BEST TWO YEARS OF MY LIFE! HURRAH FOR ISRAEL!!!

Elder Portlock

 

June 6, 2016

Well in this week we have had a pretty nice time trying to find new investigators. We are still in the process. We have had a Stake Conference with President George and also President Benjamin De Hoyos, the president of the church here in Mexico. It was a great conference.  They talked a lot about the importance of members helping in the mission work and also about the faith. I truly enjoyed the talks. I have a few scriptures they used but I can’t remember them.  They are all written in a book back at my house that I had forgotten at the house. Then something quite different happened after the conference. On Sunday President George called us and offered to take my companion Elder Stewart and I here to Tuxtla, to try to save a little money on traveling, so we had quite a fine time to talk together for 6 hours in the car (:  President George is a very honorable man and I am very grateful for all of his inspiration for us here in the mission. We are now in Tuxtla and we will be here for my last zone leader conference and then we will be traveling back to Tapachula on Wednesday. Well we will be visiting a few of my old members and converts in Las Agulas today so I will be looking forward to that. And then tomorrow. Oh! And also this week and the next week we have Elder and Sister Yañez living with us, they are using these weeks to check all the houses in Tapachula, its super fun to have them over!!! Sometimes they make us food (: they made flour tortillas the other day and it reminded me of my mom’s tortillas (: yummm! 

Well I’ll see everyone home in a week and a half!!! Love ya all so much!

 Elder Portlock

 

These are the baptisms in Comalapa.  Wow!  They were my investigators, and they are now baptized.  It makes me super happy.

My watch tan line

My stuff got a bit wet.  haha

Here's a bit of Mexican money if you wanted to see.

 

We made dinner with the Matrimonio Yanez

My study table.

Our friend Dariel

This is from when Elder Oaks came.

May 30, 2016

Well this week we have decided to go and leave all of our investigators that are not progressing and to try to receive some references. The funny thing about the members is that they love to just give less active members as references and not just their friends and family that are not members... So we have ended up visiting a lot of less active members and we got to get 3 inactive families to show up to church!! The members got super happy to see them because they are less active members that haven’t been showing up for a long time. So I feel at the end of it all we have had some pretty good progress with this week. Well we are just keeping everything going well. This next week we will be looking forward to a meeting with President George and his assistants again. Well this is everything for this week and I hope you all are doing well!! I love you all so much! see ya soon(:

Elder Portlock

So this is the rock I bought here, it's pretty cool, the tree of life.

This is a picture of what the public transportation looks like.  ahahahaha.

May 23, 2016

This Week in Tapachula we had our last multi zone meeting! President George came down with the assistants and we learned a lot of new stuff! We changed a lot of new rules of the mission! Oh! And we’re going to be getting new mission pamphlets to teach with! They are really awesome! The only thing is that they’re in English and the church has not made them in Spanish yet, so we just had one pamphlet to read and to see it, so that’s pretty cool! And then later in the day we had a meeting with President George and the stake president about closing and reopening areas here in Tapachula.  I love being able to help President George.

On Friday we traveled up to Huixtla and worked with the stake president for the day.  We had a few references and we found a lot of people to teach. Unfortunately, we won’t be going down there a lot, but we’ll go down next week to help some more!

We have this family here named Montenegro. We baptized the little girl named Valeria about 2 months ago and they are amazing. We have been working with the ward council about buying a wheelchair for the mom because she had an accident a few years ago and can’t walk. So, this week we were teaching them in their house and all of a sudden a really nice member walks in with a wheel chair and says this is for you(: my dad only used it like 8 times and then passed away, so it’s still brand-new. Wow! Patricia was super exited and stared to cry! I really love this family, were really helping them out a ton (: 

We are also teaching Patrocinio, he is this old man who is just super nice.  He has been coming to church very often and wants to get baptized on June 11, so we’re working with him (:

 OH!! And on Saturday I got a call from Comalapa and it was Itzel!!! She said that she is getting baptized! Wow I was super happy! Then on Sunday Yeni and her brothers showed up to church! Wow I was super exited to see my friends from Comalapa  (: I love the mission so much!

So that’s about the rough draft of what happened here in Tapachula this week! Oh! ya, I sent of another package home on Thursday! So we’ll see when it gets home (: let me know! I love you all so much! GOD SPEED THE RIGHT! See ya soon (:

Elder Portlock

Want some sugar?  This is all cana of sugar!!!!  There was SOOOO MUCH!!!!!  Getting ready to be processed!  I'mmm pretty sure the workers get diabetes!  Haha!

 

This is a big tree.  haha

Yeni came to church!

This is the family Montenegro that we have been teaching!  They're really great.

I cut the grass this morning.  haha!