December 22, 2014
Christmas week!!!
I'm so exited for this amazing week! Things will definitely be
amazing! I get the chance to call my amazing family on Thursday and see
how things are doing with the family haha(: Well this week was awesome!
On Tuesday we had our Christmas program for the
mission. We only had two zones; the Grijalva Zone and the Mactumezta Zone, which was a lot of fun! I finally got to say hi to a friend in the
mission! Her name is Hermana Wilson. We played the violin together in High school, and it was pretty weird seeing her here and
saying hi, but she is doing great! She has about 11 months in the
mission. Also there at the activity we had a few fun things that we did,
also a testimony meeting. and after that we went to the temple! OH man!
I love the temple! I first spent a bit of time
doing confirmations and after I got to go through a session with all the
missionaries and President George. It was a day to remember. haha When we
got to our house that night we were very tired! And I asked Elder De
Jesus ¨elder do you have the keys?¨and he said
¨no its your day to have the keys¨, I started looking for they keys in a
panic because I thought he had them. I looked through all my pockets and
all through my bag and I didn't have them. ¨Elder, I don't have the keys
you have them¨ haha then he started going through all his pockets and his bags, ¨elder! I don't have them
either..... ¨ oh crap! its really late and we don't have the keys, how
are we gonna get in????? we sat down for a second because we just didn't
know what we were gonna do, and we had no idea where
the keys were! Chapletepech, where the temple is, is about 20 to 30
minutes away. So we knew we couldn't go back there. Then I had a idea
haha, our back door is unlocked because we forgot to lock it, and the
window is broken so we could slide our hand through
it and open the door! but... the only thing is how are we gonna get up
to our house? We live above someone. So we quietly asked our neighbors
who are always awake if we could pass through their house and then walk
to the back of our house through theirs. Well
we did that, but we thought how are we gonna get up to our house??? so
in the dark we looked around for something we could use, and just to our
luck we found a small ladder. haha so we used the ladder to get half way
up our house and then jump from the ladder
to grab our ledge, from there we could lift ourselves up hahaha, well we finally got into our house and the best part is that we did it in our
suits hahhaha. I felt so ninja. Well, the next morning we called the
assistants and they said they found our keys so
tha was a relief, the only thing is that we had to go back to the temple
to get them and go all the way, so that was a bit of a bummer, but
it's all good. We have our keys(: Well the family wasn't able to get
married. It was a bummer so were gonna wait till January in about 2 to 3 weeks to see if we can get them married. But their son was able to be baptized (: so we had a baptism on Saturday and I
baptized him. His name is Christian. Wow! I'm so happy that he made this decision. I have seriously been looking forward
to his baptism because when I started the mission, Elder Muñoz and I were
teaching his mom. She had the desire to be baptized and had a date to
be baptized the first week in October, but she didn't want to get married,
so she didn't get baptized. and Christian
at the time didn't want to listen to us. He didn't believe in God at all.
But at the time he wouldn't talk to us. But I think he always listened to
us. Their house is really small. It only has two rooms. The house is about
the size of my kitchen back at home. Very small.
So he would always watch TV . During that time I think he learned a lot.
One evening we started teaching the family and Elder Muñoz and I told
him we wanted to talk with him too. He said no because He didn't believe
in God. Elder Muñoz and I took off our badges
and said that we weren't gonna be missionaries for the time we were there. We just wanted to talk like friends with the family. He grumpily
said OK and we started talking. With another few weeks passing by he
started attending the table to listen to us but never
talked and didn't want to participate. One lesson we had with the family
we decided to teach lesson one again because we had taught everything
and we thought that the mom didn't really remember much of it. To our surprise she didn't, so it was a great opportunity.
We started to ask questions about if she remembered who Joseph Smith is
and what are the role of prophets, also we asked if she remembered what
the great apostasy is. She didn't remember but Christan started to speak
and was able to answer all of the questions.
WOW he knew and understood what everything was. I have never seen an
investigator be able to remember so well what we taught. His mom was
shocked because he knew way more than she did! Also the fact that
he had been listening. Ever since he started to
pay more attention, and he slowly started to grow in faith. two weeks
ago his prayers started to seem more real! He is amazing and he has
changed a ton! He has seen so many blessings in his life and in his
family. Their family is amazing and always attend
church and always want to hear more from us. He has been so happy that
he has God in his life. He was atheist and now a Mormon. He is amazing
and I'm never gonna forget him or his family. We have a date in January
for the baptism for his mother, She asked Elder
De Jesus to baptize her, so we are just waiting now.(:
Other things this week (: haha on Sunday I gave a talk, it was
my first talk here in the mission. I was so scared hahaha the first
minute in the talk I was shaking a bit, but after that I was fine, I was
scared because I had to talk in Spanish, haha
but I know more Spanish than I think I do. My Spanish wasn't perfect at
all but the people knew exactly what I was saying. So it was a great
experience. I talked about the blessings of missionary work. So I talked a lot about the importance of member missionaries,
I shared a few stories that I had in the ward. and I also talked about
the language and how its my spiritual language and how blessed I feel
that I have the oppurtunity to learn it. I also talked about my father
and that he also served a mission in Spain, Madrid
and talked about the blessings in his life and how it had affected me,
especially that we both speak Spanish and how happy we are.
Other than that things have been pretty chill here in Tuxtla. It's cooled off a bit since October but its still very hot hahaha. The
sun is very hot haha. Well, I think that's about it for me this week. I'm
exited to see how this week will be, and also
exited to see how all of you are doing(:
Con Amor Elder Portlock
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| Our beards |
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| The mission activity |
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| The temple |
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| Baptism of Christian |
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| Eating with Mario |
