Cool Women of the Church

Another fast week here in Zacatlan.

On Tuesday I had exchanges with the district leader and went to his area, Chinaughuapan. It was a good time and for the food that day we had money, so we bought a chicken and a turkey leg and it was so much food we hardly made a dent and all for 150 pesos. 

The next day we had interviews with President Nelson and it was only a little scary when in the middle of the interview he said he was going to role play an investigator and I would have to find out his need. I had some time to talk to Hna Nelson too and she is super funny. She has so many stories that are crazy, but if you knew her, you would know they were true and could only happen to her. She can hardly speak Spanish and she told us how one day she was fighting in Costco because they overcharged her 20 pesos (a dollar) for about an hour and other funny stuff.

Some good news this week is we were able to see an inactive family come back to church. They had a lot of problems with our current branch president, so we told them to call the mission president because he is like the stake president and we found out this week that everything got fixed. We had a family night with them and shared a lesson on the atonement and then they had food for us. You might remember from some of my first weeks here, but this is the family that always makes us amazing food and they didn't disappoint this time either. 

We also went to visit a member that I have never seen before and it turns out that none of her family is baptized. We started talking to her son and turns out he is a Pentacost that only wants to destroy our religion. It was honestly a good testimony experience to see how our religion makes 100% of sense and his, well not really. He had pulled some stuff off the internet about how the book of Mormon was not true and it was really just grasping at straws. We left him with the invitation to read and pray and we will be going back to visit this family again this week.

On Saturday when we were walking in the street we passed a group of about 50 women and they started yelling at us, so at first we thought they were a group of Jehovah Witnesses ganging up on us, but then we realized that they were just a ton of relief society sisters. We talked with them for a bit and more and more kept showing up until there were about 100 in total. It was a good tender mercy to see all of these strong sisters and also to be mini celebrities for a second. 

On Saturday we also taught an English class for the first time. Only one guy showed up, but we are hoping to get lots more this week.

That's all this week

Adios

Elder Warburton

1. Some outdoor study time

2-the rest, piedras encimadas. Basically a place with rocks and pine trees and it felt like I was at home in Utah camping with the family.

Elder Warburton

México Puebla Norte

Fish and Popcorn

Another good, tiring week here in Zacatlan. Nothing too wild happened. Just a lot of walking in the hot sun.

Ok lets start with Tuesday. On Tuesday our district leader was here on exchanges with the other elders in Zacatlan. When we went to the comida they brought out us big grilled fish. They were super good, but as we came to find out the district leader, Elder Mendez, does not like fish at all. He was basically dying to get it down and when we left he was sick for the rest of the day.

We had a family night with some members this week and to our disgrace we couldn't get the fire lit. We were three eagle scouts trying to light this fire and for whatever reason it would not light. I blame it on the wood and paper being bad. After about 10 minutes of trying to light it, their neighbor came out and doused it in gas so we were good to go. Once we got the fire lit it ended up being a good family night and we roasted marshmallows and shishcobos (I know I just spelled that all wrong, but its ok). 

As for how our investigators our coming, we've had some few interesting experiences. We have one Investigator who is really great and is progressing a'lot, but for some reason she wants her son to do his first communion. She wants her and her son to be baptized, but only in August once they have done his first communion. We haven't really had time to explain to her how this is kind of crazy, but we are going to visit her tomorrow and explain a little more about how she wont be betraying God if her son doesn't do his first communion. Then we have another family in which the wife is part of the church of the 7th day and husband isn't. The husband is really interested, but the wife doesn't want to pray to ask if our church is true because she basically doesn't want to change churches and annoy God because she is changing churches so much. So, we are working with them little by little to try and help them progress.

On Saturday we went with the branch in the morning to do service at a hospital. We prepared food and then gave it away to all the people waiting outside the hospital. It was a good activity and we were able to strengthen the branch and get some good references. Then after the activity we went with some of our investigators to watch the Joseph Smith movie and it was a really good lesson. We were able to clear up their doubts about Joseph Smith and they felt the spirit. Then we started a fast with them to help them get their money together for their wedding. However, the next day ended up being sad when they didn't show up to church. They broke their only phone, so we don't have any way to communicate with them, but we will have to visit them and see what is up.

That's about all this week. 

Adios

Elder Warburton

 The branch before the service project Saturday

 Me and my favorite member of the branch Palomita. Her name is Paloma which means dove, but since she is little everyone calls her Palomita which means popcorn. By far the highlight of the week was helping her up some stairs so now we are cuates (buddies) for life.

Bible Bash Pt. 1

Hola friends and family,

A good week here in Zacatlan also the space bar doesn't really work so if words are stuck together sorry.

My new comp is pretty awesome. He is from St George and we have a lot of the same interests (star wars and quoting movies). He has about a year and a half in his mission so he knows what he's doing. 

We found out an investigator from Zacatlan who lives in our area, so we started teaching her this week. She is super awesome and has a baptism date. We basically climb up a whole mountain every other day to see her and the view is always amazing (pictures attached). We also helped her make mixiotes for mothers day and she gave us some to take home and eat. She is progressing really great and came to church with her son on Sunday.

As for Hna Rosa who I wrote about last week.... Lets just say things hit a rough patch. She was converted to my other comp and he promised to pay for her wedding, but when he left and didn't pay for the wedding we were left in a bit of a rough spot. She also watched an anti-mormon attack Joseph Smith video on YouTube, so now we are working to resolve her doubts.

We are also teaching another guy who basically has based his life on his girlfriend and its a long story that basically ends in don't put anyone, even your significant other, above God so that is my advice for you all this week.

On Saturday we also got "Bible Bashed" its in quotes because this guy didn't know genesis from apocolips (revelations). He basically tried to tell us the first prophecy in the Bible is in Genesis 3:15, look it up and you'll realize its not a prophecy at all, but a promise from God to Eve. He would ramble on and when we pulled out verses that proved our church is true (Amos 3:7, Mateo 10:1-2) he would just change the subject. It was pretty hard not to laugh because the whole time he was saying stuff like "I'm sorry i'm humiliating you guys,don't take it personal" and "I need to teach you guys what the bible really says." All in all a pretty fun time, but its too bad he wouldn't pay attention to us. 

The highlight of course was talking to the family for Mothers Day.

That about sums up this week.

Adios

Elder Warburton

An awesome view of Zacatalan

 another cool view staring yours truly

Part of an awesome mural wall here

Mixiotes, blueberry soda, and kermit the frog. Does life get better?

To answer that question, yes it does work cutting grass with machetes

Smores and a campfire for p-day

Cambios and dog meat

Another week gone by.

This week we saw some really amazing progress in two of our investigators, Rosa and Hugo. We had invited them to baptism before, but this week we set a firm date for their wedding and baptism, may 19th. Rosa has been reading all of the pamphlets and praying and she has a testimony of everything we have taught her. Hugo has to work in Puebla to pay off some of their debts and we left him with all of the pamphlets and we think that he is reading them because Rosa says that he has changed a lot. 

We also saw this week how Satan works in dirty ways. We found a family that has listened to the missionaries before. We thought that they were going to be a miracle and pure gold, but we haven't been able to talk to them for one reason or another. One of the times that we went by to talk to them a drunk guy came up and started to talk to us as we were outside talking to the mom of the family. The mom went back in to wait it out while we tried to get the drunk guy to leave as soon as possible. After we finally got him to leave, the father in law of this family came out and started to talk to us. He literally talked for an hour straight without stopping. We tried to say some stuff, but he would just cut us off. We would shake his hand and start to leave and he would just keep going. We finally got away from him by saying we had to leave and leaving the area where this family lives.

Another highlight of this week is we got to throw away our bad milk from the week before. Lets just say that our whole apartment smelled like rotten milk that night. Now for more highlights from the food category. We thought it would be a good idea to buy some tacos one day when a member gave us some money because they couldn't have us over to eat. So, we got the tacos and they were good to start with, but they gradually got worse and worse. We were basically dying after and have come to the conclusion that the meat was most likely dog or horse or cat. You decide. 

This week we also got a reference from one of the hnas in the ward. She took us to visit her friend and the family of her friend and they are great. They came to church Sunday and we can already tell that they are going to progress really fast.

Now to top it all off: Cambios. We had cambios today and I am staying here in Zacatlan, but I got a new comapion, Elder Emerson. He is from St. George and has a year and a half in the mission. I will try to send photos if I can, but these computers are not the best.

Adios 

Elder Warburton

The watchdog at the bank

Tacos

Tacos

Tacos

My new comp Elder Emerson

A catholic church with a giant statue of mary (apostasia)