The Promised Land

Ill try to remember what we did this last week, but I was just asleep so the brain is a little fuzzy.

On Monday we had interviews with the mission president in his house. It was cool to be able to talk to him one on one and I asked him how I could receive more personal revelation and he showed me how he studies the scriptures and wow. I was blown away at how he gets revelation and now i know even better than before that he has been called of God to lead this mission. I've been studying how he showed me and its really helped me to improve my studies.

On Tuesday we had another lesson (finally) with our golden reference, Claudia, from the temple. This lesson was just as good as the last one and her and her mom were even taking notes the whole time. They promised to come to church tomorrow, so fingers crossed that when we show up at their house tomorrow they will be ready. We were able to work in the area more this week, but even then a lot of things always pop up. One afternoon President called me and told me he wanted to do some emergency interviews with some missionaries the next day, so we had to go back to the offices and I had to figure out his interview schedule for the next day. Of course my companion thought I was just trying to waste time, and when we got back to the house he tried to planch me (chew me out) as we were laying in bed. I wasn't going to take any of it and the next morning Elder Salerno (the weird one from Argentina) came up to me and was like "I cant believe elder Felix tried to planch you last night, but i was listening and you were answering him so well i was amazed." 

Now for the funny story of the week; its a little gross though, so not for the faint of heart. I've basically had diarrhea for most of the week and one day I came running back to the offices to go and as i'm getting close to the door to go inside Elder Neff walks out and he sees me running and I just yell "I HAVE TO POOP" and when I walked through the door i saw the president's wife and all of his kids just sitting there. I hope they didn't understand me because I did yell it in English, but i was too distracted to stop and see if they understood. 

One thing that is different here than in the other wards i've been in is that there are members from the states here. So, on Thursday we went to visit a retired couple from the states and it was a fun time. They had subway sandwiches for us, so we got to eat "an american meal" like they said. The guy talks Spanish decently well, but his wife doesn't speak at all, so my companion go to practice his English skills for a little bit.

We have also been contacting a lot of people, but all of the people that we contact that are super interested always live in another area, so at least they are going to get baptized, just not with us. 

Lets see what else happened. I got a package from home and elder Salerno stole it when we got back to the house and i took his quesadilla. I told him he had 10 seconds to give me my package or i would throw his quesadilla in the trash, well 10 seconds passed and his quesadilla ended up in the toilet and his face was priceless. he was in complete shock that i actually went through with it. Its been fun living with other people.

Today we went to Costco to buy some food so that was awesome

Adiós, les amo 

Elder Warburton

                                                                Elder Warburton

México Puebla Norte

We have a Costco close to us and i missed the food court so much

a successful Costco run 

taking out the trash

Zone Conferences and New Rules

Not much has happened since i last wrote.

We had all of the zone conferences this week and they were pretty exhausting. We had to stay up late and wake up early to get all of the stuff done that we had to get ready. The zone conferences went really good though. It was funny to see all of the missionaries react to the new rules: we cant drink coke, play soccer, watch cartoons, or listen to any music that isn't on lds.org. A lot of the missionaries had questions and were trying to bend the rules, but President Barron layed down the law. I'm always tired, but its a different tired than being out in the field the whole day.

We almost didn't have any time to work in our area this week, but every second we had, we were outside contacting. On Friday we were finally able to go out and work and we got blessed with a ton of miracles. We found a lot of people contacting. I had the impression to contact two people on the street, so i went up to contact them and they wanted nothing to do with us. Then 30 seconds later, my comp said "lets go contact them" i didn't even see who he was talking about, but we crossed the street and contacted a mom with her two kids. It was an awesome contact and we were able to talk to her a little bit and she was almost in tears telling us how she was going through some really hard stuff. I gave her a Book of Mormon, and we are going to meet with her tomorrow. Then later we had a lesson with a person we are teaching who is really catholic. We were finally able to get through to her about how important baptism is and how it needs to be done by the proper authority. She says that she wants to be forgiven for her sins and its something really powerful when we can promise the people complete forgiveness of their sins and that God wants them to repent and he will forgive them every time they repent. 

That's all that's happened since Monday. I have a lot of pictures and hopefully they send.

1-9 Conference pictures, ill send more in another email

 Adios 

Elder Warburton

Elder Warburton

México Puebla Norte

Conference pictures

                     Elder Salerno

 fulfilling my dream of being a taco chef and flipping longaniza

Monday or Another

Another week down and lots of things happened and we will see what i can remember.

To start out on Monday night we switched the secretary assignments, so i was in charge of all the materials, houses, phones, etc. So, Thursday morning i get told that i had to find a moving company in like an hour that would give us a factura and let us pay with credit card which is pretty rare here in mexico. There were some emergency changes and the sisters needed some stuff in their house. So, i found the company and then we helped the sisters move. We took all their stuff to their house and built them a bunk bed. They weren't very happy because apparently it took longer than they wanted it to, but i would say that all in all it went really well and we got it done surprisingly fast. It was pretty funny just being in the sisters house (don't worry the sisters weren't there) just setting up a bunk bed and stealing their pizza. Their room is super small, so we had a good time trying to fit 3 beds into it.

Then on Thursday night after i had been the secretary of materials for about three days and had done all of the pending work, we changed it again. So, basically I cleaned up the other secretary's mess and then he got all of the credit for it, but its all good. Now i'm executive secretary again and we changed all the responsibilities around and now i basically have nothing to do. All my stuff to do happens once a change so now i still do the work of the materials secretary because i have nothing to do. 

We got a reference from the temple during the week and yesterday we went to visit them and it was a reference of pure gold. Its an older lady, her daughter, and the son of her daughter and we had an amazing lesson with them. They invited us in and gave us some soda and food to eat, so it started off good. Then we talked to the daughter and she told us how she has some friends who are mormons and they took her to the temple visitor center and she really liked all the stuff she learned. We invited her mom over to listen too and we started the lesson. We taught about the restoration and the spirit was so powerful during the whole lesson. We thought the grandma was going to be pretty catholic because she had some pretty ginormous statues of the virgin, but then we explained about how the Church of Christ had a prophet, apostles, authority, and revelation and she just loved that idea. At the end of the lesson she had us write it down for her and both of them were super excited to read, pray, and receive an answer. It was really cool to see how the spirit plays such a big part in the conversions of the people. Without the spirit we could have taught the same things, but they wouldn't have taken any action.

Today we went to a super nice mall here in Puebla and bowled. My bowling game is still horrible, but it was fun and after we got really good tacos at a place called the Oriental that is really big here in Puebla. 

This week we have zone conferences for the mission and the president is about to drop a ton of new rules like we cant watch any cartoons, play soccer, or drink coke. Its going to be funny to see all of the reactions.

Some highlights from the Argentinian we have here in the offices: He tried to sing the song "one day or another" and sang it "Monday or another, i'm gonna get ya, i'm gonna get ya, get ya, get ya" and I haven't laughed that hard in a long time. He also likes to answer every question with "Soy de Argentina" which leads to some pretty good laughs because he thinks his country is the center of the world. 

Also i will not be writing on Mondays anymore. We are going to take our p-days on Saturdays now because that is the p-day of president. So Monday or another i'll write you all again. 

Adios

Elder Warburton

Elder Warburton

México Puebla Norte

 Bus ride to bowl 

Sleeping on the way to bowl

The bowling crew

First Week in the Offices

First week in the offices was pretty crazy. I don't really remember a lot of it right now because i don't have my notes with me, so i'll try to remember it all.

Its pretty crazy being here in the offices, because things change every second. One day all of the district leaders were here for a training and after they all came up to the offices and were asking for a ton of stuff like we were their secretaries or something. Basically the whole week has involved making copies printing out visa papers, buying random stuff that the missionaries want and having my comp just randomly giving me the phone and trying to figure out why some Mexican is yelling at me.I usually do all of my stuff pretty fast and then when I ask for something to do my comp just gives me stuff to do to waste time, so we will see how long that lasts because if there is one thing i hate its menial labor. 

We got to go to leave the mission boundaries to go the the Puebla south mission and I would like to say it got pretty crazy, but all that happened was we didn't know how to get back so we went to a park for a second, then took a taxi.

Its really fun here in the offices because the three assistants and us 4 secretaries are usually all together. The other two secretaries are super fun and as you can see from the photos below we like to enjoy ourselves. After staying up late every night and waking up early every morning, sometimes the skin just needs a little rejuvenation.

This week we didn't have a lot of time to go out and work. We have been mostly trying to hunt down all of the investigators that the sisters had because we are opening their area. The ward here is pretty nice because there are a lot of members and there are also priesthood holders, so that's a plus. 

There are a lot of good places to eat here and its nice being in civilization again. We've been having a lot of missionaries here coming and going, so its nice that we have a decent sized apartment to fit them all.

Sorry for the bad email. Next week i'll come more prepared with what happened.

Adios

Elder Warburton

Elder Warburton

México Puebla Norte

Waking up early to run

Misión México Puebla Sur

There are no rules in south puebla

Rooftop at night with the one and only elder Gonzalez

 Slumber Party! 

 Slumber Party!