"What is he, a Mormon?"-Fletch

Not too much happened this week. So we will see how this goes. 
I watched Meet the Mormons and i forgot that they have that clip from Fletch in there and now i want to watch Fletch, but anyway.

On Sunday Teresa had her baptismal interview and everything went good with that so we have been getting her ready all week for today. We are going to have the baptismal service at 7 tonight, so i wont be able to send the pictures until the next week (that is if i can find my camera charger to charge my camera in time).

An elder had to go home early for medical reasons, so we spent a good portion of Monday figuring all of that out for him. I also learned after a "pleasant" phone call to the church travel department that when someone goes home early the mission president has to buy their plane ticket and i can't. 

On Tuesday two Brazilians came to the mission, so all morning we were trying to learn Portuguese with them and i think i got pretty good at it. I can say all of 3 words. Later that day when we visited Hermana Teresa her other grandson was home and we started teaching him too, so basically everyone we are teaching is going to be a reference from her. 

I spent a lot of time in immigration this week, so if you want to know how to renew a green card or change someones direction just send an email my way and i'll fill you in on the process. 

On Wednesday as we were going home we saw a man drinking outside of the church and decided to go and contact him. He turned out to be a pretty happy drunk, but about thirty seconds into the contact i decided i wasn't gong to leave him until we took away his bottle of liquor. After about twenty minutes of talking to him, we finally got it out of his hand when we switched it with a Book of Mormon. We dumped it out in front of him and he had the most heartbroken look on his face and he got sober in that instant. After he thought about it for a second though he started thanking us and he went home happy, so it was a good experience.

On Thursday we had interchanges and i stayed in my area and my zone leader came here. He's a missionary that was in my first district and we get along really well, so we got some work done. We found three new people to teach and one of them is super excited to come to church tomorrow. We taught her brother too and her brother was unsure, but she just said "i don't care if you go i'm going no matter what." We also did around 40 contacts, so we have a bunch of references to give and a lot of people to visit in this next week.

Friday morning president and Hermana Barron decided to surprise check our house and that got the adrenaline pumping. They called us when they were downstairs, so two went down to go and bring them up while the rest of us were running around trying to clean everything as fast as we could in 60 seconds. As i was running back to my desk to act like nothing had happened, the elevator opened and Hermana Barron just yells "ha! i caught you elder Warburton!" Luckily we passed the house inspection, we just have to get blinds and window screens.

That was this week.

Que te vaya bien

Elder Warburton

Elder Warburton

México Puebla Norte

 I didn't take any pictures this week, so here is a picture from the airport last week eating Carl's Junior

¡MÉXICO!

Another week in the mexico puebla norte paper company. Sorry for the bad introduction, but sometimes i just feel like my life is the office.

This week we saw a lot of success and some pretty hard setbacks. On Monday all of the new missionaries came and it was awesome. It was so nice to not be in their shoes and to actually know what i'm doing here. it made me think a lot about how almost a year ago that was me coming and i was like "whoa i want to be one of those cool secretaries that can speak Spanish and knows how to buy tacos someday" and i'm glad to say that the day has finally come. We got to help train them a little bit and mostly get to know them and help them feel comfortable here in the mission. 

Then that night all of the missionaries that were leaving for there houses stayed the night with us. Elder Neff and I were in charge of taking them to the airport, so we basically didn't sleep because we had to be up at 1:00 am to get ready to go to the bus stop and then to the airport. Tuesday was one of the longest days ever. So we got up at 1 to get ready to go to the bus stop and take the bus to mexico city. When we got there we got elder Voci through terminal one (he was my companion my very first day in the mission and i was his on his very last) then took a taxi over to terminal two and got the other Americans through. We had about 4 hours of break time in between sending off the Americans and the Latinos, so once we got the Americans through we were ready to rest for a little bit. President didn't let us go to the temple :( so we were about to sleep when we get a phone call from President saying that an elder and sister missed their flights. So, we had to go find them and help them change their flight so they could still go home. We found out that they didn't fill out the mandatory immigration cards, so when they tried to go through the gate the airline wouldn't let them and they had to fill out the card so they missed their flight. After that all of the Latinos showed up and luckily we were able to get them all through without any problems. So as we were finish up with the Latinos we got another call from president and he said we could go to the temple, but only to buy a rock for a missionary who had to go home a couple of days later for medical reasons. We took a taxi through down pouring rain and mexico city traffic to get to the temple (one of the coolest taxi rides of my life) and were soaking wet by the time we got into the visitor center. We ended up buying the rock for the elder and got to spend a little bit of time in the visitor center. I found the sisters who gave us the reference for Claudia and Teresa (more on them later) and got to talk to them and thank them and it was a good tender mercy. It was hard being at the temple, but not being able to go in, but we just had to be obedient to what president said. Then after that we finally made it back to Puebla.

We have been visiting Claudia and Teresa this week, but mostly just with Teresa and Jesus, Claudia's son, because they are home all day. Jesus always amazes me each time we go over. He is 9 years old and has scriptures marked in his Book of Mormon about faith, baptism, the atonement, etc and every time we show up he is watching the living scripture Book of Mormon cartoons on you-tube. He is also sharing the gospel with all of his friends at school and family members, so he is basically a better missionary than we are. Teresa is also progressing really fast and is definitely going to be ready for her baptism. Claudia on the other hand basically broke my heart yesterday. She said that she talked with her husband and that they decided that they aren't going to get married until the start of the next year and i was just destroyed. Then we asked her what she understood about the law of chastity and she knew what it was all about, but didn't think that it applied to her. We left her with Alma 39 to read to hopefully help her understand the importancia of this commandment in Gods eyes. 

On Thursday we were also blessed with a huge miracle. We finally got to visit a family of 3 siblings (the parents are never home in mexico) that we have been trying to visit for along time and they are awesome. They all accepted baptismal dates and are excited to learn more, so i cant wait to see how they progress. God is always willing to bless us with miracles, but sometimes they don't always end up how we expect, so we will see where this one goes.

Today is a big Mexican holiday (I really don't know which because i just haven't gotten around to asking) so we have to be in the house by 7. Last night our stake had a huge party but the mission president said none of the missionaries could go to the noche mexicana, so we just had to take the people we are teaching and drop them off at the door.

Ahora bien no puedo escribir ni un céntisimo parte de las cosas que han pasado esta semana. Entonces es suficiente a decir "esta semana fue buena."

Adios

Elder Warburton

No pictures of mexico city because i forgot my camera 

 

Elder Warburton

México Puebla Norte

 Bowling for Elder Neff's birthday

Pampas a Brazilian grill where they bring out meat on swords.

The cooler noche mexicana party

Cooking with hna Teresa. She is just like grandma buck and is always worrying about us and giving us food, but she speaks Spanish 

The Worlds Smallest Volcano

The weeks go by faster with p day on Saturday.

Nothing too noteworthy happened this week. For starters it's basically rained every day in the afternoon. Its pretty funny how the Lords timetable works. We go out and work at different times every day, but it always seems that right as we go out to work it starts to downpour. So, i have been getting soaked almost everyday because an umbrella doesn't work when its raining sideways. On Monday we went into the center of Puebla because i talked to a doctor and she said i had to take some medicine for the ankle that i twisted a couple months back. The center is really cool this time of year and i took a couple of pictures. The "Noche Mexicana" is coming up so everything is decorated. i don't really know what the noche mexicana is because i thought every night in mexico was a mexican night. 

On Tuesday we visited the american couple that is living here for the summer and they bought domino's pizza for us. We also found a super good food place that sells burritos (which are really hard to find here in mexico). I don't really know what those two sentences have in common, but they are about food and the food here is really great. 

We have also seen some more progress with Teresa and Claudia, the mother and daughter we are teaching. We taught Claudia how she needs to get married and it might delay her baptism and Teresa was super funny and said "Well it doesn't matter what happens i'm still getting baptized the 22nd." They both really want to be baptized so we are really hoping and praying that we can help them through this challenge. Then on Friday we went back and only Teresa was home and we talked with her and Claudia's 9 year old son for a little bit. We found out that Teresa doesn't want her daughter to get married to the guy shes been with. We should hopefully be meeting her husband Sunday night and should see if he really wants to change or just keep living in sin. Hopefully we can get them both married and baptized, but it all depends on if the people are willing to act and change.

Last night we had a ward activity with carne asada. We brought some less active members that we are reactivating and we got to eat some good carne asada. 

Today we went to the smallest volcano in the world and it was a let down to say the least. It just turned out being a really funny experience and a good look into the Mexican culture. We went to get wings for Elder Vocis last pday (he leaves on Tuesday) and we got in total 155 wings and they were better than any wings you could get in the states. 

Oh and i also sent a group email out to all the stake presidents of the missionaries in our mission because our mission president wants to do a whatsapp group with them. Apparently a lot of them were replying to all instead of just me so one stake president got really mad and chewed me out over email. Who knew that i could start a group message fight between stake presidents in my mission. 

This week i'm going to mexico city on Tuesday to drop off all of the missionaries that are leaving so hopefully i can get some cool pictures. Also all the new missionaries are coming in on Monday, so it will be a crazy week. 

Hasta la proxima

Elder Warburton

Elder Warburton

México Puebla Norte

My two favorite Argentinians

Center of Puebla by night

a catholic church that had a poster on one side with the cover of the pamphlet we use to teach the restoration

Chiles en nogada that Teresa made for us. If you want to know what it is you're gonna have to look it up.

 It was only raining up and sideways in this picture

The worlds smallest volcano

Turns out the worlds smallest volcano is full of water

On top of the worlds smallest volcano 

Mate me Mató

Lets see what we got this week.

This week we have seen a lot of success and miracles.... for other areas. It seems like just about every person we teach lives in another area that isn't ours. We are teaching two college students who are a pure gold, but live in a different area. So we basically received a reference from other missionaries to teach a girl who is going to college here. So, we called her and agreed to meet with her here in the offices to teach her. When she showed up, she had brought her friend who is also studying here and we were super excited. We talked to them and asked where they are living and they both said in other places, but its easier to receive the lessons here because they are here during the day from school. So, we start teaching them and we have a super awesome lesson and they basically tell us they want to be baptized. We set baptism dates for them for the 22nd of September. I think we will keep teaching them, but they have to assist the church in their own areas and get baptized there too. Hopefully if they do get baptized we will be able to still go to their baptisms. We've also had some amazing contacts in the street that have ended up as amazing references for other areas, but hey as long as they all get baptized, it doesn't matter who found them or was teaching them.

Besides that, things have been pretty normal here. President has been have been having interviews with all the missionaries here in the offices and basically everyone has come out crying, so president continues being pure power. Elder Salerno bought 40 hamburger patties from Costco, so we have been having fun cooking up hamburgers and he eats at least one every morning and night. On Monday morning we went to presidents house for our staff meeting and there was waffles with whipped cream, so after not having whipped cream for 10 months i got to finally indulge. 

Today for p-day we went to an Argentinian store that was more just like a room in a building. We drank something called mate that is a a traditional drink from Argentina. It was basically leaves, sticks and dirt in a cup with boiling water. Elder Salerno told us it wasn't against the word of wisdom, so we just took his word for it. It was pretty gross, but the cups and straws are pretty cool so maybe i'll have to drink it again in the future. Elder Martinez, one of the APs, tried to cut my hair in the morning and he got about half way done when he realized that he lied when he said "I know how to cut hair." So, we went to a haircut place and got it looking pretty normal. We also contacted all 4 of the people working there and they all want to hear more about the church. But surprise they don't live in our area, they just work here.  

Sorry i feel like i've been slacking in my weekly letters. I'll try to make it better next week even though i say this every week.

Adios

Elder Warburton

Elder Warburton

México Puebla Norte

13 more months

An Argentinian with his mate

me, a not Argentinian, drinking dirt

Just on the balcony drinking dirt (but look how cool the cups and spoons are)

Pensando (Thinking)