White Beaner

What is up 

This week went by super fast. I think yesterday was Monday.

On Tuesday we were standing outside of some house under a tree seeing what our next appointment was. This dog started barking at me so i pulled out the classic fake rock move to get it to leave. Then lo and behold some lady comes outside yelling that we are abusing her dog and doesn't do anything. That was probably the most interesting thing that happened.

We had a zone conference on Wednesday and Elder Valenzuela of the 70 came. It was a good conference. He opened it up for questions at the very end and everyone always asks the same classic questions "why does the word of wisdom say i cant eat meat in the summer?" or "if i don't make it to the celestial kingdom can i see my family?" so after they took up all the time answering those two we never got to the good ones.

We saw some awesome progress with the people we are teaching. One lives in free union. We have taught her the three basic lessons and then we talked about baptism. We said she has to get married or leave her boyfriend to get baptized and she said she was going to leave her boyfriend so that was awesome. She couldn't come to church though because her mom came to visit and her mom isn't a fan of the church, so hopefully everything is still good. With another person we saw some awesome progress too. We taught her lesson one last week and then this week we showed up on Tuesday and she asked all the normal questions "where did God come from?" and some others like that and said she didn't want to come to church. Then we visited her again on Thursday and taught the plan of salvation all normal and at the end we asked her "do you think this is true" and she said yes and we were like what. We asked her why and she said that she prayed and received an answer so that was awesome. 

The bad part is that we are officially leaving the area in one week. They are going to put in missionaries from the south mission until September and then put back in missionaries from the north mission. Who knows why, but that is what is happening. At least they have kept us well informed with what is going on. That was sarcasm. Our leaders haven't told us anything. Friday some missionaries from the south mission showed up at our door and told us what was going on and we had to show them the area.

On the bright side we are going to have a baptism this Saturday.

That's all for this week

i also didn't take pictures because i forgot my camera :(

adios

Elder Warburton

oh yeah i am also officially a white beaner (don't get offended). It was a name given to me by a Mexican ward member, so i think its politically correct

--

Elder Warburton

  México Puebla Norte

Mexico on Fire

Otra vez

Well lets start out with the fun stuff. The elders from the south mission thought that they could come to our area to meet the people we are teaching, so on Tuesday they came up (without permission) and we went to visit some people that were going to get baptized last Saturday. Long story short, we showed up to the appointment, they said they didn't want to get baptized, we told them to pray, we came back the next day, they had prayed and they said their answer was to stay in their church that they don't even go to. So, we saw a setback there, but we are going to keep working with them to help them see the truth.

We saw some awesome progress with a part member family we are teaching where the husband isn't a member and we went to visit them with the bishop and his family and he accepted a baptism date. We told our district leader and all he said was "don't be too excited he probably won't get baptized." If you haven't been able to tell i don't really like the leaders in my mission and if you didn't know why that about sums it up. Good thing my loyalty is to the Lord first.

We visited this less active family where they are all returned missionaries. One has gone super apostate and doesn't believe in the church anymore. When we showed up the family basically hid and we had to listen to him rant for like 40 minutes. Then finally we cut him off and asked for references and his mom came out and gave us a GOLDEN reference, like holy moly. We went later that day to talk to her and set up an appointment. Two days later we go to the appointment and she had brought us a big bag of food and we taught the plan of salvation and she felt the spirit. Then she came to church on Sunday and loved it and said that she is going to come again this week. So, i guess listening to false doctrine for 40 minutes was worth it to find this lady.

Side note i bough sushi at this sushi place here and it was actually really good and i didn't get sick.

This week we have had some crazy weather. It has rained super hard and last night at like 8:30 the sky literally got black. We went to go find some people last minute that weren't home, so we started running. The second we got home it started to downpour and it cut the power for around 50 minutes. However, if that were all i would be happy. The Popocateptl (the volcano) decided to do some work and on Friday it started raining ash and broken rock. We were outside like normal and we thought it was raining, but we realized it was black. Then we realized it was ash. We called the zone leaders and they told us we had to go home and stay home, so we had to be in our house most of Friday and Saturday morning. The whole time we were only saying "Mexico on fire!!"

that's it

Adios

Elder Warburton

--

Elder Warburton

  México Puebla Norte

This roof we hid under while it down poured

volcanic ash

Ash on our washing machine (don't worry it doesn't work)

We went back to some pyramids today and i found a Lamanite

Indiana Jones

Pathway to the forbidden temple 

Jenga Part 2

Bienvenidos 

Ok lets do this quick. 

So we are still in the area and president said that we are going to be here for the next little bit. He said things are going on in the church headquarters or something like that. Basically no one wants to tell us whats going on, but now we have to verify with the district leader from the south mission, but the stake president told us that part of the south mission will become the north mission so who knows. On the bright side we only packed. The sisters in the other area packed, left on Sunday, and came back on Monday. 

We have seen some amazing progress in the people that we are teaching. I don't want to spoil anything so that's all i will say. Then on Friday and Saturday everything fell apart and we thought that all the people we were teaching were done for and didn't want anything, but then everything got saved on Sunday, so we are doing good.

Funny story from this week. One of the ward members we are friends with saw that we were on a bus and he hopped on too and as he got on he yelled at us "hey what's up beaners" i guess its not racist if a Mexican says it. 

Wednesday was the birthday of my comp, so i got him a cake and we celebrated in fashion. We also taught a family that we are teaching about family prayer and their minds were blown. I guess its the simple things that can realize big changes. I also told them how whenever we did family prayer i was always busy watching a movie and had to make the trek upstairs to say it, but now i'm grateful for my parents showing me the good things in life. 

We live in something similar to a gated community, so its pretty peaceful. This week though all the cats were in heat. I thought i was going to lose my mind. All day and all night they are basically screaming at each other and going crazy. So, one morning i went outside with a pitcher of water and drenched them all. I had to do it like 3 more times, but after that they haven't been outside of our house.

On Saturday a part member family we are teaching invited over their brother and his wife for a lesson because a little bit ago they lost their 3 year old daughter. They have been really sad about it and had almost stopped believing in God. We were able to teach them a little about the plan of salvation, that their daughter is saved and were able to teach them more about the Atonement of Jesus Christ. It was an awesome lesson to just help these people start feeling the love of God again and to help them find some peace. They don't live in the area, so we passed the reference and hope that they will keep progressing. Just another reminder of how grateful i am for the Book of Mormon. Without it, it would be so hard to find peace and answers in my life and to know what's going on with everything. 

And last but not least. If you remember my pictures of playing Jenga with Sophia, you will be pleased to know that something good came out of it. Her parents aren't members, but are investigating the church more or less. So, on Sunday we went over before church to invite them and they (the parents) said they didn't have time. So, we decided to play jenga and if Sophia lost they had to go to church. I almost always lose so i think the Lord was with me during this game of jenga because Sophia lost and they came to church.

Adios lean el Libro de Mormon

Elder Warburton

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Elder Warburton

  México Puebla Norte

 My comps birthday

I couldn't get a really good picture, but we call this cat zombie because it literally looks dead, but its alive

Holy Places

Interesting week

On Tuesday the assistants called us and told us to have everything ready to close the area. So, most of the week we were filling out forms, getting the house ready, and helping our people progress.

The highlight was on Wednesday when we had a conference with Elder Holland. The north and south missions got together for the conference and it was an hour and a half of pure power from one of the Lords anointed. We all got to shake his hand one by one and as he said it was a "mini interview." He didn't pull me aside to have a longer interview, so i think i passed. He started out talking in Spanish which was super awesome. He just stood up and said "Elderes y Hermanas Dios vive. Dios vive" the spirit flooded the room and you could just feel that he was a special witness of Jesus Christ. He went on to talk about how important missionary work is, which was honestly perfect to get me to finish out my mission strong. He only got really firey for a couple minutes and leaned over the pulpit to yell at us "my mission means everything to me and it should mean everything to you too!" I felt like the entire church was going to fall down after that. He also talked about the importance of the temple and how when we go to the temple we ratchet everything else we have ever done in the church through the roof. He said that after the mission we will only keep progressing in the gospel or be worse than we were before the mission. We can never go back to being the same. That point really hit hard with me and in my studying this week I've really seen the truth in what he said. First in the Book of Mormon when it talks about Amalickiah and his Nephite followers who fell away from the church and became worse than the Lamanites. Then i saw it again when  i was reading Saints about the falling away of Oliver Cowdrey and other church leaders. It really hit home what Elder Holland said. We can either keep progressing for all eternity or end up worse than if we had never known the gospel. There is only one direction to go and its up. He taught a lot more, but that's all the stuff that really hit home with me. 

After Wednesday we were super pumped to go out and work and we worked like machines until it started to downpour. We were in a bus and it started to rain and i thought "oh its only raining a little." We stepped out and literally in 2 seconds i was drenched from head to foot. We had to go back home and change. It was one of the worst rain storms I've seen here and I've seen some big ones.

We didn't find too many new people to teach this week, but we have seen some amazing progress with the people we have been teaching. It seems like everyone we challenge to read the Book of Mormon actually reads it and has thoughtful questions which is a first ever. We are teaching one couple who have been steadily reading the Book of Mormon in these past two weeks and they have both received answers that it is true. They even went all the way to Cholula to the multi stake conference on Sunday. We are teaching another family, a mom and two daughters, who are so prepared its not even funny. The mom feels the spirit in every lesson and we taught them the restoration on Friday and she cried like 3 times. Literally the first person i've seen cry when we explained about prophets and dispensations before the coming of Christ. And last but not least we are teaching the husband of a member who drove us all the way to Cholula to go the stake conference even though they couldn't go for family commitments. Pure gold.

On Saturday we packed as much as we could and got the house ready for the next missionaries to come in. After we got back from working for the day we called president at around 10 to know what time we were leaving on Monday (today) and if we had to do anything else. He told us that we weren't going to be leaving until next week and was surprised that nobody had told us of this change of plans. Of course the assistants told us to pack everything as fast as we could, but then didn't bother to tell us that we weren't actually leaving. If the assistants were the mission president i think we would have another early church level of dissension here in the mission. Bonus fun fact the sisters in the other ward left yesterday, so now we are working the two areas for the week. 

That's about all for the week. Now we have to pass by and awkwardly tell everyone that we are still here.

  

Elder Warburton

  México Puebla Norte

The family of gold

Last night (or so we thought) of burritos

 I have some weird obsession about my study desk, but i created the perfect study desk only to have to destroy it 2 weeks later

A good view of the malinche not covered by contamination from mexico city