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