Jesus Maria, week 1

October 21, 2010

Hola ya´ll, things are going pretty good here in Jesus Maria. It is alot different than Guanajuato for sure though. It’s similar to Silao though as in that it is a pretty small town. It’s really just a suburb of Aguascalientes which is a pretty big city so there is a bit more money here so the city is really clean. It’s also different being in an actual ward with a ward mission leader as well. It is alot more organized so we are able to focus more on teaching people because the members are pretty willing to help with getting people to church and organizing baptisms. The ward actually has 2 sets of missionaries though, one set is in the wealthier part and the other set is in the poorer part. Right now me and my companion are in the poorer area and Elder Preece and Elder Martinez are in the newer area. Our area is easy to get lessons in and find people to teach, but most of the members who feed us are in the other area so we have to travel into the other area almost everyday to eat. It’s kind of fun, we just ask for rides in the back of pick ups to get into town haha, but apparently the president was told that as of next month, missionaries are no longer allowed to ask for rides for security reasons. So they are going to give us more money so we can take buses. We were thinking maybe missionaries were having accidents or something in other missions. But let me tell you the members here sure give us alot of food. Some members even took us to Costco last week to eat pizza for lunch haha. While we were there, we took advantage of the situation and bought us some big jars of peanut butter. So we’ve been enjoying our peanut butter these last few days. There is this family they found right before I got here that we have been teaching. It’s a young couple, Ricardo and Monaca, the mom of the guy Silvia, and the mom’s friend Faviola. They are really cool people and are scheduled to be baptized this Friday if everything works out as planned. The mom and the son lived in Texas for like 20 years so they both speak English really well. But their story is pretty interesting, I Ricardo’s sister was down town in Aguascalientes one night and she walked out of a store and some guy shot and killed her. So they have really been struggling with this for a while because they don’t really know what happens after this life. So we taught the plan of salvation and about how here in this world, we have our agency, to do good or to do bad. We explained that it wasn’t here fault that this happened and that like Alma 60:13 says God permits the righteous to be killed so that he can judge the wicked. Then they asked if there was anything they could do for her because she didn’t have the opportunity to be baptized in the church. We explained how there are missionaries in the spirit world that teach those who haven’t had the opportunity to hear the gospel and that as members of the church, we can go to temples and be baptized for those people who didn’t have the chance to be baptized while they were here. So this seemed to really give some comfort about what happened. As well something pretty cool happened yesterday morning. It was one of those blessings you don’t realize you received until later. We had some people we were teaching during the week that told us they would come with us to church. We went by for about 4 different families and none of them would open the door for us either because they were sleeping or not there. So we were feeling pretty bummed out that we weren’t going to take anyone with us so started to walk to the bus stop. While we were walking, we though of this inactive 18 year old kid (Ismael) who we had talked to a couple of times during the week so we decided to see if he would come with us. We showed up at his house and he was still sleeping but his dad woke him up and then he hurried and got ready and came with us. Yesterday was also fast and testimony meeting because they had general conference and then stake conference the next week. So we encouraged Ismael to go bear his testimony. To our surprise, he actually got up and bore his testimony and talked about how he hadn’t been to church for about 7 months but earlier in the week he had seen us on the side of the road asking for a ride which got him thinking about going back to church again, then another day we showed up again and talked about him going to church again, and then another day we were walking by his house and we helped him and his dad push their suburban and we invited him again to church and then we showed up that same morning to take him to church. Hopefully you can all understand that last part it’s kind of weirdly written, but the point of it is God had been preparing him all week to come back to church. We were thinking later in the day yesterday about how God probably didn’t mean for us to take the other families to church because if they would have been home, we would not have gone and brought Ismael to church. So yep there you have it, God works in mysterious ways. Now we just need to convince him to serve a mission haha.

Scripture of the week, 3 Nephi 13:31-33. “Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” This scripture talks about how he shouldn’t worry about our needs as much as we should first find the kingdom of God and after, all these things will be given. At times we share this scripture when people worry about the temporal things all the time instead of focusing on keeping the commandments. Because if we keep the commandments, God will ensure that all our necessities are met. Well I sure love you all hopefully you all have a good week!!

Love Elder Price

THE CHURCH IS TRUE!!!