March 2016

March 14, 2016 

hey guys,

so this was an interesting week, mexico can be very... unpredictable sometimes. so the week started out pretty hot, but as the temperature here does, it changed from one day to the next, and we actually had a good amount of snow one day. two days later and its summer again. triste mexico...

these past few weeks we have been learning a lot about working with unity, ourselves and seeing it in the families that we are serving. we are told in the scriptures a lot that we should be of one heart and one mind. i have come to realize that the trick is not that the heart or mind is not our heart or mind, but the lords heart and mind, the trick to being united is to stop trying to develop our own way of doing things, and start looking for how the lord wants us to do things.

so sunday we were teaching an investigator, we haven't been able to teach him very much because he works a lot, but we managed to talk with him after church because he doesn't work sundays. we have seen a ton of progress with him in the classes and all that stuff, and we have seen that he is super ready to be baptized, so we were planning on working with him on how we can get him there as soon as we can without being able to see him during the week. so we start talking with him about that when out of the blue he lets us know, "oh, by the way, i was baptized when i was a kid, and i just found my membership record." ...well that was easy. it was super unexpected but it was super cool. the lord works in mysterious ways and it was cool to see that our role was not to get him to baptism, but to get him active, and it is a great feeling to know that we were able to be an instument to bring somebody closer to the lord.

well thats it for now, be good, love you guys

elder gandola

March 21, 2016

hey guys,

so this week was interesting, i guess ill start with today.

so there's this thing in the mission called a preparation day where you can sometimes go and do recreational activities, except for that you don't ever actually do that. in a year and i a half the only things i have really done on p-day is go to the centro, or play sports (but soccer has been banned, so we don't do that too often anymore) today we actually did something!

so fresnillo is the location of what is supposedly the largest producing silver mine on a world wide level. there are tours and stuff, but they are only open saturday and sunday. during vacations however, they are open every day. so we got together with an investigator, his girlfriend (who is a member) another young man and another companionship of missionaries and we got to go tour the mine, which was pretty cool. there was also a zoo with animals and stuff, which was also ok. the thing about zoos is that they always sound so much cooler than they are, because when you hear that they have tigers you just remember seeing them hunting a deer or something on tv, the actual result is you just get to see a tiger sleeping and ignoring all efforts to get its attention... at least the monkeys like showing off.

so this week we have been working a lot with the members to strengthen the ward. its interesting to see how a lot of the time we have a testimony of the things, but we dont really keep it a part of our daily lives. i think that it is very easy to forget, if we are not working to remember. for example, we have all heard of the title of liberty, when moroni rent his shirt, wrote on it, and all the men came out and made a covenant to protect their rights and their families. what we often overlook is what he does afterwards, when, "he caused the title of liberty to be hoisted upon every tower which was in all the land, which was possessed by the Nephites." just like moroni, we should not look forwards to spiritual experiences just so we can go and put them on a shelf somewhere, he putit on every tower. that way it would be impossible to forget. we can also establish habits of righteousness in our lives so that, unless we try, it would be imposible to forget.

last of all, person of the week. C, he is a joven that actually contacted us in the street, he is dating a member (actually he is the one who we went to the mine with) and has gone to church a bunch of times with her. but we started visiting him and he started progressing by himself, this wek we were about to teach him about fasting, but he let us know that he had already had his first fast like 2 weeks ago. he has been learning about how the spirit speaks to us and has the talent that many life long members lack of applying the scriptures to himself. basically hes a stud, and he is of age to serve a mission to, so...

but anyways, that's it for now, hope you all are well. be good, love you guys.

Elder Gándola

March 28, 2016

so this week was interesting

so we started out the week planning on having 3 baptisms, 2 investigators that have been progressing really well and a 10 year old girl who is from a member family but was never baptized. but as luck would have it and appointments fell through, it went down to 2, then to 1, and finally to 0. so we didnt have a baptism this week, the zone leaders however, did have a baptism, which was great because the 2 investigators were both able to go, and afterwards they both felt really good about the step and a lot more ready. this week is conference, so next week we are planning on having them baptised.

so fun story from this week, we were walking along a busy road like tuesday, when suddenly we here this super loud scraping sound, so we turn around to see what it was and my first thought was, "hey, why doesn't that car have a wheel?" then i asked myself, "and who left a tire sitting in the middle of the road?"" and then i connected the two thoughts and yup, somebodies tire fell off as they were driving. we helped them put their tire back on and it sounded like they had annoyed some lady while parking, so she had come back and taken the bolts off from their tire... so that was interesting.

this was a good week to share the gospel for easter week, there is a video that the church made that you may have seen called hallelujah that was cool to share. we were assigned to speak sunday five minutes before we started the meetings, but luckily we had anticipated and prepared. i shared a thought about something that the savior had said on the cross that really struck me this week, when he pleaded, "father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." its interesting to think that he said this about his tormentors as they were in the act of killing him, and how he did it because of the very real love that he felt for those same people who despised him so much. its interesting to read about how he suffered so that we can experience mercy, and to realize that as he tells us in the scriptures, that , "the merciful shall obtain mercy." it is our duty to forgive those around us as a requisite to obtaining that divine mercy. if we do not feel that love for our enemies that the lord felt for his, moroni tells us that we can pray with all the energy of our hearts to obtain this love. thus the atonement not only offers us mercy, but can help us extend it to others.... there are an infinity of applications

of the atonement.

i have no time and have to go, but anyways, love you guys, portuense bien

elder gandola