E-mail 11/24/2014

Well we finally managed to move into the new house.  I really like the place, it´s one of the nicest places I´ve had in the mission.  But it gets really dark at night in there when we turn of the lights.  My poor companion ended up with a companion like me.  So while he was brushing his teeth, I went and closed the door to the room, so he thought I was in there and then I hide in the other room.  He finished brushing his teeth and turned off the light and he told me that he thought about some scary movies.  When he got to the door he heard my feet behind him and started freaking out because he thought I was in the other room, so he thought that I was someone else that got into the house.  So when I got to him and made a sound, I think he almost had a heart attack.  So that´s me abusing my companions.

But as far as work is coming along, we didn´t get that much done because of taking care of the problems with the house, but that´s all taken care of.   Saturday we went out to San Gerardo and went by foot.  It took us about an hour and a half to find the reference they gave us, but it is super nice out there, and the place has only privet communities.  So it´d be like what they say here "bien fresa" but I´m not sure how to translate that.  I know what it means I just can´t think of the exact meaning in English.  Basically it means a rich or nice looking place, and it was out in the middle of no were.  But we did find out which bus goes by, so we took it on the way back.

Well there's not much more that happened this week, but I´ll send some pics.

Les amo 

Elder Durrant

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

E-mail 11/17/2014

Well this week nothing went as planned, but as you know "plans are made to be changed."  We didn´t have the baptism this week that we had planned, and he will be going to Mexico City this week, so we gave him some ways to contact the missionaries down there.  We didn´t manage to get the house rented yet that we went to see last Monday, he has some issues about the contract (as always :( )  but we will be talking to him tomorrow.  One thing that went better then I thought was an activity we had on Saturday to encourage the members to do the work of salvation.  I will admit that I was a little concerned about effectiveness of sending the members out to contact people on the street, but it turned out better then I thought.  People were more accepting of them then they are to two white guys with a white shirt and tie.  I just hope that it´ll encourage them to talk to their friends.  The other nice thing is, seeing as the ward is at the point of destruction, so it has encouraged them to do home teaching, they just made the assignments this week, and if they do it, this will be the first time I have seen home teaching since I got here.  I´m hoping they do it, because if not, it doesn´t matter how much work we put into it, we won´t be able to save the ward on our own.

Oh me and my companion have found some Christmas lights, so we put them up in our house for the Christmas spirit.  I know what your thinking, that it´s too early to be thinking about Christmas.  But not here in Mexico, everyone here loves to celibate, the day they stop celebrating is a sad day (well that´s not really true, they still celebrate when they are sad :).

Les amo

Elder Durrant

 

 

 

  

 

E-mail 11/10/2014

Wow, it´s been a crazy week.  We have been looking for a new house to rent, because our house in the area of the hermanas and it´s in bad condition.  If we have too many things on, the wires start to fry, and I feel like the boiler might explode one of this days.  But the problem has been that there aren´t any houses in rent.  Someone just let us know about a house in rent, so we are going to check it out right after we finish writing.  Then today, me and Elder Arnold didn´t have transfers, but Elder Montes de oca did.  Last night he tried getting into his house to pack, but the lock wouldn't work, so he had to wait to pack until this morning.  We called up the owner of the house and he came and checked it out.  Come to find out it was just the key, it got damaged some how, so we finally got into the house about 9-9:30 and that´s when he should have been in the central, so we just took him to the offices directly.  It´s nice to see my first area, it brings back memories.  I can´t believe how long it´s been since I served in that area.  Well the time just keeps ticking away whether we like it or not.  We also stopped by Wal-Mart on the way back, we stocked up on food for the next few weeks.

Les amo 

Elder Durrant

E-mail 11/03/2014

This week has been busy.  We are continually blessed with more and more people to teach, and even thou we are in a trio, and he tries to work in his area as much as possible, we manage to get to just about everyone in the week.  The members are getting more and more involved as it is being stressed in the stake that it is the work of the members and we are here to help.  We did manage to go on splits this week, so that helped too.

Right now, we don`t know if they will take a part of our ward or combine it with another, but it will probably happen in December.  Hopefully they will just take a part of the other ward. 

We were so happy to see a family that we have been teaching, show up for church, we didn`t think they would go, they actually showed up late because they thought it was at 10, but it was at 9, but it was like a missionaries dream.  All the members have befriended them and they talked about ways they could help them with some of the problems that they have.  They are also trying to invite them to the ward activities, but we also found out why they hadn`t gone before, it`s just that they thought that when they went to church that we would stop visiting them.

We have the first counselor of the stake presidency in our ward.  He served a mission and went to BYU and his wife is from France.  He told us that he signed up to give us food on thanksgiving day. :) it`ll be awesome unless by some unfortunate reason I get transferred next week, I don`t think so, but you never know what the Lord has in store.

Les Amo

Elder Durrant

E-mail 10/27/2014

Well this week we have been busy working in two areas, or trying to find members to help out, but we are moving things along, we just have to hold out for two more weeks. We also had Stake Conference this week, but this is the first time I have not seen a Seventy come to a Stake Conference here in Mexico.  I liked it though, especially the priesthood session.  We split up in different rooms, one for the bishops and their counselors, another for the secretaries and another for the ward mission leaders, we stayed with the ward mission leaders.  The Stake President was the one teaching us, so it was nice to see them discuss some of the problems, and it has given me a few ideas to help get members involved in the work.  Like we discussed, it´s the members job to do missionary work, we are just here to help.  I don´t think there is enough time to keep this ward from getting combined with Versalles, unless we started seeing some miracles, but we are going to do the best we can.

My companion´s Spanish is improving quickly.  This week we helped him roll his R, but now he is doing it all the time so it can sound better, but it´s getting annoying, but that´s ok he´s just happy to get the language down.

I hope you like the pics I´ll be sure to send some pics of those tomatoes if we get some;)

Les amo

Elder Durrant

cerro de muerte (hill of death) it looks like a person
laying down head to the left feet to the right

 

Elder Arnold eating his first nito
(negrito(liittle black boy))
it´s a chocolate twinky

Elder Montes de oca eating his first twinky

check out what we found in our backyard,
looks like I just might be getting something
special for Christmas this year

 

 

I found a little friend at church
(I let him go out side)

E-mail 10/20/2014

WOW! what a week.  It was kind of funny because last Monday, I had an old guy yell in my face, and no it´s not something that happens a lot.  Well what happened is that we went to go visit someone that lives in his house, so when we got there he started showing us his books, it was very interesting, but we were there with a purpose, so we tried starting up the lesson, but he would cut us off and start talking.  Later on, the son of who we went to go visit, went to ask a question, but the old guy snapped at him, so his mom got upset and started yelling and he started yelling back, then in a moment he turned his anger to us and started yelling at me about an inch from my head, but I stayed calm.  He was a 70 year old man, so I wasn´t too worried, but we decided to leave.  It was funny to be honest, because he got all worked up over nothing.

Oh and we are also in a trio now, our district leader´s companion went home for sickness and there aren´t any other trios in the mission so he will be with us for the next three weeks, or until they find him a companion so now we are working in two areas.  It´s a lot of work to be thinking about both areas, hopefully we can survive.  He goes with members whenever he can, but with us both preparing investigators for baptism, we are stretched out a little.

I also haven´t mentioned that our ward is in bad conduction, by December we should be combining with another ward, they are just trying to hold out until another ward gets divided so that the stake doesn´t turn it back into a district.  I was hoping that we would have enough time to get the ward back up, but there just aren´t enough priesthood holders, but we are doing are best to help things move along.

¡Les amo!

Elder Durrant

E-mail 10/13/2014

Well this week we found a fairly high speed internet, so I decided to send pics instead of writing, so this will be a short one.
We are finding more and more people to visit.  We are looking up less active members and if they don´t live there, then we contact them.  We didn´t get anyone to go to church, our ward is at 9 and every one is asleep at that time, so it will be tough but not as tough as my last area.  We had to take a bus just to get to church and seeing as there wasn´t very many people with cars, it made it tough.  But the distance to the chapel from our house is about the same as at home, so it will be easier for the distance, and at the end of the year we will have the 11, but we will see if I´m still in this area by then.
Oh and we went bowling today, well I didn´t do so great, but seeing as I haven´t played in a while it´s understandable.
Les amo
Elder Durrant