E-mail 08/26/2013

Familia

Well this week has been amazing. The Stake Pres. came to the CdeO this Sunday to see the progress, and there was 60 in attendance this week! We were so happy. So right now they're working on buying the lots on both sides and then they will start building. And to top it all off, all but one of our investigators were in attendance. The reason the one didn´t join us was because he was sick.

Also this week, me and my companion received a confirmation that God answers prayers. After praying for a week and a half, we got one of our Investigators back!

Last week I failed to mention that Elder Johnson, our Area Seventy, came and talked to us, it was awesome! But with it came some changes, so now our investigators have to go to church five times before they can be baptized, so now all our baptisms have been moved back, but that´s ok, it gives us more time to make sure they're ready.

As for what Elder Johnson talked about, well he did a lot of calling to repentance.  The majority of the talk was on the first principle in lesson one, God is our loving Heavenly Father, and how we should take more then five minutes to talk about it, and how if our investigators truly understood this principle, they would have an easier time understanding the rest, and that they wouldn´t go inactive after the missionary left.

So me and my companion have repented, we went back and taught it to all our investigators as one lesson and from now on we teach it the first lesson by it self for every new investigator.

Well for the word of the week, I have a funny story that happened last night.  So the greetings here are "buenos días", (good morning) "buenas tardes" (good afternoon) and "buenas noches" (good night). So buenos días is until noon and buenas tardes is until 6, but here it´s until it´s dark out. But the thing is, every time I say buenas noches, the person responds buenas tardes.  So last night I said buenas tardes and the person said buenas noches.  Then my companion got after me for saying buenas tardes.  So I told him that everyone always says buenas tardes.  So as we were walking home he said buenas noches to a few people and they all responded buenas noches.  So I said okay watch, this next person will say buenas tardes if I say buenas noches, and she did.  And so did four out of five of the people I said buenas noches to, on the way home.  So I was trying to figure out why they responded that way to me, and that´s when it hit me, I told my companion, oh it´s because I´m brilliant, they think it´s still light out.

I thought you might get a kick out of that.

Love You all!

Elder Durrant

E-mail 08/12/2013

Familia

Well this has been a great week. This area is fantastic, so I must have miss understood my companion last week, because there was way more then 20 members. We counted and their was 56 members there. W took a picture to send to Fresnillo (fres'nijo) to the Stake President, so they're going to start building a chapel here this year.  Right now we only have a casa de oración or house of prayer.  It´s actually a three story building and working on extending the base floor; where the sacrament is, because it was packed Sunday, kids were sitting on the parents laps and a few of us had to stand.  We had cake after the block to celebrate.

We had all our investigators there, well that I know of.  We have a baptism next week, and if I understood right, he is being baptized in the river, so that will be interesting. 

We are teaching a family that lives close to the CdeO, so it was easy to get them to go to church.  Some time this week we got a reference from the old Pres. of the Rama (branch).  He has been in too many different churches and sometime along the way started to drink. So now he want to stop, so we have been helping him with that.

We´ve also been working with the less active members, because thier´s about 20 of them, but it hasn´t yielded as good of results.  Most have moved or we couldn't find their address.  We did manage to contact one, but she´s been going to another church. She knows that the church is true, but she goes to the other because she knows more people.

Well I know enough Spanish to communicate with my companion and teach, but some times he has to clarify what I said.  But my companion is determined to have me speaking Spanish fluently by the end of this change.

The word for this week is "asistir", at first glance I would guess "to assist" or to help, but no that´s not what it means.  It means to "attend".  This word has really messed with my head, so if I ever say "we had such and such members assist church" I really mean "we had such and such attend church"  

Love You all and take care

   Elder Durrant

This is a pic of the mission office and my old chapel

New friend

E-mail 08/05/2013

Sorry this will be another short one.

But this week has been interesting, I found out I can´t eat milk products or junk food (well I shouldn´t anyway) I need to eat apples and drink more water.  Well what happened is, I was in the offices and their was three mission doctors, I didn´t talk to them. But after they left another missionary tattle on me to the Mission Pres. wife. that I had diarrhea and so she got after me for not saying something while the doctors were there. But then she gave me that list I mentioned.

We took Elder Diaz to the Mission home (it´s big) and so he is home by now.  Soon after we got the call for transfers...........I got changed, I am no longer in Aguescalientes, right now I am in Fresnillo, it took four hours on bus to get here, and I´m still not to my area, I am staying the night with the Elders here and then tomorrow we will have our district meeting, then we go to our area in Rio Grande, which is an hour from here.  From what I know it is a Rancho, which means it´s not big enough to be a city.  Their is only a branch there with about 20-30 members, so this has been an interesting change.  From a ward of 120ish members to 20-30 member branch.  My companion is working on getting bikes for this area, but for now we will have to do a lot of walking.

So that´s this week, nothing interesting at all. ;)

Love Ya Elder Durrant