E-mail 12/29/2014

Wow! what a week.  First of all we had intercambios with the assistants.  I went with Elder Rice that was in the MTC with me, and Elder Condie stayed with Elder Torgesen that was in the MTC with him, and we also found out that we would be receiving Elder Gutiérrez.  They went to the bus station for him while I was in intercambios, it was nice to go back to my first area, but now it has been divided into four areas and we never went over that way.

It was nice to see you all on Christmas.  The member that let us use his computer was a returned missionary that went to Fresno California, he is also the one I mentioned that gave me a tie.  They gave us some other Christmas gifts as well, I´ll send some pics later.  There are a lot of good members in this ward, which is nice.  We were not able to get a lot of work done this week, we have been so busy and Pres. told us that we couldn´t go visit investigators on Christmas, just RC and active members.  We are trying to get the area up and going, so it can be an example for the rest.  We are doing everything possible to be examples for the rest and not tell the rest to do something we are not doing. Being a Zone leader is keeping me very busy, hopefully we can get everything done this week.

My legs are getting a lot bigger as well, I should be in really good shape by the next transfer.  After we finally get up one hill I see another one start right at the bottom :(

Les amo
Elder Durrant

yes it´s real

E-mail 12/22/2014

Well there went another week, it was so busy. I think Pres thought that I was getting fat or something, because my area has nothing but hills, I have not found a flat part yet.  For the most part, my areas have been flat, so now I am getting a good workout, but it`s nice here, and there`s a nice view from here. (I`ll try to send pics sometime) and the ward is fully functioning.  We also had our Christmas party with Pres., there was food and dessert and we did a gift exchange.  It was funny because we did a drawing to see who would give to who and I got an hermana and that same hermana also gave to me.  I bought her a little speaker that`s in the shape of a can of Pepsi, I was tempted to get her one that was a brand of beer, but I decided that it wouldn't be such a good idea.  On the paper we wrote what we would like, some of the other things that she wrote on there was a blouse, that was just a catastrophe in the waiting, she also wrote a hand bag and so we went over to where the purses are, but I didn`t feel it would be a good idea to walk out of there with one of those, so I just went with the speaker.  She gave me a tie, but I forgot to take a pic to send to you.  Oh and on Tuesday we had our district meeting and my comp. bought a cake and then when we practiced singing in the zone for Christmas they sang me happy birthday in Spanish and in English.  Then later that day we went over to a member to see if we could use their skype on Christmas and it came out that it was my birthday and they said that they had a gift for me, I didn`t believe it at first. (I think it was actually for Navidad) so they gave me and my comp. a tie.  Then after the party we had with Pres. we found out that a RC passed away in our area, so we went to the services right after.  Then the next day we had a Christmas party in the ward with food and games, so we invited investigators to go.  So we have been busy all week long.  Oh and church starts at 1pm.

So this next week in Navidad, pres is letting us watch a movie in the morning, it`s not necessary if you have to call the Family but I get to set things up, so I have to go.  So that`s why I won`t be able to call until about 4pm. the whole zone wants to see Frozen.  Well see you all in three days.

Les amo

Elder Durrant

E-mail 12/15/2014

NOOOO! and here I thought I was safe, it finally happened, I got transferred to Morelos, as a Zone leader.  My new companion is Elder Condie; he is from Idaho (that's where my fourth companion was from) and he has one less transfer then me.  Well President told me to expect to leave, but I did not expect this, so I told the Sister that was preparing a cake for me, that I might not be there on Tuesday, so she made the cake on Saturday.   Then on Sunday, we sang in sacrament meeting again and then we went to a music event for Christmas.  We each had an assignment.  Me and my companion got to help the old people get into the event with wheel chairs.  There were some missionaries that sang in the event and they sang The First Noel but in five different languages, it was awesome.  There was a lot of non members that went, and then we helped the old people get back out, and it took a little while to get some taxi`s, but we did it.  As we were heading back they told us the transfers, and that I was going to be a zone leader and Elder Arnold was going to stay a fifth transfer and train.  So my first day so far as Zone leader, started of at the bus station at 7:30 am and then we ended up having to wait for a missionary that was coming from the farthest zone away,. so we didn`t leave till 3-3:30, and we are still busy, but we will see what this week brings.  Sorry it`s kind of a short message today, but we will be having a Christmas party with President  this week.

Les amo

Elder Durrant

Birthday cake

E-mail 12/08/2014

Well this week has been full. First we had intercambios and choir practice in the zone for Christmas, they want us to sing in the ward this next week as-well, so we had to go and practice that too (I must have a nice voice, because everyone keeps asking us to sing) Then someone asked us to help with their English.  On Thursday we went and did a service, we helped mix up stuff that they put on the houses and then painted them.  It`s a big project they are doing to clean up the place.  There was a lot of people helping, but come to find out, they were getting paid to do it. Now everyone asked us if we were still working in the days that followed :(   We then were supposed to have interviews with our President on Friday, but it got canceled, so we had Zone meeting.  On Saturday they called us up with a surprise, we were going to have our interviews at 5.  Later they called us up and told us that he would be coming in an hour.   He took longer with other people, so we went to go eat, they called up to say that we would be having them on Sunday, so we didn`t get much done that day, running back and forth. We did get them on Sunday, and we also went to a baptism for the other ward Saturday night. So we had a busy week, oh and the Christmas devotional. They gave us cards for ¨He is the gift¨ so we are trying to spread the word.

Today I had a competition with another Elder to see who could eat a liter of ice cream faster, I won.  I`m not sure how it started, at first we saw that we could get it for 20 pesos, which is about $1.60ish, so we wanted to see who could eat the whole thing, and then it turned into a race. I did it in 14 min.

Les amo

Elder Durrant

E-mail 12/01/2014

Wow what a week!  We had an intercambio, zone conference, and Thanksgiving.  Well the zone conference was why awesome, except that at the beginning they let us know that we would be getting a shot for la influenza.  I don´t know if you remember, but last year I told you that one of the hermanas in my district almost went home (well she did go home later) she got really sick from this.  The rest of the conference was really good, he talked about planning for the week, and so the next day, when we had weekly planning, we normally do it for three hours, but this time we decided to put a little bit more effort into it so we were planning for about five hours.  We had to take a quick break about half way, because after sitting for so long you get distracted.  But when we finished we went to go with a family that invited us to have a Thanksgiving meal with them. It was so funny because the sister missionaries that are in this ward didn´t know how to use a whip cream dispenser. I´ll send some pics.

Les amo 

Elder Durrant

 

 

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)