E-mail 03/09/2015

Wow, it´s been a busy week. I can´t believe how fast the time goes by, with all the stuff that we have to do.  The meeting with pres. was really good, then there was the zone meeting; it went really well too.  I also had a surprise this week, when we were picking up all the supplies for the missionaries and their letters and packages, and come to find out I found a letter in the stack with my name on it, a Christmas card from Shari! Really fast shipping, I mean it made it nine months before Christmas!

But the work is coming along nicely, we had five investigators go to church this week and two of them have a baptismal date.  Then we got another reference from a member that we will go visit as soon as we have time in the morning.  We are working with other people and have two others that say they will go to church this week.  Luckily we set it up so that we wouldn´t have to do anything this last week of the transfer, so now we are done with all the meetings and intercambios.  I did have to take a pill called vermox, it gets rid of the amibas and lombrices en el estomago (amoebas and worms in the stomach) but that´s a story for another day.

Today we went bowling and I got two strikes in a row, then we went to a place that had a bunch of statues of comic heroes.  I sent some pics.

Unfortunately I don´t think I will have time to write next week,  I will be busy with other things. but I´ll just have to make up for it next time. Maybe one day you´ll forgive me. :)

Les amo

Elder Durrant

E-mail 03/02/2015

Wow the weeks just disappear like nothing!  Well first we had intercambios with the assistants, I stay with Elder Torgensen and Elder Condie went over to Jesus Maria.  Then they told us that we would be watching Conozca los Mormones (Meet the Mormons) as a mission, it was awesome and funny at the beginning.  It also came out in the theaters here on Friday, so hopefully it´ll help the work here.   We also had the zone conference with President, and the assistants came so we almost didn´t have to do anything.  Also, my comp got sick, but he got better!  Right now we are teaching a young adult (I think I mentioned him before) but he is way awesome, he studies and understands everything.  Sometimes he asks some weird questions, but that´s okay, we answer them all.   We have been getting a lot of references from the members, and we have had a member with us almost every day this last week, so things are moving along.  There are a lot of people that I hope will get baptized in the future.

Today we went to cerro de muerte, (hill of death) we climbed up his foot, it was funny.  It was fun, we went with some members. I´ll send some pics.

Les amo

Elder Durrant

Take care of your life, use the bridge

Picture of the zone

E-mail 02/23/2015

WOW KFC......it´s been a while since I´ve eaten that, but I´ve gotten sick of chicken.

Well, sometimes I have asked myself, why it is that I´m going home two weeks early (it has to do with the transfers, that´s the end of the transfer) and they don´t let us extend in this mission. I think that I probably would have extended had I had the option, but now I know why.  Isn´t it amazing how the Lord prepares things long before we even think about it. Samuel I know that this is the time that the Lord want´s you to go, I have learned that during my mission.  The Lord prepares things in his own time and I will be looking forward to seeing you for two weeks.

Well as for life here, let´s just say it´s hooot!  Everyone tells us that it should be cold right now, but it feels like the middle of summer, so we are getting roasted, and just when we finally fixed the boiler too.  Well I still have two more full weeks to look forward to.  This week just flew by, to be honest, I don´t feel like I´m going home, even though everyone keeps reminding me.  My companion doesn´t think that it´s bad to say how much time you have, so it makes it hard to keep it a secret, but I try to.

Me and my companion have stared a competition with exercising so that we will push ourselves, but after doing 7 sets of 10 pushups and today I did 9 sets of 8 curls using two five gallon jugs with a bar, well after that I hurt.

Les amo

Elder Durrant

E-mail 02/16/2015

Well there´s not that much that has happened this week.  We are working to find new people so that we can keep the area progressing.  We have new ward missionaries, so this week we´ll put them to work helping us keep up with everyone.  We have a family that is close to getting baptized, the only problem is that we can only visit them once a week.  We usually teach part of the lesson and visit more often, but in this case we are teaching the full lessons, it takes some getting use to, but we will see how it goes.  We were going to teach them about the restoration first, but seeing as their questions were more about the plan of salvation so we tough that and answered all their questions.

Well this next three weeks are going to be busy. First this next week we have two intercambios with the district leaders, because we won´t have time later.  Then we have zone conference and a intercambio with the assistants the following week, and the last week we have all those meetings again, planing for the zone, consejo de líderes (council leaders) and zone meeting, so we will see how much we can get done this next few weeks.

well Valentine's Day was kinda boring, everyone was gone, but in the morning a family brought us some atole (atole is a hot Mexican drink) and sugar cookies, they were good.

We also found a short cut though a desert, for some reason or other they haven´t built houses there but all around it. So we just cut though the desert to get to the other side, it´s awesome, I love short cuts like that.

Les amo

Elder Durrant

We found this road sign out in the middle of no were.
Where I took the pic, there is a road and on the other side
there are houses and everything.

E-mail 02/09/2015

Wow what a week!  We have been sooooo busy, I have no Idea how we managed to get it all done.  We did not have a single day that wasn't full.

Monday we were in the bus station until 2:30 and then we were running the rest of the day to get everything done.

Tuesday we had to prepare the zone plan and some other papers, then we ate with an hermana with 23 children (they're all grown up) she lives really far, and to save money, we walked back instead of taking a taxi, but it was farther than I thought, so we ended up walking for about 30-45min.

Wednesday we had a meeting at 7am and it ended about 4:30-5 but we didn´t get back to the house till 6ish.

Thursday we had weekly planning and some other matters that became urgent, and our meeting with the ward mission leader.

Friday we had the zone meeting and the interview for Jose for his baptism.

Saturday we had the baptism.

Sunday, church with divisions with the young single adults in the stake to find the young single adults inactive

while fitting lessons in where we could, but amongst it all we saw a few miracles. Thursday after the meeting with the ward mission leader, we were waiting for the bus, but it was taking forever and we would have gotten to a lesson late, but a member that works as a taxi gave us a ride and we got there on time.  Then after we taught the lesson, he shared with us something important that he needed to share with us.  Later on I thought about the experience and realized that the Lord wanted us to get there on time, because if we arrived late we would have rushed to try and get to the house on time and he would not have shared that experience with us if he knew we had to rush.  Then the other time was right before the baptism, we had just arrived with an investigator, and found out that his parents were fighting in the house and they had been in there since the morning.  At the same time we found out that no one was filling the font, so we had to go right away so we could have the baptism.   We decided to take a quick moment to teach him outside about trials in the life and pray.  At the end we had a prayer, which he asked that they would stop fighting, and in a moment his Dad came out and left on his motorcycle.  Today we are going to go see them, to see how they are doing.  We did manage to get the font filled up on time as well.

Les Amo

Elder Durrant

 

consejo de líderes      (Council Leaders)

E-mail 02/02/2015

Wow it´s been another long transfer day.  Me and Elder Condie didn´t have transfers, but Elder Gutierrez got transferred to another area in our district.  We got another hermana that was in Matehuala come to our zone, so that meant we got to wait in the bus station until 2:30, see as we got there at 7:30, it was a long time sitting around.  Then we have been rushing to get everything else done, and this week is the first of the month so we get to be in meetings and planning all week long.  Sunday we also got to take a hermana to the offices because she finished and is going home, but I got to see some people from my first ward, so that was fun.  The ward mission leader is still there.  We should be having a baptism this week, but that brings along with it a whole set of things to do.  Hopefully we can get it all done, with all the meetings and everything to plan for the baptism, and we just got informed that his family will be coming to listen to us, because he has been listening in the house of some members.  We also have a few other people that are getting close to baptism, we also had a family go to church that are friends of some members. 

Les amo

Elder Durrant

E-mail 01/26/15

Well this week had it´s ups and downs, but luckily there were more ups than downs. The work is progressing.  We have someone with a baptismal date for the seventh of February, then we have more that are getting close, luckily we have a lot of support from the members.  We are getting more and more references, but at the same time it gets tough to be in a trio, look after the zone, make our area the model, and at the same time focus on the needs of the people. I´m also trying to follow the advice of Shari and take every moment I can to relax, but they are few and brief especially with transfers coming up next week, we will see how things go. I hope Elder Condie stays one more transfer, but he has been here a long time, so we will see what happens.  We hope to have a good week, we found a lot of new people to teach and still searching for more, and we hope to have more people go to church, which is the great challenge. Along with that, we have another intercambio, but at least this time we get to go to the district meeting that we belong to.  Yesterday was the cumpleaños (birthday) of one of the assistants, so they invited us over for pizza, then cake and ice cream, and then we went and played billiards with a member, it was a lot of fun.

Les amo

Elder Durrant

E-mail 01/19/2015

Well I hope you get all the pics.  The first one, if you hadn´t noticed is Elder Domgaard.  We were visiting a RM from the mission Leon and he showed us the pics from the time he was in the mission field and I noticed his name, so maybe you can ask him if he knew an Elder Mil.  Plus we went to Centro to see all the cool sites, and when we got back Elder Condie was tired, so he rested his eyes for a bit.  So did Elder Gutierrez, but I didn´t get a pic of him before he woke up.

Well we are getting a lot done so that is something good.  We are doing intercambios with the district leaders, I went to the other area last week, so this time Elder Condie will go and I get to stay.  Right now we are teaching a family that members are having us teach in their home. (I can´t remember if I mentioned them last week or not) but she just had a baby about a week ago, so they haven´t gone to church, but they are excited to go this next week. They read everything we give them and the members are active in helping them understand the doctrine.  We have another young man that is listening to us in the house of his girlfriend, so we were worried that he was just doing it to marry her, but we had a talk with him and placed a baptismal date.  There is also a less active family that the kids want to be baptized so we are trying to get the whole family to go, but this last Sunday only the father and son went, but in general things are moving along and we are getting a lot of member involvement.

Les amo

Elder Durrant

Elder Nate Domgaard is the grandson of our old bishop in our ward. 
The kids called them Grandma and Grandpa Domgaard.

E-mail 01/12/2015

Well I´m starting to feel the effects of being a zone leader.  So yeah it was a crazy week with stuff that I expected and stuff I didn´t expect.  Well first off we had to do our monthly plans for the zone and get things ready for the meeting on Wednesday, and we visited some investigators that we are getting ready to leave for a time.  On Wednesday we got to the offices at 7:30 am (we got up early) had breakfast and then started the meeting, it was really good.  We talked a little about the plan de area Mexico 2015 that talks about being self sufficient physically and spiritually. (I heard that the missionaries that leave from Mexico will no longer receive help from the states, they have to pay for it) the church in Mexico is growing fast, well except for this part of Mexico. Pres. is concerned about the state of the mission, I don´t think we are the lowest baptizing mission in Mexico anymore, but we are definitely not close to the highest.  Gladly there has been baptisms every week so far this month in the zone.  Hopefully with time we can set a better example for the zone, right now we are looking for new people, so hopefully things can start moving.  We also talked about efforts and desires and I thought about the law of attraction, so I put a picture of a baptism on my desk to remind me of my commitment to help people come closer to our Father in Heaven through baptism.  When we finished the meeting we had some lunch and then went for the materials for the zone.  We finally got back to the house about 5-6ish and left to go visit some people. Then on Thursday we had our weekly planning, we received a call from Hermana Villarreal letting us know that an Hermana in our zone went to the hospital the night before and that we needed to go visit her to see what was going on and give her a blessing.  It was kind of a shocker because we didn´t know about it until that morning, so my comp. had a talk with the district leader about better communication.  We spending a couple hours in the hospital trying to figure things out and setting up an intercambio so her comp. could go to the house and get stuff that they needed.  Luckily the sickness isn´t severe, but she had to stay a couple of nights there.  When we finished that, we went and helped some Elders move their house because they have been having problems with the neighbors and he tried to get into the house, then we ran to an appointment that wasn´t there.  On Friday we had the zone conference and I had two talks about 20 min each, all went good with that, and then we got a few lessons in.  Then on Saturday we went to a baptism in the ward, because the person getting baptized wanted my comp. to do the ordinance.  On Sunday, it was so funny because Elder Condie always tells me and Elder Gutierrez that we will be giving a talk in church because he gave one his first week here, but it has never happened and this week some of the speakers didn´t arrive so they asked Elder Condie to give a talk and not us :)  We then had a meeting with the sumo consejero (High Councilor) over missionary work in the stake and we went to go eat with the stake pres. he feed us turkey with mashed potatoes :) So we didn´t get much time this week to visit people, but luckily we do have a family we are teaching in the house of members and they completed all their commitments, but they didn´t go to church because she just gave birth on Friday to a son.

So yeah it´s been crazy, and I don´t think it´ll calm down just yet.

Les amo

Elder Durrant

E-mail 01-05-2015

Well I´m sure you´re all wondering how new years was for me.......well, I went to bed.  I guess I could have put an alarm right before the hour, but I was more worried about sleep.  A family invited us over to eat, they gave us home made pizza, it was good.  Then we had to get to the house right at 9. because Pres. wanted us to call to make sure everyone got to there house on time.  This last week was our first full week we have had since I have arrived here, so we had more time to teach people, we are staying very busy.  It gets tough to get everything done at night, but it´s also nice because we both have phones and can help things move along faster.  This week will be interesting, because we have a meeting with Pres. on Wednesday so the day before we have to prepare information and plans.  Then on Friday, we will be having our zone meeting, so it will be crazy.  At least we are in the same state as the offices so we don´t have to travel so far.  We are trying our best to lead by example, that is how Christ did it.  For me, it is tough to follow someone that asks a lot and does little, but it isn´t always easy to lead by example.  You have to constantly think about how you can be better and be able to take criticism.  Well I´m still a work in progress, but as we try our best to be better, the Lord is always willing to forgive us.

Oh and it´s starting to get cold (very early, we might freeze LOL)

Les amo

Elder Durrant