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