Email 12/23/2013

Well this week has been fantastic.  We had the mission Christmas party this last week, and Pres. gave us all new scripture cases with our names on them and chocolate.  We each bought something for another missionary, I got socks and more chocolate, :) and we did some skits about the nativity, and I was Joseph.  We also sang a song in English "What Child is This". When we finished and headed for Fresnillo, because we meet together with the zone in Zacatacas, we got on a bus that was already full, so we crammed in and sang carols, it was awesome.  I have also seen miracles this week, one of them was that we managed to have 7 with a baptism day and they all came to church this week.  I don`t know why but we have been having a hard time getting our investigators in the CdeO (Casa de Oración or House of Prayer) lately, but this is the most we have had at one time here.  The other miracle is that I lost my bag with my scriptures in a bus in Fresnillo, we had already bought the tickets for Rio Grande when we realized so we called the DL, because it passes by his house. I didn`t hear anything from the zone leaders until about five,  because that's when they had time to go by where the bus stops for a time (they live close to it.) Well they told me it was in the first bus they asked.  I learned a valuable lesson about faith, I have a quote that says "faith and doubt cannot exist in the same person at the same time" I believe it`s from Pres. Monson. I had to take out all my doubts before I got a confirmation.  And it helped to help others, a new investigator had an experience a lot worse then a lost bag, so just remember that our trials aren`t just for us but to help others to.

Love you Lots and I will be talking to you a las tres en la tarde de navidad! (at three o'clock in the afternoon of Christmas!)
Elder Durrant

E-mail 12/16/2013

WOW!! Thanks everyone for your emails, oh and don´t forget to do the same for Daniel.

Well this week has been busy, we have none stop working, we have so many people to visit that we just don´t have time to visit everyone, then to top it off we had another meeting with Elder Ortiz (first or second counselor in the area Presidency) with new commitments for us, the way we work is changing, we are focusing more on working with the members and focusing more on the less actives.  We will now be treating the less actives like investigators, and the members have put together a list of less actives and friends of the church.  Rio Grande has put together a list of 207 names, the branch pres. has them and will work out a time to visit them with the person that gave the name, so we are just overflowing with work.  Elder Ortiz also told the Hermanas (sisters) to feed us more because we will be needing the energy.  But it hasn't been a problem, the Hermanas (sisters) here feed us a lot.  I think I am getting fat here, not really, I'm still skinny.  Well as for my comp. you maybe wondering what his name means, well it means smiley or smiling.  So it's not Elder Risueño but Elder Smiley.  Oh and we didn´t get those other two missionaries here this cambio (changes-transfers)  but Pres. told us this week we could start looking for a house, so we will be getting them this next cambio (changes-transfers). 

Oh and if anyone is wondering there isn´t any snow down here, I heard it snowed it Zacatacas but just a little, I miss the stuff.

Y mi español está mejorando, todavía tengo mucho para aprender, pero sí puedo hablar suficiente para comunicar con personas, como en esta semana hablé con un conductor de taxi, hablé con él sin problemas y esfuerza.

(My Spanish is getting better, I still have a lot to learn, but yes I can talk enough to communicate with people.  Like this week I talked with a taxi driver,  I talked with him without any problems and without strain.)

When I call home Christmas I will be able to show you. If you want to talk to my comp I will need to translate, because he doesn"t know English.

Pues hasta la proxima semana (Well until next week)

Les amo! (Love you all)

Elder Durrant

E-mail 12/09/2013

Well, this week we have worked really hard.  Francisco drank this week after a month and four days, so we are going to try for another month, but his wife is just about ready to be baptized.  She has had some doubts, but Francisco has helped her though them,  Now she is going to bring their daughters to church.  They have already brought one, but they are going to try to bring the ones that are married.  We are also working with the husbands of some of the hermanas (sisters) in the branch.  We hope to help them have the opportunity to go through the temple as a family.  We had all of our converts (o sea, las almas que les pueden ayudar a tener gozo[ie, souls who can help them find joy]) in La Iglesia (church) this week.  And all, but one has been active in the church.  She still has her testimony, but she just has some things that she needs to work through.

Oh, and cambios (changes-transfers) came this week.  Elder Pazcka left for Aguascalientes and I am here with my new comp, Elder Risueño.  This is his last cambio (changes-transfers) in the mission, so that means I will be here for at least one more cambio (changes-transfers) after this one.  But that's all good, I like it here in Rio Grande.  But I have to tell you that there's one missionary in Fresnillo with the same time as me in the mission, but he has now been in three different areas in Fresnillo.  He started here and is still here.  He said his call really said "...you are called to the Fresnillo mission".  I'm happy to be in this area. 

Sorry I don't have much this week.  We've been doing a lot of hard work and we hope to start seeing the "fruits of our labors" start to ripen. 

Oh, and I hope you all know that I love you!!!
Elder Durrant

E-mail 12/02/2013

Familia

This week has been fantastic

Well I´m sure you´re wondering if I celebrated Thanksgiving, well I didn´t, but Christmas has already been in motion.  They decorate their houses too, the only think that we are missing is snow.  It got close this week, we had a cold wave come thorough, in fact the District Leader told us that their water tank froze (all the houses here has a big water tank on top of the house so if the water shuts off you won´t notice) well they couldn´t shower till about nine.  Well it wasn´t so bad for us, Fresnillo is colder then Río Grande. But unfortunately it didn´t snow, and it´s already hot again.

As for the work, well it has been slow this week because of the cold, but that doesn´t mean we didn´t do any.  We continue to work with Francisco, Saturday makes one month free of alcohol :) it has been amazing to see the difference in him, before he hardly paid attention to the lessons and was depressed, but now he is attentive and understands the lessons, he has even started to work again.  Well because of work we haven´t been able to visit him as much, so he asked to postpone the baptism, so we won´t be having it this week, but we are getting him ready. His wife Nieves is fantastic, I think she might just be baptized before him.  She even came to church without him, because he needed to work this Sunday to start off work.  She told us that he never wants to work on Sunday again, what happened is the place is in a rancho (ranch) close to Rio Grande but there wasn´t a bus going that way for some time so he had to walk and when he got home he was trembling, he told her that Heavenly Father was chastising him for working on Sunday.  We also talked to someone in one of those little stores because we were looking for something, he told us to come back and he would have it, when we came back we chatted with him and found out that the missionaries had visited him before, but he lost contact with them, so we are going to visit with him this week, his story is very interesting, so I will try to fill you in next week.

Love you all!!

Elder Durrant

P. S. FELIZ CUMPLEAÑOS JUAN!!   (HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOHN!!)

E-mail 11/25/2013

Familia

Well this week has been awesome, we have been working extremely hard to complete our goals this week.   We have been working on having all our lecciones (lessons) with a member present. We just about completed our goal, but Saturday everything seem to keep us from completing our goal, all our investigators were busy with one thing or another.  It was about 7:00 pm when we just about gave up with our goal, then we decided to visit one of our investigators that we haven´t visited in a while, because he´s not always there when we visit, but he was this time and told us that he usually goes with friends at this time, but for some reason he stuck around the house when we came to visit.  The Lord sometimes gives us a hard day just to prepare us  for something special to come.

Something else that happened this week is we had the wife of the Francisco (who is trying to stop drinking) start to have lesson with us, she is very Católico, (Catholic) but she told us that she wanted to follow her husband.  We hope to baptize him in Dec and help her gain a testimony of the church, so he can baptize her afterward.

I love it here, I love the people and to be honest I don´t want to be changed from this area because I have worked so hard with these people, I want to see them baptized.

Love Elder Durrant

E-mail 11/18/2013

Sorry I didn`t write last week.

But this week has been filled with hard work.  We are working on having more members join us when we teach.  And we had ward conference this week, we only managed to get four investigators to go, but we had more success in less actives and future investigators, the place was packed, there was about 60-70 people there.  They have selected three possible places to put the chapel, so the excitement continues.  The investigator I have mentioned before with alcohol, Saturday makes two weeks clean, he just needs two more (and a whole life time).

The people here are amazing, we have about 15 investigators and about 6 possible people to teach.  We have been so packed that we don`t have time to visit all of them. But we have divided the area for December.   We thought it would be easy to divide it, but the Lord had a different idea. So we started off with a prayer, talked over it, then asked the Lord what he thought, when we didn`t feel anything we talked over it some more and then prayed again. We followed this pattern until we felt good, it took us about two hours to do it. My companion said ¨so this is what it`s like for the apostles when they make a new mission.  The Lord really is active in this work, we just need to work on being able to access this help.  At first I was really afraid of promising a blessing to people, but I have learned that the Lord has already promised this things.

We also had a seventy come and speak to the stake leaders and they invited the missionaries to join, Pres. Villarreal spoke too.  We are hoping for even more animo (encourage) with the members.  He invited the members to complete the commitment in General Conference to invite someone to hear the missionaries before Christmas. And he invited us to visit the members and teach them the Restoration, so the members could decide if we are worthy to teach their friends.  It was awesome!!

Love you all!!

Elder Durrant

E-Mail 11/04/2013

Dear familia,
Well this has been a very interesting week. First off me and my comp. have been speaking Spanish almost always ever since I got here. But it´s my responsibility to teach him English, so we decided to speak English in the house and Spanish outside. It was so funny because it wasn´t just Elder Paczka having a hard time. Well let´s just say it was harder then I thought to switch between languages. I would start to talk in English but then I would just automatically switch back to Spanish.  Well after speaking English a little bit again it came back to me, but it made me wonder if I was learning Spanish or English. It also makes me wonder what it will be like when I come home.

Well as for work here, well we have an investigator that we have had ever since I got here, (I´m pretty sure I mentioned him in my emails before) he is an alcoholic and he hasn´t been able to quite, so this week we decided to visit him every day.  So far it has been working, except for one day we were a little late because we were waiting for a member to join us, but then we found out that he couldn't, so we rushed over and on the way we found him sitting down with a drink.  Well he told us that he thought we weren´t going to come so he went for a walk and passed by a friend and he gave him a drink.  Luckily we found him before he drank a lot, so then he poured the rest out. but we hope it will be the last.

We have also been working with a less active member, when we visit him he always has an excuse and that we can come back another day, but when we come he just does the same thing, so we decided to just share a scripture at the door.  Well when we went to visit his son, but he wasn´t home and the father was, so when we asked him if we could visit with him, he said yes and during the lesion he was very attentive.  Well needless to say we left his house shocked. he still didn't come to church, but I have high hopes for him.

The other interesting thing to happen this week is well Halloween, all saints day and day of the dead.  Well my comp. said they celebrate Halloween in his city on the 31, but here they celebrate it on the 1 and 2 and rather then go to houses for candy they go to stores, so centro (center) was swarmed with little kids. It´s funny because we have Halloween because they have all saints day and day of the dead and they have Halloween because we do.  Well they still had their transitional stuff, they had some stuff setup in centro so I took some photos, but the computer dosen´t want to load the camera so maybe next week.

Love you all!!

Elder Durrant